Month: February 2021

Hey, Elon Musk, Don’t Waste Your Time Terraforming Mars


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It seems to me the logical way to settle the universe is to simply turn people into data then shoot tiny probes out across the galaxy at near the speed of light. Once they reach, say, Alpha Centauri, you zap the all the information to the probe. Using nanotech, you re-create humans and look around.

Now, that last bit is a bit much even for me.

More likely, what you do is, you have hard AI and that hard AI is zapped to your tiny probe which then creates an android body of some sort using the aforementioned nanotech.

Anyway, the point is, it seems like a huge fucking waste of time to actually send humans anywhere off planet. Using hard AI, nanotech and the speed of light, you could look around the galactic neighborhood pretty easily. Or, put another way — you’d be an idiot to throw any resources at terraforming Mars when you could wait for technology to reach the point where you could zap humans to a livable planet at the speed of light.

In the 10,000 years it would take to terraform Mars, you could settle hundreds — thousands — of planets within 10,000 lightyears of earth. Seems a no-brainer to me.

Silicon Valley’s Next Frontier: The Mind


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

First, I’m a nobody and no one listens to me. But I’m old enough to notice something — the last time Silicon Valley changed the average person’s life on a practical level was the smart phone.

Since then, Silicon Valley’s been resting on is loreals by designing apps.

Now, Elon Musk is apparently trying to take things to the next level by doing a some sort of neural link. But, fuck, man, I’m not drilling into my skull. It seems like there’s a pretty obvious way to avoid giving someone a lobotomy during the development process of such an invention. If you want to know what I’m alluding to, read Arthur C. Clarke’s 3001: Final Odyssey. There’s a pretty obvious way to allow us to do the obvious — skip the goggle phase of MX (VR / AR) and get plugged directly into our minds wetware.

If you could use your own mind’s processing ability, then you don’t have much need for googles that no one will wear. It’s the most intuitive — and logical — next step in media: use your own mind as your media player.

I still think Big Tech can read our minds (to some extent) via our phones. And, to that extent, I think we’ve reached something akin to a “soft Singularity.” The Singularity is here, but it’s so subtle in nature that not everyone realizes it’s happened.

Those who do know, are making a shit ton of money off of it.

Taking Miley Cyrus’ Career To The Next Level


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have a serious creative itch to buy a guitar and try to start writing pop-rock songs. But for the moment, I’m going to hold off that. If I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it right. I have a novel I’m working on and that’s totally consumed my creative life for the foreseeable future.

But I still have music on the brain and, as such, I continue to think about Miley Cyrus’ career. I admire her willingness to take chances and I find it frustrating that, to date, all of those risks have fallen with something of a thud. I will give her credit, though, unlike Taylor Swift, at least Ms. Cyrus challenges her fan base. Ms. Swift, while producing good music, releases album after album that is nothing but fan service. Ugh.

Anyway, in a sense, it seems to me that Ms. Cyrus’ conundrum is she wants to bank into hard pop-rock and that market just doesn’t exist. It’s a dead end. I would go so far as to say only as part of a girl supergroup could Ms. Cyrus (with the help of some very famous friends) do anything about the pop-rock space right now.

So, I guess what I’m saying is Ms. Cyrus has two choices in front of her — one, she goes back to the tried-and-true safe adult contemporary route or she can continue to take risks and maybe, just maybe strike it rich by appealing to GenZ people who don’t even know who The Clash are.

Ms. Cyrus definitely seems to want to single handedly bring back punk and New Wave. But here voice isn’t really suited for that. She has a beautiful — but very pop – voice. As such, I would suggest she continue her current trend towards pop rock.

But I would also suggest she look to form some sort of super girl group for one album. It would help all their careers in the long run if she managed to pull it off.

The DPRK Threat Is Still There


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

We’re overdue for the DPRK do some saber rattling in a big way. I think some of what’s going on is the DPRK probably has a nasty case of COV19 that they’re dealing with and they are to preoccupied with that to shoot off a ICBM or test an H-bomb.

But they’re still a serious, serious problem.

I have ever reason to believe that President Biden will handle the situation in the calm, cool normal manner that, like, a normal president would. And, yet, that doesn’t mean that the DPRK isn’t going to scare the shit out of all of us in the process.

The typical American has an abstract fear of the DPRK. What they don’t have is a full understanding that the DPRK has both the means, motive and opportunity to vaporize a major American city under the right conditions.

At the same time, I can honestly say that I no longer wake up in the middle of the night with the abject fear that Trump is going to end humanity with a stray tweet.

So, as such, we’re far better off than we were. But we need to be prepared for some pretty crazy whack funky things to happen when it comes to the DPRK in the near, near future.

Ava: A Half-Assed, Partial Review


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Yet again I tried to watch a movie and stopped at just about the inciting incident. I do this all the fucking time. This time, it was with the movie Ava. The issue with this movie, the reason why I stopped watching it so early, is I just didn’t care about the characters.

And, in a sense, it was very bland.

It’s structure, at least, was very cookie cutter. What’s so wild is how another, similar movie, Atomic Blonde, pulled me in right away with almost no backstory. Within moments of Atomic Blonde starting, I was hooked. I wanted to see what happened to the characters.

But with Ava…meh.

It just seemed like a rote tale that went by the numbers. So much so that I realized it would be a waste of time to keep watching it and stopped. There were a few character touches that I appreciated, but overall the actual story was blah, blah, blah, I’ve seen it all before.

My Personal Struggle To Understand Why Vox Grates On My Nerves


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Ahhh, Vox. Something about Vox — or, specifically, its video presence on Tik-Tok and its general media coverage — really, really, REALLY FUCKING GRATES ON MY NERVES.

But I honestly don’t know why.

I’m even reading — and enjoying — Ezra Klein’s “Why We’re Polarized” book. It’s really good and I highly recommend it. It’s very insightful. And, yet.

I’ve given it some thought and I think it’s that on Tik-Tok the highly educated elites who dabble in the service want to come across as some sort of hip youth pastor to the rubes like me. At least with, say, traditional mainstream media on TV there’s an established construct of authority. But on Tik-Tok, these people who are very, very smart and very, very well educated want to turn their chair backwards and talk about how Shakespeare is really rap.

Oh, please.

There are plenty of people who are doing a great job on Tik-Tok presenting the news but Vox ain’t it. They need to ditch the pretense. We aren’t equal — and least I suspect they don’t think I’m their equal — and if they came across an idiot like me in real life they would do everything in their power to get as far away as possible.

Vox’s media coverage is even worst. It comes across as the distillation of every woke — and high — late night college freshman conversation. All art is reduced to its tropes, microaggressions and perceived slights to this or that part of the world of identity politics. Whatever happened to enjoying a good story and worrying about THAT? Or, put another way, instead of bitching and moaning about if a story has two women talking about something other than a man at some point, how about…telling me is it a good story? Does it convey emotion? Do I care about these characters?

I guess some of this comes from be being too old — and poorly educated (went to a public college, natch) — to quite fit Vox’s intended demographic, and, yet, generally otherwise digging what they have to say. So, this leads to a certain amount of cognitive dissidence.

Armageddon 2025-2030


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

For a number of significant macro trends, it seems as though what will be marketed as World War 3 will likely happen around 2030. I say this for the following reasons.

Fortress America
The United States is going to implode into itself sometime around 2025 when the Republican fascists take control. They will proceed to “Make America First” and pull all our troops out of countries across the globe. The United States will leave NATO, etc. This will destabilize the world order in a rather spectator fashion.

Power Vacuum
It will take a little while to do this — maybe five years or so, and, so, by about 2030, the world will descend into something akin to a world war.

Wildcard: American Civil War / Revolution
Now, the above assumes that the United State’s transition into an autocratic managed democracy will be peaceful. It’s possible that the United States will violently implode in the 2024-2025 timeframe and World War 3 will happen then, not in 2030.

Regardless, we’re fucked.

Mulling Lorne Michaels’ Eventual Successor At SNL


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Let me begin by saying the only reason why I keep talking about this is, well, Lorne Michaels is 76 years old and he’s got to retire sometime. But maybe he’ll be like Queen Elizabeth II and vow to retire when he’s 100. And, let me stress, I don’t know anything and I get things wrong all the time.

Having said that, there seems to be three types of people who are in the running for Michaels’ successor — Tina Fey, Kenan Thompson and everyone else.

So, while Thompson should get it because he knows the show so well, Fey will get it because she’s got brass balls and won’t take shit from anyone. I could definitely see NBC splitting Michaels’ job into two. Thompson gets to be the comical “executive producer” that shows up every once in a while, while Fey gets to be the behind the scenes, tough as nail broad who knocks heads when need be.

Just as an outsider, it seems as though Michaels job is a unique blend of mentor and aloof manager who has his finger on the sensibilities of liberal America to the extent that he can pluck comics from obscurity. So the “everyone else” group of potential successors could be a wide range of people.

It would be very interesting if NBC didn’t pick someone with extensive SNL experience to run the show. But who knows. It’s just something interesting to think about.

Anyone Who Thinks The Republican Party’s Embrace of Qanon Will ‘Destroy’ It Is Very, Very Naive


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Welcome to Weimar America. The clock is ticking for the American Nazi, er Republican…Party to seize control. Probably in the 2024-2025 time frame. The only thing that will stop it at this point is, I don’t know, the Singularity or First Contact. Or maybe Jesus coming back.

I say this because if you look at the Nazi Party, it was into some pretty bonkers things. It was very much into mysticism and conspiracy theories. The dead hand of history is just too powerful — the bad guys are going to win. We’re doomed and you need to either leave the country or move to a Blue State.

Now.

The next time the Republicans control all the branches of government, we won’t be as lucky as we were last time. Even if it’s Trump that comes back, he’s likely to be just a deranged figure head, with Mike Pompeo or Tom Cotton being the organized, youth autocrat who really pulls the strings.

As such, American democracy is dead. We’re an autocracy without an autocrat. Enjoy the few years of a liberal democracy while you can. Once the Republicans take over again, they’re going to weaponize the existing ICE infrastructure, purge the media and start to pull all our troops out of our various bases across the world

Fortress America will be here and American Killing Fields will be just around the corner. In fact, I would say the only thing that might bring down our new autocratic overloads will be their excesses. But Putin has been in power for 20 years now, so there’s no reason to believe President Tom Cotton won’t be president for 20 to 40 years as well. Soon enough, the United States will be identical to Putin’s Russia without even a civil war or a revolution.

It’s over.

The Struggle To Write A Novel Continues


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

These days, I often feel like I’m spinning my wheels when it comes to this novel. I write and write and write and don’t really seem to move very far away from the beginning. This, after several years of development.

But, I think if I look at this situation on the macro level, I’m doing ok. A lot of all this re-writing comes from this being my first novel and no matter what, I would probably be in this situation because I just don’t have any idea what I’m doing.

And, yet, I’ve come to a decision — I need to switch things up now. I have to do something, anything to force my hand. I’ve been developing and writing in a delusional vacuum that the point has come that I need to finally start to move forward.

Some of the problem, also, is I came up with a concept that three years ago I simply did not have the ability to write. Now, I’m far closer. I’m still nervous that someone is going to steal a creative march on me somehow, but even if they do, I can always piviot to the three or four other concepts I have. It’s going to hurt like a bitch to do that, but it hasn’t happen yet.

I just have to keep pressing forward. I have to believe. I have to start to lock things down and stop demanding I write things that are “perfect” in the first draft.

We’ll see, I guess.