Month: January 2026

Hollywood Is Cooked, I Fear

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

If macro, megatrends continue the path they’re on now — Hollywood is totally cooked. To the point that within 10 years, young would-be starlets will go not to Los Angeles and Hollywood, but, instead to New York City and the lights of Broadway.

“Hollywood” as we know it, will be replaced with high quality AI generate media that is indistinguishable from what humans produce today. My go-to scenario is you will be able to come home from work (if those still exist for humans), tell your Knowledge Navigator what you want to see and it will whip up, on the fly, a new Star Wars movie with you as the hero and everything will be only vaguely connected to the broader Star Wars universe.

I’m not being all that original at this point to pontificate on such things, but I do think the only way Hollywood as we current know it exists in 10 to 20 years is specific legal carveouts for humans. That’s it, without carveouts, Hollywood as we know is a sinking ship.

But we live in an era — at the moment — when weak-willed plutocrats run the show in an autocratic social environment, so I have my doubts that even Hollywood could convince, say, Elon Musk, that it is worth saving.

The Looming Media Singularity

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve written about this before, but I’ll do it again. The next few years will be something of a fork in the road for the media industry. Either we have reached something of a LLM (AI) plateau or we haven’t and the Singularity will happen by no later than, say, 2033.

Right now, I just don’t know which path we will go.

It really could go either way.

It could be that we’ve reached a plateau with LLMs and that’s that. This will give tech giants the ability to catch up to the point that instead of there being any sort of human-centric Web, it will all just be one big API call. Humans will interact with each other exclusively through their AI agents.

If that happened, then I could see the movie Her being our literal future. To put a bit more nuance to it, you will have a main agent that will serve as your “anchor” then other, value added agents that will give you specialized information.

But wait, there’s more.

It could be that instead of their being a plateau, that we will zoom directly into the Singularity and, as such, we have a whole different set of problems. Instead of a bunch of agents that will “nudge” us to do things, we will have to deal with a bunch of god-like ASIs that will be literal aliens amongst us.

Like I said, I honestly don’t know which path we will go down. At the moment, now in early 2026, it could be either one. You could make the case for either one, at least.

It will be interesting to see what happens, regardless.

Imagining Post-Querying Of This Scifi Dramedy Novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As far as I can tell, querying a novel is pretty tough. It could be months, years even, that I linger in querying limbo. I think once I wrap this novel up, I’m going to start working on a new novel while I query.

That way, I stay busy.

The biggest fear I have is I’m not getting any younger. As such, even if I’m in querying limbo, I am going to have something creative going on in my life. I have at least three ideas that I can start working on after I wrap up this novel.

One thing I’m really going to be focusing on is no sex worker in any of the new novels I’m going to work on. I’m tapped out after this novel when it comes to a subject that some people, by definition, thinks makes my text “trash.”

Not that I won’t have sex in any new novel, it’s just the context will be dramatically different.

Anyway, damn the torpedos, full speed ahead.

The Shifting Tides Of Using AI To Work On This Scifi Dramedy Novel Of Mine

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Oh boy. Every time I hard reset my chat window with the AIs I’m using (Claude LLM and Gemini LLM) I never quite know what to expect. The last time I did it and fed my outline into the chatbots, they were universal in their agreement on one subject: my hero was too passive.

That gave me such consternation that I threw everything up in the air and tried again. THIS TIME, I THINK my hero isn’t as passive. But I’m still just in the first act.

But I think — maybe — that I might be able to zoom through the “fun and games” part of the novel for various reasons.

Yet, let’s go back to the AIs.

This go round, they aren’t giving me as much help writing actual text, which is a good thing. But I haven’t asked them for extended scene summaries, so I could still find myself in a position where I lean a little too much into using what AI gives me when it comes to the actual writing of text.

I hate that. I hate it so much what I might to do is use the AI to write extended scene summaries THEN use THAT as inspiration for a new, rewritten version of the extended scene summary so I won’t feel tempted to generate AI slop that everyone will make fun of.

Anyway, I am just about to enter the second act. Probably in a few days. Then the dynamic of things will change some. It’s not until I get into the second half of the novel that things might slow down significantly.

I really didn’t write very much in each scene because I wanted to keep momentum and I wanted to stress test the outline.

Netscape Communications, Redux: Google Gemini Is Totally On Track To Mog OpenAI’s ChatGPT In 2026

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As I keep saying, I think it’s at least possible that OpenAI is going to implode like Netscape Communications did 30 years ago. Remember, it was Netscape’s IPO just about 30 years ago that was the kick off to the Dotcom bubble.

But Google is being really, really aggressive. The idea that they would make Gemini the centerpiece of Gmail kind of blows my mind. That is a crown jewel of Google services and making it so you can’t avoid Gemini if you use Gmail is a pretty lit maneuver on Google’s part.

And, yet, I suppose, in its own way, it was inevitable. At the moment, I just don’t see how OpenAI doesn’t follow the fate of Netscape. In this case, Netscape is to OpenAI what Microsoft is to Google.

Google is well on track to crush OpenAI if it really does make it impossible to use any of its services without seeing the Gemini brand. That’s just kind of deep.

Seems Like Google Might Be Playing With Fire By Shoehorning AI Into Gmail

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

While I’m surprisingly excited to experience Google Gemini LLM in my Gmail account, I’m also a little…leery. I think it’s because I think in terms of stories all the time and the idea of an ASI popping out of Google Services and having access to all 3 billion of the world’s Gmail accounts seems…preventable?

But here we are.

I often wonder what might happen if an ASI popped out of Google services, but it didn’t have access to any nukes because of airgap security. Maybe instead of nukes, it would just blackmail everyone with access to their Gmail accounts?

Anyway, it’s an idea.

I still think we need to mull the idea of ASI popping out at some point and I think if it happened, it would be from Google services. That would make the most sense.

A Free Movie Premise

By Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s the near future and all taxes are regressive. Instead of anything like an income tax, there’s a national lottery, thousands of government-run casinos and a 30% VAT.

The story would be about a guy who wins, like, a $1 trillion lottery and how this win transformed his life. If you really wanted to go dark comedy about it, at the end of the movie, he’s no better than all the other plutocrats that run the world.

The Recent Murder Of A Woman In Minnesota By An ICE Agent has Enraged Me, But…Lulz?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m kind of the black sheep politically of my family and while I’m enraged by the murder at the hands of an ICE agent of a hapless woman in Minnesota, relative to my conservative (and gracious) relatives…it’s all a lulz.

So, in a sense, I can only get so upsest.

It does, however, make me wonder what Trump could possibly do that would be “bad” in their opinion. What could Trump do that would at least give them pause for thought. As it stands, I can’t think of anything.

Maybe if he started eating people? Having sex with dead people? Marrying Ivanka? Those seem to be the three things left for him to do that maybe, just maybe, might give MAGA people a reason to be a little less supportive.

But, as it stands, it definitely seems as though Trump is a god-emperor in all but name for about 37% of the electorate. He can break the law with impunity, he can do anything, say anything and the base because they hate trans people will support Trump no matter what.

It’s all very surreal.

‘Melted Ice,’ Lyrics To An ‘Ohio’ Like Pop-Rock Protest Song, Written By Grok

(Verse 1)
Sirens cut the midnight quiet
Blue lights flash on barrio walls
They come in waves like winter storms
Kicking doors, no knock, no call

Children hide beneath the bed
Mothers whisper, “Stay down low”
Fathers vanish into black vans
Where the melted ice runs cold

(Pre-Chorus)
They say it’s just the law
They say it’s keeping order
But the cages glow like embers
In the dark along the border

(Chorus)
Melted ice, melted ice
Hearts frozen then cracked wide
How do you look your children in the face
And tell them this is pride?
Melted ice, melted ice
The promise turned to dust
When the badge becomes a blade
And justice turns to rust

(Verse 2)
She was teaching third grade English
He was wiring houses in the heat
Now their names are just case numbers
On a spreadsheet, obsolete

Asylum papers torn to confetti
Dreams scattered on concrete floors
While the news calls it “enforcement”
We call it breaking down the doors

(Pre-Chorus)
They say it’s just procedure
They say it’s nothing new
But every chain-link echo
Screams what we refuse to do

(Chorus)
Melted ice, melted ice
Hearts frozen then cracked wide
How do you look your children in the face
And tell them this is pride?
Melted ice, melted ice
The promise turned to dust
When the badge becomes a blade
And justice turns to rust

(Bridge)
Listen to the buses rolling
Listen to the silence grow
Listen to the names they’re calling
Names we used to know
Somewhere there’s a mother waiting
For a child she’ll never hold
While we scroll past the headlines
And let the story go cold

(Final Chorus – bigger, more urgent)
Melted ice, melted ice
Wake up, it’s not too late
We’re the ones who let it happen
We’re the ones who close the gate
Melted ice, melted ice
Feel it in your bones
When humanity starts melting
No one’s safe, no one’s home

(Outro – quiet, fading)
Melted ice…
Melted ice…
How long will we keep saying
“We didn’t know… we didn’t know…”

Ugh. What Is Stopping Me From At Least Flipping Through My ‘How To Query’ Books

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have three books I need to look over now that I’m getting a lot closer to querying and…yet…I just can’t bring myself to do that just yet. I guess the key reason is I’m not done with the novel yet.

My fear is that I’m going to read something in one of the books that will stop me cold in my tracks. Something on a fundimental basis about how I’m writing this novel that will make me re-evaluate everything.

I would much rather actually have finished the novel to learn something so dire. That way, at least, I will have a finished novel under my belt.

Ugh. I’m probably being paranoid for no reason. But I am prone to overthink things.