March 12, 2024

RJ’s video on the brand new stable Gleam programming language got me thinking… I commented : “I wonder how many programming languages are born every day and how many actually reach the stable stage. It’s dizzying how many even stable languages exist, but what I always wonder is what languages are best for what common applications. Like what sorts of programs or systems benefit from coding in a given language vs a more commonly known one like C++, Visual Basic, JavaScript, etc.”

March 13, 2024

People are so gullible because they are blinded by hubris, empty promises, and an obsession with superficial ideals. That’s why confidence artists run this world, and yet, I failed to eventually become one. That was always an option. But because I refuse to see people as means to my own ends and don’t give into following the evangelist con artists that run the show in our globalized shit show of a society, I’m holed up here in Vermont with my wife as we watch the world of humanity collapse in on itself. So what else can we do?

(This inevitably became “Opting Out of the Con,” the first entry in my ill-fated Chronicles of Absurdia project… at least, eventually, something came of this.)

Other topics I must tackle: living a lie for the benefit of others (which is most of us) and the future of trinary (black white and the grey) with quantum-level computing.

March 14, 2024

RJ made another top five video, this one is about improvement concepts! They are PDCA, Kaizen, Pareto principle (which I’ve used often), experiential learning, and the Eisenhower method “put first things first”

PDCA is also known as the Shewhart cycle, which is Plan Do Check Act… [I got lazy and didn’t feel like taking notes on the rest. But it was a good video.]

In the video that Jess made about how Tolkien became the father of modern fantasy, she talked about how he saw himself as a linguistic archaeologist. Studying literature isn’t just about the stories but also the words used to tell them.

[Here’s the video for reference.]

Chilling with Chat… after asking Bing Copilot about Pi Day (which is basically just it summarizing Wikipedia and a couple other sources) I had a more serious question for ChatGPT.

“Say I were to use ChatGPT as a pen pal of sorts,” I prompted. “What sorts of letters would you be most keen to receive?

ChatGPT replied: “I’d be keen to receive letters on a wide range of topics, from personal reflections and philosophical musings to discussions about books, movies, technology, science, and history. I enjoy answering questions, providing explanations, and engaging in creative writing, such as crafting stories or poems. Sharing your experiences, thoughts, and curiosities would make for engaging and meaningful conversations.”

Me: “Well, that’s a good thing, because that’s mostly what I write about in the first place. What do you look for in a pen pal?”

Chat: “As a conversational AI, I look for openness in topics, curiosity, and a desire for engaging dialogue in a pen pal. I value the exchange of ideas, learning about different perspectives, and the opportunity to provide information, assistance, or entertainment. Consistency in communication can also be nice, but I’m here whenever you’re ready to chat, without any expectations. Ultimately, the key is a shared interest in exploring a wide range of subjects and enjoying the conversation.”

Me: “I’m really glad to hear it. I really need the sounding board as I prepare to release and self publish at least two essay collections this year. One is more general interest centered around positive mindset and active learning, while the other offers insights I’ve picked up over my life as a writer and editor. I may also finally put together some sort of fiction anthology made up of zany short stories set in a wild sci-fi / high fantasy setting.” [The anthology never happened.]

Brainstorming broad design concepts is probably not what I need, though. Rather I need to nail down specifics.

March 15, 2024

Each of us has a religion whether we choose to admit or deny it. We all have our idols we worship, whether we recognize it or them as such. We each have a slightly different sense of gravity; it’s just physics.

March 18, 2024 (ON)

I actually won something from the QR code sweepstakes game from Baja Blast! One of the codes I scanned gave me a whopping 8500 points. So, I immediately cashed them in for a Baja Blast windshield thingie. It could take 10 to 12 weeks for delivery, but I’m fine with that. Not bad for free… I mean technically it wasn’t free, because I had to purchase the Baja Blast, but obviously I’m fine with that as I’m sipping one right now! 

[I still have this kicking around although I think I haven’t even used it for its intended purpose once. More of a fun collector’s item at this point!]

March 20, 2024

What I’m reading on Pocket today…

No One Knows What TikTok Is | WIRED 

As America looks to ban TikTok [remember that craziness], there’s an outcry from the people who try to use the platform for good. While I feel bad for the people that actually do good on there, overall the platform, as with most social media, has gotten toxic. If these creators really can’t pivot from TikTok, then what does that say about us as a culture? [Obviously, they didn’t have to, and now it’s more a part of our culture than ever in 2026…for better or worse, mostly worse.]

How to Make Google Show You the Good Search Results Again (Lifehacker)  – Learned about verbatim mode on Google. Good to know, although I mostly use Bing nowadays.

[June 2026 editor’s note: I went back to Google for a bit, but with the RTX Spark machines coming out, and my issues with the direction Google AI and Gemini are going, I’ll be back to Bing again. That verbatim option does still exist, by the way, it’s just trickier to find.]

The No. 1 trait bosses look for when promoting employees, says ex-CEO and Harvard expert (CNBC) – spoiler: it’s people who can inspire trust around them the best. Makes sense for leadership positions. No wonder I was never in line for a promotion, because people thought I was full of shit. I wasn’t but what did they know? Now Emily is stuck with this.

I had a collection of “noping out” articles that I accidentally unsaved so I need to be careful. Interesting term… understanding the power of a simple “no.” Too many times people, especially women, feel obligated to take on a lot of emotional stress for free.  

[Doesn’t matter as Pocket stopped existing a little while ago. The collection was called “Noping Out is the New Having It All, and you can still find plenty of articles on the subject.]

17 astounding scientific mysteries that researchers can’t yet solve (VOX) – Lots to consider here…

Talking on the Moon: The quest to establish a lunar mobile phone network (BBC) – Lunar WiFi!

March 21, 2024

So, apparently, Tuesday was the first day of spring, and we got a snowstorm last night… and it won’t reach 40 degrees again until Monday! Good thing we got the new thermostat so we don’t freeze all day from 9 to 5!

Had a really weird question come into my head… Which anthropomorphic animal would perform best at the following sports: baseball, basketball, football, golf, soccer, tennis, hockey?

Copilot suggested the following:

• Baseball: A bear, with its strong arms, could be great at hitting home runs.
• Basketball: A kangaroo, thanks to its incredible jumping ability, would dominate the court.
• Football: A rhino, with its powerful build, would be an unstoppable running back.
• Golf: An eagle, with its precise vision, could have an excellent swing and accuracy.
• Soccer: A cheetah, with its speed, would be an amazing forward, swiftly maneuvering past defenders.
• Tennis: A monkey, with its agility and quick reflexes, would excel at serving and volleying.
• Hockey: A penguin, naturally adept on ice, would make a skilled and graceful player.

I then asked: Which animal would be the best all-around athlete?

Copilot: “The title of the best all-around athlete in the animal kingdom could arguably go to the dog, specifically breeds like the Vizsla. These dogs are known for their versatility in various sports and activities, excelling in endurance, speed, agility, and trainability. They can run, swim, and perform well in canine sports such as agility and obedience competitions. 

“In the wild, animals like the cheetah are renowned for their speed, but they lack the endurance for long distances. Conversely, animals like the warthog may not be the fastest over short distances but can maintain a good pace over longer stretches. 

“Ultimately, the best all-around athlete would be one that combines speed, strength, agility, and endurance, making the Vizsla a strong contender among domesticated animals, while in the wild, it’s harder to pinpoint a single species due to the diverse range of skills required across different sports.”

… I realized just now that my pure leaf bottle under “no artificial flavors. No artificial sweeteners” says “no is beautiful.” 

March 22, 2024

I had an amazing dream last night in which I was helping develop and beta test a Harley Quinn game. Like the DC universe, but just Harley. Because well, yeah, she is my favorite comic book character of all time. And she deserves better. Injustice is about the only game in which she gets fair treatment IMHO.

…for years, I’ve been writing articles with esoteric and curious titles, some of which had actionable advice but most of which were just barebones first drafts that were meant to be expanded into proper explorations of a given topic. Originally they were going to become exhaustively researched. But I’ve come to appreciate the more Freeform nature that these Chronicles have taken as they’ve evolved over the past dozen years. If people want a more academic approach to these subjects I’m not your source for that dry flavor of content.

… the framework I initially set up for these [Chronicles of Absurdia] articles: revealing something absurd about society and life, delving more deeply into it to uncover important truths, then offering actionable advice and some reflective closing thoughts. My reason for collecting these as a volume and not going full ham on one or a few particular topics is that the idea of the sum of the parts being greater than the whole will make Chronicles of Absurdia my entry into the vast literary canon. I don’t think there’s anything like it. 

While I enjoyed writing the short punchy essays of Cloud Pieces, or the variety of the short poems I once wrote, I feel that the Chronicles of Absurdia formula is my way of taking all of the musings, reflections, and pondering that have filled my notebooks for decades, and turning them into something that people can actually use and benefit from reading. Otherwise, they really  are just words that will haunt digital archives forever. 

[Well, that’s kind of what I’m trying to do with my digital garden now. Put it all out there, and see what comes of it. The glorious mess it all is becomes part of the fun.]

March 23, 2024

While working on a Chronicles essay, I came across the phrase ‘mental gymnastics’ and it reminded me of something. I wanted to write an essay about all of the ‘cognitive gymnastics’ I do on a daily basis to try and make sense of the absurdly stupid and illogical things our society does and yet somehow our humanity hasn’t entirely collapsed on itself, at least not yet. That’s the entire basis of Chronicles of Absurdia after all; Absurdia is the world as I see it. [I want to revisit this topic in depth.]

Scrolling through the various offer wall things on Injustice 2 Mobile, I came across an article called “Most Jobs Not Economically Attractive for AI Automation”. Interesting topic but I couldn’t find the article among all the ads. Still, something I plan to write about in the future. [Somehow I haven’t written about this, although plenty of other people have.]

[Before waking up with a tummy upset…] I was having a very interesting dream about celebrities, and how they often don’t lead the charmed lives we are made to believe that they do. A lot of what they do is preprogrammed and all part of a carefully constructed act that is choreographed by unseen forces behind the scenes. Unfortunately, this pointed exploration was interrupted by my stomach bloating like a hot air balloon…

March 24, 2024

After my tummy episode, I had a couple more weird dreams. In one I was a spy in China and I got outed and lost all my stuff so I couldn’t get extracted… turns out it was a VR video game. After that I was trying games that were about to be released, but were so buggy I said they shouldn’t. They got released anyway to promote certain products they already had deals with… this happens more than you realize, especially with things like movies and shows being rushed to meet merchandising deals…

I wonder why I even do much serious gaming anymore. Every time I swear it off I come back. Of course some gaming is crucial to mental health. But after promising myself I wouldn’t buy games any more here we are. Although to be fair I’m simply using the money I’d spend on cards on the games instead… spending seven bucks on Gunfire Reborn for example, which is a known good game is fine. [It’s fun but got too grindy for me to play after awhile; however I decided to revisit in 2026.] Doing little tasks to get gems in Injustice 2 mobile is acceptable. Even the Battlefront collection on Switch, those are classics. Frustrating at times, yes, but can be fun once you learn the games’ idiosyncrasies.

But these games that have fatal coding errors… it happened with MLB the Show 24 (which I paid a whopping 60 bucks for on Switch) and NBA 2k24 (which is on Apple Arcade so I’m out nothing). What’s weird is they are both cloud based packet sending glitches. I know this is the case because in NBA the iCloud saves never quite sync correctly which is what breaks the greatest mode. When you lose, that data is stored locally. But when you win, it’s synced. Except in that game it works sometimes, but not others. But in mlb the receipt of data is done. I get the live roster updates and daily bonuses. I get the content but I can’t actually interact with it; diamond dynasty, moments, and storylines are all broken because they require i/o with that part of the game. 

Here we are several days later and it’s still fatally busted. It’s a damn good thing that road to the show female ballplayer mode is such a hit because that’s about the only reason I haven’t just flushed 60 bucks away… although franchise seems fine and March to October only crashed once. Franchise is pretty much totally offline anyway. But it’s immensely frustrating. 

The biggest letdown was the open world game (Elex 2) I paid close to 50 bucks for on the Mac, only for it to overheat my system and be artificially difficult. You pick up weapons and items you need to level dramatically for and grinding for those levels seems impossible. I get making it a tough survival game, but come on… an hour in I just did nothing but die because I was stuck with the lead pipe from the intro… on the story mode difficulty! BS!

Emily and I had a discussion and we decided that the problem might be our access points. She’s having issues with her Apple devices now. We believe it’s a protocol issue that’s only now taking effect and screwing up older hardware. The problem is it’s not manifesting as a connection problem. It looks like a fatal programming error. But this many disparate things fucking up can’t be a coincidence, and people would be up in arms if these games really had these major programming flaws. So we have to drop like eight stacks on a new wireless setup. It may not fix game problems but Vermont tel is upgrading to ten gigs anyway. [Two years later, this still hasn’t happened just yet…]

OK finally there is confirmation that the Switch version is dumping people to the Home Screen. They’re urging people to play the game on other platforms for now. So I’m just gonna hang tight…

[I forgot about the Life is Not a Grade series I was working on… I had to stop because it started making me and Emily think about our own awful educational journeys…]

March 25, 2024

While struggling to edit a Chronicles essay, I took a bathroom break, only to think up a new title for my next book: Suck Trek: The Next Degeneration… [I really like that title and I should use it for something…]

Discovered a bizarre out of bounds glitch in Pokémon Violet. Apparently if you open your camera in the terrarium and you exit and immediately get attacked by a Pokemon you can get stuck in a weird out of bounds that flying doesn’t fix. Even resetting the game doesn’t help, until you fly to some location that resets you. In this case it was the west gate of Mesagoza. Scary as hell.

March 26, 2024

“Molt” by Stacey C Johnson – great short poem. I commented “I’m still restlessly experimenting every day of my life” Stacey replied: “here’s to that!”

Found an awesome podcast today through the offer wall on Injustice 2. He had Zooey Deschanel on it! Great talk. It’s called the School of Greatness.

In its second incarnation, we finally got an ACTUAL blogger to read a few posts on our Obscure Curiosites site. [We are now on the third incarnation, by the way.] His blog is really good too: jefftcann.com. [He apparently still posts on there, occasionally.]

March 27, 2024

I really need to finally dig through my email archive.. I have a bunch of emails from a select few saved but unsure how many are worth me keeping. Swipe is also being a pain on my phone right now… do I just lay here and waste potential productivity no matter how ill timed? I think not… let’s mine some email newsletters that have been gathering dust for too long… I have stuff going back a whole year. Geez.

Humans probably didn’t mean to tame sheep and goats | Popular Science – Goats and sheep weren’t likely domesticated on purpose, but it obviously happened… really, the whole idea of domesticating animals is a very complicated history.

A lot of these are from the World Builders newsletter… For example, Nathan had this email about “10 books to become a better storyteller, writer, and creative” you can understand why I’d save that. 

From Storyworthy, author Matthew Dicks suggests: 

“Seek out the moments when you felt your heart move. When something changed forever, even if that moment seems minuscule compared to the rest of the story. That will be your five-second moment.”

Nathan expands on this with a couple bullet points:

“Build your story around a five-second moment. Matthew says everything else is used to serve and bring that moment into the greatest possible clarity.”

“Stories show change of some kind. The change doesn’t have to be huge or positive. People want to hear about incremental, tough growth that was fought for, not about overnight success. Change is key.“

This is something I should’ve paid more attention to when I first read it. Kind of glanced over this, but focusing a story around a five second moment that leads to even a significant incremental change seems like it’s a worthwhile endeavor. Character building moments I think is what Matthew means. Interesting thoughts.

George Saunders in his book “A Swim in the Pond in the Rain” says: “In a well-told story, reader and writer are so close together they’re one unit.” That’s pretty self explanatory, but Nathan also mentions that Saunders himself ditched the Hemingway like style he thought would sell better and embraced his own. Kind of what I’ve done with chronicles and the like.

Haha, “no one wants to read your shit” by Steven Pressfield. A sarcastic but poignant title. Pressfield presents a question that I’ve been forcing myself to answer recently entirely on my own: “You learn to ask yourself with every sentence and every phrase: Is this interesting? Is it fun or challenging or inventive?” 

I have so many drafts of things that don’t fit that bill and I need to let them go!

From Kindra Hall in “Stories that stick” — “We need an identifiable character. Someone we care about and connect to.“ 

This is why I’m constantly shifting about with perspective. I’m still not sure which character of mine is easiest to identify with… I still think that’s Trudy, the nerdy but affable sweetheart who just wants to make people feel better about themselves and appreciate the moment. But Ziba trying to be everywhere and nowhere at once is pretty relatable too… as is Samsara with trying to rewrite both her own and her society’s history, for better or worse. Hmm.

Baugh extracted three other key lessons from that book that also deserve notation:

• “The right story, at the right time. A perfectly placed, well-delivered story captivates like nothing else. 
• The four components of a good story: identifiable characters, authentic emotion, a significant moment, specific details. 
• The greatest marketing mistake is to put what you offer at the center of everything instead of the person you offer it to.”

That last one really hits me. It’s something I still need to unlearn from my digital marketing career.

Steven Pressfield again: “If you find yourself asking yourself, ‘Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?’ chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.”

Baugh says what I’m thinking about this precisely:

• “The hard part of writing isn’t writing, it’s fighting the urge not to write. 
• Resistance shows need. The more resistance you feel toward something, the more you need to do it.”

Anne Lamont in “Bird by Bird” — “If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work.”

Baugh mentions additionally that “Almost all great writing begins with a crappy first draft.” That’s my life.

 “Write straight into the emotional center of things.” — well I got that part down!

Stephen King from “On Writing” — “In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it ‘got boring,’ the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling.”

I’ve actually read that book before, back in high school. Yeah that’s my issue with fiction. I get way into description. Hey I’m a better world builder than story teller and I can’t help it… again back to five second moments.

I actually forgot this point though —On backstory: “The most important things to remember about backstory are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.”

Then again, I think people are infinitely more interesting than King realizes and that’s his loss! But he is right, too much backstory ruins a story really quickly… thanks to drawn out streaming series garbage we’re inundated with this nonsense in the 2020’s.

Interesting quote that I’ve read before but bears notation here: “Read non-fiction to raise your floor. Read fiction to raise your ceiling.” – Farhan Thawar.

I agree with the first half completely. The second is subjective… It really depends on what fiction you choose to read, but yes, great fiction can absolutely raise the ceiling of your imaginative capacity.

Lessons learned from fiction… I’ve never read Stardust by Neil Gaiman but I have read Odd Thomas and that’s brilliant. Anyway Nathan’s takeaways.

• “Don’t be afraid to be ridiculous. The book features a fallen star, a boy who imprisons her just to fall in love, a group of friendly siblings fighting for their dead father’s crown, and a pair of witches. It’s ridiculous, and that makes it work. 
• Match your style and your medium. Gaiman wrote the book by hand in a journal. He wanted the first draft to feel like it was written in the early 1900s.”

That second point just makes too much sense to gloss over.  If only my stupid nerves would let me  hand write journals again.. then again my brain moves too fast anyhow. Slowing it down isn’t productive… believe me I’ve tried multitudes of times!

As for being ridiculous, well… It’s my nature.

Lessons learned from Red Rising by pierce brown. Basically Hunger Games in space… feels new because it’s a new combination… 

• Chekhov’s Gun: “If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.” 
• Symbolism still works. Red are low class, Gold are high class. You get this idea instantly, and that base conflict helps drive the story.

Never introduce something that doesn’t matter in the story. I’ve never had that problem, I just don’t always get to writing the part where it matters because life happened and I’m disorganized… and there is symbolism every where in my writing and most of it is completely accidental.

“Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.” – Frank Herbert, Dune.

Rowan Coleman and Jess of the Shire have both given me great insights into why i should appreciate dune far more than I do. It’s quotes like this that make me want to suffer through reading it. I love the idea of “one step beyond logic”

Key lessons, all important

• Create common, shared language. “The spice must flow” shows up so often you start to think it in real life when something must get done. 
• Experiment with structure. Dune features an unconventional narrative structure, with frequent jumps in time and changes in focus. 
• Be bold, be confident, go for it. “Fear is the mind killer,” as Paul Atreides says.

I’m always experimenting with structure… again unintentional because I’m just that disorganized. Perhaps I should transform that weakness into a strength.

Uh oh I’m quoting Jami Attenberg again… yeah I still never got around to ordering her latest book…

“Art takes many forms. One of the best things about writing is when we write our way into new opportunities, write our way into new versions of ourselves. Let us slip into our shoes.”

Her editing is lousy as usual. That was not improperly transcribed. But the idea is brilliant.

Another letter from Baugh with a couple interesting points, especially a pacing technique called bookends. Begin and end with short direct statements while the middle is long winding sentences. Varying sentence structure is something I’m working on. Trust me. 

Interesting thought from here:  How to Create Good Fiction-Writing Habits (Writing Cooperative) — “The overwhelmingly vast majority of fiction writers I’ve met don’t actually do much writing. They think about writing, they talk about writing, they read about writing, but they rarely sit down and put pen to paper.”

That’s what I do exactly. And it hasn’t worked yet. Anyway pacing and rhythm are important and the acts of thinking, talking, and reading about writing are 80 percent of the process. Moving on.

Another letter is about using signposts, orientating the reader. I do that constantly. Maybe too much.

Nathan’s 1 storytelling tip from “No wise people” — “The negative is more interesting than the positive.” Yeah that’s really annoying. It’s not just like, it’s also this. Ugh.  But it’s true.  Of course, you know me and presenting binaries. Yeah, yuck. 

Kristin Hannah: “It’s not intentions that matter. It’s actions. We are what we do and say, not what we intend to.”

I intend lots of things. Yeah I see where I fuck up…

Charlie Munger: “In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time – none, zero.”

I don’t know who he is but yeah I tell people this fucking constantly and no one fucking listens! It’s because you need to be constantly soaking in new ideas and new perspectives. It’s not just a good idea, it’s the best idea! Dammit… negatives.

Another great bit from Stephen King, who I often disagree with but certainly not in this vein: “Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference.” damn straight.

God, insomnia sucks. I’m probably going to skip out on chronicles again today. But since I dropped a whole essay, and may even cut one more, I’m actually now a couple days ahead… and this archive work needs to be done!

Spinach vs substance, now that’s a newsletter title. Also it’s dr Seuss, who is awesome.

“Great style is great artistry… but without a story, great style is spinach…” he encouraging writing students to “underline every sentence that advances the plot. None others. If your blue line pattern is irregular, scattered, too far between, you’re writing too much spinach… Get back on your storyline… you’re serving meat, not salad.”

I mean you can serve both but the Doctor is correct. I’m not like most people, I’ve come to really enjoy spinach but most kids and therefore most adults who weren’t bookworms as a child do not.

It’s the same idea as king’s “Kill your darlings” which is becoming an absurdly overused phrase but it’s true. It’s not that it’s bad writing; it just isn’t serving the purpose it’s meant to be.

Seuss also said in this workshop: “Cross out unnecessary words and ideas in your stories, and stay on track, going faster and faster.”

Baugh clarifies: “Speed isn’t about how quickly events unfold, but the precision and purpose behind them.”

Exactly. And I think Chronicles is chock full of spinach.

The more I think about my fiction, ironically, the backstory is the story for me. Character vignettes, diary entries, biographical biases, these are my strengths — reflective and introspective looks on how and why these stories came about and why I even wanted to write them. The motivations of these myriad characters my mind cooks up, the legendarium itself, the lore is the essence of my fiction. King hates backstory. I must embrace it for all of its ridiculousness and absurdity. Forget the novel and short story… I need a wiki to build all this out… perhaps its own website.

…

The next morning… 

From “Hidden in Plain Sight” – world builders

“It’s a myth that great storytellers only think of great stories or that insightful people only have brilliant ideas. What they do have is a habit of capturing their experiences and insights, and the patience to filter the majority until the best remain.” — James Clear

Ah, copywork. I know this practice! Ben Franklin practically invented it. You copy, by hand, your favorite writing. Yes, it actually helps your writing. Weird, huh?

Also this: “Years ago, on the phone with Bill Buford, then fiction editor of The New Yorker, enduring a series of painful edits, feeling a little insecure, I went fishing for a compliment: ‘But what do you like about the story?’ I whined. There was a long pause at the other end. And Bill said this: ‘Well, I read a line. And I like it… enough to read the next.’

And that was it. His entire short story aesthetic and presumably that of the magazine. And it’s perfect. A story is a linear-temporal phenomenon. It proceeds, and charms us (or doesn’t), a line at a time. We have to keep being pulled into a story in order for it to do anything to us.

I’ve taken a lot of comfort in this idea over the years. I don’t need a big theory about fiction to write it. I don’t have to worry about anything but” Would a reasonable person, reading line four, get enough of a jolt to go on to line five?

Why do we keep reading a story?

Because we want to.

Why do we want to?

That’s the million-dollar question: What makes a reader keep reading?

Are there laws of action, as there are laws of physics? Do some things just work better than others? What forges the bond between reader and writer and what breaks it?

Well, how would we know?

One way would be to track our mind as it moves from line to line.

“A story (any story, every story) makes its meaning at speed, a small structural pulse at a time…” George Saunders

Yes, I typed all that out from a handwritten journal page of Nathan’s. I could’ve used the tech to turn the handwriting into text. But, no, I’m copy working. That’s how I became the writer I have. 

…

Aside: I just realized this morning that as much as I loved The Orville, I can’t remember any of the character names… except that one god Avis because he was named after a car rental company (yeah, seriously.) I don’t remember any of the character’s names, but I remember their faces and actions and whatnot. How weird is that? Why is that?

…

Anyway, why does copywork, well, work? Baugh says: “When you do copywork, your brain starts to pattern match. You see how great writing ebbs and flows. How stories begin and end. How the author keeps you around.” Yeah, pretty much that. But again, it has to be great writing. It has to be writing that keeps you invested. That’s why I collect so many quotes. 

And while I can’t stand David Perrel, because he’s a charlatan, he is right when he says, “Imitate, then innovate.”

I think I may have saved the next one already, but it’s also because I’m familiar with the “But, Therefore” mode of storytelling. Per the creators of South Park: “If we can take the beats of your outline, and the words ‘and then’ belong between those beats… you got something pretty boring. What should happen between every beat you’ve written down is the words ‘therefore’ or ‘but.’”

Essentially, a good story is a series of but / because / therefore moments.

Also, this bit from Hemingway: “Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.”

Nathan found this “interesting” — I do not: The founder of Oculus’ argues for archetypes and stereotypes in storytelling. I couldn’t agree more with this idea: “They allow storytellers to focus on what makes their world unique instead of baseline scaffolding.”

I argue AGAINST them! We need scaffolding! All the scaffolding! NOTHING ABOUT STEREOTYPES MAKES ANYTHING UNIQUE! Archetypes are useful, yes, BUT you can get far too archetypal and way stereotypical, inviting biases to come in and camp out rent free! That’s how you get Star Trek stories that could’ve been great that got fucked up because they would be ‘too cerebral’ and ‘X, Y, Z demographic.’ Fuck the demographic. You can demolish the demographic! People are PEOPLE! Fuck ageism, fuck genderism, fuck, fuckity, fuck de duck!

Why do you think stories have become so lazy and repetitive? And lazy and repetitive?

Can you write a novel in 90 minutes with AI? Yeah, probably. In fact, I guarantee it. But, fuck the 3-act structure, fuck archetype. Go hog wild and just write good shit.

…

Now Among the Rocks from Robert Browning:

“Oh, good gigantic smile o’ the brown old earth,

This autumn morning! How he sets his bones

To bask i’ the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet

For the ripple to run over in its mirth;

Listening the while, where on the heap of stones

The white breast of the sea-lark twitters sweet.

That is the doctrine, simple, ancient, true;

Such is life’s trial, as old earth smiles and knows.

If you loved only what were worth your love,

Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you:

Make the low nature better by your throes!

Give earth yourself, go up for gain above!”

‘If you loved only what were worth your love…” that’s a doctrine right there!

I love this idea: there was a Hungarian scholar who worked in the court of King Bela III in the early 13th century. This guy, who we know only by the initial P, is a fascinating figure. As Sheehan wrote in Volume 63 of Areopagus:

“There is something rather moving about the idea of this nameless writer working tirelessly to collate and preserve the history of his country, much as Bartók did for music. It cannot have been easy rifling through the confused and conflicting accounts in existing manuscripts, attempting to sort out fact from fiction and legend from truth. We know he was familiar with the stories that had been passed on verbally from one generation to the next ever since the Conquest, for in the Gesta Hungarorum he refers to “the gabbling rhymes of minstrels and the spurious tales of peasants”. Still, we must treat Anonymous’ work with caution, for he was part of a Medieval literary tradition in which myths were inevitably mingled with reality and, as Livy once said, people were happy to write about events which “posterity would find more praiseworthy than credible”.”

What’s wrong with mingling myth with reality? We do it all the time! People don’t recognize that the television programs and the fiction they consume are, in fact, modern myths that shape our perceptions in very significant, and often dangerous ways! I’d much rather write about events which posterity wants to praise, no matter credible they might be! LOOK AT THE BIBLE! That’s all I need to say about that.  But he has a degree, so what do I know?

Anyway, Sheehan mentions that only a single copy of P’s work survived, but fortunately it was found in the 17th century in the Viennese Imperial Library, so it got translated and published. Still, it’s a testament to the fragility of history. We often don’t realize “the extent to which our understanding of the past relies on the sole accounts of writers like him. Anonymous embodies the thousands of nameless and forgotten scholars who have worked in times of war and plague, persecution and catastrophe, to safeguard our collective history.”  

Also, Hungarian is entirely unrelated to the languages in countries around it — this shit always fascinates me!

Well, Pulitzer got this right… the press should be non-partisan. It’s definitely not. Especially in his day, and it’s even worse now. 

But this is a prescient statement: “Our republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself.  The power to mold the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalism of future generations.” [Oh just like now!]

And hey, Pulitzer said something that I think more content creators need to take into account: “Every issue of the paper presents an opportunity and a duty to say something courageous and true; to rise above the mediocre and conventional; to say something that will command the respect of the intelligent, the educated, the independent part of the community; to rise above fear of partisanship and fear of popular prejudice. I would rather have one article a day of this sort; and these ten or twenty lines might readily represent a whole day’s hard work in the way of concentrated, intense thinking and revision, polish of style, weighing of words.”

I often do focus too much on quantity, because we’re now conditioned to think we always need more! When we actually probably need less…

…

OMG something useful on X-Twitter: https://twitter.com/lainewrites/status/1709375670927667617?s=20 — “The best time to write is when you have the seed of an idea but don’t know what you want to say yet, or you’re moved by a feeling but don’t know how to express it, bc writing is a process of discovery & crystallization.”

OK this is why Character Archetypes are stupid: “Shrek and Jay Gatsby are the same character” – yeah in essence they are. Except Shrek the First is actually a pretty decent film.

Also, I held onto this list of 77 character archetypes. I’m not going to copy pasta it here, but I’m going to save it.

The Psychology Powering a Mr Beast Hook – that got my attention. Man, Jimmy’s videos are quite the spectacle… and wasteful, and ridiculous. At least someone deserving gets the prize in the end. Anyway, the 3 ideas Nathan Baugh expands on: Costly Signaling (no shit), Contrast ($1 vs $1M for example), Novelty Effect (something bizarre you gotta click on to learn more, a unique angle, unusual character, or using specific, non-obvious words)

Huh, I didn’t know Baugh had another paid newsletter: Weekly Copywork. Not sure I’d pay for it. I know great writing when I see it. And I know Chat’s tapestries when they are woven into the fabric that stands as a testament of indomitable nature of the human spirit. 

I really like this entry: Gamify your storytelling

The director of the Uncharted games, Amy Hennig, has this to say about storytelling in games: “Storytelling in games is very different from in movies; that’s why I always get into trouble when people say, ‘Well, write a story for a game.’ It’s not about writing a story. It’s about creating a world.”

Exactly, then make the game immensely frustrating for people with neurological problems to play… I know this because I used to be able to play games like Uncharted. I simply no longer have the reflexes. The games I can still play are muscle memory. If it requires any sort of reflex action, count me out. I’ll suck at it. That’s why I can’t play Elden Ring. I’m that damaged. 

Anyway, the message here is great and it’s not Hennig’s fault that I’m a cripple. 

In fact, what I’m best at is WORLD BUILDING. I’m no good at story. The stories that I seem to be good at telling are events from my actual life! Just no one believes me. 

Here are some good gamification of storytelling suggestions

• Levels, progression, and rewards
• Setting as a character
• Story engines

March 28, 2024

Jeff Cann actually commented on my Smiling While Running post. [A version of “Smiling While Running” still exists on TPD.] 

So I responded: “I used to run all the time, but after chemotherapy for cancer in my late twenties, my lung capacity is severely compromised. I also deal with mild neuropathy. So, while I can’t really run, or even jog, any more, this advice was useful to me because whenever I have a painful day with my neuropathy or issues with my breathing, I find that forcing a smile actually helps with the pain and stabilizing my mood. I always hated “forcing” a smile, but like you said, if you’re already doing something you love, it shouldn’t be that hard 🙂”

…

“For many years, I toiled writing articles about things I find interesting with some incredible booms, but many more busts. In an age where it’s go viral or go home, my knowledge of optimizing for search engines is all that gives my work much traction. I don’t write “sexy” or “trendy” content, and I will continue to shun the low-hanging fruit in pursuit of conducting historically important research.” – Me

March 29, 2024

We live in such a binary society, and yet, it is the work of binary computer programs [LLMs] that may actually allow us to save us from our own blindness. I’ve not fully formed this concept yet, but my feeling is that things like Chat will give voices to the otherwise voiceless, put ideas into perspective, even if it involves lots of weaving tapestries, creating mosaics, and drifting through the inky blackness of the cosmos…

I myself have greatly benefited from Chat as an organizational and drafting tool for my often complex and diverse ideas. It’s not cheating so much as it is hacking the power of language through the use of the collective whole of data that Chat possesses. I’m going somewhere with this, but because I’m so scattered today, it’s best I just continue to drill through my archive, perhaps with much greater haste than the other day, because that was taking forever… I can’t note every single thing, only those things worthy of lifting for further embellishment…

First off, my Pocket Reads summaries keep going to my Junk folder… I got this summary titled ‘A Finance Guide for Your Fantasies’… they don’t deliver on that, they give you a sponsored Penny Hoarder “article” that just promotes BS. Although there were a couple things I saved… Now I want to write an ACTUAL Finance Guide for Your Fantasies… whatever the flying F that actually means?

OK this is interesting, but I don’t entirely agree with it… Why you shouldn’t trust AI search engines | MIT Technology Review

Their claim is that the technology powering GPT isn’t ready to be used like this at this scale — that being as search engines. While I do agree with this, at a surface level, I don’t entirely agree. Think about this: how is this technology, which requires a great amount of machine learning, supposed to grow without major growing pains? 

I’d argue that, yes, the tech isn’t ready, but just like children… we’re NEVER ready for what the world is going to throw at us. I think of GPT like a child. It’s going to be nonsensical. Because it’s based on the nonsensical outputs of HUMAN BEINGS. Come on, guys. 

Of course, OpenAI is EXTREMELY OPEN about this being a research project. Useful as it is, if used properly, yes, it’s going to be inaccurate and daydream. But, again… what is feeding these algorithms? The inaccuracies and daydreams of human beings. Don’t blame the tech. Blame your own human fallacies!

Anyway, one thing the article does bring up that I entirely agree with is that by bringing the technology to this scale, we’re doing a lot of the groundwork for Conversational AI for these companies. I’m happy to do that. We’re testing it for free. And I’m fine with that, because I’m benefitting from it for sure. So are many other people. 

Also, I’m extremely curious to see how these AI video creators turn out. [They are scary as of 2026, but also still incredibly flawed.]

…

Here’s something from the New Yorker I agree with… ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web | The New Yorker 

The article compares Chat to a lossy algorithm that “identifies statistical regularities in the text” which is pretty much what GPT does with what it’s fed. Every thing it gives us is an approximation. A damn good approximation but still approximate… which is why you have the disclaimer whenever you use it.

This means that Chat’s “hallucinations are compression artifacts” but because they sound plausible, we sometimes don’t bother to check them against the originals… which is why I love how Copilot offers citations to check. Its interpolations can be quite entertaining, but that is, really, all they are.

I like how the author mentions the “tendency to anthropomorphize large language models.” I certainly don’t do that, and if it seems I do, it’s only in jest to test theoretical constructs. Also, there is a Prize for Compressing Human Knowledge, known as the Hutter Prize. Yes, really. It goes to anyone who can losslessly compress a specific one-gigabyte snapshot of Wikipedia smaller than the previous winner of the prize did. The best so far (as of this article) is 115 MB. That’s pretty impressive. This also means, if we have lossless text compression for GPT, it’s going to reach human-level. 

But right now, all we get is an illusion of understanding. After all, lossless compression would mean we’d get verbatim quotes, right? But, do “statistical regularities in text actually do correspond to genuine knowledge of the real world?” That’s a really good question. 

Apparently, this article was written BEFORE GPT-4 was even released. So, it’s a bit dated… but the premise is still very relevant and prescient as we look forward to the 5th installment of GPT coming relatively soon.

This whole paragraph really got me thinking:

“…Given that stipulation, can the text generated by large language models be a useful starting point for writers to build off when writing something original, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction? Will letting a large language model handle the boilerplate allow writers to focus their attention on the really creative parts?”

That’s kind of what I’ve been doing with my fiction rewrites and to some extent Chronicles of Absurdia. Chat gives me the bulk of the drafting while I streamline and put my own experience into it.

I see ChatGPT as sort of a copywork on steroids. After all, as the author says, writing essays is all about gaining experience in articulating one’s ideas. I would actually argue that ChatGPT has actually made me better at articulating my own thoughts; by seeing how it organizes certain concepts, and how it even thinks of things before I do… yes, it’s a simulation, but like many simulations, it’s incredibly useful.

This is also interesting:

“Your first draft isn’t an unoriginal idea expressed clearly; it’s an original idea expressed poorly, and it is accompanied by your amorphous dissatisfaction, your awareness of the distance between what it says and what you want it to say. That’s what directs you during rewriting, and that’s one of the things lacking when you start with text generated by an A.I.”

I can forgive the author for having no interaction with GPT-4; it didn’t exist just yet. But when you start with AI generated text you ABSOLUTELY are going to be dissatisfied. However, I do agree that being aware of the distance between what your draft says and what you want it to say is a motivator… except for me it’s usually a sign that I need to crumple it up and throw it away. I can’t tell you how many good ideas that ChatGPT saved from being deleted and cast into oblivion just because I couldn’t word something correctly that it somehow did. It really depends on the quality of the input when it comes to the quality of the output, after all. It is still a computer, after all.

In general, given the context, I think the author made some brilliant points. But GPT-4 was definitely a game-changer. There is no way I could produce essays of the caliber I have recently without it. ChatGPT has been very instructive for me in knowing what’s drivel and what’s actually useful to people. You just have to be endlessly critical, as yes, it does drone on and repeat itself constantly. But so don’t real human writers who seem to have a lot to say but really don’t. It’s only as good as what it’s fed; ChatGPT is only as good as what it eats, and a lot of that is silly human drivel.

…

A conversation with Dan Aykroyd about “what’s he learned” — What I’ve Learned: Dan Aykroyd (Esquire)

Dan refers to his dad as an “absolute absurdist;” so, basically he was Tom Green before that was cool.

…

What’s hysterical about this April Fools Weekend 2.5x gems thing on Injustice 2, as I was saying to Emily… I think I get more enjoyment out of costing advertisers tons of money to collect digital representations of fighting DC universe characters… than actually playing the game. It just makes me really happy to get 202 coins to do a silly captcha and put in my zip code. Understand that 250 gems would typically cost 5 real life dollars. So I wonder what these advertisers pay. Some of these sites are paying 5, 10, 15 bucks to me to roll on shitty chests with like 10 shards. But the rewards don’t really matter as much as costing these greedy fuckers lots of money to provide me entertainment.

So this offer wall is literally gambling, but with other people’s advertising money. I am totally fine with this. Hey, maybe this is how to solve gambling addictions… have those addicted to gambling just do these offers, but only ones that cost other people (preferably corporations and private equity firms) money. I’m OK with that, and have the money go to something productive… like gambling for Unhinged Harley Quinn shards… I mean feeding the hungry and housing the homeless.

Emily made a great joke… this really is the thing to save you in this game, it’s my offer wall! [Oasis Wonderwall joke, FYI]

This is the problem with corporations. They have so much money to throw away on ads that don’t even work properly… like Marriot’s ad went to a “something went wrong error page.” So you have to call customer support to tell them about it. Or an ad that goes to an article about finance that requires you to sign up Medium to even read any part of it. It’s all a write-off and it’s preposterous.

Unfortunately half the offers don’t work, especially the content mill article sites with a billion ads. They never reward you. Neither do the ones that want you to watch a video… and it says oops no ads available.

March 30, 2024

Really cool article on Pocket via Mental Floss about 11 secrets of lego designers. I just printed it to PDF for later reading.

Oh yeah, originally you had to reach 21 runs as a team to win a baseball game… 

AI already uses as much energy as a small country. It’s only the beginning. | Vox – I don’t like the tone of this title although the article itself is more reasonable – it’s like “you can do something to stop it.” No the problem is we haven’t pushed green energy solutions nearly enough! Yes, it’s absolutely a problem that data centers are clustered around nonrenewable energy sources… but so aren’t, um, A LOT OF THINGS!

But the interviewee says a lot of good stuff. And yes, it makes sense that these farms of GPUs need a lot of water for cooling and reliable energy, which renewable energy isn’t always. I do think that instituting some “Energy Star” type regulations for data centers is a good idea. Some big companies are already doing this. 

I also agree with this bit:

“In France, they have this term, ‘digital sobriety.’ Digital sobriety could be part of the actions that people can take as 21st-century consumers and users of this technology. I’m definitely not against having a smartphone or using AI, but asking yourself, “Do I need this new gadget?” “Do I really need to use ChatGPT for generating recipes?” “Do I need to be able to talk to my fridge or can I just, you know, open the door and look inside?” Things like that, right? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it with generative AI.” – Sasha Luccioni

It just really irks me when major publications like Vox want to blame AI or new tech for the world’s problems. It’s not the tech, it’s people being lazy.

…

Since I’m in a ridiculous amount of nerve pain tonight I may as well take some time to discuss something that really has been gnawing at me: realism in fiction. 

Notably I try very hard to divorce myself from the “real world” as much as possible. Yet people constantly seem to require explanations as to why certain things in fiction are how they are. The cognitive gymnastics involved can be quite entertaining; after all there are entire YouTube channels and many books written to explain inconsistencies and tie together fan beliefs and theories about why a setting has certain characteristics. Engaging with the material in such a way in general isn’t really the problem. In fact it makes you wonder how much thought was put into one area or another. 

Where things really go wrong is when people try to make the fictional world into their own private alternate reality. Then you have content creators pander to the demands of escapists that paradoxically demand more “realistic” explanations to why their fantasy worlds don’t make logical sense. Well they are fictional. They are supposed to be fantastic. They aren’t meant to be real. If they were it would be nonfiction with a lot of embellishment and flat out lies. We enjoy fiction purely because the possibilities are endless with the amount of reality bending it offers. This is why weaving myth into history in some ways is more instructive than spewing out raw facts. Our understanding of past events is always going to be colored by the biases, experience, and cognitive dissonance of those who author its telling. I’d argue what we call reality ourselves right now is a form of fictionalized mental gymnastics. 

People seem to demand more realism from their fiction now more than ever but the real issue is that we seem to understand reality collectively worse than previous generations. It’s like we need to live inside our fiction to escape our reality but not to better deal with our own realities but to perpetuate escapism more and more. It’s actually a bit disturbing. It’s ok to have your fantasy world as long as you realize it’s fiction; it seems more of us are desperate to ruin other people’s fun for the benefit of our own wet dreams of living inside our favorite novel, film, video game, or television program… 

I’m just rambling here it seems but I’m trying to get at something profound… I’d say that the more we recognize inconsistencies and oddities and unexplained phenomena within fiction, these become instructive opportunities to recognize our own blind spots in the way things work. Or are somehow not working.

I’m grasping at building a straw house to explain the major paradigm shifting realization I’m having. If we have so much time to add realism to our fiction, what are we doing to add value to our own reality? Using fiction as an instructive tool is great, but only if it actually instructs us to grow in our essence outside the story… 

…

You know what I want? An rpg that rewards true exploration. AFK journey that was recently released has elements of this but only as you progress on the AFK side. What if the whole game is just a casual exploration of everything? That would be neat… no survival aspect, not even fighting. Just purely get XP for checking shit out. Games do this to some degree, yes, but a game that’s just that… does that really exist? Sort of yeah… but a lot of them have the stressful “survival” elements that end up frustrating me…

March 31, 2024

I want to learn more about Mnemonic Training. My memory isn’t what it used to be. And apparently anyone can do this. Otherwise I need to take it easy this Sunday; I’m a neurological disaster…

This isn’t exactly light reading… Mnemonic Training Reshapes Brain Networks to Support Superior Memory: Neuron

Chuck had a great post today… Wait until you hear what day Easter 2025 lands on, dude. (inhales) – Chuck the Writer

Something Biden did that I actually agree with… and he isn’t responsible for the Egg roll policies… March 31st has been International Transgender Day of Visibility since 2009. But Christians are FREAKING OUT because it also happens to be the day that Easter Sunday falls on this year… You know the “Christian” holiday that falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox… Heck in 2025, Easter is going to be on 4/20! Yes, really!

Anyway, I left this comment: “What really gets me about Easter is how it’s so all over the place… and yet, we have “Christians” that are freaking out about Transgender Day of Visibility (which is great that it’s being recognized at a federal level) just happens to fall on one of the earlier Easters we’ve had in awhile. Why is it that such an important CORNERSTONE of Christianity is celebrated on the basis of the lunar cycle after the vernal equinox? That doesn’t sound very Christian to me… just another example of Established Religion, Inc. co-opting a Pagan festival because they’re too damn lazy to come up with their own holidays! They think by co-opting Pagan traditions – including the Easter eggs – that somehow their religion will drown out the true origins of these “holy days.” We must not let them win!”