Author: Self

“First, a practical argument: writing a formulaic book may be easy but making money off it is hard. Slop is still a numbers game. There are countless writers trying to hop on the latest trend, whatever it is. Editors I know tell me their inboxes are flooded with Romantasy pitches from authors who have never written in the genre before. This is true in every commercially successful trend, fiction and non-fiction. Remember when bookstores were overflowing with adult coloring books, Tumbler-to-book deals, and “fratire” bro books? The vast, vast majority of authors chasing trends will fail. Their books won’t be published or if published they won’t sell. Succeeding in the slop game is a matter of luck and timing, impossible for an author to control”

https://countercraft.substack.com/p/art-in-the-age-of-slop

“concerning characters that could actually exist doing things that could actually happen in a world that’s recognizably ours; matching the mundanity of the described world with a mundanity of style and voice; expressed without any experimentation, formal intricacy, or metatheatrics; relaying all information in sentences that never fool, trick, deceive, engage in play, engage in double entendre, engage in deliberate obscurity, or otherwise strain the reader’s attention at all; are based on the assumption that the only path to transcendence is through steady and responsible accumulation, not the transformative moment; and which generally operate according to Jonathan Franzen’s commandment that for literature to survive, readers must never be challenged in any way they don’t wish to be challenged”

https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/what-the-book-section-likes

“We’ve created a cybernetic teddy bear; something that helps to sustain an illusion of conversation that people can use in order to facilitate the well-known psychological fact that putting your thoughts into words and trying to explain them to someone else is a good way to think and have ideas. (That this would be a big use case ought to have been obvious to anyone who knew the history of ELIZA).

I genuinely don’t know how revolutionary this might be, even if this is all there is to it. A machine that doesn’t get bored listening to you could be an incredible boost to a lot of people. It’s actually quite hopeful in my view; although it is nowhere near as science fictional and glam as “AGI”, this could be a very relevant use case”

https://backofmind.substack.com/p/building-a-better-teddy-bear

“In recent years, he started taking on work that he’s described as “corporate creative shit,” and his LinkedIn now includes roles with titles like “Senior Creative Strategist.” Not everyone can be in a band like Vampire Weekend; while Koenig sings of the millennial plight from the charmed perch of arena stages, most peak-indie artists are living alongside their other aging mortals as they try to muster some stability before the next global crisis takes hold”

https://www.hearingthings.co/how-four-elder-millennial-indie-artists-embraced-middle-age-in-2024/

“There’s something about your 40s. It’s too late, really. The big changes you’re making now should have made at least a decade ago. But the thing is: You can still just about do it. It’s still just about possible. It’s pretty much your last chance for the professional life you dream of.

Most of the best new year’s resolutions, however, are modest. They are small. They are achievable. They might be physical, or financial, or professional, or intellectual, or cultural. But they are possible, with a moderate amount of effort.

The key to most resolutions is 6am. This is the horrible goddamned truth of it. I despise this truth from the bottom of my heart”

https://iandunt.substack.com/p/happy-new-year-now-sort-your-fucking

“There are also people sniffily suggesting that, because there’s no public demand for such a move it is, ipso facto, pointless – as if the only reason to do anything is to attempt to plump the polls now, and that doing anything that might be termed “governing” is for wimps. Boris Johnson may have left office two years ago, but Johnsonism, the belief that governing is entirely a matter of chasing headlines and shaping a message rather than the boring, messy issues of actually running a country, still hangs over our politics like a bad smell”

https://jonn.substack.com/p/my-much-anticipated-2024-books-of

“Patriotic middle class Canadians often believe their country is good to the extent it functions as a stable, safe, bourgeois utopia, in which life’s most important bills are paid by someone else (healthcare, retirement) while everything else (real estate, food, gasoline, etc.) is cheap and abundant. There is no gun violence or endemic poverty, and if that means the citizenry are too complacent and risk-adverse to produce an Elon Musk, well, that’s a fair trade”

https://jjmccullough.substack.com/p/is-trudeau-responsible-for-declining

“This guy just won power for Labour for the first time in nearly 20 years. He ruined the Conservative party, reducing it to a rump of 121 seats. It is, by any measure, one of the single most impressive electoral accomplishments of our lifetime. There is no logical option but to acknowledge him as politician of the year. And yet the coverage of Starmer is sullen, grudging, condescending and vitriolic. Never has someone accomplished so much while being treated as if they’d achieved so little”

https://iandunt.substack.com/p/the-complete-dunt-awards-2024

“1640. The protestants who dominate Scotland’s parliament pass a law making celebrating Christmas illegal; England follows five years later. The ban is short-lived south of the border – once Charles II is restored to the throne in 1660 it’s party on, really – but Christmas remains verboten in Scotland rather longer, and does not officially become a public holiday until (this is mind blowing) 1958. This is why the Scots are so big on New Year”

https://jonn.substack.com/p/its-chrissssssssstmaaaaaaaas