Archive for writing

This Was/Is/Will Be the Reason the Revolution Failed/Fails

Posted in Grumblings with tags , , , , on November 18, 2025 by chemiclord

Alex Laughlin has a rather interesting piece he composed for Defector that I found fascinating, but probably not for the reason Laughlin intended, and allowed me to embrace in the inner old man that I’ve been slowly becoming as I shake my head at “kids these days.”

https://defector.com/resonate-podcast-festival

The article itself chronicles the rise and inevitable fall of the Podcast Boom, as defined by the Resonate Festival, and how ironically it is perhaps in a better place now that all the big money interests are gone and they are allowed to simply be themselves.

I drew a different lesson from it, though. I saw a collection of people desperate to find some handhold for their passion project to make money and allow them to continue doing it. Podcasts have merely become the latest creative venture where people are reckoning with a depressing reality of humanity and the societies we build around themselves.

“Podcasts are dead?” The average human asks. “But I listen to Joe Rogan every day!”

That is the painful truth that quite literally every creative medium faces eventually. Just like books. Just like artwork. Just like movies. Just like television. Video games are right in the middle of that devastating sorting. Streamers are getting beaten with that reality right now like it’s a mafia shakedown.

I happens to all of us.

The discovery that the average human being could not give one single solitary fuck about creative work, with the exception of a handful of rather generic, unchallenging examples that they can nod their head to, not require a terrible amount of thought, and give them a momentary distraction before they jump back into the rat race that is their daily lives.

It is nigh impossible for anyone other than those few examples to ever make a living solely on creative work, and often times the people that do are more lucky to get that critical opportunity than simply being so good they can’t be denied the spotlight. Sure, about twenty gazillion people listen to Joe Rogan. A million billion people will happily read something from John Scalzi or Stephen King. They’ll gleefully line up to watch the next big film starring one of the Wilson brothers (I actually have forgotten just how many of them are in Hollywood right now). Hideko Kojima could be the producer of “Kojima Shits on a Plate” and have approximately seven million people desperately asking if it comes with a “Smell-o-Vision” feature.

(I want to be clear that I’m not attempting to particularly drag anyone I’m naming here. Another harsh truth that the desperately creative don’t like to face is that there are very, very few genuinely awful creators who don’t know their craft at the top of any given heap. They are more than great at what they do, even if they rose to prominence due to things outside of their creative skill set. Time to cope and accept it, Mr. I Got 17 Subs via Spotify.)

But 99.9% of the people who try their hand at creativity are simply never going to make enough and get enough of an imprint for it to their path to a comfortable life. That’s the reality, and no amount of social or economic upheaval is going to unlock more slots in the collective interest of human kind. It’s an exclusive club, and you are overwhelming unlikely to ever get an invite. That simply has to be okay, because that’s not going to change.

Now, I’m not trying to deter anyone from creating. That would be… (looks back at his bibliography) rather hypocritical. If you are willing to tear yourself apart to scream into a void, go for it. Just don’t expect anyone to listen. Don’t expect anyone to particularly care. If you get lucky, get that shot, and find a hand hold to build from, go for it, don’t look back, and don’t apologize for your good fortune.

But don’t spam social media with your links. Don’t be a nuisance trying to advertise yourself to a public that doesn’t give a fuck. Don’t be a shit heel trying to drag down anyone you think “got lucky,” thinking that it’ll help you advance in any tangible way.

And get off my lawn.

Metaphorically, of course. I don’t have a lawn. I live in a moderate apartment in a suburban commercial district.

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On Messaging…

Posted in Grumblings with tags , , , , on September 21, 2025 by chemiclord

For nearly the last year, the political left in America has been obsessed with “messaging,” and “strategy,” and have been very, very loud in their displeasure that the Democratic Party “leaders” aren’t doing it right, at least, not certain leaders.

There’s a degree that this obsession is understandable. We are desperate for an answer. Something we can do that will sway enough people in our direction. That we must have made a mistake, and that if we just do [x] or [y] different, that will be enough!

But let me offer this possibility: What if “messaging” and “strategy” don’t actually matter as much as we want it to, and all these beatings we’re giving each other (and ourselves) aren’t going to really make that much difference?

Strategy and messaging is fine and all, but it all hinges on a potentially dangerous assumption. That the units in play are actually competent enough to understand the message, and cares enough to take it to heart. It is not the slightest bit clear that the “Average American Voter” is either of those things.

Imagine sitting down at a chess board, and you discover that half of them are Monopoly pieces, another seven are actually glued to the board, the two bishops are both on black squares, and four of the pawns are actually on the other side of the board.

At that point, any strategy you might have had needs to go out the window.

Oh, and every five turns, the rules change into an entirely different game. The “Average American Voter” is not only dreadfully incurious, they also have the object permanence of a demented goldfish that had meth sprinkled into its tank. What they care about now is likely not what will matter to them five weeks from now. And frankly, all it would take is one squirrel with its tail on fire running past them, and all your carefully crafted “messaging” will matter slightly less than fuck all.

So, my advice? Take a deep breath. Don’t hurt yourself or others. There’s a degree that you can do “everything right,” and it’s just not going to sink into the heads of a good chunk of people. Worrying too much about messaging right now is a fool’s errand. We don’t have to do this to ourselves.

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On the Epstein “Conspiracy…”

Posted in Grumblings with tags , , , , on July 12, 2025 by chemiclord

Maybe it’s just because I tend to be skeptical of conspiracies in general, but If I had to offer a loosely-educated guess, the “list” Epstein made basically had every interaction he had with anyone wealthy or powerful, and not necessarily clients.  The creep went out of his way to integrate himself with anyone with any meaningful influence, and I sincerely doubt all of them were interested in buying what he was selling… but it would make for excellent blackmail nonetheless.

I strongly suspect if the “Epstein List” had anything particularly salacious beyond what had already been leaked… someone clout-hunting would have leaked it.

As for the entire “Epstein was murdered” angle, I have yet to see anything particularly compelling about the evidence that can’t be explained by “shitty prison doing shitty prison things.”  Would I be surprised that a shitty prison doesn’t exactly have the best surveillance?  No.  Would it surprise me at all that they still use crappy equipment from the 90s?  Nope.  Would I be astonished that the guards wouldn’t exactly be invested in making sure a pedophile in their midst stayed among the living? Not at all. Am I surprised that Trump is trying to cover this all up because all of it makes him “look bad?”  Not in the slightest.

At the end of the day, I have to believe one of two scenarios.  Either a secret cabal of wealthy and powerful individuals who could have offed Epstein at any number of opportunities decided to choose the worst possible time when he was under the biggest microscope of his life to kill him and guarantee exactly the sort of scrutiny that they spent literally decades trying to avoid, going through an elaborate scheme that would inevitably involve people outside their cabal that had no particular reason to stay silent…

… Or a dude used to a billionaire’s lifestyle was looking at a lifetime in a shitty prison with all his allies, clients, and associates now pretending they never knew him, and decided to check out early while creating exactly the sort of chaos and scrutiny his clients sought to avoid.

I dunno, the most likely scenario seems pretty obvious to me.

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So… What is Transcendent About?

Posted in Grumblings with tags , , , , on March 1, 2025 by chemiclord

If you were to compile a list of the questions authors most hated to hear, “What is it about?” would likely rate very high, if not right at at the top. It’s a question that is both necessary to ask, but at the same time, it doesn’t really say much. If we could sum up our books in a satisfactory manner in a handful of sentences, it wouldn’t be much of a book worth talking about, would it?

Nonetheless, as much as I may loathe it… I have to try. Though I fear it won’t be a terribly brief summary.

The shortest, and most unhelpful answer is that Transcendent is about humanity slowly recovering from near annihilation after billionaires nearly destroy the world. And sure, if you wanted one sentence that kinda sorta set the stage for the first page of the book, that would be it.

But it’s also about how misinformation is twisted to lead people where they kinda wanted to go to begin with, and how the tribalistic nature of humans lends itself to (perhaps unnecessary) conflict. It also about the myth of meritocracy as it is currently told. It’s about finding your own path in a society that is hellbent on forcing you a very specific way. It’s about subtle and overt racism. It’s about misogyny. It’s about how people can be fed a plate of shit and have them asking for seconds.

It’s about my observations of the world around me. It’s about three main characters who don’t quite fit either trying to fit as best they can, or blow it all up, or desperately trying to keep us from blowing it all up more than it has to.

But Transcendent is also about questions, ones that I don’t necessarily have good answers for. How do we keep a society from taking bad bait? How do we manage bad faith agents? Hell, one big question is simply, “What makes us… well… us?”

If any of that sounds interesting to you, then you might like what’s inside this fairly hefty book, and those yet to come.

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