In fits and starts, we’re reaching a point where open source AI image generators are getting good enough that they can generate high-quality celebrity porn. We aren’t there yet by any stretch of the imagination.
Right now, I’m seeing a lot of pretty good fakes of well-known actresses in one-piece bikinis. Some of them are so good that you can barely catch that they are AI-generated.
But once we reach the tipping point where people can generate unfettered AI celebrity porn, watch out. Things are going to go a little nuts on social media until someone, somewhere figures out how to tamp it down.
Or, who knows, maybe being awash in high quality AI generated celebrity porn will become the new normal. I hope not, but that’s a real possibility.
I continue to cruise through the third act of the latest draft of this scifi dramedy WIP. One issue I’m facing is the scenes of late just aren’t long enough. I’m struggling to get them to be two pages, which is annoying.
My “comp” novel.
I plan on fixing that issue when I do “color correction” as part of the next draft of the novel. It won’t really be a full new draft, but rather just a lot editing because my ability to get anyone to beta read this thing is up to debate.
I continue to not read the comp novel for my novel, “Annie Bot.” I know I should, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. Just the idea that there is a novel — especially what appears to be a feminist screed — that is so similar to my novel rattles my cage.
I have read a few pages and I already am being too hard on myself for my lousy writing. And, yet, I have to — have to — get over myself and read that novel so I can properly refer to it in my query letter.
I am also beginning to have a growing sense of unease about the querying process. This is, in a sense, the farthest I’ve ever gotten when it comes to this process of traditional publishing because I know if I actually put the work in this novel is query-level good.
There continue to be some structural problems with the novel that I’m going to have to do open heart surgery on the document to fix. That’s going to be a real pain in the ass because I’m ready to take things to the next level — seeing if I can get someone to be a beta reader.
But I’m so flat broke and generally don’t know anyone willing to be a firm but fair beta reader that, lulz, I’m going to have to lean on AI to be my “manuscript consultant” for as long as possible.
Already, AI has pointed out that my hero is way too passive. That’s one of the structural issues I’m going to have to fix.
As I understand it, the next edition of Windows — Windows 12 — is meant to be “fully agentic.” I have no clue what that would mean in real terms, but I do think that all jokes about “Clippy” aside, there is one way to integrate AI into Windows: completely re-imagine what Windows is.
Instead of a desktop, you would have an Knowledge Navigator-like interface. Maybe power users could use an XR headset to “see” their desktop. But, in general, the Knowledge Navigator route is the way to go.
By doing so, Microsoft would not only be throwing their lot in with AI, they could even dominate the space. Millions of people would be forced to use AI in ways they never ever even imagined.
Do I think this is going to happen?
Probably not. It’s still too soon. But it’s coming, I think. Even if the AI bubble bursts, at some point, we’re all going to have Knowledge Navigators instead of the traditional desktop UX.
I remember Bob Hope joking at an early 1980s Oscar’s ceremony that if a bomb were to go off there that Pisa Adora (sic?) would be the greatest actress in the world.
With that in mind, I’m mildly nervous about the fate of the upcoming Oscars. It would be just the type of thing for Iranian sleeper cells to attack.
I also have a very elaborate fear that someone might try to take over SNL while it was on air one week. That seems like the makings of a pretty good movie plot, come to think of it.
Anyway, hopefully I’m wrong. Hopefully everything will work out peaceful and safe that will be that.
Things are going pretty well with the scifi dramedy novel I’m working on. Even though at least one of the AIs I’m using balks at the term “dramedy” for the novel. But that is the general goal of the work — I want it to be very much in the same vein as “Her.” Though, admittedly, the Megan Fox vehicle “Subservience” is, in a way, a better comp movie. But my novel is more like if Subservience met The Enteral Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (in my dreams.)
I’m currently in the third act and hope to wrap up this draft in a few weeks if I can stop drifting towards my goal and get my ass in gear. I have something pretty special in play here and it’s just a matter of doing it.
Once I get this draft of the novel finished, I’m going to take a VERY DEEP BREATH and do some structural open heart surgery on it. It’s going to be a serious fucking pain, but it has to be done.
I keep getting nagged by the AIs that I use that my hero is too “passive.” And there are some other issues that simply have to be addressed.
I am a bit annoyed that in the second half of this draft my scenes just are too short. That, too, is going to be something I’m going to really give a lot of thought to. Your scenes are supposed to be, in general, on average 1,000 words.
Though, I will note, that that’s just a rule of thumb. I feel a little uneasy that my scenes in general seem shorter than what they should be. But I think my style on a structural basis is closer to Stieg Larsson than anything else.
Anyway, today I hope to knock out a few scenes and wrap up an complete chapter. That’s the goal, at least. I keep worrying about what literary agents will think of me as a person when they do due diligence on me.
Are they going to think I’m too nuts to take on as a client? I really worry about that. I’m the first to admit that I have some pretty gaping character flaws, but, in general, I mean well.
Or, as the late Annie Shapiro would say, I’m a “delusional jerk with a good heart.”
This novel is very cinematic, if nothing else. Too bad I would be nearly 60 if the absolute best happened and I sold this novel, it became a success and then was adapted into a movie.
If Iran attacks the US in the homeland, it probably will with some sort of dirty bomb. They have the means, motive and potentially opportunity do do such a thing.
I know a dirty bomb is a plot point from Blade Runner 2049, but, lulz, it’s a real possibility.
It’s just the type of fucked up shit that Trump would need to declare martial law or to just in general doing something like cancel the 2026 elections.
That’s where all of this is going, I think. And when Trump does that, then we probably have a civil war and or revolution of some sort.
I keep seeing chatter and buzz on Twitter about something big going on in Silicon Valley that has given everyone there pause for thought. I’m at a loss as to what it might be.
I suppose AGI or ASI, maybe?
But that would not account for how dire the vibe is coming out of the Valley. It’s all just so mysterious and weird. People are talking like they’ve seen something that will mean the end of the world.
Who knows. But it is interesting that it’s happening in the context of all the weirdness in the Middle East right now. Ugh.
All of a sudden, in just the last few weeks, a series of new words have crashed into the English language. Things like “mogging” and “lookmaxxing” are suddenly on the tip of everyone’s tongues.
It makes you wonder if people had more money if we would also start wearing different clothes as well. As it stands, however, we just don’t have the extra cash to do that so we express the vibe shift going on around us in language.
I do think there has been a vibe shift, however.
It happened rather abruptly at some point just after New Year’s. We’re in a new age where anything is possible.
I don’t care what Trump thinks, barring something truly extraordinary like a few nukes blowing up across the USA, Trump simply can not cancel elections. Remember, the USA had elections during the middle of a civil war.
So, if Trump used what may be WW3 as a pretext to “cancel” elections, there will b hell to pay. I would even go so far as to say if Trump fucked with elections so they were clearly no longer free and fair, then, that, too might be enough to cause some sort of mass revolt on the part of the American people.
AND, something similar would happen if Trump ran for an illegal third term.
Anyway, I’ve frequently been accused of “hysterical doom shit” so maybe all of this is a lulz.
I am, however, unnerved by the prospect of some sort major terrorist attack in the USA sooner rather than later because of the dumb war Trump has started with Iran for seemingly no damn reason.
I want to be clear: I don’t think we’re in World War 3 yet. But I do think we’ve entered one of the most genuinely destabilized moments in modern geopolitical history — and the distance between “very dangerous” and “catastrophic” is shrinking.
The two flashpoints I keep coming back to are Taiwan and the Korean Peninsula.
China’s posture toward Taiwan has grown increasingly assertive, and the window for a forced reunification attempt — whether through blockade, gray-zone pressure, or outright invasion — is a real strategic consideration among analysts, not just speculation. Xi Jinping has tied his legacy to the Taiwan question in ways that make backing down politically costly. If that move comes, it almost certainly draws in the United States, Japan, and potentially Australia, triggering a conflict that would dwarf anything we’ve seen since 1945.
Then there’s North Korea, which has gone conspicuously quiet. That’s not necessarily reassuring. The DPRK has spent the last several years dramatically advancing its nuclear and missile capabilities, and silence from Pyongyang sometimes precedes provocation rather than signaling restraint. A miscalculation on the Korean Peninsula — or a deliberate escalation — could ignite a second front almost simultaneously.
What would it mean if several of these regional conflicts metastasized at once? At some point, the international community would have to reckon with the label: World War 3.
And here’s the domestic question that keeps nagging at me. If that label became unavoidable — if the U.S. were actively drawn into multiple simultaneous conflicts — would it create the political conditions for something unthinkable at home? Emergency powers have been expanded and abused before, even in democracies. The scenario where a president uses wartime crisis as justification to delay or suspend elections is not fantasy; it’s a documented playbook from history, and one that American institutions have never actually been stress-tested against at this scale.
I’m hopeful we don’t get there. I genuinely am. But hope isn’t a strategy, and the architecture of the current moment deserves to be taken seriously.
Only time will tell — and lately, time hasn’t been especially reassuring.
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