There is a price for “gifts”. This is a given of fairy lore, of course, but it’s also a known thing of the human brain.

As humans our period of having our every wish catered to is limited, and frankly I think we learn early that our wishes and needs won’t be perfectly met. After all, I remember as a mother having to ignore my babies as they fussed once I knew they were clean and fed. Why would I do that? Because what they wanted was play and the limitations of my own adult world wouldn’t allow me to spend the whole day playing with them, of course.

And after the infant stage everything we do comes with effort and time to learn. Which means we learn everything is a price.

Hence, when we find something awesome that seems to be handed to us for free — be it a thing or an ability to do some things — we tend to want to know what it’s going to cost us. If we didn’t there wouldn’t be all sorts of proverbs telling us that we definitely shouldn’t look too closely at the gift. I’m particularly struck by “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” because we all know what happened to Troy when they didn’t.

Which brings us to the Bardic Gift. I’ve been told — repeatedly — this week, by very disparate things that this is what my particular curse should be called. We’ll examine that in a minute.

I came to this post because I’m still reading The Voyage of The Spaceship Beagle. For various reasons, but mostly because the cough came back and apparently I was sleeping like fine hammered carp, it’s been heavy going. Last night I gave up and had the strong anti-histamine (more on that in a moment) syrup which knocked me out, and it’s amazing how much focused I am today.

Just in time to hit the middle story (I gather it’s three) which hinges on mind control for various purposes. This made me growl and got my hackles full up, and it took me a while to figure out why. (I mean, it’s a book. It’s not physically biting me. Heck, it’s on the kindle, and my kindle is almost tame.)

I have an intense dislike of anything that distorts my mind. I want to know that however my mind is functioning, even when under my own influence and therefore trying to dredge the depths of depression and the shoals of the seas of unwarranted despair, it’s my own. Partly because I have over a half century of checking for and adjusting for my own peculiar quirks, like depression. I know the black dog is there, I know its growl. I’m aware of its bite. I know how to muzzle it. And if I can’t I know it’s the sign of something else, like physical illness or not sleeping very well. (At this point the cough is probably allergies. I need to clean my bedroom. It’s the only place the cough persists and not coincidentally one of two rooms in the house that hasn’t been thoroughly cleaned.) But if you throw an outside factor at the mixture, I might not even be aware of it till things spin out of control. This almost happened in fact with both adderal and montelukast. The second is particularly puzzling since you’d think a brain trained to detect depression would detect depression. But this was alien, strange, unaccustomed depression. And it almost offed me.

Anyway, my aversion to pain killers and mood adjusters and yes ADD meds and asthma meds with side effects extends to almost disabling levels. Like refusing to take pain meds after surgery and therefore — apparently — prolonging the time of recovery until the doctor lassoed me and made me take meds. (On my own terms. It was more weaponized Tylenol than anything else.) Or, refusing to take the effective anti-histamine syrup, because I’m afraid it will have some effect (most anti-histamines turn off the writing) until I’m a zombie, walking into walls from coughing all night.

Now, I’m not an irrational being. Actually, I overthink everything to the point of paralysis. So my aversion is likewise not irrational.

I intensely dislike being under the influence of drugs that affect my mind, even in relatively small ways (that’s not either Adderal or Montelukast) because they affect what I still find incredibly pretentious to refer to as my “Bardic Gift”.

What the heck is a Bardic Gift? Well, I don’t know what it is to you (tovarisch.) Or even to other people possessed of (by) it. But I know how it manifests. And I suspect I know where it comes from.

The human mind is a mechanism for making sense and meaning out of chaotic reality. Some of our minds are just particularly afflicted with the need to create overarching, intricate mental machines of sense and meaning. We do it as we breathe, and it comes from such a basic level of our minds that we do this at a sub-conscious level. Literally as most of the time we’re not aware of it till the finished product presents itself with force and urgency to our conscious mind, fully finished and demanding we do the work of parturition to present it to the unsuspecting and fortunately largely uncaring world.

Fortunately? You say. Oh, heck yes, because the manifestations of this curse that I’ve identified fall on every artist, sure, but they also hit hard on the founders of cults, or creators of compelling, fully-formed, internally consistent political theories that sweep a lot of other people into the machine of sense and meaning. This is dangerous — do I need to tell you that? — because not all cults are on the side of light and, humans and reality being chaotic, almost any political theory that demands everything make internal sense and everyone fit into a niche in its vision spins more and more out of contact with reality. Such political theories fill mass graves.

Now, yes, this means that great advantage could perhaps be derived to the world in general by filling those mass graves with people like me. In theory. In very broad theory.

I’m here to tell you it doesn’t work worth a damn. And to the extent you can cause it to work it plunges the civilization engaged in it into a cycle of repeating stupidity that amounts to civilizational Alzheimers.

I suspect it happens a lot to tribal civilizations, where it’s both possible to identify such people with much greater accuracy — In a smallish group you know which family is prone to wandering around with its loincloth on its head muttering about how we must paint ducks yellow so they don’t take over the world. And you know it’s hereditary — and eliminate an entire genetic strain. I suspect they’re eliminated over and over again. (Mostly under the guise of witch-hunting.) Until the tribe … remains in the neolithic for millennia. Which is why innovation and higher achievement comes with letting the oddlings move away and do their thing. Like, you know, our improbable, amazing nation. (Yes, there’s something seriously wrong with the harp in the illustration. do you really want me to spend the rest of the day autistically fixing it, or do you want me to finish this post and go work on the novel? Right.)

But we do have an example of a society with writing falling into this cycle too. China became so obsessed with getting rid of everyone with the bardic gift that they have not one but several periods in which they executed grandmothers that told stories. It came back. It is a natural tendency of the human brain, just exaggerated so it can be recreated by genetic drift. And they did it again. If you study their history (not recommended if you’re a depressive) it’s like watching grandad who has forgotten his own name continuously watering the cat and giving tuna to the house plant while walking around in someone else’s underwear and muttering how he’s the center of the universe.

So, you can’t eliminate us. And we can’t stop doing what we do, for the simple reason that it’s how our brains function while they remain alive. (I have had friends be disabled by serious health events, and I myself have been battling an intersection of serious issues for 20 years now. (Yes, it is getting better, but you only see it in the bird’s eye view. This year I can do things I couldn’t last year, but I’ve been so sick I’ve done very little. Still, it’s gains.) who still have the compelling stories — or other stuff, but most of my friends do stories — show up on whatever their schedule used to be. And they drive them insane, because–) The price of the gift is to use it.

We are given for free something for which most human beings have to struggle and the price is we have to do it. (Keep this in mind. It’s important.)

There is a plurality of creatives who are consciously creative and work hard for it. Most of the time I can tell when consuming the product, and I suspect most people can. But they are also more often really successful because they can control it and shape it to “what is selling.” Those of them who know we exist (many refuse to believe we do and think we’re lying) hate us with a purple passion, because they must painstakingly assemble structures that appear fully formed and moving to us. On the other hand, they can walk away from it when it stops paying, or when the field is so embuggered that it kills your soul to stay in it.

But we can’t. Because the vision that presents itself is so enormous, so clear, so immediate and pushes so hard that the only way to stop from creating is to kill what we are. And the only way to do that — in my case — is to feed the depressive cycle until I come to as close to death in life as I can.

I suspect most people who suffer from this use a similar mechanism to damp it, because Herr Professor Jordan Peterson has stumbled on the certainty that “Creatives who stop creating start dying.” He’s correct on that. If you take nothing else from this post and you’re a creative in this way — i.e. have the bardic gift — please, I implore you, take this: Creatives who stop creating start dying. I don’t honestly care if the creations of your gift are good or not, if you can make money or not. I don’t care if you have very little time because your real life job eats your life, I beg of you to start carving out some time to create. (Oh, and if your bend is either cult leader or political leader, unless you’re fighting on the side of letting individuals be individuals and not imposing your oh so compelling vision on them, please deviate it to writing. It’s usually possible.) TO SAVE YOUR OWN LIFE AND SANITY PLEASE START CREATING, no matter how slowly. (I have reason to believe at the extreme ebb of the dampening you start sending signals that make your body ill. Yes, I know that sounds newagy, but I am also convinced that’s what I did about 20 years ago, when I was trying to walk away from writing.)

Because the price of the gift is to use it, but you can channel it, it is vital that you stay in control of your own mind, so you can channel it in the right way. What is the right way? Well, again, I don’t know about you (tovarish) but in my case I try to use it not to drive people to despair or suicide. And to stir them away from the more poisonous of compelling bardic visions that involve restructuring society towards authoritarianism. Even if the thing isn’t exactly under my control, I usually can control it enough for that. (It’s a negotiated peace. I still have to keep certain elements in, or it’s worse than denying the gift.)

I’ve heard of other gifts, non-bardic. Grandma, for instance, had a healing gift. And she had sharp warnings about what happens if you don’t use it, which I gather is exactly the same as what happens to my kind, only hard and fast and with spikes in it.

Anyway — all this amounts to — I’m really leery and will always be of anything that takes control of my mind, because however misaligned and weird it is it is mine, I know it, and I have some idea how to navigate it so it doesn’t cause harm. But giving control to someone else–

Well, now. If you knew that the someone else was perfect and wanted only the best for you it would be tempting. (This is why a religious belief is protective for my kind, again so long as you keep it within bounds. My people fall into insanity all too easily. Because we do believe there is a being who is perfect and only wants what’s best for us. And (as someone put it recently) He doesn’t dress like either Jim Jones or Mao.) But there is no such human. Even the smartest and with the best intentions aren’t fit to control others, because each of us has highly personal biases and phobias that aren’t entirely under our own control. (Which is why totalitarian societies always, inevitably, become shit-holes.)

So, you must keep your mind as free of influences you can’t account for as possible. Or I can. Though I suspect the anti-histamine is less harmful than not sleeping for a week straight.

And it’s a balance. And I must walk it. Because I got this gift for free. And I need to use it as best possible. Or it will spin out of control and eat me.

Now for those not thus afflicted who’ve been reading this with horrified fascination (LOL. Trust me, it’s worse from the inside.) you too, if you’re living in this wonderful, chaotic, ever-inventing land of ours, were given a gift.

You were given Liberty for free. And the price of the gift is to use it. Or you start dying.

Use your liberty and do not let it be unnecessarily be encroached upon or deviated. (The “necessary” is up to each of us to determine. Like the juggling of lack of sleep with anti-histamine dulling of the senses.

And use it. Use it joyously and extravagantly. To create, to innovate or (simply! Ah.) to cretae a life you want to live the way you want to live it.

As we begin this long weekend, meditate on your gifts and how best to use it.

Stay frosty. Stay free. Stay creative.

*And for those wondering: Yes, sometimes I use blog posts to convey ideas that would be best conveyed in short stories. And this post might yet be a short story at some point. It’s just right now, mid-revision I don’t have time to go walk into yet another world. But it will come I suspect. Because this is complex and intricate and yeah, best conveyed in an emotional past. However this will stave it off enough for me to stay sane while finishing the monster novel. Until then:

Sincerely, SAH*

Imagine you are atop a cliff, and must leap to another. Below you there’s a chasm.

Your only chance is to leap for it. Which means there’s a moment where you’re suspended in the air. Between peaks. You could just go down hard. Lost. Done.

All you can do is keep your jump, keep your form, keep going.

Right now the US, and to an extent the world (because buckos, if we don’t make it, they’re just as cooked) is suspended in the middle of that jump.

If we fail the chasm is deep and dark. Note I’m not saying it’s eternal. If we fall the chances of the human race going down for the long count are minimal. I believe in humans. We’re scrappy and mean, a crazy little ape that just won’t stay down. But the count can be extended without being the final long count. And it can be very dark without the sun going out.

I don’t need to detail the chasm, I think. I’ve talked about it before. This generation is seriously unprepared. People out there are getting college degrees for the diploma they can’t read and being saddled with loans for jobs that don’t exist or which, thanks to the plethora of H1B visas don’t have openings, or don’t pay what they used to pay.

Even the trade schools read as a “modified, limited hangout”. A lot of those jobs are getting eaten by improved technology and/or being paid less because of immigration of one sort or another.

In fact, when making decisions for kids, I hear desperate grandparents suggest trade schools and I think “That’s a way to calm the grandparents, in the long run it won’t mean much.”

Because it all depends on how the jump goes. And either way any training you can get now, whether ivy league or local trade school if we crash you’re going to be out of luck. It’s going to be more of what we have seen: schools, government and everything weaponized against the people they theoretically serve. … for a while.

Not as long as they think it will be, because…. whisper it with me Catastrophic Technological Change. It will take their plans down too. But what comes after, we don’t know. Except that it will take a while. And what comes after only the gods of chaos know.

Except we haven’t fallen yet. We’re in middair.

Which is the reason that everything right now is in suspension. The current generation is caught between the current thing and what comes after.

What comes after? We don’t know. We know right now there are people trying really hard to remove obstacles and improve the chances our foot lands on the next peak. That the catastrophic technological changes, as it dissolves the present creates a future worth living in. That we have a shot. We, the US, western civilization, humans.

But it’s impossible to know exactly how we land, if we land, etc. because there are many things in the air with us. Mostly because–

Look, our economy has been hampered, played with, messed around since Wilson at least, and likely before. Sure, sure, the tech favored what happened, the hyper centralization of things, but there were still choices made that hinged not on the tech, but on the ideas in people’s heads. Centralized was considered better. Top down more efficient. And the cult of the expert led us into the hands of some very strange theoreticians.

It’s like a stream whose course has been deviated by dams. As you remove the dams, you get the river flowing back to its course.

Except in this case, it’s not the same river. Not anymore. Because tech has changed. People have changed. And no, not for the worst. I know. I can hear you people out there. I swear to bob assuming your ancestors were idiots and young people are dumber than you were is the immutable sin of mankind.

No, the young aren’t dumber than you were. They’re undeniably worse educated, in terms of formal education, but they are in many ways more used to change, to learning on their own, to finding their own paths than we were. Partly because we didn’t give them what they needed, and they’ve been finding their path. Partly because… well, we didn’t have acess to the firehose of information the new tech provides.

So what comes next? Who knows. You can’t tell the shape of things to come when they’re still not here. I can make guesses. I’m pretty good at guessing. And five years out I might make some accurate guesses. 20? 30? No.

Someone talked about how if you bring your A game neither AI nor anything else can stop you. They’re not wrong. But here’s the thing, your A game might not have the course you would play it on yet.

Look, when I was eleven I knew I wanted to be journalist. I wanted to find out the truth. I wanted to write about it. (I also wanted to write fiction, but that wouldn’t pay enough to live off of in Portugal.) So … well, when I investigated the possibility I found my politics (weird and European as they were) locked me out of the profession, because I wasn’t communist nor could I condone communism. Even if it called itself socialism and put on a funny wig.

So that was done, right? Except that now, forty years later that is precisely what I do, both here — let’s call it editorials — and at instapundit — let’s call it the night desk.

Could I have guessed at the shape of what I do now? Heck, guys I couldn’t have guessed 20 years ago when I started this blog on livejournal where it would take me, both good and bad.

Part of this is that we’re in a time of high change. Not in a time when you can prepare your kids for a future that might not be like the present but will be pretty close. And change is likely to accelerate as we remove the dams and trammels on the flow of tech, of economics, of invention.

Until recently I thought we were about to be shoved off the cliff, and we’d fall and then have to trust luck and spirit to make it back up fast enough that it wasn’t all lost.

Right now though, we’ve jumped. We’re up in the air, and our foot almost touches the next cliff.

All I can say is right now there’s hope.

The generation coming up, the generation caught in pretty bad positions? They’re the generations in between the ordered world of the past and what comes next.

What can we do?

Don’t give up on them. Don’t give up on removing the obstacles to freedom. Don’t give up on tech change.

And if you can, influence things in the direction of hope, of possibility, of innovation, of human liberty.

The way the wind blows might affect our jump only a little. But anything to give us a better chance.

Throw your heart into it, and throw yourself forward.

AI Thievery and the End of Humanity by Ing

AI technology came seemingly out of nowhere just a hot minute ago, and suddenly it’s everywhere—and it seems like it’s either the end of the world or a dawning utopia depending on who you listen to.

A family member sent me this article the other day, and it got me thinking about how people on both sides of the AI debate are getting it wrong. And also at least a little bit right. Perspective: My books were used without permission to train AI models. What now? [URL: https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2025/05/03/ai-engines-used-my-books-without-permission/%5D

As the title suggests, the author is not a fan. And for good reason.

It’s a simple fact that that at least some of the organizations that are making and training AI models didn’t ask permission to use any of the material they trained their large language models on. Most of it, they arguably didn’t have to. It was on the internet because it was intended for public consumption.

However, some portion of it WASN’T intended for free public consumption. People pirated books written by the author of the article above (along with many others), and the LLMs scraped the contents of entire pirated archives along with everything else. Which means they illegally used vast amounts of material. But because digital materials and copyright are somewhat abstract and the brobdingagian scale of the theft boggles the mind, very few people can be made to care.

What should be done?

The organizations that trained AI models on that material need to make it right by paying royalties and/or licensing fees for what they illegally copied. And if they won’t voluntarily make it right by paying royalties and licensing fees for what they illegally copied, then they should pay steep penalties on top of it.

How to do it, I don’t know. But the burden should be on them, not their victims. And it should hurt. If it puts some of the companies developing AI or even all of them out of business, well, tough titties. I don’t think it will, but if it does, fine. They should’ve thought about the consequences before they stole all that stuff. 

But the people who have been injured here, and AI opponents in general, aren’t helping themselves by framing its emergence as some kind of technopocalypse. They’re throwing around phrases like ”making people stupid and making truth irrelevant” and talking about limits and guardrails, but the horse isn’t even on the track. The horse has left the barn, the chickens have flown the coop, and neither protest nor wishful thinking will reverse the event. AI is not going away.

You could bankrupt every company that’s currently working on it, and somebody else would still pick it up and start it up again, because it’s VALUABLE. People can make money off it. Big businesses can make big money. Smaller businesses can make smaller money. All sorts of individuals and organizations all over the place can can make their lives easier and do more work with less time and effort. Or, yes, “create” some cool thing despite having zero talent and no desire to develop the craft (see: me, visual art).

It’s unfortunate that the writer of the article I linked above highlights a legitimate problem—thievery on a grand scale—and then descends into hysteria. (Calling it AI doesn’t help. Artificial it is, intelligent it ain’t. Large language models—LLMs—are just a mass-marketable form of machine learning, which is a concept that has been in use for a long time.) This new technology isn’t going to destroy culture itself or the human mind any more than the printing press, computers, the internet, or the Industrial Revolution could. 

But those things did irreversibly alter our cultures and way we interact with the world. And this technology is developing with far greater speed.

It reminds me of something broadcast news legend Edward R. Murrow said back in the 1960s, when people were starting to wonder what the recent advent of computers would do to society: “The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say it.”

LLMs (I hate calling it AI) are a heck of a technology, in that they actually CAN, to some extent, remove the old problem what to say and how to say it…but unless they evolve into something else entirely, they can’t absolve you of the need to consider whether you SHOULD say it. The “oldest problem in the relations between human beings” will remain, and that’s the gap of understanding.

The problems inherent in figuring out what you believe and who and what you can trust are about to be compounded at speed. Again.

So, as our poor wronged author asks above, what now?

Well, we do need to impose consequences for the thievery that occurred during LLM development. That’s a Herculean task by itself, and I have no ideas on how it ought to be accomplished, but I don’t think fearmongering is going to make it any easier.

And if you’re worried about where this technology is going to take us, so am I.

We should probably all be at least a little bit worried about that. If you’re not uneasy about some of the uses people will try to put it to—especially the ones in various governments, with their talk of “guardrails” and “misinformation”—you’re not paying attention. (If you haven’t yet, check out what Marc Andreesen told Ross Douthat after the 2024 election, especially the part about what the Biden junta wanted to do with the AI industry: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/17/opinion/marc-andreessen-trump-silicon-valley.html.)

As for the worry about AI taking away people’s jobs, it probably will take some jobs from some people. New technologies tend to do that. The company I work for uses machines to do all the soldering humans once did, almost all of the placement of parts on printed circuit boards, and almost all of the previously tedious, painstaking, and error-prone inspection processes. Yet humans still have jobs in those factories—jobs that are a lot more humane than factory work used to be. New technologies tend to do that, too. (I once was a human doing soldering by hand on a production line, and man, am I ever glad we’ve got robots to do it now.) 

I used to scoff at the possibility of AI taking my job (I played with some early versions of ChatGPT in 2020, and they were pathetic), but now it looks like there might be a real chance that it could. If not the entire job, at least the part of it I enjoy the most, which is putting words together to convey valuable information to other people. 

It can’t yet. But a lot of people want it to. Earlier this year, I got a freelance writing gig from a university I used to work for because they tried to have ChatGPT do a particular writing job last year—and they got slop. Grammatically correct, but slop. They used it, but they also realized the product needed human discernment and creativity, so this year they ponied up the money to pay a human. But what if next year’s budget doesn’t have the money? What if they try AI again and the result is actually good enough?

My day job may be resistant to takeover, as it requires both specific technical knowledge (not very much, but some) and creativity (arguably not a lot, but some). But it’s not out of the question that as AI models improve, they might be capable of synthesizing technical information, a campaign guide, and the appropriate vocabulary well enough to get an effective marketing message across. And there’s 90% of my job, lost to automation. I wouldn’t like it, but I really couldn’t blame anyone for making that decision.

So, again…what now?

For now, I’m approaching this the way I approach most innovations: cautiously. I have less than zero trust in Big Tech (they’ve earned it), so I’m shunning all the AI “enhancements” to my consumer products, which have always worked perfectly well without it. (Are there any that work better with it? I seriously doubt it.) And I’m slowly and somewhat reluctantly experimenting with ways LLMs can save me time or make certain things easier—mostly at work, where there are IT and security professionals who have approved certain apps and where I stand to gain or lose the most monetarily by knowing (or not knowing) what the technology can do. And where, if a certain Big Tech behemoth screws anybody over for its own profit, it’s not me personally. 

I might end up crafting prompts and editing a machine’s output for a living, which would make me feel sad, but I guess I could deal. I was a kick-ass copy editor in my day and I still have some skills that a computer can’t develop. Yet.

In conclusion, while the advent of AI and LLMs presents significant ethical and practical challenges, it is crucial to approach these developments with a balanced perspective. The unauthorized use of copyrighted materials for training AI models is a serious issue that demands accountability and restitution. However, framing AI as an existential threat to humanity may hinder constructive dialogue and solutions. Instead, we should focus on implementing robust regulations and ethical standards to ensure fair use and protect intellectual property. As AI continues to evolve, it is essential to remain vigilant and adaptive, leveraging its benefits while mitigating its risks. Ultimately, the future of AI will depend on our collective ability to navigate its complexities with wisdom and foresight.

(Final note and disclosure: I fed the rest of this essay to Copilot and told it to write a conclusion for me. Haha! Never let it be said that I can’t adapt! Also, “implementing robust regulations”? Pshaw! I hope you realized that wasn’t me talking. It just now occurred to me that I might’ve got better results by telling Copilot to emulate my writing style (could it? I dunno), but maybe its best that I didn’t. Don’t want to give it any ideas about usurping my role as the thinker in this relationship.)

*This is Sarah. Unfortunately my work too was pirated to train LLMs. Am I on the warpath about it? No. Am I pissed? Yes. Because the LLMs belonged to small, scrappy companies like Meta and such. So, why am I not on the warpath? Well, because humans get my books to train new writers all the time. So they owe me the price… of a copy. I’m pissed because it’s paltry of them to balk me of $4.99. But it’s not like it would change my life. Eh. – SAH.*

Do I HAVE to put up my “AI is going to destroy the novel market” decorations already? I still have my “AI is going to ruin science decorations” up.

Some X-brainiac last week — same brainiac who keeps banging the little drum for “you’re all contributing to the death of culture by not paying enough to artists” (Buyers and sellers, how does that work, even?) — said if a writer used AI for covers, obviously he/she was also using it for novels and “their entire catalogue is suspect.”

Head. Desk. Repeat. See that dent? That’s how many times head went against desk.

This is the sort of argument that’s so wrong it would need to be several miles towards “right” to be merely “Wrong.”

First, notice novel writers using AI for covers. Most of us — with a few notable exceptions, and those people do their own covers — are not artists. Even those like me who took 3 years of art, are not at the level where drawing a cover from scratch is feasible time-wise. I could do it, but it would take me almost as long to do as to write the novel. It’s simply not feasible, from a business point of view.

Second, again always with a few exceptions who are artists and writers and who go extra on the covers, while covers can be works of art, they don’t NEED to be. While people pay attention to covers, they treat it more as a billboard for advertising the novel. The cover in itself doesn’t need to be achingly beautiful or filled with soul searching, or whatever. Sure, if it is, it’s to the good, but if it’s the most beautiful, artistic cover you’ve ever seen and doesn’t signal genre, subgenre and pacing of novel correctly? It fails as a cover.

Would most of us still pay top dollar for a great artist if we could afford it? We definitely would. But the problem is even I — who earn semi-decently — can’t afford that.

Also, the artists I can afford will likely use AI to the same extent I do. Keep in mind every single cover takes at least three and sometimes as many as 10 pieces of render “stitched together” and then having the lighting, etc. fixed, and often the whole is overpainted. it’s just that takes a week, not the year it would take me to paint a cover.

Anyway, does this mean that my novels are “suspicious”. (We’ll leave for later a friend’s opinion that AI is going to overtake the indie market in a tsunami of crap.) Meanwhile let’s discuss my catalogue, most of which has been out for over 10 years.

First let’s get something out of the way: My husband says they advertise AI that can “write novels.” This might be true. The AI might even be able to write novels, who knows. What it doesn’t do, if the state of the art I see in Jane Austen fanfic is accurate, is write DECENT novels. It can’t follow a line of experience and emotion. Someone forgives someone else, then starts looking for an apology AGAIN over and over and over. The best thing about those novels are the reviews.

But let’s suppose some LLM can write a coherent, enjoyable novel? Does this mean I’m going to use it to write my novels?

Why on EARTH would I? I want to write my novels. I mean, I came here to write novels and chew gum, and I’m all out of gum.

No, seriously. The best instance of AI written novels would still need extensive edits. That’s the part I don’t like to do. It would be like when I paid someone to watch my kids so I could clean the house. Completely the wrong way around.

However, let’s suppose AI can write a novel, and a decent passable novel.

So, what is the problem? There are more novels to read, right?

Okay, I can hear the Reeing from here. Please, keep it down to a dull roar.

Objection number one: But the stories will be soulless, and people will be churning them out a million an hour. Right?

Maybe. But if they are soulless, and — let’s face it, Artificial Intelligence is just a Large Language Model — they do tend to be prejudiced towards a certain uniformity and non-originality, then why are you bothered that people will churn them out by the hundreds? There might be some problems with search, mind, but people will rapidly learn to route around AI novels. In JAFF reading the first couple of pages will do. Or the comments. (Oh, the comments.)

Look, there are tons of soulless novels being written by alleged humans. They dot every i and cross every t of the “thing to say” and “the in thing”. They don’t seem to be doing great, honestly, judging by the ever diminishing print runs.

You can’t simultaneously say that AI written novels will be very bad, and that they will steal all our jobs.

Making a lot of money as a writer is never a big chance. But if you miss it, it’s not likely to be because of AI.

Maybe in the future AI will write with the verve and passion of a Dumas and challenging ideas of Heinlein, but — looks meaningfully at midjourney, which is the best of the lot imho — it won’t be the near future. And I suspect it will have as much trouble with emotions as with hands. (For the same reason. Most artists/writers have problems with that area, too.)

Until then, it can write beginner novels, or highly formulaic novels. With a ton of editing. Novelists will be fine. We compete with better every day from Eastern European authors who also seem to churn them out by the dozen.

In fact, what my friend was complaining about with indie being overwhelmed by a tsunami of AI is the same old argument as the tsunami of crap.

Was there a tsunami of crap published. Well, kind of. Except most people realize it’s still a lot of work, even just getting a cover on it and publishing it. But up front there were a million deep-trunk novels published, and they were wretched. (Around 2012 Dan used to do dramatic readings of the worst he found. My favorite was the one that explained what a robot was. And an alien. And…. Like he’d just invented science fiction or something.)

But again, those didn’t overwhelm anything. They didn’t find readers, and sank without a trace. When a book has one review, and it’s one star…. well. Again we’ll be fine.

Is anyone still reeing? Oh, yeah, that guy in the back is reeing about plagiarism. To him I’ll say “be your age.”

Plagiarism has a very exact definition, and LLMs are not engaging in it. (Unlike ivy league college presidents.)

Look, there are a couple of people out there who have bestselling novels taking the general idea of one of mine. In one case, it’s probably coincidence, in the other we shared an agent, and it probably came up in a talk with her, particularly since I refused to do what he wanted with the book.

So, I can sue and take all her money, right?

No. When you hear of J. K. Rowling paying someone 100k because this person also had a character named Harry Potter and had sent her the manuscript, it’s not plagiarism. it’s someone very rich paying a nuisance to go away.

Ideas aren’t copyrightable. Character names aren’t copyrightable. Heck, even plot lines aren’t copyrightable.

Do you know what plagiarism is? Taking large CHUNKS OF TEXT. The LLMs don’t do that, or not in any provable way. I mean, some of the sentences are banal and everyone uses them, but a sentence of two ALSO doesn’t rise to the level of plagiarism.

So no. The LLMs are not committing plagiarism.

They are in fact taking plot lines and ideas, but you can rest easy. Because having seen people run brainstorming experiments, nine out of ten of the ideas they give you are “movie of the week” or a recent tv-series.

You have nothing to worry about.

And by you I mean YOU. You who are actually trying to write what you love in the best way you can. YOU have nothing to worry about.

The precious mavens of churned out politically correct prose? My husband gives me to understand they could be replaced to advantage by a small perl script, no AI needed.

But that’s not your concern. Your concern is your novels.

No artist who is highly original, no writer who is highly original, probably no musician who is highly original needs to worry.

Except with competing with themselves. They do need to worry about that. And it will be a b*tch.

AI? I’m mildly worried about people assuming/running on the idea it is actually sentient. But only mildly.

Yes, they want to entrust medical diagnostics to AI. You know guys, highly distracted, extremely overworked doctor vs. AI. It’s going to be gruesome either way, and sometimes the AI gets the hands right. By a miracle!

AI is in fact a fad. Oh, not the real technology. That’s still buggy as all get out, and will need to have the bugs shaken out. And will. And it is very promising.

But the things/ideas/capabilities people attribute to AI? That’s a fad.

Remember the Radio Flyer? Little red wagon for kids. Nothing Radio about it. But Radio was the new, new thing. So everyone did it. There was also a time when Atomic as the in things and everything was atomic.

AI is like that now. Everything is “AI” even when it isn’t.

So, chill. Let things shake out. Neither Radio nor Atomic finished us off. And this won’t either.

All I want (for Christmas) is for King Harv to put out the Radio Atomic AI coffee! I’ll not only buy a few lbs. I’ll buy mugs and T-shirts with the description!

Now forget AI and go do what you do. And do it well. AI will hold no fears for you.

This is a review of King Harv’s Bengal Tiger High Caffeine coffee.

*Full disclosure: King Harv’s Imperial coffees sends me coffee now and then. They don’t require (or even hint) I should review them in return. My guess is they send them to e in hopes it will fuel writing.

I, on the other hand, feel obliged to do a review of my favorites in hopes they’ll roast some more excellent coffee. – SAH*

It is a little known fact that when William Blake penned:

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forest of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Despite the odd spelling, he was talking about King Harv’s Bengal Tiger coffee. You see, he’d built a time machine in a fit of romantic inspiration, and managed to travel in time to acquire King Harv’s Bengal Tiger. However, on his return the machine broke.

Since he’s not built it according to rational principles but only poetic inspiration, he could not build it again.

Instead, he was forced to remember it only, through long nights when he’d rather be working, but found himself asleep.

Ahem……

Come with me, through these lovely spring woods. We’ll hike until we come to a log cabin. You can smell that inside it someone is baking bread, but you’re not ready to face people. Instead, you sit down on a fallen log and open your bag of homemade trail mix, heavy on premium dark chocolate, fresh toasted pecans and Brazil nuts, and chunks of date and fig.

This is the sense of King Harv’s Bengal coffee, that mix of tastes and smells, and the sense of coming home, tired after a long walk, only to be revived by the marvelous extra jolt of caffeine.

It has scents of chocolate and oak, with notes of date and fig.

If you drink it neat, you’ll experience early intense notes of fresh brown bread and damp weathered wood, growing in intensity in the aftertaste. There’s also faint nut flavor most similar to Brazil nut and a faint note of tawny port, which may be the dried fruit and wood notes syncretizing.

Now add a little bit of cream. Cream only. Chocolate is now very prominent in the front, presenting not unlike a really high quality chocolate ice cream, giving way gradually to the woodier notes,and getting less sweet and more earthy as it evolves. Late arriving there’s a hint of red wine but still very buried in this preparation.

Now let’s try whole milk only. Aged wood– like the scent of walking into an old pub or a building with a lot of exposed wood beams. Then the nutty flavor distinguishes itself more as being similar to Brazil nut and blends into the prevailing wood flavor. What was probably the bread character now presents more like rich earth, with a faint scent of leaf mold and petrichor like the scent after a rain.

Sugar only makes the early flavor very reminiscent of aged wood. The late evolution briefly resolves into dried fruit, then settles back into aged wood. There is also s very, very faint floral note discernible in the background throughout the evolution.

Milk and sugar is probably the preparation that best balances the flavors of chocolate, aged fruit, and wood in my opinion, presenting as discrete notes in that order. The buried floral note was most prominent in this preparation for me, by which I mean it went from a 1/10 intensity to a 2/10.

With cream and sugar, depending on how heavily you lean into it it really reinforces the impression of chocolate ice cream. The wood flavor is still present but now the tanins are getting stepped on a little by the sugar, even if you use a light hand and take it JUST past the point where it’s perceptibly sweet as I did.

As expected the sugar brings the fruit notes more to the fore, with a flavor resembling sherry or another dessert wine presenting more prominently and earlier in the flavor profile. That said, at first blush I took this as part of the chocolate note, as the two blend into each other.

Iced, which is not my normal preparation, but since we’re getting towards summer and some people on the discord group were going on and on (and on) about iced coffee: iced brings out the wood flavor more intensely than any other preparation– really the only one of these where it presented as outright smoky. So if that’s your jam, go for it.

Favorite preparation: milk and sugar, but I’m biased as that’s my usual. However, I think it’s the preparation that shows off the widest range of flavors at once and rounds off the edges of the earthy flavors here without erasing them. Second favorite is a tie between cream only and milk only. The cream really gives a remarkably strong chocolate flavor. Milk only gives a somewhat more muted wood impression in comparison but I think it gives the best view into the earthy flavors and lets you resolve and appreciate their nuance best without any one becoming overpowering.

Fans of espresso and very dark coffee will want to try it on ice.

And while trying it, pity poor William Blake, stranded in his time, without another chance at the wonderful richness — and invaluable caffeine content — of King Harv’s Bengal Tiger.

Toast him with a cup as you go on your way.

Book Promo

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH

*Sorry, I was kidnapped by an autistic obsession with learning to use midjourney editing and it wouldn’t let me go. So this is unholy late, and tomorrow’s post will be late too. Sigh. I hate it when my brain does this. – SAH*

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Passing of the Age

Once, gods and Titans went to war because humanity existed and the Titans…didn’t like that. Will, the blacksmith’s apprentice, was born long after the war’s bitter, destructive, last gasp. It left the land scarred, leaving behind the Wastes, a massive pit in the landscape, dug by poisoned magic. The old world was lost in the ashes, and survivors were left with so little that any who didn’t pull their weight (or had something someone powerful wanted) were exiled to starve in the Wastes.

Just. Like. Will.

Cast out to the Wastes because his father remarried and his stepmother had wanted her children to inherit, he turned to his master, the smith. The smith, who had held Will back to keep using his labor for free, refused to go against the rest of the village, angry though he was to lose Will’s labor. In lieu of the honestly-earned status of journeyman that would have protected Will from exile, his master gave him a bag of grave goods: a hammer (but not a good one), tongs (that were rusting to pieces), and a file (more than half worn out). And two small coins to pay the ferryman when he reached the river dividing life from death.

Will entered the wastes with the clothes on his back, inadequate grave goods, and determination to live through it, in spite of his village. And a mission given him by the Land, and by the god of the wild places, to take the knife he made with his grave goods to the very center of the Wastes. There, he will find his destiny.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: A Fox in the Henhouse (Timelines Universe Book 2)

Delaney Wolff Fox is a spy. A cute spy. A deadly spy.

A spy you want at your back when stuff gets real.

From a palatial office in Johannesburg, to a fancy whisky bar in Sydney, Australia, to a beautiful private beach in southwest Florida, to the great and wild city of New Orleans, Captain Delaney Fox, United States Space Force Marines (Intelligence Division) finds herself beset by assassins at every turn, while first saving an alien government’s valuable artifact from the South African cartel that’s stolen it, and then being assigned to guard said artifact while it completes a world tour, on loan from that same alien government.

But like the proverbial fox in the proverbial henhouse, you can count on Delaney to complete the mission and come out with the prize, intact and in hand – even if the “farmer” isn’t all that keen about her doing so.

FROM M. D. BONCHER: Dreams Within Dreams (Tales From the Dream Nebula Book 1)

Enter a world with no stars… no sun… no moon… no Earth. Only “the Dream”…

“An imaginative, action-packed tale that reads like a vision. If you like a bit of cyberthriller in your sci-fi… you’ll enjoy this one.”

– Kerry Nietz. Award winning author of “The Dark Trench Saga” & “Amish Vampires From Outer Space”

Winston Harper is a sky trucker down on his luck. Years of numbing his past trauma has whittled away his reputation. Blacklisted and back to the wall, Winston’s only hope of survival is a no-questions-asked contract offering pay high enough to make him forget his own name. What could possibly go wrong? When the client changes the deal and imperial security crashes the party, he’s on the run caught between the empire and a rebellion. Hauling ten containers of contraband cargo, and guided by a mysterious femme fatale who holds all the cards, death may be the better way out…

Set in a post-apocalyptic future where the lines between technology and biology have become blurred, humanity survives on the remains of the solar system scattered about in a sky of endless twilight, ruled by an alien entity. Follow Winston Harper as he becomes entangled in the struggle against the cosmic empire and potentially, the secrets of humanity’s lost past… and perhaps its future?

“Dreams Within Dreams” is the first novel in a rollicking retro-futuristic Sci-Fi serial merging cyberpunk and old school pulp adventure with a touch of neo-noir intrigue. It’s “Flash Gordon” meets “Smokey and the Bandit” meets “The Matrix” meets “Talespin”.

FROM STEVE WHAN: The Time Between Towers: A Diaolou Mystery

Four friends. One impossible tower. A challenge that will test everything they know—and everything they are.

When Maya, Liam, Zara, and Dylan stumble upon a mysterious structure deep in a Maple Ridge forest, they don’t know that they’re about to enter the challenge of a lifetime. The daiolou—an impossible blend of ancient Chinese architecture and futuristic engineering—isn’t just a building. It’s a living puzzle that will push them to their limits.

Trapped inside a structure that seems to change with every step, the friends must use their unique skills to survive. Maya’s photography. Liam’s engineering prowess. Zara’s mathematical genius. Dylan’s encyclopedic knowledge. Each room presents a new challenge that demands their best—and threatens to expose their deepest fears.

As the puzzles grow more complex and the stakes rise, they’ll discover that the greatest challenge isn’t solving the tower’s mysteries—it’s trusting each other when everything seems designed to tear them apart. Some challenges can’t be solved alone. Some prizes aren’t what they seem.

FROM DECLAN FINN: Wyverns Never Die (Honeymoon from Hell Book 3)

THE SEQUEL TO THE DRAGON AWARD NOMINATED “LOVE AT FIRST BITE” CONTINUES!

Marco and Amanda have been hounded from Chicago to San Francisco by all the forces of Hell. Surely, Wyvern Con science fiction and fantasy convention in Atlanta would be safe? Who would dare attack a convention the size of a small city?

Everyone.

Before the newlyweds even arrive, they are nearly killed by Chinese assassins. The local vampire nest has turned on them. Cyber-zombies have been unleashed on the streets.

Somebody has been playing a game with Marco and Amanda. But this is one honeymoon couple that like to play chess. And now, it’s time for their gambit to commence.

FROM ANNA FERREIRA: The Root of All Evil

When murder comes to Stockton, it brings long-buried secrets in its wake…

Kate Bereton leads a busy but unexciting life as the clergyman’s only daughter in a small Dorsetshire village. She’s grateful for the break in routine heralded by the arrival of her stepmother’s latest guests, but when Kate discovers a dead body in the parsonage one morning, she finds herself in much more danger than she could have ever anticipated. Terrified and desperate, she turns to the local magistrate for help. Mr. Reddington is eager to aid his dear friend Miss Bereton, but can they discover the murderer before it’s too late, and the secrets of the past are forgotten forever?

With a dash of romance and a generous helping of mystery, The Root of All Evil is a charming whodunit that will delight fans of Jane Austen and Agatha Christie alike.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: A Few Good Men

Ladies and Gentlemen, we declare the revolution!

He spent 14 years in solitary. Now he’ll ignite a revolution.
Born a prince among Earth’s fifty tyrants, Lucius Keeva emerges from imprisonment with a fractured mind and a deadly purpose. When assassins hunt him, fate delivers him to the USAians—secret keepers of America’s forgotten beliefs.

For 500 years, this underground faith has preserved the Constitution while awaiting their prophesied leader. In Luce’s madness, they recognize their messiah.

Now the son of tyranny becomes liberty’s champion. As the USAians rise from the shadows, their weapons of war finally unleashed, a broken mind and a fallen prince prove the perfect weapon against an unbreakable regime.

One madman. One ancient faith. One last chance to restore the republic from legend.

A FEW GOOD MEN —where belief becomes the ultimate revolutionary tactic.

AND FROM THE NON-LITERARY HUNS

MURPHIC INDUSTRIES: Miniatures! Random decorations! Widgets!

Morrigan’s Mercantile! Shiny, Sharp, and Stylish…

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: PIPE

What is art, a man said and washed his hands….

Okay, fine, he said “what is the truth” or at least that’s an interpretation. What actually happened was a guy was asked “What is art” and said “I’ll be d*mned if I can tell you, but I know it when I see it.”

This has been made fun of by Academics, Intellectuals and other people who are formally wedded to just so stories and theory, but in the end it is the only way to identify art. Humans know art when they see it. Or hear it. Or read it. Perhaps “know it when they experience it.”

More importantly, though I — and most people — know it when we don’t see it.

First let’s start with Sarah’s beg #1: I don’t know if “art” exists anymore than I know if “talent” exists (beg #2.)

I know craft exists and I know work exists. Whether some works move me to tears because the artist was exceptionally talented and was creating art, or because the artist spent enough years practicing that he had sublime ability to craft the piece in just such a way is not only above my pay grade. It’s so far above my pay grade it’s left Earth’s near-orbit and is floating in space.

Whether it’s close-to-perfect craft or the kiss of the gods, though, I do know art when I experience it. See that “moved to tears” thing. Now, it’s not always tears, of course.

I would classify art as “remotely causing people to experience emotions by use of symbols.” Some is better than other, but all art causes an emotional response in the person experiencing it. The emotional response can be anything, but it is an emotional response. Note, the emotional response has to be what the artist intended, because a lot of “non art” in my experience causes disgust or horror or a desire to hit the person who created it with a really large shoe.

(There is a spicy and largely mentally handicapped argument that writers who use AI to do covers will also use it for their novels on Twitter. We’ll get to that another day next week. Let’s just say it makes as much sense as “artists who use AI to generate descriptions are also using it to paint for them.” — which is to say none whatsoever. Though the second is more possible in certain sub-fields. Abide in patience. It’s a side spur, and I’ll go trundling down it next week.)

An I know art when I don’t see it. Take for instance Big Tish:

The only emotions I can manage for that absurdly banal display is “Why is it taking up space?” and “Did my tax dollars finance that?” And also “Good Lord, couldn’t she have put on a dress, if she was going to be on display?”

Look, that ridiculous nonsense has set off an argument where some artists somehow have come up with the absurd conclusion the decline of art is because we don’t pay artists enough.

This is absurd, because no one is obligated to pay for anything. And people pay, willingly enough, for things they like.

That these things — Thomas Kincaid comes to mind — immediately get declared “non art” is not anyone’s fault but the critics establishment.

That some people choose to consider art only what the critics establishment says it is is I think an effect of schooling. “What is art?” “What teach says it is!”

The problem is that “teach” aka critics and professors for the last 100 years have been at war with popular taste and trying to distinguish themselves from it as a primary mission.

This has led to the uglification of public spaces and the creation of either incomprehensible or horrific “art” that evoke ONLY a sense of disgust and annoyance from the public… who of course refuse to pay for it.

This in turn lead the government to step in, with further enshitification of what is considered art.

In literature they now do Marxist Theory to prove that things no sane person would buy for sheer enjoyment or love are important and must be read and inflicted on school children, while beloved books that make their author rich must be “trash.”

This is all insanity. The tax-financed and NGO financed horrors aren’t art. They’re very expensive White Elephants that our inheritors will try to hide or turn to rubble, because this illusion of importance can only be supported by massive infusions of money coming from a large, all pervasive and out of control state. (Which no one can afford.)

Art? Art is fine and will continue being paid for. Because it evokes strong feelings. Be they joy or fear, or even just “It makes me feel funny, and I like it.”

Art is ludic enjoyment. And the public will always pinch money from their six packs to pay for what they enjoy.

And that’s what will survive.

Excuse me, I must make a point. It might not be the most popular point in the world, but it is a point that must be done.

A lot of you seem to be running with “Well, even if Soviet propaganda made us unreasonably scared of nuclear war, this is to the good because it prevented a nuclear war.”

Um…. it sure did. Or at least it prevented us from doing a first strike… Which honestly given the presidents we had those years was probably not very likely.

On the other hand, it also prevented us from using conventional warfare for real, or pretty much do anything except oppose Soviet expansionism and adventurism — which was essential to their survival since socialism is always parasitic and extreme examples, the kind we call communism are parasitic and destructive, meaning the only way to avoid complete starvation is to devour other countries — in a token way, with our troops hemmed in by ridiculous ROE and not allowed to win. Though even then, most of the time, unless the thing was in our face, we just sent the Soviets sharp worded letters. And leftist presidents? They didn’t even do that.

While we were avoiding very hard offending the Soviets because after all they had the same arsenal we did or more, and they were on an hair trigger and if we said boo, they’d eliminate us.

But that’s okay, right? Because we didn’t send a first strike.

Look, this is nonsense. It’s fossilized “nukes will kill da urth” shite in the back of your brains.

Peace is lovely. War is always awful. But sometimes war is needed. Period. And peace is sometimes too costly.

Arguably the “cold” part of the cold war, that counterfeit peace, cost a lot of people all over the world. It cost the deaths of the “little wars”, the destruction of economies, wealth and ability to create and invent all over the world. It caused the deaths of American service men fighting with both legs in a sack of ROE. It cost us our overculture and academic integrity being infiltrated and corrupted by the soviets, because of course the intellectuals were so scared of the superior Soviet might (and just a little turned on, as they always are by despots) and hoping they’d been eaten last. It might in fact have cost us our country. I don’t think it will, because we’re still fighting. But except for a few lucky breaks, it could have, plunging the whole world in a morass of civilization (and population) destroying “socialism” for a while.

Is that worth it? Because we avoided the big bad nukes (largely non existent on the Soviet side. Oh, they had some, but nowhere near parity, and for a while at the beginning, they in fact had almost none) and deaths from hot war?

I don’t know. I don’t know and neither do you. And don’t go pretending you do because you can paint mind-pictures of little girls dying in nuclear explosions.

Do you know how many graves were filled all over the world by the Soviet expansionism that we allowed? I heartily advise you to read a history of Cuba since the Castros. I advise you to read the black book of communism. I don’t know if any books have been written about what the Soviets and their Cuban mercenaries did in Africa. What I know are mostly first person, eye witness accounts, but if you distill the worst of The Black Book Of Communism, then steep it in the juice of nightmares you’ll be there.

So, would it have been better if we’d realized how much stronger than the Soviets we were and had put an end to their blustery larceny and mass murder? Maybe. Or maybe, as I suggested on Monday’s post if our more “progressive” leftist presidents had realized they had the ability to remake the world to their crazier dreams, we might be in a worse position.

My husband likes to believe we’re living in the best of all possible worlds. And maybe we are. Maybe.

But here’s the thing: we don’t know. We can’t now. Even now, a lot of our thinking and still a lot of our war theory, a lot of our thought, a lot of our calculations of war and peace are polluted by the propaganda pounded into our heads.

It’s entirely possible that really, refraining from pounding the Soviet horror and letting it prance all over the world was the best result of a bad situation. Or possibly it could have been better and fewer people might have died.

But we have no way of knowing. And it’s irrational and stupid to pretend we do.

Look, to give a more recent example: perhaps locking down was the best thing that could have been done with COVID. Oh, not because the virus was terrible, but because the propaganda machine of the dems might have managed to start a civil war to set themselves up to steal the election. Maybe this is the best of all possible worlds, and it will presently rain ice-cream from a clear blue sky.

But the events happened because of massive propaganda. Not only didn’t we make the decision clear-eyed, we still don’t know what happened. And we might never know. And this burns me beyond what I can reasonably explain.

It is the same thing with the lies and pervasive propaganda by the Soviets. It caused us to do things in a way we might not even have considered if we knew the truth.

Is the result still the best?

I don’t know and neither do you.

This upsets me terribly, but not as much as people pretending that it was all worth it.

As though they could know.

Newspeak Nations: How Language Erases Struggles – by Charlie Martin

I’ve been re-reading George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” again, something I recommend anyone interested in politics or writing should do regularly. Here’s a bit that struck me today:

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better.

Orwell, like Ayn Rand, wasn’t so much inventing a fictional world as he was fictionalizing the world he knew, enhancing it to make a point. To clarify it, Orwell wrote in the Appendix to 1984:

“The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible,…”

The thing is, we’re not dealing with Newspeak, at least in detail. Instead we are seeing people on both sides parroting phrases they’ve heard elsewhere in place of thinking about what they mean.

My maternal grandfather Bill McClintock was born in the Choctaw Nation. Now, by definition, a nation is a group of people with a shared culture, history, and identity. There’s no question that the Choctaw Nation was and is a nation.

But when he was born there in 1895, the Choctaw Nation was part of Indian Territory, along with the Cherokee, the Chickasaw, and the others of the Five Civilized Tribes. The Indian Territory was part of, and under the authority of, the United States. Grandfather was born in the United States, not in some country — I don’t know, Choctawland maybe.

Through a succession of decisions made by the Great White Father, Indian Territory was broken up, opened to white settlement, and eventually became part of the state of Oklahoma.

Now, by definition, a country is a defined geographic area with an independent government, and borders.

There was no country of Choctawland because while it had more or less fixed boundaries, it was wholly contained in the United States, and while there was a tribal government, it was effectively subservient to the Federal government and not really independent or sovereign at all. (Oh, there was some face-saving assertion of sovereignty, but it was subject to regular intrusions, more in sorrow than in anger.)

This linguistic distinction—nation versus country—matters. I felt it sharply when someone claimed Israel was a country long before May 14, 1948. My objection isn’t about doubting Am Yisrael, the Jewish people, who have existed for millennia, nor do I question their deep historical and spiritual connection to Judea or their right to return to their ancestral homeland. My issue is the sloppy conflation of nation with country, which muddies history and erases struggle.

To unpack this, let’s look at the Balfour Declaration:

His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

The language there is instructive—hard to beat the imperial sleight-of-hand of a British diplomat—in that it says “a national home for the Jewish people.” The phrasing is cagey, leaving room for endless interpretation, but it was declaring that Jews should have the right to enter Palestine when it was removed from Ottoman control.

What it didn’t say was that the Jewish nation was to be a Jewish country. And, under the Balfour Declaration, it wasn’t. In effect, the British were asserting their intention to create a Jewish Reservation in Palestine, just as the United States created an Indian reservation following the Removal. You remember, the “Trail of Tears.”

There followed 30 years of struggle and a revolutionary movement to establish the country, the state of Israel in the territory once called Palestine since the Romans.

Insisting that Israel had been a country since time immemorial denies the struggle that made Israel a state, and denies the ability to think about that struggle.

When someone insists Israel was a country “since time immemorial,” they’re not just wrong—they’re wielding language to erase history, much like Newspeak aimed to erase thought.

Just as the Choctaw Nation’s struggle for autonomy was buried under U.S. promises of “sovereignty,” the Jewish nation’s (Am Yisrael’s) fight for a state was no foregone conclusion but a hard-won victory against imperial odds.

To conflate nation with country is to deny those struggles, to dull our ability to think about power and resistance. Clear language isn’t just pedantry—it’s a rebellion against the fog that hides truth.