visitingwriter.bsky.social
Jewish SciFi/Fantasy/Horror author. Developmental editor. University instructor. Chicago Manual of Style enthusiast.
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God, imagine if they sank all the useless AI shilling into paying adjuncts and junior tenured faculty decent wages.
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I don't think they want to save that money, tbh.
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They'll try to replace a lot of that stuff with mercenaries, but mercenaries are only loyal as long as you're paying them and not stressing them out too much.
Good luck with that when you're also actively torpedoing the economy, dumbass.
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Never mind gutting the defense civilian workforce, hamstringing logistics, crippling the intelligence community, promoting for loyalty instead of competence, destroying all the anti-corruption safeguards, throwing out climate change mitigation, playing fuck-fuck games with R&D/procurement...
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Every day is a good day to block Politico.
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Sagat Kenny at the end is the most terrifying jumpscare I've had in months.
This man's hair must be protected at all costs.
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There's a point where I'm just like, "Wait. Is that the end? Did I just write the end? Crap. I did. I can't put anything after it. That's the end. I had stuff planned after that but I guess there's just no room for it now. Damn."
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Nader was a major factor in giving us President Bush. He's a reasonable blame target for every shitty thing Republicans have done from November 2000 until infinity.
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what awful force compelled you to put this out in the world.
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Look at it for more than five seconds.
Call it a nasty word.
Laugh when it trips (Teslas can trip).
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Questing on main, bro.
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If you're unfamiliar with Ernst Röhm, go look him up. That's a good model for how Thiel will probably end up when it's his turn.
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Every day is a great day to block Politico. It's a useless gossip rag for wannabe insiders looking to feel important.
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There's also no nuclear taboo left by the 2090s, but that's a different subject all together.
(It's also why the US capital is Philadelphia, DC.)
And I'll leave #worldbuilderwednesday at that.
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But also: There is no real "competitive balance" in the warfare of the 2090s, just as there isn't in real life. Who strikes first is often the real deciding factor. And when that first strike doesn't do the job, well...
Places like Huntington, West Virginia get scrubbed off the map.
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Mages are rare enough that they obviously haven't replaced conventional forces, but that's still a freaking gamechanger.
The details around cyborgs would take too long to write, BUT tl;dr they're ideal fast attack units, among other things.
(A great hard counter to a battalion of mages, in fact.)
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The MC of my current WIP is a former artillery mage.
Imagine you have a dude running around with as much firepower and range as a modern-day howitzer and his supporting logistics is identical to any other grunt.
Now imagine you've got a battalion of them.
Now imagine the other side does too.
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And speaking of magic and cybernetics: Both have fundamentally altered the nature of armed conflict. The first (official) uses of magic in warfare was way back in the 2000s. The first combat cyborgs followed not long after.
Both those things are nearly ancient history by the 2090s.
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It hasn't really come up yet but I'm looking forward to the MC having to eventually contend with some nameless goon who has, like, 4 normal-sized assault rifles lashed together with 1 grip, firing them like an oversized pistol.
(Cybernetics and magic both exist, ignore the real world physics here.)
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My thinking right now is that the military-industrial complex adapted to the hands-and-firearms thing by just making grip mods so that your average 9-footer can hold and fire a human-sized gun like normal.
Except those folks are big and sturdy enough that you could probably do a helluva lot more.
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God I hope so. I get the sense that ghoul probably would've been thrown out in late 2023 if 10/7 hadn't happened.
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Because Smells Like Teen Spirit got laundered into a pro-wrestling theme for a guy who sells yoga videos.
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It's not enough to push through evil legislation. They have to wrap it in the flesh of something better. This, in turn, hinders the ability to push for those better things.
It should come as no surprise that this is a favored tactic of abusers and cults.
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AI can do a lot. Imagine the advances we could have in space or medicine or predicting the weather or anything useful like that.
Instead, it feels like 90% of what AI is used for is destroying everything that makes us human, and all so a handful of smarmy techbros can make slop and call it art.
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Now apply that process to a machine that determines human thought.
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Because take a look at almost any tech company over the last ~20 years. Just about all of them have enshittified. They found a point where they could cough up the bare minimum of service while charging a maximum price, often losing key features or getting harder to use in the process.
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The thought of living in a world where that's normal scares the shit out of me.
Especially with how many industries it will kill, how little or nothing will replace what we lose, how many people will be discarded, and how badly culture is going to stagnate as a result.
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2. As a writer, I've noticed that every single time I'm exposed to generative AI content, across almost any medium, my creativity declines. It's like curtains being drawn over a window in my brain.
I've spoken with other creatives and a lot of them report similar experiences. Not all, but enough.
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Also, speaking as a homeschool survivor who's probably on the autistic spectrum: Social skills are SKILLS. You have to use them and practice at them or you will lose them.
And if you do lose them, you don't get them back very easily, if at all.
(It's 2025. I'm STILL recovering from the pandemic.)
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You can see a slower, more limited version of this play out all the time in any edit war on Wikipedia. You can see a more comprehensive version of it by looking at the rightwing media bubble. GenAI just makes it quicker and more efficient.