I find myself giving myself a day to kind of chillax. This happens in the context of me reviewing the “Fun & Games” part of the novel. So, I continue to progress forward.
As long as I’m moving forward, I’m happy. It’s really sinking in how much work I have ahead of me if I’m going to make this novel something good enough that might actually get published.
I do find myself coming up with a lot of good ideas about how to make the novel better during this brief pause. I generally like to pause for a day or so occasionally so I don’t “run hot” and grow overwhelmed. But time is running out and I need to get back at it, even if it means working outside my comfort zone.
But I definitely feel pretty good about the general state of things.
Republicans are on the hunt for some reason, any reason, to impeach Biden. Just in the last 24 hours, they have been telegraphing that they want to lay the groundwork in the minds of voters that Biden is on the cusp of being impeached.
At the same time, there is the looming possibility that because of some very dumb politics the U.S. faces an unprecedented default. Biden may have to come up with some novel methods to avoid that default and if he does, it’s clear that House Republicans will strike and impeach him.
It doesn’t matter that Biden would have saved the global economy if he, say, invoked the 14th Amendment to avoid a default, Republicans will have their reason to impeach Biden and rally the base.
In principle, at least, Biden doing anything out of the ordinary is a gimmie for House Republicans impeaching Biden.
And, if you really want to think about it, it’s possible that even if we do default that that, unto itself, could be the reason why House Republicans impeach Biden.
Another theory of the case is that if Trump gets indicted a few more times, it would be helpful for Republicans to go through an impeachment process as all of that is happening. It could be that all this talk about impeachment is a preemptive measure in the face those potential looming indictments to give Republicans something to talk about as all of that happens.
There is a disturbance in the force. It definitely seems as though we’re about to experience a serious case of future shock over the course of the next few months. The entire knowledge economy could be not just drastically transformed by AI, but face serious contraction as well.
It could be that a lot sooner than you might think, the issue won’t be who gets paid for writing what, but audiences deciding that “artisanal art” has unique value unto itself. So, it’s possible to imagine a future where 99% of all art is AI generated, with the remaining 1% being created by humans who make a lot of money.
All of this might happen in the context of a real resurgence in live performances of all sorts. If I could, say, have an endless supply OK Computer era Radiohead, then seeing them live with new stuff will be something that people will pay an even bigger premium for.
Or, put another way, it could be that the average person won’t even notice that most of the entertainment they consume on a daily basis is AI generated. The entire greater showbiz industry will effectively collapse. It could be, in a sense, an extinction-level event for the entire concept of humans producing recorded entertainment.
It might happen so fast that even if the Hollywood writers’ on strike now are able to get some concessions from producers that it will all be moot. The only people in the future making money will be producers and the actors living passively off their full body scans. Otherwise, lulz.
That’s why I think for the Writers’ Strike to be successful, they need to be very, very aggressive on the AI front. They need to demand strict, clear carveouts for human writers. I would prefer a total prohibition on the use of AI to create a movie, but I think that’s probably pushing it.
As I understand it, the entire movie industry pretty much runs on hookers and blow in the sense that a lot, A LOT, of the industry is pretty much just vibes. And I could see from the producers’ point of view that the use of AI would be part of a broader effort to “modernize” showbiz.
Instead of any connection to the human touch, the vast majority of (bad) movies will be AI generated. Live entertainment will gain in value significantly and the only old-school movies that will exist will be high-end movies with a very specific vision.
But, wait, there’s more!
All of this would be happening just as movies and video games fuse. It could be that what movies exist in the future will be immersive in nature and the audience will collectively “play” the movie as a group in some sort of metaverse hellscape.
The point is — these may be the waning days of the Hollywood industry that has existed for about 100 years. It could be that the very idea of a “passive” human generated movie is going to be seen a very quaint a lot sooner than you might otherwise imagine.
The only thing I can compare this to is what is show in the movie Moneyball. A lot of how movies are actually produced is a magical mystery concoction accumulated over the decades. Or, as one producer once famously put it, “Nobody knows nothing,” when it comes to making movies.
So, it could be that because of the techno-capitalist imperative, soon enough, the back end of Hollywood will be done entirely relative to cold, hard metrics. What’s more, the very idea of “mass media” may not longer exist as everyone gets a different very, very specific and very, very personalized movie or TV show each time they sit down to watch something.
There will be no shared reality anymore. No watercooler movies or TV pop moments to share on social media. Professional (human) writers will turn to the live experience to make a living.
The Republican Party works in mysterious ways and it definitely seems as just within the last 24 hours they’ve all decided to begin the process of laying the ground for impeachment of Biden over “vibes” It makes you wonder “Why now?”
All I got is maybe they know that Biden is going to pull a rabbit out of a hat to save the country from default and, as such, they need to prepare the base for what it about to happen. They are officially looking for an excuse, any excuse, to impeach Biden, no matter how tenuous its connection to reality. It’s almost as if they’re just bored and they’ve decided they need a win.
They need to not only juice the base but distract low-information voters. Or, it could be, they have realized that if they’re going to impeach Biden before the 2024 election they kind of have to do it now. But the idea of impeaching Biden definitely is very appealing to the MAGA Republican base and given how fucking frothy and fascist Republicans are just in general, it’s something that was bound to happen sooner rather than later.
I have long though this was going to happen and have been thinking for some time that it was odd that Republicans hadn’t already impeached Biden since they had control of the House.
I have printed out the “Fun & Games” part of the novel and now am going to go through and edit it. This going to involve a fair amount of writing and rewriting because there are some pretty big holes here and there. But my overarching goal is to keep momentum going, so I decided to go this route.
I needed a win and this was a quick and easy way to give myself one. I’m feeling pretty good, overall, with where things stand. I thought I might be finished with the first half of the novel by now, but, alas, it definitely seems like it could be next week before that happens.
But I am moving forward, and that’s all that matters. I’m going to try to do some more reading — especially rereading books about writing — so I can stimulate my creativity some more. Things have really stabilized with this novel and, really, the issue at the moment is simply being willing to put the hard work into things.
I am also a little concerned that while the overall story is interesting that it’s not dark enough in some respects. But the story is a very accessible, easy read that keeps me, the writer, interested if nothing else. This novel is such an easy read that it’s possible I might make it such that one could theortically sit down and read the whole thing in one sitting like I did with Daisy Jones & The Six and The Martian.
I’m very, very, very poor at the moment, but reasonably content.
Something curious has happened within Republican ranks in just the last 24 hours. All of a sudden, there’s all this chatter about this or that impeachable thing that Biden is alleged to have done — with absolute no proof. It makes you wonder if they haven’t decided that the need to impeach Biden for something, anything sooner rather than later.
One theory might be that Republicans believe that should Biden come up with some novel manner to avoid a default that they can use that as a reason to impeach Biden. This, despite it being Biden that would have saved everyone’s ass by having done so.
Regardless of why this is happen, it’s obviously part of a broader messaging campaign on the part of Republicans. They want to pound into people’s minds that we just about to impeach Biden for some reason, any reason. So, when it finally happens, they want low-information voters to shrug and just assume this was something that had been in the works for sometime.
I don’t think any of us normal people really appreciate how radicalized Republicans are and continue to grow. As I keep ranting about, the conditions for either autocracy or civil war are there, it’s just an issue of which one of those choices we ultimately pick.
From the buzz I continue to monitor coming out of the tech community, it seems clear that Hollywood may be about to be “Moneyballed” in the sense that a basic human element of the industry — writing — may be turned into a technology issue.
And while I totally support the current Hollywood writers’ strike, if it goes on as long as it probably needs to, the risk that studio executives will simply turn to AI to write very formulaic scripts will increase significantly. Given that at the moment you can’t copyright something done by AI, it’s possible that Hollywood bigwigs will begin to lobby Congress to change that particular situation.
All that has to happen is one AI generated script be produced and it be a success for the whole Hollywood creative ecosystem to be upended. Remember, the vast majority of Hollywood entertainment is formulaic, stale and, well, bad. So the first people to feel the pinch of any AI writing revolution would be hacks who have no talent to begin with.
I still think that once this entire process is complete that live theatre may return to a popularity it’s not seen since…the rise of movies. It could be that when 99% of all recorded entertainment is AI generated that audiences will want to return to the comfort of live entertainment that will have a human touch that our new bot overlords will not be able to provide.
It’s at least a possibility, I suppose.
It just seems to me that Hollywood as we currently know it functions on some very antiquated assumptions. Once LLMs are able to generate content that is just good enough to be watchable, then, that’s it, the revolution will be here and the entire Hollywood economy will be disrupted.
Today has been a very productive day in more ways that one. I started the day by writing some scenes, then did some editing and then wrapped things up by figuring out a tentative sequence of scenes in the third act.
It helps that I have a lot of different things I can work on at any particular moment so it’s not as easy to grow bored or frustrated. I’m still on track to have enough slack in the chronology that I can edit the entire second draft a few times before I finally print it out and start handing it to people.
I really want to hand the second draft to people as often as practical because I feel a physical hand off gives the event more weight. At least, that’s the plan. Once I’m in the Beta Reader process, I’m going to start work on another novel of some sort, so I keep that momentum going.
I’ve been giving writing a screenplay a lot of thought, but…I also realize I’m just too old to successfully pull of that particular hat trick. Though, if I wrote a break out first novel, that might be enough to allow me overcome basic Hollywood ageism on that front.
Though, of course, it could be that by the time I am a published author — if that ever happens — that the very idea of being a professional writer of anything will have been totally revolutionized.
I try not to think about that.
Anyway, it’s fun to think that soon I’ll be in a totally different stage of this process.
Ok, it’s completely bonkers to propose that CCP-avilated ByteDance might be able to read the minds of Americans via Tik-Tok. I get it. I sound like a crazy person. But how do you explain this: my teeth have been sore recently for some reason.
And, lo and behold, today I got pushed a video that had to deal with someone’s teeth hurting.
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence. Given my age, etc, then the algorithm simply is guessing that someone in my demographic might have teeth issues.
Dua Lipa is a real stunner. I’m impressed with how beautiful she looks in this outfit. Her long raven hair really pops relative to the white of the dress. The thing about Ms. Lipa is she is, in general, just a stunning subject. She looks good in pretty much everything and she just gets better looking.
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