Month: October 2023

Trump Is A Symptom, Not A Cause — Twitter Liberals Need To Get A Grip When It Comes To The ‘What If Hillary Won?’ Counter-Factual

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have no special insight into anything, but I was alive in 2016. And Republicans made it clear in the days leading up to the 2016 Election that lulz, they were fully prepared to simply not allow ANYONE to fill a SCOTUS vacancy unless they were MAGA.

As such, Twitter liberals need to shut the fuck up about “Oh, if only Hillary Clinton had won in 2016.” Trump is nothing more than a symptom of some severe macro problems in the American political system that would have caused SOMEONE like him to become president starting early as 2016 and no later than 2024.

In some respects, you can’t even “blame” Obama for Trump. The forces that allowed Bill Clinton to win in 1992 also caused Trump to come into being. In general, America’s fucked because of the forces that bring down all empires sooner or later.

The only question in my mind at the moment is are we going to somehow pull off a third hat trick and — after some turbulence starting in late 2024, early 2025 — renew our democratic traditions and grow even stronger. Or are we going to slouch into a MAGA autocracy. Or, worse yet, we bomb ourselves into oblivion without any clear endgame.

But the point remains — Twitter liberals are being crybabies to pine for some alternative universe where Hillary Clinton won in 2016. I remember the passion that the Trump Train had behind it in 2016. If he had lost, we wouldn’t know what a horrible president he would be and he would definitely win in 2020. So, all the horrible shit that happened in 2017 – 2021 would just have been punted down the road four years.

GET A FUCKING GRIP TWITTER LIBERALS.

MAGA Mike Is Doing America A Favor By Being Who He Is

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing about Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson is the more I learn about him, the more I know my conservative relatives — whom I love dearly — will love, love love him. I would even go so far as to suggest that they will soon be chomping at the bit for malignant ding-dong Trump to name the Speaker his 2024 veep choice.

The thing about MAGA Mike is he’s pretty much just your typical modern MAGA person. A solid 38% of the electorate loooooooves what he has to say on the culture wars and the “vibes” that are tearing the country at the moment.

After much, much, much, much time brooding over what the fuck is going wrong with America on a systemic basis, I think I may have it figured out. A combination of growing income inequality, the browning of America and women’s economic agency is tearing the country apart on an existential basis.

The browning of America is really key to America’s instability because it feeds into a white identity politics narrative. America is zooming towards a tipping point where we’re kind of like South Africa in the sense that a minority of the country controls a majority of the political and economic power. This is a very fucked up situation, no matter which nation it happens to occur in.

Anyway, we’re reaching a moment in time when Americans collectively figure out what our future will be for generations to come. Do we become an autocratic MAGA state of blood and soil, or do we allow things like the browning of America and women becoming economic equals happen as they should?

I have a fear, of course, that we’re going to “take it to the streets,” if you will. We’re going to have at it against each other in our struggle to figure out what type of America we want to be. If Trump becomes POTUS again in 2025, the possibility of a Blue “Glorious Revolution” and a reactionary counter-revolution on the part of MAGA grows by leaps and bounds.

But if it’s NOT Trump who is our MAGA POTUS, then I think we simply shrug and become an autocratic white Christian ethnostate with a thin gloss of lingering 1st Amendment rights.

Imagining An American ‘Glorious Revolution’ Against Tyrant Trump Starting In Late 2024, Early 2025

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I hate violence. Hell, I hate conflict of any sort. But, as we enter being about one year away from the so-called “Fourth Turning,” I find myself thinking about what might be the BEST case scenario in a huge, massive clusterfuck.

Now, in real terms, I think the United States just slipping peacefully into autocracy is probably the absolute best scenario of a wide rage of really shitty outcomes. And, yet, if you think about what might be best if we want to remain a functioning democracy, there is the “Glorious Revolution” option.

This is all very speculative and I still can’t really game it out, but, in general, this would be where things get so fucking bad under Tyrant Trump that the 60% of the American population that wants to remain the “land of the free” rises up and brings Trump down, MAYBE with the help of the U.S. Military.

But it would go something like this — starting in January 2025, Tyrant Trump lives up to his name and he’s so full of hate and the need for revenge that a lot of common folk who, to date, have lulzed Trump’s tyrannical inclinations will sit up and take notice.

I think of these people as political “Radical Moderates” As such, even though about 1 million smug Twitter liberals will have left the country by that point, enough of us Poors join forces that we manage to bring Tyrant Trump’s tyrannical regime to its knees.

I could see not only mass protests as things got progressively worst under Tyrant Trump, but maybe, just maybe, that unicorn of American political levers — the General Strike. Americans are so chill — even under duress — that it’s really difficult to imagine something as out of the ordinary as a General Strike.

But we live in unprecedented times. And, according to political science, all you need is a motivated 5% of the population to bring down the government. So, it’s easy to imagine if Trump somehow managed to sign a complete, and total, ban on abortion of any sort in the context of pulling out of NATO and South Korea and God only knows what the fuck else, that women, if nothing else, might collectively decide to YOLO it and just not go into work until Trump is out of power.

Now, before this seems like too rosy a scenario, there would obviously be an equal and opposite reaction on the part of MAGA if, say, Congress was actually thinking of doing something about Trump. So, things would really be totally chaotic as the two sides tore the country apart.

What might START as a “Glorious Revolution” against Tyrant Trump, might endup as just a regular old fucking Second American Civil War.

So, as I mentioned before, lulz. I guess I’m cool with us slipping peacefully into a MAGA-themed autocracy.

Logically, Our ‘Her’ Movie Future Will Be Powered By The House That Steve Built

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

If you believe — as I do — that they’re rushing towards a future that is very similar to that imagined in the movie “Her,” then, well, it definitely seems as though Apple would be the company to make it happen.

They don’t have a profitable search engine business to protect and they have gobs and gobs and gobs of money to throw at creating a top-tier LLM. And, what’s more, they are at the forefront of XR technology with their Vision Pro.

But, as I always say, I can’t predict the future. I have no idea what is going to happen. And, yet, I would suggest you keep an eye on what Apple does in the next 18 months with XR and LLM.

I think it’s at least possible that were about to have a thunderclap of innovation around the fusion of XR and LLM technologies to such an extent that it might cause a severe recession and the loss of millions of jobs. But, we’ll see, I guess.

Now I’m Worried About Joe Biden

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

“Pres Biden walked back into WH at 6:58 after nearly 90 min handing out candy. It was chilly 58 degrees & he was likely soaked from nonstop rain. Even those with umbrellas on the lawn were drenched & cold. No aides brought out an umbrella for their almost 81-yo.”

Steven Nelson


I saw a headline from a Voice Of America correspondent that suggested President Biden left his handing out of Halloween candy tonight drenched from a hours-long cold rain.

William Henry Harrison
This makes me extremely uneasy because, well, you know. He’s 80 years old and that’s just the type of dumb decision that fell William Henry Harrison. This has long been a concern of mine. And it only gets worse because of how the new Speaker of The House is known as “MAGA Mike.”

Something wicked, this way comes. If, God forbid, something happens to Biden, and if those blind items about a Harris sex tape are real and it comes out…then, well, we got President MAGA Mike on our hands.

Ugh.

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Came To Love Tik-Tok Potentially Reading Minds

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I don’t REALLY believe Tik-Tok (and Big Tech in general) can read my mind, but sometimes…eerie things happen. Take, for instance something I noticed today.

I spent a few hours right next to my elderly, wheelchair bound father. It was only when I came home and started to use Tik-Tok that I noticed something….weird. I was being pushed a number of Band of Brothers videos all of a sudden. Now, that really isn’t as big a deal as it might seen because, lulz, that happens to me all the time.

It was something else that happened with Tik-Tok that made me sit up and take notice — I was also pushed a number of Kelly’s Hero’s clips that featured Donald Sutherland as “Oddball.” I struggled to think of why this was the case, then I thought how I sat right next to my dad earlier in the day and started to wonder — did Tik-Tok read my dad’s mind? Does my dad think I’m an Oddball type character?

There are two reasons this kind of spooks me. One, if that’s what’s happening, then I have some insight into my cypher of a father that I’ve never had before. And, what’s more, if you could prove Tik-Tok (and Big Tech) and read our minds, wouldn’t they have a responsibility to, say, notify the police if some crazed would-be mass shooter’s mind was being monitored by Tik-Tok and they knew what he was thinking about doing?

But I don’t believe Tik-Tik, or anyone else, can read our minds. Yet….it is curious. All very curious.

Yet Another New Beginning For The Third Draft Of The Novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I continue to write and rewrite — and rethink — a new beginning for the third draft of this novel. At the moment, the biggest problem looming in my mind is if this new beginning will push the word count of this novel to a point where I either have to cut it to two novels (with a cliffhanger connecting them) or I will have to somehow re-imagine things once I’m done with it.

If this novel is no more than 140,000 words, I’m at least open to trying to pitch it because The Girl On The Train is about that many words, as I understand it. But the key issue is just get something, anything done as a third draft.

Anyway, the new beginning is really, really good. It flows really well and there is a real ebb and flow of cause and effect there that wasn’t there before. My only fear is that if my storytelling continues to improve the way it currently is, that the whole project will endup being reimagined in a way that will slow me down a great deal.

All of this happening in the context of the fucking Fourth Turning potentially happening starting in late 2024, early 2025. AND I’m not going to live forever and I need to put up or shut up sooner rather than later.

AND, what’s more, in the back of my mind, I find myself wanting to bootstrap some sort of effort at a screenplay. But the keep reform I hope to do with this third draft is to be more methodical. I hope to be a lot less informal with how I develop then write scenes.

My mind was kind of running hot the last few days and the little pause I’ve taken in writing has helped a lot.

I Continue To Bootstrap My Second Creative Track Of Learning To Write Hollywood Screenplays

By Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve decided to chill out until November 1st when it comes to the novel. I’ve been running hot and I don’t want to burn out and grow discouraged. As such, I’m going to (hopefully) spend the next 48 hours bootstrapping myself with screenwriting.

I have learned a lot about how to start a major creative project through all the hard work I’ve put into this novel, so I have a sense of what works well with my personality. I do think I’m going to probably pick something like The Enternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as my “textbook” and really read it and study it to get a sense of how a master does it.

But I (hope) to read a lot of other screenplays as well — especially Star Wars.

A lot is going on all at once when it comes to my nascent efforts to figure out how to write a screenplay. I pretty much have an entire plot nailed down when it comes to a screenplay based on the real-life events that took place when I went to Lonely Beach in Thailand some time ago.

But, remember, I’ve talked a good game about this sort of stuff in the past, only for me to lose interest and for me to focus all my attention on writing a novel. So, lulz, who knows.

Imagining The Reality Of Our ‘Her’ Movie Future

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Here are some basic existing things that I’m using to game out the ultimate demise of the “passive Web” by, say, the end of the decade. (Excluding a pause to get the outcome of The Fourth Turning sorted out, of course.)

The first is the growing power and popularity of Large Language Models. Another is the growing power of computing hardware in general. Another is the fact that there is some techno-cultural determinism in LLMs solving some pretty basic problems with the Web as we know it. And last would be improving XR technology.

Ok, with all that in mind, it’s pretty easy to imagine that we literally could live in a Her movie-like future pretty soon. Everyone will wear a earpiece that allows them to have real-time conversations with a LLM digital assistant. The LLM’s dataset will be the entirety of the Web. The LLM will be finely tuned to your specific personality to the point that all of today’s bitching and moaning by conservatives about chatbot “bias” will seem quaint and silly.

Instead of searching Google, we will have casual, personal conversations throughout the day about whatever it is we need to know. Websites will no longer exist — or will no longer get the (human) traffic that they get today. And here is where XR technology fits in.

Instead of the passive use of a “browser” to read a New York Times article, you will actively be presented the contents you’re interested in by your LLM — probably displayed as a multimedia AR experience at your demand. The connection between AI and XR is not as obvious as maybe it should be. It seems to me that the two will feed on each other so that both are trillion dollar industries by 2030. (Again, baring the United States collapsing into civil war / revolution because of fucking ding-dong Trump.)

The thing about it is, all of this could happen really, really fast. Within just a few months, content on the Web could collapse into a Singularity with little or no direct human interaction with it. An entire genre of media will no longer be relevant at all.

Even all the microblogging services that have popped up might no longer needed because the real-time news element of the services will be replaced with you having a really interesting, personal conversation with your digital personal assistant.

Or, at the very least, what you might previously get via Twitter or Bluesky, you will see via a XR display that you wear most of the time.

Besides the obvious historical and political obstacles to this happening, there might be some human resistance to what seems to make total sense today. As such, maybe it’s not 2030 that no one reads The New York Times website anymore, but, say, 2033 or later.

But it’s coming. I just don’t see how the Web continues to exist in its present form.

The End Of The Web

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The crux of much of the money made in the Internet era has been slapping ads on solving the problem of there being a deluge of information on the Web. But it is growing more and more apparent to me that it’s at least possible that as we careen towards a “Her” movie type future, that the Web could collapse into something akin to a technological Singularity.

The entire modern Web paradigm will evaporate into into simply interacting with a hyper-personalized LLM. So, rather than a Google-style one to many situation we have now where we all go to Google to ask a question, we will each have a LLM specifically tweaked to our personal proclivities.

What’s more, the Web itself will no longer exist.

There are elements of this potential future that I can’t quite game out yet. What about video or music? How does any one make any money off of content if all content is simply fed directly into a LLM that then, in turn, tells end users about that content?

I think we have to contemplate the idea that the next trillion dollars in tech will be made from whomever can scale Her-like software. So, rather than a smart phone, you’ll have some sort of device that interfaces with a LLM. The end product will be much like what is seen in Her or even the Apple prototype commercial from way back when where a dude talks to a high end digital personal assistant.

As such, it seems Apple would be the most obvious company to benefit from this because they don’t have a profitable search business to protect AND they have a unified software and hardware ecosystem.

The issue of online content, however, is a much more difficult thing to process. But it is easy to imagine that LLM hooked up to a real-time feed of the Internet could market the final death of all media online. If your LLM uses the ENTIRE INTERNET (including the Dark Web) as its dataset, the fact that at the moment you only can get “suggestions” about a portion of the Internet’s vast content becomes quite moot and quaint.

The LLM will simply digest all of human knowledge and give you a specific answer specifically tailored to your personality and needs. It will know everything about you and so there will be something akin to “preemptive search” that takes place.

But, again, how will some future interation of The New York Times make any money? I honestly don’t know at this point. Maybe they will be paid to feed their content directly into the LLM? But I do know that the Web as we currently conceive of it is lurching towards its doom.