Categories
dungeons & dragons writing advice

How AI is Making Dungeon Mastering Easier Than Ever

I run a Dungeon & Dragons campaign for four students that meets for two hours a day, two days a week. Our campaign takes place in my home-brew world, Migia.

I don’t have the time or the skills to map a logical geography for a whole world, so I used the open-source Fantasy Map Generator created by GitHub user Azgaar, a JavaScript wizard from Richmond, Virginia, to generate and tweak a world map for Migia. 

The generator allows you to customize place names, stylize the design, focus the map on political borders, biomes, cultural zones, religions, etc., and render it as a flat map, a 3D scene, or a globe.

From there, the Internet offers a plethora of D&D-focused generators to help me bring Migia to life. There’s the city map generator, the dungeon generator and cave generator, the random encounter generator, the side quest generator, the backstory generator, the NPC generator, the fantasy name generator, and a whole list of auto-roll tables that will generate everything from a “breakfast at a traveler’s inn” to “resurrection consequences.” On days I prefer rolling dice to pressing buttons, I head over to the D100 tables on DNDSPEAK.com for inspiration.

Tables from the Dungeon Master’s Guide

Generators have been around as long as D&D has. Computers may make them easier and faster to use by combining a slew of tables into one button push, but at bottom, most generators are just the lists of tables Dungeon Masters find in the official rule books or create on their own.

In other words, generators are not artificial intelligence but glorified spreadsheets.

Midjourney Bot To Create Images For A Campaign 

In September, one of my D&D buddies added the Midjourney Bot to our Discord chat server. You enter a few words in the chat, and the bot will create an original image based on your prompt using artificial intelligence and machine learning. 

I started using it to create images of non-player characters in the campaign.

Take the image of the harengon, for example (a harengon is a kind of rabbit-like creature). I prompted the bot to create “a ferocious rabbit standing on the edge of a cliff with a sword in her hand.” After about a minute, Midjourney Bot provided me with four drafts based on the prompt.

Four options for my harengon

From there, I selected the draft in the bottom right and told the bot to “upscale” it. A minute later, I had the final image of my harengon. The upscale added brush strokes and more detail across the entire canvas. I could have continued to tweak, but the image served my needs, so boom…two minutes after having the idea for a ferocious rabbit sword fighter, I had a picture I could base the doe on.

The results of my various prompts were interesting and captured the vibes I intended (e.g., “a female elf with long white hair and dark skin standing in the center of a cloud made from daggers”), but they lacked the details that I need to really dig into their characters.

Then I realized that I could use the word “portrait” in my prompts to force the bot to create more realistic images of my NPCs.

For the last few months, whenever I’ve needed an NPC for the campaign, I type a few words into Midjourney Bot that summarize the kind of character I’m looking for and add the word “portrait.” A couple of minutes and a few drafts later, I’ve got an image I can show my players to help them imagine the individuals they encountered during the campaign.

From Characters To Scenes

A few weeks after I started using Midjourney, I decided I could use it to create illustrations of the previous D&D session’s scenes.

Most D&D campaigns last weeks, months, years, and sometimes decades. When you sit down with your friends (or students) for a session, there’s usually a few minutes of recap (“Last time on Dungeons & Dragons…”) to remind everyone where we left off.

How much cooler would those recaps be if I could throw in an illustration or two of where they were or the monsters they were still facing?

Thanks to the Midjourney artificial intelligence image creator, my D&D campaigns became much more visual.

Craft Assistant (GPT-3) To Write Original Histories & Backstories

I use Craft to manage all the information I need for Migia. Craft is like a note-taking app on steroids. I discovered it a few months back (long after Apple named it the “2021 Mac App of the Year”), and it’s the first app in a long time that I loved using. I immediately converted 90% of my document-creating/managing tasks to Craft; months later, I haven’t looked back (I really should write a blog post about it; it’s so good).

A couple of weeks ago, the folks behind Craft added GPT-3 to the app, calling the feature the “Craft AI Assistant.” As Craft wrote in their announcement, “We believe that GPT-3, one of the most impressive AI systems ever built, which applies machine learning to understand questions and generate human-like text, has now reached the point where it’s more than just a novelty.”

I tried it out — “Generate a list of blog post ideas” — but didn’t really see a way to integrate it into my daily habits, so I moved on with my life.

But on Wednesday this week, I found myself behind the 8-ball for this week’s D&D session with my students. The adventurers were on a ship on their way to a pirate haven named Maroon Cave, about 200 miles off the coast. I knew a giant shark was about to attack them (I’d ended the last session by playing the theme to JAWS), but if they made it past the shark, I didn’t know what they’d find at the pirate haven.

With less than an hour to prep, I opened Craft, brought up the Assistant, and asked it to “write a 400 word history of a pirate haven named Maroon Cave.”

Craft AI Assistant writes a history of a pirate haven for me.

Within seconds, the Craft AI Assistant had written an entire history, explaining why it was named Maroon Cave (from the French word for “fugitive”) and why pirates were safe there. It also attached famous pirates such as Blackbeard to the history, provided details on two specific events that occurred there, and summarized what the cave is used for today (“a popular tourist attraction”).

I couldn’t use all of that in my campaign, but after a few tweaks (French became Elvish, for example, and Blackbeard became a goblin pirate queen; plus, I deleted the section on it becoming a tourist spot), it was perfect.

Next, I needed a popular location at the pirate haven, a tavern where the adventurers could go to find the information that brought them to the island in the first place.

After a quick stop at the tavern name generator, tweaked with the help of some students who were in the room with me, I asked the Craft AI Assistant to “write a biography of a dwarven woman who runs a tavern named the Tipsy Turtle on an island that serves as a pirate haven.”

The Assistant created a story that begins, “Lydia, or ‘Lyd’, is a dwarf who runs a tavern, the Tipsy Turtle, on Maroon Cave. The cave is ruled by the law of the sea – piracy. Lyd, however, brings a touch of stability to this dangerous place.”

First, note how it recognized I wanted the tavern to be on Maroon Cave. I didn’t tell it that. It picked up the information from the other notes in my app.

It continued the story, “She arrived at the cave roughly 15 years ago as the young lover of the infamous pirate queen, Captain Aurora. After Aurora’s disappearance, Lyda decided to stay on the island. Seeing the need and the potential for profit, Lyd decided to build a tavern, and it quickly became a popular gathering place for the locals, as well as for pirates who passed through.”

It wasn’t perfect. I had to edit, tweak, and create D&D-specific details for Lyd. I gave her a dwarven last name (Trueboots), determined her alignment, gifted her a few stats unique stats (+5 to Charisma checks), and figured out her personality traits. Still, by starting with the story created by the Craft AI Assistant, I turned what could easily take 30 minutes into a five-minute task.

From there, I popped into Discord, submitted a similar prompt to the Midjourney Bot that I gave to GPT-3 (“a dwarven woman who runs a tavern on a pirate haven”), and two minutes later, I had a portrait of Lyd to help my students bring her to life.

Lyda, the owner of the Tipsy Turtle

There’s a lot of controversy around these AI assistants. Artists and illustrators are rightly crying foul because the images the bots come up with have, at their origin, unique works of art that can be found on the Internet. They also work at a high enough quality now to replace the need for human illustrators and artists, and like the Luddites of yore, the skilled workers feel undervalued and dismissed.

Meanwhile, the word-generating AI bots will make teaching students how to write essays incredibly problematic. It’s too easy for an unscrupulous teenager to generate an original report on whatever topic their teacher asks for. These things can create titles (see the one that accompanies this post) or analyze the theme of The Scarlett Letter:

The theme of The Scarlet Letter is that of the consequences of sin and guilt. The novel examines how individuals respond to these consequences, and how societal norms dictate how we process guilt and the importance of justice. In the novel, Hester Prynne wears the scarlet A (for adultery) as a badge of her shame and is ostracized by her Puritan community for her actions. The novel examines themes of confession, repentance, and how the truth is often obscured by the judgment and prejudice of others. It also speaks to the power of secrecy and the importance of owning up to one’s mistakes in the face of public scrutiny. Ultimately, it reminds us that everyone is capable of sin, and that it is important to be forgiving and understanding instead of harsh and judgmental. 

– Craft AI Assistant

There are real consequences to these technological advancements, ones that will not always be helpful to humanity.

I get that.

But I’m also a busy and stressed Dungeon Master, and if these things can make that role more manageable and fun, then I’m ready to roll.

Categories
reviews

Top 5 TV Shows of 2022

My wife and I didn’t watch too many shows released this year. We caught up on old shows we hadn’t seen yet (e.g. Yellowstone) and chased them with faithful sitcoms (e.g. 30 Rock). Separately, I started a bunch of 2022 shows but due to … you know, “life” … I haven’t finished them yet (e.g. House of Dragons, Rings of Power, Sandman).

Of the shows I did finish, here are my top five.

5. We Need to Talk About Cosby

In 1965, Bill Cosby was already a successful stand-up comedian and was just about to become the first Black man in American history to star in the lead role of a nationally-broadcast television drama. He was also already a sexual assaulter.

By the time the accusations against the man who would become known as “America’s Funniest Father” came to light in 2014, Cosby had committed at least 60 instances of rape, drug-facilitated sexual abuse, sexual battery, child sexual abuse, and sexual misconduct. He had even terrorized young women who appeared on his massive hit sitcom, The Cosby Show, women those of us who grew up in the 1980s still remember seeing on TV.

In short, Bill Cosby was a monster.

In W. Kamau Bell’s documentary series for SHOWTIME, we learn the man’s history of violence, but we also learn the ways he contributed to the growth and development of Black America. Bell tells the full story in all its complexity, showing why Bill Cosby really is, as Philadelphia Magazine described him, “Dr. Huxtable and Mr. Hyde.“

This is what documentaries were invented for. Bell doesn’t provide any easy answers. His series shows that humans are messy and complicated and can simultaneously contain the worst and best of our nature.

He was right. We need to talk about Cosby, which is why you need to watch this show.

4. The Bear

My wife is from the suburbs of Chicago. I’m from the suburbs of Boston. The first time our families met was at our college graduation party. Her father prepared Italian beef for everyone. After tasting it for the first time, my brother said (not within earshot of my future father-in-law), “Meh. It tastes like Steak-ummms.”

And thus was declared the regional war between Boston-style roast beef and Chicago-style Italian beef.

For the record, I love them both.

I also loved The Bear, FX’s anxiety-inducing series focused on the story of a world-renowned chef who inherits an Italian beef joint in Chicago after its owner, his older brother, kills himself. The series focuses on his attempts to make changes to the restaurant while also respecting its traditions and the people who work there, most of whom he’s known since he was a kid.

But more than just a workplace dramedy, The Bear explores panic and grief as the main character, his sister, and crew deal with the loss of the brother and boss who inspired, angered, protected, and loved them.

The casting is perfect, with no weak link among them, and the pacing of the episodes is fantastic, giving viewers just enough of each character to sense their heart and humanity without (d)evolving into an anthology show (see Atlanta).

Should you watch The Bear if you haven’t yet? Yes, chef.

3. The Legend of Vox Machina

Despite being a die-hard Dungeons & Dragons player and dungeon master (sometimes playing in three different games per week and going on five or six years of using D&D in the classroom with my students), I do not listen to or watch Critical Role, the most successful D&D-focused podcast on the Internet with Twitch episodes that regularly draw in half a million viewers per week.

Despite not knowing anything about the world or storylines of Critical Role, I thoroughly enjoyed their animated series, The Legend of Vox Machina, on Amazon Prime.

You probably know the basic plotlines of a typical Dungeons & Dragons campaign. A small group of adventurers go on a quest to kill a dragon, find a jewel, save a princess, stop the goblin king, etc. They use special abilities and weapons to overcome their foes, solve mind-bending puzzles, and avoid death-inducing traps. Plus, there’s magic.

But unless you’ve played a game of Dungeons & Dragons, you might not know the experience is typically wildly chaotic and filled with obscene language, rampaging violence, and a dragon’s hoard of double-entendres. On the other hand, players often care deeply about their characters, and they’ll genuinely wrestle with certain decisions, such as whether to sacrifice their character for a compatriot or go against their principles to avoid betraying a friend.

The Legend of Vox Machina does a fantastic job of recreating what it feels like to sit down at a table with some of your funniest and weirdest adult friends and play a game of Dungeons & Dragons. Combine its perfect tone with talented voice actors, a massively experienced dungeon master, and high-quality animation, and you’ve got an almost perfect show.

I can’t wait for Season Two.

2. Severance

First, it’s just nice to see Adam Scott working. I’ve been a fan since the 2007 HBO series Tell Me You Love Me (canceled after one season) and became an even bigger fan thanks to 2009’s Party Down (canceled after two seasons). When he showed up as a regular on NBC’s Parks & Rec in 2010, I thought the same thing I thought in 2022: It’s nice to see him working.

What’s better, though, is to see him working on something so good. Adam Scott’s comedy chops ingratiated him in the Adult Swim universe, which is fine but not something I watch much. His affability also led to a stint as a game show host.

But to see him as the lead character on a high-concept, expertly written, wonderfully cast, sci-fi-influenced, suspenseful drama that kept viewers surprised all season long was just a pure delight.

Of course, there was more to Severance than Adam Scott. He was joined onscreen by the always incredible John Turturro, whose character enjoys a heartwarming relationship with a character played by the surprisingly delightful Christopher Walken. The other two main characters — played by Britt Lower and Zach Cherry — round out our heroes, and each of them is given enough focus to make it a true ensemble. Then we get Patricia Arquette as one antagonist and the incredible Tramill Tillman as the other, both of whom brought so much tension to the screen.

Season One ended on a huge cliffhanger. I’m excited to see how its creator will surprise us next.

1. Reservation Dogs

This is simply the best show on television right now.

Every episode hits just right. Some of them make you laugh. Others bring tears to your eyes. Most of them do both. Each of the four main characters is perfect, and every supporting character makes you want a spin-off show that focuses exclusively on them.

Whether it’s an episode about a reservation police officer being accidentally dosed with acid and stumbling upon a secret society of fish-fuckers out in the woods or a bottle episode where the entire community rallies around a teenage girl whose grandmother and lone caretaker is dying in her bed, this series about four Native American teenagers dealing with the suicide of their leader and best friend is as good as it gets.

Several times during the season, my wife or I would ask the other, “Which character is your favorite?” And every single time, it’s an impossible question to answer. Each one is so freakin’ good and played so freakin’ well that to choose an answer would be disrespectful.

For example, one of the episodes this season focused on Cheese. His uncle (whom he lived with) got arrested for growing weed, so the state sent him to a boy’s home run by Marc Maron. Each of the characters in the boy’s home, including Marc Maron’s, was played perfectly by the actors, and they each explored the humor and the pathos of their small parts. Meanwhile, the actor who plays Cheese nailed every scene. The character is lovely and sweet without being cloying or losing his edge (gotta love a character who is thoughtful enough to introduce himself with his pronouns while also wearing a GWAR shirt) that at the end of the episode, it only makes sense to say Cheese is my favorite character.

But then in another episode, the actress who plays Elora pulls off a single moment — the moment when she realizes her grandmother has died (note the change in her expression at 1:07) — with such subtlety, grace, and…well, truth…that I made my wife rewind the scene and watch it again. How could she not be my favorite character?

But then there’s Willie Jack, whose depth, loyalty, and “realness” are unparalleled, not to mention Uncle Brownie, Big, Mose & Mekko, and all the wonderful aunties. How can a person choose a favorite from this incredible bounty of talent?

I will say, however, that I find myself giddy whenever we get a scene with the spirit guide.

I love this show, these characters, and these actors so much. And you should too.

Categories
asides

Strange coincidences: Are they fluke events or acts of God?

From Strange coincidences: Are they fluke events or acts of God?:

In his new book published in September, “Meaningful Coincidences: How and Why Synchronicity and Serendipity Happen,” [Dr. Bernard Beitman] shares the story of a young man who intended to end his life by the shore of an isolated lake. While he sat crying in his car, another car pulled up and his brother got out.

When the young man asked for an explanation, the brother said he didn’t know why he got in the car, where he was going, or what he would do when he got there. He just knew he needed to get in the car and drive.

“I don’t say I’m right, but I’m telling you this stuff happens,” Beitman said. “Scientists have difficulty believing it because they don’t know how it happens… Whether they say it’s probability or God, I just go crazy with people who think there’s only one thing that causes coincidences.”

Categories
reviews

Top 5 Albums of 2022

According to Apple Music, I listened to 4,038 songs this year across 348 albums by 1,215 different artists. Most of those albums were not recorded in 2022 — 423 minutes of my listening time, for example, came from the Grateful Dead, a now-defunct band that hasn’t recorded a new song since 1995, and 395 minutes came from Miles Davis, who has been dead since 1991.

That said, I added 533 songs across 47 different albums from 2022 to my Music Library this year. The Apple-Music-defined genres of those albums included African, Alternative, Electronic, Folk, Funk, Hard Rock, Hip-Hop/Rap, Jam Bands, Jazz, Pop, Psychedelic, R&B/Soul, Rock, Singer/Songwriter, and Underground Rap (an official Apple Music genre, I guess).

It is an eclectic group that does not include some of the year’s most celebrated albums but does include popular artists such as Lizzo, Kendrick Lamar, and Beyoncé, as well as niche artists such as The Gasoline Brothers and Natalie Cressman & Ian Faquini.

Without further adieu, I present my Top 5 Albums of 2022.

5. Benevento

Marco Benevento

Marco Benevento, a renowned multi-instrumentalist, has played with greats such as Trey Anastasio, Pink Martini, Ween, John Medeski, Phil Lesh, and Joe Russo. He recorded the twelve songs on this self-titled album in his home studio in Woodstock, NY, where he played all of the instruments and enlisted his wife and children to sing background for him.

The album sounds like an optimistic sun kiss of 70s Californian psychedelic jazz-pop. The drums include electronic and acoustic beats, and his vocals sound like they’re filtered through a drive-through speaker at a carhop along the Pacific Ocean. It’s difficult not to sway your head and bop your shoulders as you listen.

Each song on the album includes his incredible keyboard skills, and even the 36-second track, “Polysix,” which sounds like a sunshower composed by a child’s toy (manipulated by a computer), has enough of a dance groove to keep your foot tapping.

4. This Machine Still Kills Fascists

Dropkick Murphys with lyrics by Woody Guthrie

As a devotee of Bob Dylan, Wilco, and John Steinbeck, I’m a sucker for a Woody Guthrie lyric. As a Boston native, I’m a sucker for the homegrown Celtic punk-folk music of Dropkick Murphys. When you combine them, as the Murphys do on This Machine Still Kills Fascists, and add to them the blue-collar-fueled political progressivism embodied in the ass-kicking AntiFa movement, well, you’re gonna earn yourself a spot on my Top 5 Albums of the year.

The Murphys never try to present themselves as more than they are: a bunch of hardworking Bostonians who’ll kick your ass for disrespecting the neighborhood but who’ll always wrap their arms around you to sing a maudlin folk song that brings the bar to tears at the memory of the Irish lads who sacrificed their lives to defend their principles. They’re the kind of band that invites their friends, family, and fans into the recording studio to add beef to their raucous choruses. They play guitars, bang on drums, and spend an inordinate amount of time figuring out how to mic up bagpipes.

That doesn’t change on This Machine Still Kills Fascists, but they do it 100% acoustic this time. As they announced on their website, “That’s right – there’s not a guitar amplifier on this album!!” The lack of amplified electricity can’t stop their infectious driving anthems, and the addition of Guthrie’s pro-union, eat-the-rich lyrics makes this album exactly what our country needs right now.

Dig a hole, dig a hole in the meadow
Dig a hole in the cold, cold ground
Dig a hole, dig a hole in the meadow
Gonna lay you fascists down

3. Unlimited Love

Red Hot Chili Peppers

Unlimited Love marks the first album from the Chilis in six years and the first to include guitarist John Frusciante in sixteen years. Produced (once again) by Rick Rubin, Unlimited Love captures the natural evolution of this quartet.

One has to remember that the Chili’s perenially shirtless singer, Anthony Keidis, perenially naked bassist, Flea, and perenially baseball-hatted drummer, Chad Smith, are all in their 60s, and even Frusciante, the teenage guitarist wunderkind who turned down Frank Zappa to join the Chilis in the late 1980s, is now 52.

This is not the same Californian funk-punk band that George Clinton and Maceo Parker introduced the world to in 1985. They’ve lost members to drugs, toured the globe, fought their addictions and lost and fought again. They’ve ascended the charts, won awards, been criticized for chasing hits, dated a Spice Girl, Cher, Madonna, Sinead O’Connor, Ione Skye, and Heidi Klum (among many others), slept with over a hundred women in a year (including the 14-year-old daughter of a police chief), and been charged with sexual assault against a fan in the crowd. They rode in the ambulance when teen-hearthrob River Phoenix overdosed, had children with multiple women, and made their way through at least ten former band members (most of them guitarists who tried to replace Frusciante).

Life has happened to these four, and the evolution of their music shows it. The songs on Unlimited Love were most definitely written and played by the Red Hot Chili Peppers we all fell in love with on Blood Sugar Sex Magick, but these are not young men anymore, and their sense of what sounds good includes emotions and complexities that their younger versions could not have heard.

Crazily enough, after being on hiatus for six years, the Chilis released two albums this year. Unlimited Love is the first one (and the better, in my opinion) but the second, Return of the Dream Canteen, is a quality album too, and you should definitely give it a listen.

2. Conspiranoid

Primus

No song captures the political reality of our late-stage democracy better than Primus’ “Conspiranoia.” The verses in this eleven-minute epic depict the dread fantasies of Lloyd Boyd the Paranoid and Marion Barrion the Contrarian. As Les Claypool, Primus’ prime mover, sings, “You can lead a horse to water / but you cannot make him drink. / You can guide a fool towards logic / but you’ll rarely make him think.”

If it were just the political messaging of the lyrics and the hilarious list of conspiracy theories spoken in the final three minutes, the song would still be a must-listen in a post-Jan. 6th America, but Claypool’s virtuosic bass lines, supported by Tim Alexander’s powerful drumming and Larry LaLonde’s experimental guitar excursions, keep every moment of this sonic behemoth fresh and exciting.

Conspiranoid is a three-song EP. “Conspiranoia” is followed by the infectious “Follow the Fool” and the haunting “Erin on the Side of Caution.” The other two songs are decent and fit the musical tone set by “Conspiranoia,” but it’s the first song that kept me listening to this EP again and again.

1. Omnium Gatherum

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard

If you’re not already onboard with this Australian band, you’re missing the most excitingly unpredictable band since Ween. They released four albums in 2022: Omnium Gatherum (April); Ice, Death, Planet, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava (October 7th); Laminated Denim (October 12th); and Changes (October 28th).

That wasn’t even the most albums they’ve released in a year; they released FIVE full-length albums in 2017! In short, they’re friggin’ nuts. Changes marks the twenty-third album released by this sextet since they formed in 2010.

There’s simply no way to describe King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. A single song may include death metal screaming choruses, smooth psychedelic bass lines, Beastie/Beck-like raps, jam-band guitar adventures, poly-genre fusions, melodic harmonies, and trippy production effects.

Any of the four albums released by KGLW this year could have been on the list, but with sixteen songs and a running time that exceeds 80 minutes, Omnium Gatherum provides the largest taste of what these incredible artists are capable of. Press play and let that baby surprise you at every turn.

Categories
asides

The devious fossil fuel propaganda we all use

From The devious fossil fuel propaganda we all use:

“[BP’s] strategy [of asking individuals to consider their ‘carbon footprint’] is to put as much blame on the consumer as possible, knowing the consumer is not in a good place to control the situation…It basically ensures that nothing changes.”

Categories
asides

She Spent a Decade Writing Fake Russian History. Wikipedia Just Noticed.

From She Spent a Decade Writing Fake Russian History. Wikipedia Just Noticed.:

Over more than 10 years, the author wrote several million words of fake Russian history, creating 206 articles and contributing to hundreds more. She imagined richly detailed war stories and economic histories, and wove them into real events in language boring enough to fit seamlessly into the encyclopedia. Some netizens are calling her China’s Borges.

Categories
asides life

A Tweet Before Dying

From A Tweet Before Dying:

The whole tech industry—by which I mean the cluster of companies that sell code-empowered products to billions of humans—is in extraordinary decline… I’m grieving a little over here. But life must go on, despite who…owns Twitter, and how ridiculous the metaverse might be. That’s why every morning, sometimes before breakfast, when I am in despair, I remember the three letters that always bring me comfort: PDF… This was the original function of the web—to transmit learned texts to those seeking them. Humans have been transmitting for millennia, of course, which is how historians are able to quote Pliny’s last tweet (“Something up w/ Vesuvius, brb”). But the seeking is important, too; people should explore, not simply feed. Whatever will move society forward is not hidden inside the deflating giants. It’s out there in some pitiful PDF, with a title like “A New Platform for Communication” or “Machine Learning Applications for Community Organization.”