That's a different article. The Gizmodo article has a byline of "Melissa" and apparently is originally from TodayIFoundOut.com.

So, might be "inspiration". I suspect "Melissa" did not "find out today" - chlorine trifluoride isn't exactly the stuff you discuss at your average dinner table.

You need a whole bunch of expertise to write about it. Gizmodo does not usually have this expertise, but its writers do usually recognize snappy writing that might go viral.

Yeah, I suspect “Melissa” fed Lowe’s article to an LLM to get a quick article that’s sure to get views.

In 2015? 2 years before "Attention Is All You Need"?

Ah, I miss the days when this sort of soft plagiarism required a minimal level of effort and even some genuine research. It might even rise to the level of "acceptable" if she cited her sources more thoroughly. Sadly, as presented, her choice of both anecdotes and example materials makes it pretty clear that the author is mostly just rearranging Lowe's and Clark's words.

Good point! I’ll be more careful before quick posting.