The only thing stopping me advocating Biden resigning the presidency because of his age is we just have no precedent for such a thing happening. It’s just not something presidents in the US do.
So, I guess we’re stuck with Biden. A very, very old Biden who looks dodders around like he should be in a nursing home. But he does continue to be really sharp mentally, so, lulz, what do I know.
Look up the Election of 1872.
I continue to grow more and more worried that SHOULD — God forbid — something happen to Biden, that we may find either there being a massive political firefight at a brokered Democratic Convention, or, worse still something really fucked up AFTER Election Day.
But, here we are. There’s just not much any of us can do but hold our collective breath.
Sometimes, you can’t make this shit up. Trump has such absolute control over Republicans that they are now also sucking his cock on foreign affairs. If Tyrant Trump becomes POTUS again….I just don’t see how NATO surivives.
Sometimes, I just don’t get The New York Times. It continues to, on a systemic basis, fumble the bag when it comes to framing the growing threat that MAGA poses to American democracy. (See below)
It definitely seems as though The Old Gray Lady simply can not, will not ring the alarm to the general public about what dangerous political territory we are in at the moment.
And, yet, here we are.
Of course, in the end, what’s probably going to happen is when Tyrant Trump is re-elected that he’ll put the squeeze on the paper and it will be sold to some Trump-friendly oligarch who will remake it in a MAGA image.
I’ve talk about this before, but as I write this novel, there is a character that I keep imagining Sydney Sweeney playing in any hypothetical movie adaptation. It is comical for me to any propose such a thing at this point in the process — I haven’t even finished the fucking novel yet.
But I’m a fan of Ms. Sweeney and daydreaming about such things give me a brazen excuse to show you a picture of her.
Sydney Sweeney
She’s a real babe — as you can tell — and she’s exactly the phenotype that I have rolling around in my head as I write a secondary character in this novel. The character is kind of a wild child who serves as both a little bit of comic relief and a “truth teller” who helps move the plot along.
But, as I said, I’m being silly to even worry about such things at the moment. I just think Ms. Sweeney is hot and I wrote this post as an excuse to show a picture of her.
I often think that the only way I’ll ever teach English in Asia again is if the DPRK somehow collapses and there’s another bubble for ESL by desperate Koreans, this time from former North Koreans.
Me with my students about 2004.
I have noticed something curious on the “easy job for broke writers” front, however — training LLMs. It definitely seems that there MIGHT be a little bit of a bubble now when it comes to doing such shit to the point that otherwise useless — but creative — people like myself might be able to make good money doing it.
But I have a pretty good setup at the moment. I’m in a very idyllic situation for writing a novel and I don’t really have any reason to change it. I’m bonkers and I have a lot of time to write. Don’t know if I need to unset that apple cart by introducing training LLMs into the equation.
And, yet, I also know that all good things must come to an end. It definitely seems as though it’s possible that this very specific situation that I’ve been grateful for the last few years may come to an end in roughly a year. It’s going to s u c k and I need to start thinking about what I’m going to do.
But, who knows, it could be that by that point the training LLMs bubble will have popped and I’ll just have to be miserable like everyone else and use what little free time I have to write and read when I get a chance.
It’s times like these that make me think we live in a simulation. I say this because all of the conditions are there for late 2024, early 2025 to up there with 1917 – 1918 in sheer number of astonishing and historic things happening in a very, very short amount of time.
Just imagine how the history books might describe what we’re careening into. We have an elderly, if very capable president doddering around while a dangerous and deranged would-be fascist dictator is absolutely determined to become president again. It’s like something out of Shakespeare.
Things are so bad that I’m extremely worried about our nation’s fate from the moment the ballots are printed until the moment the 2024 president election is certified in early 2025. Trump is such an avatar, a vessel for white Christian rage that if Something Bad happens to Biden — especially after a very close election the fall of 2024 that he may have lost….HOLY SHIT.
Look up Horace Greeley and the election of 1872.
Total. Complete. Chaos.
And that might set off a chain of events whereby the whole world goes tits up and about 1 billion people die because of all the nukes that start to whiz around as the US consumes itself because “vibes.”
I just don’t know what to tell you. All the signs indicate that late 2024, early 2025 could be EXTREMELY DRAMATIC on a macro historical basis. But I can’t predict the future, so, who knows. It could be that we just somehow muddle through like we always do and nothing of note will happen.
But the thing about Trump and his plans for a second term is he definitely seems to be determined press some pretty important issues to the breaking point. They say you go bankrupt gradually then all at once and that’s exactly what might happen in late 2024, early 2025.
Or not. Again — I can’t predict the future. I couldn’t predict a global pandemic would be enough to stop Trump in 2020 and there are any number of Black Swan events that might happen that might make all my hysterical fears seem silly in hindsight.
Any discussion of what I’m about to talk about must address the huge MAGA elephant in the room — it’s very possible that we may have to go through something along the lines of WW3 before we reach any sort of Singularity, petite or otherwise.
But, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that Trump somehow doesn’t manage to kill about 1 billion people when he is re-elected and in an effort to remake the global order in his image causes WW3 to break out. Let’s say we continue to have relative peace and prosperity.
It definitely seems as though by about 2030 that some combination AI and android technology make totally upend and disrupt the currently human-dominated service industry. There would likely to be an number of unexpected side effects.
The most obvious is, of course, a real push for some sort of Universal Basic Income. I could see this being paid for by some combination of a 30% vat and the taxation of the economic activity of non-human actors. (Though I know some Objectivists who think ANY taxation is theft, even if the “thing” being taxed isn’t even human. Ugh.)
The other, less obvious side-effect of the wide spread use of AI and androids would be that there would be no DDD jobs for undocumented immigrants to fill. Now, apparently some conservatives are soooooo racist that they somehow think that undocumented people will still come to America even if they’re going to starve to death because there are no jobs for them.
But, I think any reasonable person can assume that if all service jobs and all DDD jobs are done by AI androids that, well, that might single-handedly solve a few macro problems in the American body politic. There’s a reason why Japan has been obsessed androids for decades — they knew they would need them because of a lack of new babies.
So, if there was a snap, massive rollout of AI androids in the US it’s possible that the weird bending of in America’s political system that has caused MAGA to warp everything might subside and we might go back to “normal.” Or not, maybe things will just get worse because the plutocrat oligarchs who would control the AI androids would use those very same androids to control the everyone.
Well, I’ve yet AGAIN gotten to a stabilized first chapter. It will be interesting to see how long it lasts. It could be that something will happen and the whole thing collapses again, but for the time being things are stable enough that I can piviot to thinking about the state of my characters.
Corrie Yee has the same phenotype as my heroine in my imagination.
My characters are pretty colorful and interesting. I have a real sense of who they are now. They’re not just “moods” anymore, but far closer to real human beings with needs and desires. I still feel bad that I have never really done any sort of character study of any of them.
But, lulz, here we are.
My heroine is really unique. In fact, I would go so far as to say she could even be Lisbeth Salander-levels of iconic if I can just keep pushing myself and try to finish this damn novel before The Fourth Turning happens and the entire globe collapses into chaos and anarchy.
Ugh.
Me (in the back) being a character.
I still need to force myself to go outside my comfort zone and consume some sort of media that someone else produced. They say if you have time to write you have time to read. I need to take that suggestion to heart. It’s just I have force myself to do it. No more excuses.
It’s just so annoying. I have very specific, very harsh metrics for storytelling and if they aren’t meant then I get frustrated and stop watching. But I can’t keep doing that. I really need to suck it up and read a lot more and watch a lot more.
For a very health reason, I’ve decided to stop drinking full stop. And it sucks. It sucks so bad. And we haven’t even gotten into the part of the year where I may hang out and drink with other people.
No more barfly for me.
But I just don’t see how it’s possible to do anything else.
I’m on the wagon and I hate it.
I suspect that this is it. That I’m never going to drink again if I want to live very much longer. Apparently, all that day drinking of whiskey finally got to me on a physical basis.
With Trump’s comments about NATO, I don’t know what to tell you. It definitely seems as though he’s going to get elected and something akin to WW3 is going to happen. And it will happen in the context of either the US becoming a MAGA-themed autocracy…or collapsing into revolution / civil war.
I hope Biden wins in 2024.
Of course, I can’t predict the future, so, lulz, anything might happen. But Trump and MAGA have a huge amount of momentum on their side. I guess all good things must come to an end.
It will be interesting to see if there is ANY Red Line for conservative Traditionalists. Is there ANYTHING that Trump might do that might give them pause for thought. I don’t think there is.
If anything is going to save us, it’s going to be us — Blues specifically. Good luck.
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