Maybe I’ve mentioned this before — I am prone to repeating myself — but something seems off with Jennifer Lawrence. She seems a bit forlorn, a bit…sad. She doesn’t seem to come across as the happy-go-lucky, chipper person that she was back in the day.
JLaw
I suppose you could rack it up to her being older, more mature and a mom now. But, just on casual examination, it seems like it might be deeper and more existential than that.
It seems to me the crux of the “AGI” debate is reasoning. To truly have a “mind in a box” you need for the “mind” in question to have human-level reasoning. So it not only can do some advanced thinking that a human might be able to, but it has the *reasoning* ability to know, hey, maybe not turn all the matter in the universe into paperclips.
Now, I will admit that I’ve been using Claude 3 and it’s been at times…spooky. It definitely SEEMS to have some sort of basic reasoning abilities. But I dunno. It could be that I’m reading into things something that is not there.
But I do wonder what happens when we get close enough to AGI that most code is written by…AGI. All those fucking smug tech bros who tell people me to “learn to code” are going to have to learn…how to write.
It will definitely be interesting to see what is going to happen with Universal Basic Income. If we reach AGI, or something close to it, and the entire profession of “coding” is wiped out, then, oh boy. You could see a bunch of well educated tech bros join the ranks of MAGA and then we have a fucking anti-tech fascist movement on our hands.
But it will be, in general, interesting to see how things work out.
I don’t really believe in New Age bullshit, but sometimes I do find myself having a curious sensation — that someone, somewhere in South Korea (or connected to it) is thinking about me really hard.
Me, (right) in South Korea around 2004.
I know this is fantastical, but in the past, at least, around the time I have such feelings, someone will swoop in and look at this blog. It hasn’t happened — yet — but someone did download “Somehow” my 30,000 word screed about the crazy days and nights I “enjoyed” between 2006 and 2008 in connection to ROKon Magazine, Nori Bar and the late Annie Shapiro.
I dunno. I just don’t know what to tell you, folks. It’s probably nothing. It’s been about 13 years since I was in South Korea and there’s no reason to believe anyone in South Korea — even a Korean — thinks about me at all these days.
But it is all very….spooky. It does, yet again, make me want to return to South Korea (and Asia in general) one last time to see what’s up. I know South Korea well enough to know that there’s a 50 / 50 chance that if I went back to Seoul anytime soon I’d find myself with a job at Samsung training an AI.
Jesus Christ. I’m really beginning to fear that because I’m a kook and broke that finding someone to edit my novel is going to be a real fucking struggle. It’s going to be a lot more of a struggle than I could have possibly imagined going into this project a number of years ago.
But, here I am.
The same fears I have about liberal white women literary agents being non plussed about my kooky behavior on social media are there when it comes to how I’m going to find an editor.
Add to things how fucking broke I am and….oh boy.
But, if nothing else, I’m well on my way to wrap this novel up in a few months then I can piviot from the delusional dream land I’ve been in for the last few years into the bitter, cruel world of editing and querying.
Nathalie Emmanuel pretty much looks literally like my heroine in this picture.So much so I’m worried someone is going to steal a march on me creatively!
And, yet, as I keep saying, I would rather just never be published than self-published. I would rather fail in a monumental, catastrophic way than do the co-out of self-publishing. I totally validate self-publishing, it’s just not my scene and not my vision for any novel I may write.
Anyway, I’m just a few scenes away from reaching the midpoint of the alpha release of the third draft of my first novel. This novel is a lot — A LOT — more spicy (and funny!) than Stieg Larsson’s original Millennium series of books. And while I just am not as good as he is when it comes to structure and POVs, I do think that, in general, the story flows a faster clip than The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Nathalie Emmanuel pretty much looks literally like my heroine in this picture.So much so I’m worried someone is going to steal a march on me creatively!
And, in a sense, I do feel that I’ve finally, FINALLY, developed and written a novel that has the same vibe as The Girl Who Played With Fire. It’s not fan fiction — it’s its own thing — but the influence that novel has on my work is pretty obvious in the sense that if you pick up my novel after having read the original Millennium series of books you’ll think, “Oh, I get it, this is like a Stieg Larsson novel set in America.”
That is the general goal of things in my mind.
But, in real terms, my novel is creatively its own thing other than a few stylistic choices and a few Form Follows Function things I was kind of forced into doing because of the genre.
My heroine has a sleeve tattoo like Megan Fox sports now, even though I thought of the idea first!
In fact, the biggest difference between my work and Stieg Larsson’s is something pretty basic — our personalities. He seems like he was way more serious than I am and had a far more twisted creative sense than I do. I love to laugh and socialize and it’s a real struggle for me to stay serious — or think about dark things — for too long.
The fact that Sydney Sweeney is so popular at the moment definitely gives one pause for thought. We have to think about the meta of it all. I seem to recall the idea that in good economic times — or at least a good stock market, more “full figured” women are popular in mass media.
Sydney Sweeney
The thing about Sweeney is she is MAGA coded, as much as she tries not to be. So, in a sense, she may be one of the few young “four quadrant” Hollywood stars out there. She can “play” like a Blue center-Left cultural figure, but all the MAGA knuckle draggers know her background and know she’s actually one of them.
Or something. Something like that. What the fuck do I know.
Now, let me put the following in context — the Millennium novels not written by Stieg Larsson after his tragic death continue to be published and I can only assume are doing reasonably well. So any quibbles I have with them can easily be seen as just my usual crackpot delusional rantings.
My dream is to write a heroine as compelling as Lisbeth Salander.
But having said all that, I will give you my first impressions of the latest novel featuring Lisbeth Salander, “The Girl In The Eagle’s Talons.”
I’ve only just begun reading and I’m taken aback by how the novel doesn’t feel like a Stieg Larsson novel. The chapters are a lot shorter. The author doesn’t use surnames to refer to people. The novel just feels like it’s…there. It’s just like any other novel you might pick up, at least so far.
At the moment, I have potentially seven(!) novels that I want to write set in the same place populated by pretty much the same characters. I want my novel to feel like a Stieg Larsson novel the moment you pick it up. There are some obvious caveats.
I’m not nearly as good on the structural backend as Larsson was, for one thing. But I have studied one of his novels, The Girl Who Played With Fire, a lot and I believe I have a sense of how to make my first novel an old brown shoe to anyone who knows the original Millennium novels.
Nathalie Emmanuel pretty much looks literally like my heroine in this picture.So much so I’m worried someone is going to steal a march on me creatively!
When you pick up my novel, I want you to glance at the first page and “get” that this is meant to be an homage to the original Millennium novels, even if it’s totally and completely different outside of a few elements of style and some form follows function elements.
Anyway, I’m being very, very delusional. I’ve not even begun to query yet and it’s very possible because of the following issues that I will never succeed in becoming a published author:
My Crazy Drunk Behavior in Asia I was kind of a wild animal in South Korea back in the day. And it’s not like I’ve hidden how bonkers I was. It’s just not in my nature to do such a thing. So any liberal woman women literary agent worth her wine is going to smoke out how bonkers and crazy I was back in the day. And that, unto itself, may be enough to steer them clear of me, no matter how much I’ve changed since then.
My Not Doing Anything For About 20 years This is another tough issue for me to have to address during the querying process. I have not done _anything_ of note since late 2011. That’s….a long time. But, here I am, wanting to bootstrap myself out of this particular situation by writing a break out hit novel. Yet I suppose it’s possible that, by definition, could be the thing that prevents me from getting published. I could write the fucking Bible and because I’m a nobody, I just won’t be taken seriously as an aspiring novelist — and never will be.
My Being Bonkers I’m kind of a kook. And the more due diligence is done on me by the typically liberal white women who are literary agents the more they’re going to think, “Uh, no.” There remains a lot of a taboo about having mental health issues, despite what everyone wants you to think when you’re bonkers, so…I dunno. Though I SUPPOSE it’s possible that could be used in some sort of marketing campaign for the novel, “bonkers author makes good,” that sort of thing.
The Nature of The Novel Offending Liberal White Women I got nothing against liberal white women, it’s just I worry that the nature of my novel — that of a part-time sex worker who wants to own a community newspaper — may be a little too much for them to stomach in the context of being my literary agent. If I was a transgendered, undocumented woman, rather than a smelly CIS white male, it would be different, but I “don’t have a lot going for me demographically” as one woman recently mentioned when I wanted her to look at the first chapter of my novel.
As I lurch towards the querying process, which can be quite brutal from what I can tell, I have to let sink in the fact that I could very well, uh, fail. So, let’s go through the reasons why this might be.
My Crazy Drunk Behavior in Asia I was kind of a wild animal in South Korea back in the day. And it’s not like I’ve hidden how bonkers I was. It’s just not in my nature to do such a thing. So any liberal woman women literary agent worth her wine is going to smoke out how bonkers and crazy I was back in the day. And that, unto itself, may be enough to steer them clear of me, no matter how much I’ve changed since then.
My Not Doing Anything For About 20 years This is another tough issue for me to have to address during the querying process. I have not done _anything_ of note since late 2011. That’s….a long time. But, here I am, wanting to bootstrap myself out of this particular situation by writing a break out hit novel. Yet I suppose it’s possible that, by definition, could be the thing that prevents me from getting published. I could write the fucking Bible and because I’m a nobody, I just won’t be taken seriously as an aspiring novelist — and never will be.
My Being Bonkers I’m kind of a kook. And the more due diligence is done on me by the typically liberal white women who are literary agents the more they’re going to think, “Uh, no.” There remains a lot of a taboo about having mental health issues, despite what everyone wants you to think when you’re bonkers, so…I dunno. Though I SUPPOSE it’s possible that could be used in some sort of marketing campaign for the novel, “bonkers author makes good,” that sort of thing.
The Nature of The Novel Offending Liberal White Women I got nothing against liberal white women, it’s just I worry that the nature of my novel — that of a part-time sex worker who wants to own a community newspaper — may be a little too much for them to stomach in the context of being my literary agent. If I was a transgendered, undocumented woman, rather than a smelly CIS white male, it would be different, but I “don’t have a lot going for me demographically” as one woman recently mentioned when I wanted her to look at the first chapter of my novel.
If a foreign-owned video app was found to have the technological capability to read or monitor the thoughts and mental activity of its users in the United States, there would likely be tremendous backlash and outrage, though perhaps not quite as extreme as mind control.
Some potential reactions could include:
Public anger over a massive intrusion of privacy and violation of civil liberties on a national scale by a foreign entity.
Demands for the app to be immediately removed from app stores and banned until its mind-reading capabilities are verifiably removed.
Calls for investigations by Congress, the FTC, and other authorities into how this was allowed and what user data was accessed.
A rush of lawsuits and legal action against the company by users, consumer groups and state attorneys general.
Intense scrutiny and criticism of any U.S. companies/platforms that enabled the foreign app’s mind-reading capabilities through lack of oversight.
Push for much stricter data privacy laws and regulations around emerging mind-reading/brain-computer interface technologies.
Loss of trust in the entire video app and its parent company, potentially tanking its U.S. userbase.
While not an direct hostile act like mind control, the ability for a foreign corporation to secretly read Americans’ minds would be seen as an unacceptable privacy breach and abuse of power. There would be immense pressure to shut it down and regulate against such capabilities until proper rules are established.
ROKon Magazine started in late summer 2006 when I met the now-late Annie Shapiro. The whole saga / drama lasted until about 2008, if I recall correctly. If you want to read the whole messy booze-fueled drama from my POV, here it is:
The story is pretty damn interesting, if I do say so myself. But it was all a long, long time ago — nearly 20 years now, and there’s really no reason for anyone, even me, to be interested in it anymore.
I mean, I daydream about someone like Phoebe Waller-Bridge wanting to write a screenplay based on the story, but, lulz, that’s just a daydream. And I do draw upon what happened back then a GREAT DEAL for the novel I’m writing. But I just find it very curious that anyone — ANYONE — would be interested in ROKon Magazine.
And now that I’m on the cusp of querying, I wonder if white liberal women literary agents doing due diligence on me are going to be really into all my bad behavior back then. All I can say is — I’m sorry. It was a long time ago and I’ve grown so much as person relative to what happened back then that it’s like I’ve had a brain transplant.
Otherwise, you’ll just have to accept me for who I am.
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