Category: Cold Civil War

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.

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.

I May Have A Little Bit Of A ‘Debbie Does Dallas’ Problem With The First Act of The Third Draft Of This Novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I may have a problem. Sorta. I have a female protagonist and much to my chagrin, I realize looking over the first act that more than once I have leaned into a “spicy” situation to progress the plot forward. I’m afraid my heroine is going to come across as something of a slut.

And, yet, in this topsy-turvy world we’re in at the moment, I suppose being so sex positive as an author will be seen as a good thing. But for the fact that to some (many?), uh, I’m a smelly “CIS white male” who is just doing it because I want to fuck my heroine.

Or something. Something along those –never-get-a-dude-the-benefit-of-the-doubt lines

But, in general, I’m very pleased with what’s going on with this novel. I’m just a little concern about….uh…length. The novel continues to “breath” growing bigger and smaller as I keep fucking tinkering with it. I have got to stop doing that and lock things down one way or another.

If I don’t, I’ll be dodging bombs during the Fourth Turning a year from now and STILL now have finished the third draft.

Of MAGA, Incels & Sexbots

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It definitely seems as though we’re rushing towards a moment where at least two macro issues will fuse — sexbots and Incels. So, in the future, it’s possible that Incels will simply have relationships with pliant sexbots rather than have any relationships with women at all.

Ugh.

What’s worse, it’s possible that once MAGA succeeds into banning all birth control, they will go after this alliance. MAGA’s “moralistic state” will regulate the use of sexbots to the point that they can’t be used as…sexbots.

And all of this definitely seems to possible a precursor to MAGA finding a moralistic reason for regulating AI out of existence. I think this is part of a broader move on MAGA’s part to see AI as a threat to “traditional values,” be they economic or moral.

Anyway. No one listens to me.

‘The Moralistic State’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It seems clear to me that fucking MAGA Nazi Republicans want to replace the “administrative state” with the “moralistic state.” There will be a 30% VAT rather than any form of income tax. Meanwhile, all sorts of white angry Christian morals will be imposed on hapless Americans who just want to be able to edit a tweet.

That, at the moment, seems our fate.

At least on a macro level, that’s what we’re drifting towards. That move towards a moralistic state has a huge amount of historical-political momentum behind it. And, honestly, as much I as I don’t want to even think about it, the only way to avoid such a horrible fate is a massive political clusterfuck in the guise of something like a second American civil war or revolution.

I don’t want that. I hope it doesn’t come to that. But….oh boy…..

An Existential Flaw In Pandemic Fiction

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As I find myself working on a second creative track in the guise of a novel, I also find myself mulling about an existential flaw in pandemic fiction. It’s such a glaring flaw that it’s a serious pet storytelling peeve on my part.

The guise of my irritation is two fold.

One is, it is absolutely impossible for any virus, no matter how virulent to kill off 99% of the population so quickly that humanity doesn’t bounce back within 40 to 60 years. And that’s the second part of my pet peeve — you can’t “unlearn” some pretty basic elements of the modern world.

As such, even if you wiped out 95% of the white, first world Western world, you have millions — maybe even a billion — of brown poor people left untouched by any pandemic, even if it’s of a The Stand level of potency.

This, from a storytelling standpoint, brings up an interesting idea — if you combine humanity snapping back within no later than 60 years with the sources of population being in remote areas of South America, Africa and, maybe, the East Indies, what kind of world does that created down the road?

So, I think someone — maybe me? — should write a novel or screenplay about systemic racism that flips the script on the modern racism problems we have in the world. In this new future world, white people are blamed for the horrific effects of a pandemic a few decades before, to the point that they live in conditions similar to the horrible problems we find in America’s inner cities.

Of course, there is a real risk that all of this would come across as, well, racist. But I think if you made it clear what you were trying to convey, that you MIGHT be able to get away with it.

Hatefully.

A Hot Take On Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson

A Hot Take On House Speaker Mike Johnson

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

For all the ridicule that the center-Left echo chamber is throwing at new House Speaker Mike Johnson, I can tell you that his views are pretty much the sweetspot for many, many hyper conservative people within the American electorate at the moment. To the point that I could see only the growing de facto trend towards always having a female Veep being the only thing preventing Trump from picking him as his veep in 2024.

But for the fact that the United States is either going to stop being a functioning democracy or collapse into civil war / revolution, I would suggest that Speaker Johnson is on the fast track to being a POTUS at some point in the near future. His positions are so fucking absolute and fucking extreme that he’s just what the doctor ordered for the small, but potent portion of the Republican electorate that seems to run the country these days.

So, I don’t know what to tell you.

I will tell you though, that if Speaker Johnson becomes POTUS we will no longer be a democracy — or even a “Constitutional Republic.” We’ll just be a plain old autocracy.

I Fucking Hate MAGA Nazis

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m a man of peace, a man of ideas. And I hate conflict and violence to the point that I struggle to watch conflict — of any sort — in movies and TV shows. And all my anger towards MAGA, I’ve channeled into a six novel project that uses subtext to rant about how much MAGA Nazis suck.

Having said all that, we really need to accept that there is a good chance that there will come a day in the near future when MAGA and the Nazis are seen as historical equivalents. In fact, I would propose that MAGA Nazis are going to lead to the death of more people than just regular old Nazis. The population of the United States is just so much bigger than Europe in the 1940s and the power of the United States is such that, oh boy.

So, late 2024, early 2025 COULD be it. Either we turn into a MAGA Nazi autocratic state or we have a civil war (Reds) or a revolution (Blues.) Or, since I can’t predict the future, maybe we’ll somehow punt all our problems down the road again. Maybe some outside force really will save us from ourselves, like Mueller, She Wrote seems to believe.

America’s Vibes Are Off

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The fact that Saturday Night Live had sketches entirely in Spanish without subtitles has kind of rattled my cage. The reason is, I fucking hate MAGA and yet I found something about it rather grating to the nerves. If it bothered me, then, Lord only knows it probably bothered those 60,000 low information swing voters in five states that will determine the 2024 election.

Add to this how my conservative relative to this day is extremely angry about what happened with COVID and I have a lot of conservative sentiment within my mind to process. If we had a functioning democracy — and no Electoral College — I might switch from a center-Left party to something closer to a center-Right party.

But, lulz, I just don’t have that as an option. So, fuck it, I’m just going to have to double down on my center-Left love of democracy and prepare to potentially risk my life and scared honor for that love. I say that because I believe the best way to fix a lot of these cultural problems is more democracy, not less. So, yes, there are some extremes on the far Left, but the answer is not to turn the United States into a MAGA Nazis white Christian ethnostate.

Anyway. Only time will tell, I guess. I can’t predict the future. Maybe everything really will work out.