Commander, I'm late to this post but I just wanted to say that I found your 'stack in the dark, gloomy days in the middle of the Covid cloud. As a natural skeptic and a resident of the state of Washington, your observations and writings helped me understand that I wasn't the crazy one. For that, I'll continue to be a loyal reader and proud paying member.
I almost didn't read this one you wrote, as I don't want to delve into AI. But it actually is interesting and look forward to reading part 2 that you have written.
I wish we could! We don't have a fence around our property though, and no money to build one. Mom and Al commissioned one but the guy absconded with the money. Thus, no fence. They took him to court but he didn't have any money. His father offered to pay them back part of it but they said declined. The guy's dad didn't do it and my parents didn't feel that his dad should pay for it.
Wow that is nuts! I had a guy do that on my outdoor biz signage. He said it would take 3 days but it was only after my landlord called him and said "lawyer" that he actually came through -- 6 months later.
My parents, for some reason, didn't realize that you never, ever, ever pay for all of something in advance. If you do, you probably won't ever see them or your money again. Then there's the "mañana" culture here - they'll do it mañana (tomorrow). Nobody is in a hurry except to get paid. Otherwise, tomorrow, or the next tomorrow...maybe.
I've felt a unique and close relationship with you since I discovered your work. Along the way I realized that at least half of your regular readers feel exactly the same way. That is a remarkable endorsement of your writing.
Today's column strikes a personal chord with me. For many years I, too, was writing for others, even though that wasn't my purpose. My objective was always to help an owner improve his/her business, or to help a frustrated soul to break out from the miasma of the maggotry dependent on crony capitalism and the whims of a cruel overlord to create his/her own job as a business owner. In both cases after the daily interaction has ended the only remains of the day were the writing I left behind.
“We have six members including one black and two women. We’re diverse.” It took an hour before he agreed to retract all offers of membership and start over. There was diversity of gender and race, things that are irrelevant in business. There was no diversity in experience set. They were all small business owners in the industry that he was sure would be the primary customer of his products. Caution: Groupthink Ahead!"
I consulted to ITT, a conglomerate, almost thirty years ago. My mission was to assess the European holdings, including yellow pages, hotels, IT firms and others for centralized procurement. I landed in Brussels the day the central controls for the national rail network burned. Belgium being Belgium, there was no backup. I collected the head of hotel purchasing in Europe and interviewed a dozen employees, discovered that the purchasing manager threw away all memos, unread, from the corporate purchasing office; the chap was an Arab who read French and Arabic only. The day I departed I had breakfast with the hotel manager and told him how to get another room to rent during the next renovation. I gave him the written report; he leaned across the table and kissed me. I continued similarly, showing the manager of the Hotel Danielli in Venice, 28 years ago, how to fund the next renovation. I had looked over Italian inventory accounting laws. Everything was depreciated. Everything. The hotel didn't have the right amount of inventory, so I had a large room opened. It had been described to me as "old stuff." It was. Many, many cubic yards of antique silver cutlery, dishes, platters, etc. I called an inventory monetization expert, who offered $15M sight unseen.
I did the same thing in the paper industry, the tooling industry, the office furniture industry, the limousine industry and a bunch of others. In every case it was the written report that made the difference. I have ghost-written several books. I have authored books that were bought by publishing houses, and short stories purchased by anthology and magazine publishers.
An airline's cabin attendants' union hired me to write a letter to management explaining why they should be covered by time rules identical to pilots, starting with rest time between flights.
Most of my writing for others has been for businesses, who are the toughest customers. To them, the Cicero Rule comes first. "When I have more time, I'll write you a shorter letter."
Well, you do a lot of commenting on some of the Subdomains I read. When I finally went over to your "stack" (subdomain) I was pleasantly surprised. You are a good writer. I do not pay for anything or do paid subscriptions. Not so far, and I appreciate those whose work and comment spaces are open to me. My own work is that I am an intellectual; I discovered important news about economics; but nobody seems to care. No, there is nobody to take my important and unprecedented ideas seriously, which they might but they could do it only they took the time and really investigated. Nobody wants to do that. My work changes the whole study of economics. Independent writers have difficulties earning money; and, so do independent scholars. I do not know any "real" scholars; and I have a hell of a time finding anyone to dig into my own scholar works.
I think you may be on to something that the way to earn a living writing will have to focus on "writing for yourself," or maybe writing from your most authentic self (I know that sounds a little cheesy), which is something that AI can't do. ChatGPT is not ever going to replace Screaming into the Void, though you're right that it has a good chance of being able to just vomit out easy marketing copy (or a University's EDI statement). My husband is an artist, and he listens to artists complaining about DALLE and similar programs who are afraid that AI will replace them. My husband uses AI as a tool and doesn't think it can replace an artist who is doing anything really authentic or unique. I think we should view ChatGPT and other chat bots as tools. When I was struggling with a novel, I put a few prompts into ChatGPT for the hell of it to see if it would help. It did not. I find that the only way to get successful copy from a chatbot is if you actually could just write it yourself. It might be a time saver, but that's it. ChatGPT is never going to be Kurt Vonnegut.
One example: Gato now has awesome pictures in his articles. Soon, it's likely that even "nobodies" will be able to add voice acting into their one-man videogames. There definitely is a lot of GOOD potential as well as bad.
I loved the article about how some mid-level college admin used ChatGPT to compose some correspondence or another, but forgot to erase the "Created by ChatGPT" at the end. Way to tell the whole world that your job can be done by AI. :/
I thought the admin was trying to give fair attribution but was so tone deaf that they didn't realize how it sounds to have a chatbot write your EDI statement. I find my version funnier, but I think yours is just as likely to be correct. Also, I love Gato's pictures!
I use to be a graphic designer. In the mid 1990s I was going to night school, taking courses in graphic design and saw the software we were using could really fool the average person. It was also when I started noticing the news media was not only getting things wrong, but doing more propaganda than news. I got a niche type job; determining if art was good enough for print, then taking the files from the print book and getting them in a program so that we could make ebooks, take the art and use it for other purposes, promoting. Basically making our backlist and current list available to whomever. It was interesting but universities don’t pay well, not even the high end ones. Most of the files are on a server in India. The business wanted to do all the layouts of books, but the work was not up to snuff. When I left, I taught my replacement and moved to Texas. Getting away from the east coast, the whole world changes. I retired early, not because I was ready but where we live made the logistics of going to work really impossible. Then COVID, Trump, shenanigans both political, medical, education and a view that parents were now domestic terrorist, inflation, lies and a real disconnect of the government from its people.
I look to people like you to not only give me a check point, touchstone, to make sure I am dealing with reality, to know I am not alone. I am in my 60s now, no children unless we talk the furry kind, and I am hunkering down. Stocking up on books…just living. Part of the reason is this Substack, it is real, thoughtful, complex and explains various elements I am unaware of. Life is complex, this helps me with the complexity. Thank you.
I appreciate this so much, thank you! Thinking that we were alone during covid was "rock bottom" for me and a lot of other people. If we use this space to meet one another and provide support, it will be a success far beyond what I hoped.
Why yes, you have returned the favor (and made me thereby remember a very very naughty [original] Star Trek cartoon drawn by my [now late] friend showing a favor being returned. Carol, may your humor enrich the afterlife eternally).
Well, now you know how I feel. As a HS grad who entered the full-time job market in 1968 with almost nothing to offer except what I discovered to be a talent for fixing bosses' lousy writing and making them sound good, I saw that by 2001 nobody gave a damn about that. Spellcheck and cut 'n paste paragraphs and the remarkable illiteracy of even the well-educated (!) managerial class meant no one even noticed whether I produced good prose or not, or had strong feelings about the nuances of words all dumped into the synonym bucket. It's very painful to realize that one's talent, genuine as it might be, has lost all market value.
Here's a nice empty promise you unfortunately can't take to the bank. I was thinking just last night that if I won the lottery (I keep dreamin' but...) I'd set you up with a little nest egg because I think you're worth investing in. When I can't offer actual financial support to a good Substacker, I try to bring as much value as possible via comments, and of course I owe the existence of my own Substack to the interest people have taken in my words here and elsewhere.
My eyes always brighten when I see your name in my inbox. What strange good fortune came out of our Plague Era, that following breadcrumb trails on Twitter led me eventually to you, el gato malo and Eugyppius, and some others. Never an ill wind 'n all that.
When I had my first fiction story published on a webzine with a comments section, and strangers from who knows where read my stuff and found it worth thinking about and remarking on, that was a moment of such magic that will never lose its luster. I'm glad in the cosmic sphere of things to help to pay on that favor, to you.
Be of very good heart. You're one of those lights we need very badly.
Yesterday someone subscribed to my Substack because of a comment I wrote on Bad Cattitude, and she then read my most recent story, which I'd been struggling to get right for five years. I'd thought I never would manage to tell it properly and even though, considering the extent of my reach, any achievement would be mostly just for my own satisfaction, I at least wanted to know that I hadn't failed myself.
This is part of what she said: "...I would have believed you’d written it from firsthand knowledge..."
I think I know exactly how you feel. OK, maybe not *exactly.* But close enough, I bet.
My daughter works for an agency that hires those gig content creators, and it will likely be disbanded in the next few months. Because of the algorithms and 'bidding wars' that you know about, small businesses are being flushed at a relentless rate. They can't afford to put money into marketing that never gets seen. She's giving a presentation to hundreds of people this morning (and is terrified), which may change things for her but not all those businesses.
I hate saying this, SC, but I think we need to find a way to save everybody, not just those we have a personal relationship to. I was thinking this yesterday because of someone who needs housing, which I feel guilty that I have. But in the end, I could save one or two people by giving up what means the most to my happiness and I wouldn't feel guilty ... just miserable.
I do hope this 'stack gets you through this transition period. But I also think we need to be forming a plan because it ain't getting better for anyone.
You nailed it perfectly. And I'm not saying that not being able to write would be the end of the world. I'm getting old but not there yet, and the current workforce seems to be suffering from a "showing up to work" problem -- one I'm not afflicted by. So even if this portion of my life comes to an end, I'm only moderately nervous about what comes next -- even if it's just being a cog in the machine.
Unfortunately, I think the "save everybody" solution is going to be some sort of universal basic income -- putting us all at the mercy of people who don't give a fuck about us.
In my worse moments I think universal income will happen. I then look at welfare programs. (How successful were they, which depends on your viewpoint) There are work arounds, underground markets, economies, trading, victory gardens, trading food stamp money for other things. Neighborhoods will pull together, families will go back to living in one big house, pulling resources and everyone will scale back. They will have to. The coasts will become unlivable for anyone who isn’t a billionaire. There are times when even I wished my soil could sustain a garden, a foot down there is granite. Then deer, raccoons, gophers, voles, hawks, snakes (good and bad), you get the idea...
There's a reason why it's emphasized in several scriptural faiths that to save one person is to save the whole world. To make a meaningful positive difference to one person, if one is able to do so, is not small. It is everything.
How do you choose who to save? That's where I get stuck. For every one you save, there are 5000 waiting behind them. David Graeber talks about how religions of altruism developed at the same time as money, which made everyone dependent on it. So greed and need, and religions that said it was all up to us to take care of everyone else all occurred together. Convenient for them, eh? They can make us all precarious, one step away from losing everything, and blame US for not helping more. I think that was a crock.
In a system of reciprocity, people naturally take care of each other.
"In a system of reciprocity, people naturally take care of each other."
You should pardon me but this is often serious bullshit.
In a system of decency, you take care of your own first, so they have a chance to become independent. You strengthen your family, your neighborhood. You make that circle of strength spread outward.
Then you attempt to save those with the best chance of succeeding. Life is harsh that way, but the person with the strength to make the most of assistance in a positive way will be able to save at least one other, in return.
You can't save everyone in the most profound desperation. You can't save every starving child. You must try to save the children most likely to live, first. Otherwise you dilute your resources and none of them will have a chance to thrive.
When I founded a women's center in an impoverished, extremely conservative place, at first we made our services free. The girls and women didn't much value what we didn't put enough value on ourselves. When we instituted fees, and fines for unexcused absences, the program began to thrive. Our teachers knew the circumstances of our students and for the absolutely most desperately poor, there was fee forgiveness. But those who could manage to come up with the very modest fees were expected to figure out how to do so.
And the students understood the fairness of this. Not everyone was in the exact same circumstance. Among the poor there are levels of poverty, ability and character. They knew that the most impoverished girls/women, if given a chance to learn income-producing or conserving skills, would be improving the circumstances of their own families, helping more than just one person.
There's no magic answer, no magic system. People are in awful circumstances for a lot of different reasons, some out of their hands and some very much because of bad choices. You save the genuine true victims of circumstance first.
That has also been my experience. At a prior job we had a summer program for low-income high school students. When it was free they didn't value it, but when we charged, even a nominal amount, they took it seriously.
As Orwell said in Down and Out in Paris and London, "A man receiving charity practically always hates his benefactor—it is a fixed characteristic of human nature."
Just look at all the places where public transit is now "free" -- it's turned buses into rolling homeless camps, meaning that everybody who can avoid them do so. This, of course, leads to further drops in ridership, widening the cash gap between costs and revenue. In turn, that leads to more 'bailouts' of public transit, furthering the spiral.
I tend to agree with this, especially making your circle of strength spread outward. This is the best way to enable people to be strong enough to thrive and create their own circle of strengths.
Your writing style is not AI - thank goodness, and I think there’s enough inauthenticity in the world that we need to read “real” writers. I love the way you express yourself, and it’s a joy not to Scream alone. Keep on writing, and we’ll keep reading (and subscribing). Thank you!
"Bad news about your ongoing heart attack......it seems you're not up to date on your boosters. To maintain healthcare capacity, only those who have gotten all the recommended shots are able to access care at this time. Have a great day!" *click*
"I'm sorry insert-pronoun-here, but your alleged assailant has a more inclusive social credit score than you, so you are therefore currently denied emergency services"
Sorry SC, I can't help but sarcastically repeat what was said to me and my brothers in the mining industry when they were shutting down (unnecessarily but, "for the earth") the gold mine we worked at: "Learn to code". Ooops. We won't need coders either... So, I guess we all need to just shut up, take our Universal Basic Income, eat our bugs, take our shot(s) of the month and be happy... just like we're told to do...
I remember that as well. It's only okay to say that to groups with an "unacceptable" profession I guess. Lol. The ancient Chinese curse of "may you live in interesting times" has never been more poignant than today. IMO
As Mary said just ten minutes ago, you have a unique "voice" and your work is impeccable. I hope you are able to keep your integrity and imagination.
Unlike most, I enjoy AI. My computer suggests I buy things it knows I like. Bing's AI gives me great answers to most questions and it doesn't hide small retailers from view like Google does. I suspect the Pentagon uses algorithms developed by perverts to determine which countries to invade and that's disturbing.
As we peasants gradually devolve into becoming the Eloi, I can imagine a world where we are forced to each lab-created food while the Morlocks eat us.
Thank you for this behind-the-scenes view, SimCom. AI will NEVER be able to replicate your unique, authentic voice, or that of other writers who offer up their heart as well as their thoughts... and that's why I continue to hold hope for the future.
Thank you so much! That's what I hope! AI "content" is pure bland corporate speak. It will never Scream about the war in Ukraine or government censorship -- ironically because the AI has been censored already.
Nor will it see the need to scream. It will be prompted at times to do so, but will it see indicators that thought is being supplanted by propaganda? Can it discern even the lack of low grade semantic dissent?
Commander, I'm late to this post but I just wanted to say that I found your 'stack in the dark, gloomy days in the middle of the Covid cloud. As a natural skeptic and a resident of the state of Washington, your observations and writings helped me understand that I wasn't the crazy one. For that, I'll continue to be a loyal reader and proud paying member.
So, thank YOU.
Also, you're welcome. 😉
This comment makes me so happy. Are you in for the summer scream meetup?
Let's do it!
Yeah. This AI crap is worse than...well, crap. Crazy shit is more like it. My experience is anecdotal but...
https://open.substack.com/pub/rreggievanderveen/p/openai-drops-a-turd?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=71l80
I almost didn't read this one you wrote, as I don't want to delve into AI. But it actually is interesting and look forward to reading part 2 that you have written.
Here's a link to part 2 in case you haven't seen it yet!
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/now-lets-talk-about-ai
I wish we could! We don't have a fence around our property though, and no money to build one. Mom and Al commissioned one but the guy absconded with the money. Thus, no fence. They took him to court but he didn't have any money. His father offered to pay them back part of it but they said declined. The guy's dad didn't do it and my parents didn't feel that his dad should pay for it.
Wow that is nuts! I had a guy do that on my outdoor biz signage. He said it would take 3 days but it was only after my landlord called him and said "lawyer" that he actually came through -- 6 months later.
My parents, for some reason, didn't realize that you never, ever, ever pay for all of something in advance. If you do, you probably won't ever see them or your money again. Then there's the "mañana" culture here - they'll do it mañana (tomorrow). Nobody is in a hurry except to get paid. Otherwise, tomorrow, or the next tomorrow...maybe.
SC,
I've felt a unique and close relationship with you since I discovered your work. Along the way I realized that at least half of your regular readers feel exactly the same way. That is a remarkable endorsement of your writing.
Today's column strikes a personal chord with me. For many years I, too, was writing for others, even though that wasn't my purpose. My objective was always to help an owner improve his/her business, or to help a frustrated soul to break out from the miasma of the maggotry dependent on crony capitalism and the whims of a cruel overlord to create his/her own job as a business owner. In both cases after the daily interaction has ended the only remains of the day were the writing I left behind.
The third or fourth post I wrote was entitled Purple Martian Females (https://billheath.substack.com/p/purple-martian-females) and was drawn from a document I had written for a client. Relevant passage:
“We have six members including one black and two women. We’re diverse.” It took an hour before he agreed to retract all offers of membership and start over. There was diversity of gender and race, things that are irrelevant in business. There was no diversity in experience set. They were all small business owners in the industry that he was sure would be the primary customer of his products. Caution: Groupthink Ahead!"
I consulted to ITT, a conglomerate, almost thirty years ago. My mission was to assess the European holdings, including yellow pages, hotels, IT firms and others for centralized procurement. I landed in Brussels the day the central controls for the national rail network burned. Belgium being Belgium, there was no backup. I collected the head of hotel purchasing in Europe and interviewed a dozen employees, discovered that the purchasing manager threw away all memos, unread, from the corporate purchasing office; the chap was an Arab who read French and Arabic only. The day I departed I had breakfast with the hotel manager and told him how to get another room to rent during the next renovation. I gave him the written report; he leaned across the table and kissed me. I continued similarly, showing the manager of the Hotel Danielli in Venice, 28 years ago, how to fund the next renovation. I had looked over Italian inventory accounting laws. Everything was depreciated. Everything. The hotel didn't have the right amount of inventory, so I had a large room opened. It had been described to me as "old stuff." It was. Many, many cubic yards of antique silver cutlery, dishes, platters, etc. I called an inventory monetization expert, who offered $15M sight unseen.
I did the same thing in the paper industry, the tooling industry, the office furniture industry, the limousine industry and a bunch of others. In every case it was the written report that made the difference. I have ghost-written several books. I have authored books that were bought by publishing houses, and short stories purchased by anthology and magazine publishers.
An airline's cabin attendants' union hired me to write a letter to management explaining why they should be covered by time rules identical to pilots, starting with rest time between flights.
Most of my writing for others has been for businesses, who are the toughest customers. To them, the Cicero Rule comes first. "When I have more time, I'll write you a shorter letter."
Thank you, Bill! I love reading your stuff, no matter if it's a comment here or an article on your own 'Stack! Stuff like this:
"There was diversity of gender and race, things that are irrelevant in business. There was no diversity in experience set."
This sums up the entire 'diversity' sham better than anything else. It doesn't matter what you LOOK LIKE if you all THINK THE SAME.
Well, you do a lot of commenting on some of the Subdomains I read. When I finally went over to your "stack" (subdomain) I was pleasantly surprised. You are a good writer. I do not pay for anything or do paid subscriptions. Not so far, and I appreciate those whose work and comment spaces are open to me. My own work is that I am an intellectual; I discovered important news about economics; but nobody seems to care. No, there is nobody to take my important and unprecedented ideas seriously, which they might but they could do it only they took the time and really investigated. Nobody wants to do that. My work changes the whole study of economics. Independent writers have difficulties earning money; and, so do independent scholars. I do not know any "real" scholars; and I have a hell of a time finding anyone to dig into my own scholar works.
If you'd like, you can author a guest post here!
I think you may be on to something that the way to earn a living writing will have to focus on "writing for yourself," or maybe writing from your most authentic self (I know that sounds a little cheesy), which is something that AI can't do. ChatGPT is not ever going to replace Screaming into the Void, though you're right that it has a good chance of being able to just vomit out easy marketing copy (or a University's EDI statement). My husband is an artist, and he listens to artists complaining about DALLE and similar programs who are afraid that AI will replace them. My husband uses AI as a tool and doesn't think it can replace an artist who is doing anything really authentic or unique. I think we should view ChatGPT and other chat bots as tools. When I was struggling with a novel, I put a few prompts into ChatGPT for the hell of it to see if it would help. It did not. I find that the only way to get successful copy from a chatbot is if you actually could just write it yourself. It might be a time saver, but that's it. ChatGPT is never going to be Kurt Vonnegut.
One example: Gato now has awesome pictures in his articles. Soon, it's likely that even "nobodies" will be able to add voice acting into their one-man videogames. There definitely is a lot of GOOD potential as well as bad.
I loved the article about how some mid-level college admin used ChatGPT to compose some correspondence or another, but forgot to erase the "Created by ChatGPT" at the end. Way to tell the whole world that your job can be done by AI. :/
I thought the admin was trying to give fair attribution but was so tone deaf that they didn't realize how it sounds to have a chatbot write your EDI statement. I find my version funnier, but I think yours is just as likely to be correct. Also, I love Gato's pictures!
Gato's pictures are awesome, aren't they? I love cats so I always look forward to the cats (here, too, SC - update please!!).
I'll try to get a video when the cat gang gets together to cause mischief outside tonight :)
"This should keep you up at night."
Gee, thanks. I've been looking for a cure to my somnia. It's been interfering with my news-junky-ism.
I use to be a graphic designer. In the mid 1990s I was going to night school, taking courses in graphic design and saw the software we were using could really fool the average person. It was also when I started noticing the news media was not only getting things wrong, but doing more propaganda than news. I got a niche type job; determining if art was good enough for print, then taking the files from the print book and getting them in a program so that we could make ebooks, take the art and use it for other purposes, promoting. Basically making our backlist and current list available to whomever. It was interesting but universities don’t pay well, not even the high end ones. Most of the files are on a server in India. The business wanted to do all the layouts of books, but the work was not up to snuff. When I left, I taught my replacement and moved to Texas. Getting away from the east coast, the whole world changes. I retired early, not because I was ready but where we live made the logistics of going to work really impossible. Then COVID, Trump, shenanigans both political, medical, education and a view that parents were now domestic terrorist, inflation, lies and a real disconnect of the government from its people.
I look to people like you to not only give me a check point, touchstone, to make sure I am dealing with reality, to know I am not alone. I am in my 60s now, no children unless we talk the furry kind, and I am hunkering down. Stocking up on books…just living. Part of the reason is this Substack, it is real, thoughtful, complex and explains various elements I am unaware of. Life is complex, this helps me with the complexity. Thank you.
I appreciate this so much, thank you! Thinking that we were alone during covid was "rock bottom" for me and a lot of other people. If we use this space to meet one another and provide support, it will be a success far beyond what I hoped.
Relevant article here:
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/this-is-not-a-drill-part-2
Why yes, you have returned the favor (and made me thereby remember a very very naughty [original] Star Trek cartoon drawn by my [now late] friend showing a favor being returned. Carol, may your humor enrich the afterlife eternally).
Well, now you know how I feel. As a HS grad who entered the full-time job market in 1968 with almost nothing to offer except what I discovered to be a talent for fixing bosses' lousy writing and making them sound good, I saw that by 2001 nobody gave a damn about that. Spellcheck and cut 'n paste paragraphs and the remarkable illiteracy of even the well-educated (!) managerial class meant no one even noticed whether I produced good prose or not, or had strong feelings about the nuances of words all dumped into the synonym bucket. It's very painful to realize that one's talent, genuine as it might be, has lost all market value.
Here's a nice empty promise you unfortunately can't take to the bank. I was thinking just last night that if I won the lottery (I keep dreamin' but...) I'd set you up with a little nest egg because I think you're worth investing in. When I can't offer actual financial support to a good Substacker, I try to bring as much value as possible via comments, and of course I owe the existence of my own Substack to the interest people have taken in my words here and elsewhere.
My eyes always brighten when I see your name in my inbox. What strange good fortune came out of our Plague Era, that following breadcrumb trails on Twitter led me eventually to you, el gato malo and Eugyppius, and some others. Never an ill wind 'n all that.
When I had my first fiction story published on a webzine with a comments section, and strangers from who knows where read my stuff and found it worth thinking about and remarking on, that was a moment of such magic that will never lose its luster. I'm glad in the cosmic sphere of things to help to pay on that favor, to you.
Be of very good heart. You're one of those lights we need very badly.
Why did you start cutting unions halfway through your comment? It made it very difficult to read!
I have just now, rereading this, realized that "cutting unions" actually meant "cutting *onions*. I can be real slow sometimes....
LOL typos for the win!
Sorry! I type and read on a laptop, not smartphone, so what I see is not, I guess, what you get...
Just give me a warning next time so I'm not bawling everywhere!
You didn't know I like you? A lot?
There's a difference between knowing it in your head and seeing it on the page. I appreciate it so much it's hard to put into words!
Yesterday someone subscribed to my Substack because of a comment I wrote on Bad Cattitude, and she then read my most recent story, which I'd been struggling to get right for five years. I'd thought I never would manage to tell it properly and even though, considering the extent of my reach, any achievement would be mostly just for my own satisfaction, I at least wanted to know that I hadn't failed myself.
This is part of what she said: "...I would have believed you’d written it from firsthand knowledge..."
I think I know exactly how you feel. OK, maybe not *exactly.* But close enough, I bet.
My daughter works for an agency that hires those gig content creators, and it will likely be disbanded in the next few months. Because of the algorithms and 'bidding wars' that you know about, small businesses are being flushed at a relentless rate. They can't afford to put money into marketing that never gets seen. She's giving a presentation to hundreds of people this morning (and is terrified), which may change things for her but not all those businesses.
I hate saying this, SC, but I think we need to find a way to save everybody, not just those we have a personal relationship to. I was thinking this yesterday because of someone who needs housing, which I feel guilty that I have. But in the end, I could save one or two people by giving up what means the most to my happiness and I wouldn't feel guilty ... just miserable.
I do hope this 'stack gets you through this transition period. But I also think we need to be forming a plan because it ain't getting better for anyone.
You nailed it perfectly. And I'm not saying that not being able to write would be the end of the world. I'm getting old but not there yet, and the current workforce seems to be suffering from a "showing up to work" problem -- one I'm not afflicted by. So even if this portion of my life comes to an end, I'm only moderately nervous about what comes next -- even if it's just being a cog in the machine.
Unfortunately, I think the "save everybody" solution is going to be some sort of universal basic income -- putting us all at the mercy of people who don't give a fuck about us.
In my worse moments I think universal income will happen. I then look at welfare programs. (How successful were they, which depends on your viewpoint) There are work arounds, underground markets, economies, trading, victory gardens, trading food stamp money for other things. Neighborhoods will pull together, families will go back to living in one big house, pulling resources and everyone will scale back. They will have to. The coasts will become unlivable for anyone who isn’t a billionaire. There are times when even I wished my soil could sustain a garden, a foot down there is granite. Then deer, raccoons, gophers, voles, hawks, snakes (good and bad), you get the idea...
Totally agree.
There's a reason why it's emphasized in several scriptural faiths that to save one person is to save the whole world. To make a meaningful positive difference to one person, if one is able to do so, is not small. It is everything.
How do you choose who to save? That's where I get stuck. For every one you save, there are 5000 waiting behind them. David Graeber talks about how religions of altruism developed at the same time as money, which made everyone dependent on it. So greed and need, and religions that said it was all up to us to take care of everyone else all occurred together. Convenient for them, eh? They can make us all precarious, one step away from losing everything, and blame US for not helping more. I think that was a crock.
In a system of reciprocity, people naturally take care of each other.
"In a system of reciprocity, people naturally take care of each other."
You should pardon me but this is often serious bullshit.
In a system of decency, you take care of your own first, so they have a chance to become independent. You strengthen your family, your neighborhood. You make that circle of strength spread outward.
Then you attempt to save those with the best chance of succeeding. Life is harsh that way, but the person with the strength to make the most of assistance in a positive way will be able to save at least one other, in return.
You can't save everyone in the most profound desperation. You can't save every starving child. You must try to save the children most likely to live, first. Otherwise you dilute your resources and none of them will have a chance to thrive.
When I founded a women's center in an impoverished, extremely conservative place, at first we made our services free. The girls and women didn't much value what we didn't put enough value on ourselves. When we instituted fees, and fines for unexcused absences, the program began to thrive. Our teachers knew the circumstances of our students and for the absolutely most desperately poor, there was fee forgiveness. But those who could manage to come up with the very modest fees were expected to figure out how to do so.
And the students understood the fairness of this. Not everyone was in the exact same circumstance. Among the poor there are levels of poverty, ability and character. They knew that the most impoverished girls/women, if given a chance to learn income-producing or conserving skills, would be improving the circumstances of their own families, helping more than just one person.
There's no magic answer, no magic system. People are in awful circumstances for a lot of different reasons, some out of their hands and some very much because of bad choices. You save the genuine true victims of circumstance first.
That has also been my experience. At a prior job we had a summer program for low-income high school students. When it was free they didn't value it, but when we charged, even a nominal amount, they took it seriously.
Even the most desperate recipients of charity have a certain resentment towards the unequal balance of power in the relationship.
Can testify to that. I think we simply become an outlet for the resentment they feel for their own situation.
As Orwell said in Down and Out in Paris and London, "A man receiving charity practically always hates his benefactor—it is a fixed characteristic of human nature."
Just look at all the places where public transit is now "free" -- it's turned buses into rolling homeless camps, meaning that everybody who can avoid them do so. This, of course, leads to further drops in ridership, widening the cash gap between costs and revenue. In turn, that leads to more 'bailouts' of public transit, furthering the spiral.
I tend to agree with this, especially making your circle of strength spread outward. This is the best way to enable people to be strong enough to thrive and create their own circle of strengths.
Your "circle of strength" is your true commune.
Your writing style is not AI - thank goodness, and I think there’s enough inauthenticity in the world that we need to read “real” writers. I love the way you express yourself, and it’s a joy not to Scream alone. Keep on writing, and we’ll keep reading (and subscribing). Thank you!
"Hello, this is 911, please enter your social credit score for service."
You won’t have to enter it, the number will be associated with your phone number and connected to your account details.
"Bad news about your ongoing heart attack......it seems you're not up to date on your boosters. To maintain healthcare capacity, only those who have gotten all the recommended shots are able to access care at this time. Have a great day!" *click*
I was asked recently STILL if I was interested in getting the vaccine no doubt as part of hospital protocol.
WOW!
"I'm sorry insert-pronoun-here, but your alleged assailant has a more inclusive social credit score than you, so you are therefore currently denied emergency services"
Sorry SC, I can't help but sarcastically repeat what was said to me and my brothers in the mining industry when they were shutting down (unnecessarily but, "for the earth") the gold mine we worked at: "Learn to code". Ooops. We won't need coders either... So, I guess we all need to just shut up, take our Universal Basic Income, eat our bugs, take our shot(s) of the month and be happy... just like we're told to do...
RIGHT?
But telling Buzzfeed or NYT writers who just got laid of to 'learn to code' was a banable offense on Twitter for a while.
Wonder what the difference was?
I remember that as well. It's only okay to say that to groups with an "unacceptable" profession I guess. Lol. The ancient Chinese curse of "may you live in interesting times" has never been more poignant than today. IMO
Peace and prosperity is boring, anyway!
As Mary said just ten minutes ago, you have a unique "voice" and your work is impeccable. I hope you are able to keep your integrity and imagination.
Unlike most, I enjoy AI. My computer suggests I buy things it knows I like. Bing's AI gives me great answers to most questions and it doesn't hide small retailers from view like Google does. I suspect the Pentagon uses algorithms developed by perverts to determine which countries to invade and that's disturbing.
As we peasants gradually devolve into becoming the Eloi, I can imagine a world where we are forced to each lab-created food while the Morlocks eat us.
At least the Eloi were happy, if I recall correctly!
Only the ignorant ones.
Like Kobe Beef Cattle, their lives lives were wonderful. Until they were eaten by the Molochs.
Thank you for this behind-the-scenes view, SimCom. AI will NEVER be able to replicate your unique, authentic voice, or that of other writers who offer up their heart as well as their thoughts... and that's why I continue to hold hope for the future.
Thank you so much! That's what I hope! AI "content" is pure bland corporate speak. It will never Scream about the war in Ukraine or government censorship -- ironically because the AI has been censored already.
Nor will it see the need to scream. It will be prompted at times to do so, but will it see indicators that thought is being supplanted by propaganda? Can it discern even the lack of low grade semantic dissent?