What The Fuck Is Going On With HBO?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Let me be clear — I’m just a doofus in the middle of nowhere. No one listens to me. But I’ve known of HBO my entire life and I’m worried about its future. WarnerMedia (AT&T) simply has no idea what the fuck its doing with the brand. Either just call their streaming service “HBO” or call it “Warner+.”

To have this bastard child known as “HBO Max” is to not only confuse the market but degrade the great, great HBO brand mindshare. It just makes no sense, any of it.

In passing, I would note when you’re fighting against the streaming behemoths of Disney+ and Netflix, you probably need to dig a little deeper to catch people’s attention. I know of the simultaneous release decision for big movies on HBO Max…but that seems like a gimmick.

If I was either HBO Max or Paramount+ I would take things to the next level with content and emulate Disney+ by dusting off the old — and rarely seen — back catalogue.

Anyway. No one listens to me.

Why ‘Second American Civil War’ Porn Is So Popular Right Now


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It all started with Ronald Reagan. It was Reagan who told the base that all their problems were caused by evil liberals. So, pretty much, it has been down hill from there.

So, here we are.

About half the American electorate is eagerly waiting a civil war where they are freed from the confines of “cancel culture” so they can murder evil liberals in cold blood without any consequences. I say this because most of this blog’s traffic comes from people in Red States obviously stroking one off in the middle of the night to the idea that if they could just murder liberals then they could provide for a family of five again even without a college education.

I look at my Webstats and it’s a steady flow of URLs from Texas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina who are very, very, VERY interested in some sort of Second American Civil War.

What is so nuts about all of this is if these people would just cool it and let politics take its course, they could get everything they ever wanted. But it definitely seems as though we’ve reached the game of …”but THEN what would happen” where the only logical conclusion is if “cancel culture” keeps going that good old boys in the South (and Mountain areas) will take it upon themselves to slaughter those evil, evil liberals in cold fucking blood.

This is the point where I say — if you’re on of those good old boys: eat shit and fuck off you cocksucker.

Anyway.

The point is, we are so totally fucked. Either there’s a civil war in about five years, or a strong man, a “man on a horse” takes over and strangles our fragile liberal democracy without firing a shot.

Jennifer Lawrence, My Novel & The Role Of ‘Dr. Susan Calvin’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing about Hollywood types is they both live in the aether and also (probably) are obsessed with what people say about them online. I’m a nobody living in the middle of nowhere…but I am writing a novel. And (I think) it’s a good one.

I sometimes for shits and giggles find myself thinking about who might play this or that character in the move adaptation of the novel if somehow, someway miraculously sell it. I really like Jennifer Lawrence, so I mull which character she could play. Honestly, I can’t really think of any character off the top of my head, but given the point of the novel I could definitely see her wanting to, like, uhhhh, produce it.

I’m not going to say I’m any type of “feminist ally” because, well, I’m of the opinion that if a dude says that about himself he’s just looking to get laid. But I have been inspired by the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements to write a novel that pretty much roots around in those concepts as part of its DNA. It also has sex and tech stuff that goes boom so dudes will like it, too. (Hopefully.)

But absolutely no one listens to me. No one. But if someone, somewhere, would listen to me — Jennifer Lawrence? — they would realize there is a great, great sci-fi franchise just waiting to be exploited by Hollywood: Dr. Susan Calvin.

It kind of blows my mind that no one has noticed what a great character she is — and there are all these short stories to be adapted into movies! She appears briefly in the dumb I, Robot movie with Will Smith, but that’s not the character in the short stories at all.

In the short stories, she’s a tough as nails robot psychologist who goes through a series of adventures. All Hollywood would have to do is dust these adventures off, update them, do cool stuff with them and, there you go.

And, yet, again let me say — no one listens to me. Ever.

The National Security Implications Of Tik-Tok (Potentially) Reading The Minds Of America’s Youth


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Let me state for the record that I have no idea if Tik-Tok (or Big Tech for that matter) can read our minds. But if it’s happening, Tik-Tok abuses the technology the worst, given how of all the “Hey, are they reading my mind” abuses I find these days seem to be the most egregious on Tik-Tok.

The issue is — the connection between Tik-Tok and the Chinese government is probably pretty nebulous and difficult to pin down. And, obviously, I don’t know the nature of any putative mind reading technology that may be being used. Is it point-to-point? Is the information gleaned being stored somewhere that can be analyzed? Is this all part of a broader “Soft Singularity” that no one is telling us about? What gives?

What’s more, if private companies can rummage around in private citizens minds using electronics connected to the Internet, just imagine what the CIA, NSA and MI6 can do at this very moment.

But, again — I have no idea if my fears about any of this are real. All I have is a low-grade hunch that maybe, just maybe a Soft Singularity has happened within the bowels of Big Tech and they haven’t told us about it.

Yet, let’s assume that if not now, at some point in the future, “digital telepathy” might be weaponized by both sides as China grows in power and the United States is put on something of a back foot. (Remember, it’s very likely that the United States will become a MAGA autocracy in the 2024-2025 time frame so a lot of my fears will become a lulz.)

But maybe one might find the governments of each country breaking it to their respective populations that they should stop using electronics if it seems like a war is about to break out between China and the United States? If it is, in fact, possible for Big Tech to read our minds and it’s completely unregulated there are so very many moral, ethical and political consequences to deal with if that particular cat is ever let out of the bag.

Having a New Cold War enemy being able to read the minds of your youth is a severe national security issue that might be seen as something close to the dropping of the first a-bomb in historical implications.

Or not.

No one listens to me.

And this doesn’t even begin to address what happens when the a MAGA autocrat uses “digital telepathy” to read the minds of the American populace on the the DL. Talk about a Black Mirror episode! They could have almost absolute control over the population without even anyone realizing.

Everyone uses a phone or a computer. If someone just vanishes one day because of technology no one believes even exists, well, oh boy.

Some Thoughts From What I’ve Read So Far Of Ezra Kline’s ‘Why We’re Polarized’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m really digging Ezra Kline’s book, “Why We’re Polarized.” It’s helped to crystalize a number of abstract fears I have right now and make them concrete. I now understand why the United States will be indistinguishable from Putin’s Russian in less than a generation.

The chief thing is the America I grew up in was the product of white people feeling on top and there being an obvious dominate political party. Throw in that when I was growing up the average blue collar dude without a college education could provide for a family of five all alone and, well, the changes since then make it clear that an autocrat was bound to happen soon enough.

The center-left is so God-awful weak in the United States, that once an actual autocrat (instead of the empty-suit would-be autocrat of Trump) takes power , we won’t know what hit us. All my nightmare scenarios from the last few years will come to be and I will definitely be snatched by a member of the weaponized ICE.

So, enjoy the next few years of liberal democracy while you can. I haven’t gotten to the end of Kline’s book yet, so I don’t know what his solution to this clusterfuck is yet. But it seems to me, as I keep saying, if you can get out of the United States now, do so.

Trumplandia is coming back in about four years and it ain’t going to be pretty.

My Hot Take On The Governor Cuomo Nursing Home Deaths Debacle


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I totally think that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo deserves all the hot water he is currently in. If that means he gets impeached for his current nursing home debacle, so be it. But I’ve been forced to consume Fox News hysterical coverage of this clusterfuck and here is my hot take.

  1. I Thought All This Was a “Media Hoax.”
    We’ve come a long way from Fox News being the amen choir to Trump’s bonkers ranting about how COVID-19 was just a “MEDIA hoax” meant to hurt him politically. Now, Fox News is pretty much lost it’s fucking mind going after Cuomo. Talk about media hoax!
  2. What Cuomo Did Was Wrong. But So Was What Trump Did
    We’re now at 500,00 deaths from COVID-19 because Trump was a lazy, incompetent doofus who didn’t care about the rising death toll. He did such a bad just that that, in itself, should be enough to drive him from public life, never to be seen again.

    So, fuck you, Fox News.

The First Draft Of The Novel Is Beginning To Consolidate Up To About Chapter 4


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Though there are some gaps here and there, I’m just about to consolidate the novel up to the 4th chapter. Things are moving really, really fast right now. I continue to graze a lot of books about how to write and develop novels — in addition to general books to help with development of characters — and I’m feeling pretty stoked.

As I’ve mentioned, there is at least one potential existential issue with the novel — when it’s set. It’s taken me so fucking long to get to this point that the (first?) Trumplandia Era is over (for the time being.) Given that Doofus Trump is going to CPAC this year, it definitely seems as though he’s running again and that particular issue will be solved. It will be solved in the sense that Trump’s not going anywhere and there are going to be plenty of regular readers who will want to read my “Atlas Shrugged for liberal-progressives.” (Though this is an extremely simplistic description of what’s going on.)

One thing I keep gradually drifting towards is throwing all my time at the novel. No one reads this blog and the only reason to write anything on it anymore is I’m paying for the domain name and sometimes I need to vent. And sometimes I get drunk and just feel like writing something, anything, that isn’t novel related.

But I continue to seethe about what happened during the Trump Era, so I here I am — I have all the energy necessary to develop and write a decent 100,000+ word novel set just as the “Before Times” were about to end and the pandemic was about to fuck everything up.

Anyway, I have to keep going. I need to move faster.

My Novel As Trumplandia Catharsis For ‘Woke Park Slope Moms’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

First, I know I’m being “oblivious and stupid” for even mentioning some silly idea of New York City ‘woke Park Slope moms.” It’s just a joke I tell myself to make me smile whenever I think about who the audience for this novel is.

But having said that, today was one of the first days when it really sank in that we’re no longer in the Trump Era but in the Biden Era and some basic assumptions about this novel that I made no longer apply. And, yet, the universe I’ve come up with is so Goddamn interesting — and there’s so much momentum behind it in my mind — that I’m going to keep going.

I’m not even going to hedge my bets by working on anything else. I learned a long time ago in this process writing a novel that any such talk is just a distraction. I made a pretty big break through tonight with the beginning of the novel and so I’m pushing ahead.

The biggest structural problem with the novel right now is because we’re in a new political era — one when the president isn’t deranged — it kinda feels weird talking about POTUS as a deranged person.

And, yet, I think if I made it absolutely clear when this novel is set — during Trumplandia — that readers will get it. I don’t intend to mention Trump’s name during this novel, but he definitely has an Individual #1 presence in it. I mean, who else would be president during the time this novel is set?

So, I’m hoping that a lot of people like me will want what I want — a plot that’s not-so-subtly influenced by the bonkers events of the last few years. I can’t help that it’s taken me this long to get to the point where I can actually probably finish this novel at a reasonably fast clip.

I’ve fallen in love with these characters and the least I can do is knock out one complete novel involving them. I keep struggling with some significant insecurity about how dated this novel will seem, and, yet, if I address Trumplandia in a way that, say, “woke Park Slope moms” find some catharsis, then maybe some of them will want to read it.

There is one option — simply slice the POTUS angle off the plot altogether. But, to date, I’ve not figured out how to do that. I want to root around in macro political issues using fiction. So, in a sense, this is my Atlas Shrugged, only it’s more such a novel for liberal-progressives astonished by how bad Trumplandia got before it was all over with.

Or, to put another way — I’m still angry enough about Trumplandia to keep going, damn what everyone thinks.

A $1 Trillion Challenge To Elon Musk: The ‘Mindcap’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Silicon Valley is embarrassing itself right now. There’s all this talk of a “neural link” where you fucking drill a hole in someone’s head — possibly giving them a fucking lobotomy — when there’s a far, far less intrusive solution to this problem: the Mindcap.

I’m cribbing this idea from Arthur C. Clarke’s novel “3001: Final Odyssey,” but here’s the point — wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to lay the technology over someone’s shaved head making someone stupid by accident as part of the development process? Ugh. It’s so obvious and so annoying.

Now, the reason why I even mention this is I have come to believe that the basis for such a revolution in how we consume technology already exists. I’m just an idiot in the middle of nowhere, but I definitely get the sense that Big Tech is using electronics to read our minds in some way. Or, it’s at least possible.

So, Big Tech, instead of thinking very, very small with a digital party line called Clubhouse, why not live up to your ideals of “disrupt” by breaking huge swaths of the economy like it did with the Internet. Why even go through the middle sage of VR – AR using Oculus Rift.

It makes far, far, more sense to throw all your efforts into a Mindcap. People will have to shave their heads, yeah, but so what. You can always wear a wig AND you get to cut out the middle man when it comes to consumption of media, services, you name it.

We’re talking Steve Jobs “think different” levels of transformation of the average, everyday person’s life. Apple, or Elon Musk, someone, if you could mass produce a $1,200 mindcap that was actually functioning in any way at all, you could easily make $1 trillion through first mover advantage alone.

But I know I’m working on some dubious assumptions. Only someone like Elon Musk could throw money at the idea of a Mindcap. Remember, my idea this Mindcap would be completely unobtrusive. No drilling into someone’s head. You lay the technology directly over someone’s bare scalp and the Mindcap augments your existing mental ability and allows you to access the Internet.

It’s just kind of sad that Silicon Valley has lost its touch. For shame, for shame. You come up with smartphone and now you’re too busy stroking one off on a digital partyline to think big.

How I Quit Worrying & Came To Love Big Tech’s ‘Digital Telepathy’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Whenever I think of how I’ve come to believe Big Tech is reading our minds (in some way) I think of that dude who figured out the Bernie Madoff scheme really never got any credit. In interviews he comes off as an acerbic, somewhat deranged guy. Just the type of guy that MSM wouldn’t give credit for breaking a huge story.

I feel for that guy.

I have no New York Times-level proof that Big Tech can read our minds, but there’s one specific thing that Big Tech (specifically Tik-Tok) is doing that is so specific that it definitely seems as though there’s some mind reading going on: they know shit about my body.

Now, as I keep saying, I hate conspiracy theories, so, yes, it’s very possible that through AI or algorithms they’ve somehow magically narrowed down specific issues with my body that I’ve told no one about. And if that’s the case I have two responses — then THAT needs to be regulated. And two, if that’s the case, they’ve managed to come up with an AI that has figured out very specific health issues for my specifically that make one think we’ve reached a Soft Singularity somewhere in the shadows.

But Big Tech (Tik-Tok) keeps pushing me very specific content for very specific health issues — down to virtually the same wording in my own Goddamn mind! — that something has got to be up. What’s going on right now, of course, is, I think, a Soft Singularity has happened and our poor old rummaged through minds can’t process that we’ve reach a point in technological development where Big Tech can actually READ OUR FUCKING MINDS.

We just can’t grok it. It just isn’t something we can process, so we dismiss it. And if only freaky weirdos like me are claiming this, then it’s very easy to dismiss it. There’s no proof. All I have is a direct link between my personal, internal monologue and the content I’m being pushed by Big Tech. I can’t PROVE THAT, now can I?

It’s Tik-Tok that seems to abuse their ability the most. They don’t just push me content for, say, “bathmat” without any obvious context, they push me content with some abstract analyzation to it. Now THAT is fucking spooky.

But let me be clear — I bounce back and forth between believing I’ve figured this out and saying this is just another one of my kooky ideas I’ve had since I’ve left South Korea.

The only reason why I keep bringing it up is…Big Tech keeps trying to pull a Soft Singularity fast one on me and it’s beginning to bug the shit out of me.