When I created Safiya for Coriolis: The Great Dark, I had a pretty clear picture of the kind of campaign we were about to play. Or I thought I did that is.
Exploration. Expeditions. Ancient ruins. Dangerous places beyond Ship City where having a Roughneck who could repair machinery (and crack a few skulls when necessary) would come in handy.
Instead, we've spent our first few sessions investigating a murder.
So much for the plan.
AI can turn an ordinary conversation into a minefield remarkably quickly—and EVE Online is no exception. Rixx and I wade into the debate from our sometimes differing perspectives, beginning with “AI slop” and the increasingly blurry line between AI-generated content and work that remains human-led but AI-assisted.
We discuss how we each use (or deliberately avoid) these tools in our creative and professional lives. Taste, experience, judgment, fact-checking and accountability don’t magically appear with a good prompt, but does every use of AI deserve to be thrown into the same bucket?
I've been writing on CrazyKinux's Musings in one form or another since 2005. Long before ChatGPT, Claude, image generators, or any of the current AI tools existed, I was writing about EVE Online, about the community of players & bloggers, sharing things I had learned, interviewing people and generally following whatever rabbit hole happened to interest me.
So AI didn't suddenly make me creative, but it's definitely changed how I create.
He almost ignored it.
There was nothing unusual about receiving messages in space, but this one was different. No corporate header. No security tag. No context. Just a name he had not seen in a very long time.
Cassian Drake.
The text beneath it was short.
Jita 4-4. 2200.
The Glass House. Come alone.
I need the favour back.
He stared at it for several seconds, then checked the routing data attached to the message.
Drake was not the kind of man who crossed dozens of systems for a casual conversation. If he was willing to travel that far just to ask for a favour in person, whatever had happened was serious.
Reluctantly, he set course for Jita.
This week, Rixx Javix and I sit down with Jim Halescott, one of EVE Online’s most unconventional entrepreneurs. From thousands of characters and an industrial network stretching across New Eden to an ambitious plan for something resembling a galaxy-wide chain of convenience stores, Jim has built an EVE career almost entirely outside the paths the game officially gives us. What sounds absurd at first gradually reveals itself as a remarkably sophisticated operation involving manufacturers, haulers, intelligence gatherers, market manipulation and hundreds of working relationships.
I went into Season One of Dark Matter knowing absolutely nothing about it—which, in retrospect, was probably the best possible way to experience it. A former coworker had simply told me I had to watch it. That it would blow my mind.
And yes, suffice to say, my mind was thoroughly blown.
There’s a point in the season where you think you understand the ramifications of the Box and the alternate realities it opens. Except you don’t. You’ve barely scratched the surface. By those final episodes, the full breadth—and potentially infinite consequences—finally begins to sink in.
That’s what stayed with me.
Not simply the science-fiction premise, but the uncomfortable personal question underneath it: how many different lives might each of us have lived? What if we’d been more cautious, less cautious, more direct—or simply made one different choice at precisely the right moment?
Season Two premieres August 28, so now is the perfect time to watch the first if you have not seen it — or in my case, binge it again so everything is still fresh for Season 2.
I've only watched the Season 2 trailer twice, so I genuinely have no idea where the story goes from here, and that’s precisely why I’m excited.
