Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
No bio...
User ID: 297
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2mo ago
I'd be surprised if you've literally never written up some paean about something, but do you genuinely not understand why zero out of three of the highest-profile examples coming up dry might point a direction?
Dude, my effortposts are mostly about Hugo drama. FYI Impassionata's latest alt came by the other day to scream at me (personally!) about letting fascists run amok, and obviously I'm a fascist simp as evidenced by my failure to blah blah blah. (You didn't get a chance to see it, which I guess you can therefore also dismiss as unevidenced and therefore non-credible.) Amazing how the one thing I've never been wrong about, all these years, is how both sides reliably accuse me of the same thing.
No, I say it's covering your ass because when someone tried to point out people who did, here, this didn't change the slightest bit of your position.
Fine, I should not have said "no one." But no, I don't think AaahtheFrench and Impassionata "count" in any serious way. But I will stipulate there is a lizardman's constant for any proposition here on the Motte.
Because they're a subreddit that was formed around and because of supposed adherence to this principle, and its importance to appeal to Blues. Because they are not selected from Blues in some way that should make them atypically willing to overlook violent rhetoric. Because I keep asking you for examples of better Blue groups and organizations, and you haven't presented any. Because I've been looking for a near-decade for better Blues groups and organizations, and haven't found any.
I think you are overstating the significance of TheSchism, but as for "better Blue groups and organizations," what are your criteria? Public disavowals of political violence? The Democratic Party (including Biden himself) quickly condemned the Butler shooting. So did most major newspapers and churches (including the woke ones). The GOP quickly accused Biden of inciting it. You mentioned the attempted Kavanaugh assassination (didn't make much of a splash because the guy got arrested before anything happened) and Tesla vandalism, and I'll say fine, how many Red organizations jump up to condemn attempted assassinations, vandalism, and arson directed against Blues? Some, but often with the same defectors or mealy-mouthing we see when reversed. Is your thesis, or is it not, that Blues basically have defected from a norm against political violence and Reds have not?
((and, indeed, instead find Blues that spontaneously turn out to not; both "my father-in-law jokes or 'jokes' about throwing molotov cocktails at houses with Trump signs" and "the minecraft mod guy I worked with is really proud of punching Brendan Eich and wishes he did it more" are not hypotheticals.))
Okay, they're assholes. I've got some anecdotes about Red family members and coworkers too.
Yes, and I'm trying to get an answer out of why you think it's wrong, and if those reasons are supported.
I think it's wrong because I do not think the majority of Americans, of whatever political stripe, support or endorse political violence. I do not think you or FC have made a convincing case that Blues have shown stronger defection tendencies than Reds on this. The most proximal comparison seems to be responses to Jan. 6 vs responses to BLM, which are usually argued on the basis of which one was worse rather than who was more consistent about condemning it. Blues, unsurprisingly, think Jan. 6 was much worse, Reds think BLM was much worse - personally I agree that the BLM riots and other follow-on effects were objectively much, much worse, but crucially, neither side thinks they are actually defending political violence because Reds mostly claim Jan. 6 was a nothingburger and Blues mostly claim the riots were "mostly peaceful protests". I think both sides are wrong, and in this case Blues are more wrong, but it still doesn't make the case you are arguing.
Did I miss something? Netstack said this was the first time Trace got modded, it was his last set of posts here, and I defended Trace in most of his last thread, where the facts demanded it. Was there something earlier?
No, this is totally my bad. I misremembered him telling you off when it was WhiningCoil. My apologies for that one. (I think I remember you getting into it with him on Twitter recently, which probably helped derail my memory.)
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2mo ago
gave you a list, of :
The week of July 13th 2023, write a significant post in the Butler shooting thread here, criticizing the progressive mainstreaming of eliminationist and violent rhetoric.
Okay, I didn't do that. Guilty as charged. I guess every time a leftist does something violent, I need to write an effortpost criticizing it or you won't believe I actually feel strongly that leftist violence is bad? I cannot promise I will live up to this expectation, but the next time there is such an incident, feel free to ask me what I think about it.
This week, resting your argument on whether something happened, instead of covering your ass with whether you remembered something happening.
So if I say "I do not remember this happening" that's "covering my ass" because I admit someone might have posted something I don't remember or might have missed?
I think you are being a little unreasonable here.
Or, if not that, at least not move the goalposts from "When that happens, the Blues are not going to want to tolerate it, and the Reds are not going to accept an abrupt demand for a return to order and decorum." and "Someone comes in here and says The Culture War has Gone Too Far, we have to get a handle on the violence guys, sure things happened in the past, but now it's serious, it's time to crack down on the hate and radicalism!" to "no one [here] thought it was no big deal or worse, something to be encouraged" (and now "I think political violence is bad all around and I think most sane (not-on-the-Internet) people agree.")
This is not moving the goalposts. This is my reason why I think the premise is wrong. You may disagree with it and you may think I have not argued the case sufficiently.
Are you ever going to explain why "harping on a dead subreddit" is wrong, or even engage with the matter, or is this yet another dodge?
I mean, it's not "wrong" it's just petty and mostly irrelevant. Why should I consider your critiques of the Schism to meaningfully generalize to all Blue tribers?
And you're still not engaging with FcFromSSC's literal words, instead of throwing the goalposts out a third story window.
You're very frustrating. I'm sure this conversation is very satisfying to you because you will get lots of upvotes and I will get lots of downvotes, but you're just being amazingly disingenuous here.
I already stated that that quote from FC, I disagree with. It's that simple. I think he's wrong. His thesis is that Blue tribers have tolerated and permitted political violence and thus normalized it (and destroyed the norm against it) and that when Red tribe turns the table and starts killing Blue tribe public figures and Blue tribe thinks this is bad, Red tribe will say "Little late, bub." (@FCfromSSC, am I mischaracterizing this?) I clearly stated I think this is wrong, and I also admitted, right in the post you are responding to, that I might be proven wrong and FC proven right. We'll probably find out sooner than I'd like, alas.
I answered the question and yet you keep writing elliptical verbose accusations of moving goalposts and not answering questions.
Very frustrating. When Trace blew up at you and told you off, we had to mod him, but man did I understand why he did it.
It's a gotcha that you constantly use this sort of phrasing to minimize bad behaviors by Blues
Probably half my (non-mod) posts here are criticizing the bad behavior of Blues. Whenever I want to get upvotes to balance the downvotes I get arguing with fan favorites like you, I can reliably agree with everyone else about the latest woke craziness.
(I am being ironic. I do not post things with consideration to whether I will get upvoted or downvoted.)
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2mo ago
Do you have some better example? Going to explain why it shouldn't matter? Or are we just supposed to pretend history started yesterday?
This is why I often find the barrage of accusations you throw at me disingenuous. I do not claim history started yesterday or claim things "shouldn't matter." You are as usual throwing a tossed salad of vaguely related insinuations - Trace therefore lack of comment on political assassinations therefore something about a years-ago prank against LoTT (which I joined in condemning at the time, btw)...
I disagree with @FCfromSCC that we are at a point where there is no longer a norm against political violence, that this norm was destroyed by Blues, or that Blues in general are pro-assassination. I believe him that he encounters Blues on the regular who say things like this. If you say you do, I will take your word for it. While I probably am in a much more Blue bubble than him, I don't encounter them that often but it does happen. I think political violence is bad all around and I think most sane (not-on-the-Internet) people agree.
Now it's possible I'm wrong. Some Happening may prove me wrong in a tragic and terrible way. But for now I stand by my position, and I am tired of you vaguely (or specifically) implying I'm a lying hypocrite every time I say "No, actually, we Blues do not think that way."
In the narrow sense, not try to hide a falsifiable and meaningful claim (did anyone here do X) behind a unfalsifiable and meaningless one (do you personally remember anyone here doing X). In the shallow one, it'd have been embarrassing for me if I'd had opened that link to the Butler shooting thread, and there was a big Amadan post talking about how this contextualized and heightened their concerns about political radicalization on the left, and I'd have liked to be embarrassed. I guess ChrisPratt tried? In the I'm-going-to-be-repetitive-and-obnoxious sense because dodging this matters here like every other time before, I'd have liked you to not moved the goalposts from FCFromSSC's "sure things happened in the past" to your own "no one thought it was no big deal or worse, something to be encouraged."
Non-sarcastically: I read this three times and I am still not quite sure what you are trying to say here. (Other than that I am a hypocrite, for Reasons. I was able to parse that much.)
I have pretty good reading comprehension and I don't know why it is that I always find your logic hard to follow. If you'd like to rephrase this to be more clear (even if you feel a need to insult my intelligence and integrity again), I'll try to respond.
I'm sorry that you had that sort of encounter, and I give my sympathies and empathy if you lost friends over it.
Doubt, but thanks.
I do, yes, think it would be stronger if you had something you could actually show, or a reference here contemporaneous to it happening instead of suddenly revealing under challenge, or if you didn't duck from 'it doesn't happen in real life' to 'a small number' where 'most' of your friends didn't agree, but again if it were just you I'd just be throwing a reference to a recent old argument.
Speaking of hard to parse, I don't know what "recent old" argument means; you could be talking about something I posted last week or something I posted back on reddit. But sigh fine, go ahead, what are you talking about?
More critically, I think it would have been stronger to start with that, than to start with "TikTok screamers" like this was only a problem in one website that doesn't really count.
This is another thing you do: I am sure you know I did not literally mean that zero Blues in the entire world have ever expressed sympathy with the would-be Trump assassin except on TikTok. So when I mention yes, I have encountered a few elsewhere, you act like this is a gotcha. Come on.
as an example of the sort of problem that actually contains what you and yours falsely accuse FCfromSSC or I of.
At one time I was worried about FC's growing accelerationism, but I have never considered him to be the same as Kulak. I don't really think you want to go Kulak either, you just seem pretty sympathetic to the argument that Blues have it coming.
No. I think both the guy promoting rando violence, and the guy who says he hates rando violence but only really can write about it when it's against his side are both bad, and I think it's actually a pretty serious indictment of society in general that they are getting anywhere near the coverage that they are, while anyone that really cares at best gets shoved into some third-rate Red Tribe rag.
While I agree with you that both advocating violence and refusing to condemn violence are bad, I think equivocating between Kulak and Trace is ridiculous. If Trace has failed to condemn the Trump assassination with sufficient vigor or you think he and Matt Yglesias and the SPLC only condemn rightist violence, fair enough, you can hold that against them, but I don't think it's remotely the same as actively advocating for violence. I don't think it's an indictment of society that a fairly milquetoast centrist like Trace has attracted a modest following and your feeling so seems to be purely based on your long-standing grudge. Kulak, a guy who, even if he's being 100% performative grifter, actively cheers school shootings and race war, is such an entirely different kettle of fish I cannot believe you're serious.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2mo ago
On one hand, anyone is a broad term. But they probably don't count.
I specifically said I don't remember, because I was pretty sure you'd post a link to something a banned troll said once.
Does the Schism care more about debating whether Trump is a fascist than whether shooting Trump is a bad thing? Yes, color me surprised. (And color me unsurprised your mad hate for Trace has you still harping on a nearly dead subreddit years later.)
The problem's going to come about the next time that Blue Tribers want Red Tribers to care about this sorta violence aimed at Blues, and everyone involved promises that they've got examples somewhere, just left them in their other pants. The Blue Tribers might well have genuinely opposed it at a deep level, personally. Just, you know, not enough to do anything, or even hear about it.
I don't know if this is a dig at me or at the Schism or Blues in general. What, specifically, would you like me to have done about the attempted Trump assassination? If I tell you that indeed, I have gotten into fights (and been blocked/defriended) for arguing with lefties about how fucked up it is to cheer on political violence directed against people we don't like, I assume you will not believe me because I'm not giving you links so you can enlarge your dossier on me. *
You and FC are claiming Blues basically don't care about political violence until it touches them, and then they'll cry real loud about it. I think every tribe cares a lot more about their own side being hurt and the degree to which they object to violence done to the other side depends on how opposed they are on principle to political violence and suppressing other people's rights.
The popularity of Trace on X gives me some hope, the popularity of Kulak gives me less. I suppose for you those values are reversed.
* Yes, this happened. A small number, and most of my leftie friends agreed with me it was fucked up. But I've seen it.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2mo ago
I can understand people who have principled objections to certain weapons or tactics, even if I disagree with them. But someone who only objects when it's one particular group that they really hate who uses "dirty tactics," I don't believe their objections are actually based on principle.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2mo ago
It shows a reckless disregard for the lives of civilians, for one.
How is it more reckless than air strikes?
I think killing diplomats in a country you're not at war with is much worse though. It undermines everyone's ability to make peace and is just vandalizing the commons of humanity.
It may be poor diplomacy, but given that for all practical purposes Iran is fighting a war with Israel, and their officers were in Syria to execute military operations directed at Israel, I don't consider any claims that Israel was "fighting dirty" to be ingenuous.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2mo ago
I have no doubt that many countries (including the US) are trying to do that and definitely would if given the opportunity.
I also don't see what is uniquely bad about the pager operation. The rhetoric about "they booby trapped office supplies!!!" seems very bad faith and crocodilian. Yes, they targeted a terrorist guerilla organization with supply chain infiltration. And?
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2mo ago
The last republican president assassinated was Lincoln in 1865.
No, Garfield and McKinley were both Republicans.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2mo ago
I'm confident we could game out how the conversation goes, right here and now. Sometime in the next five years, a popular Democrat gets topped by an assassin. Someone comes in here and says The Culture War has Gone Too Far, we have to get a handle on the violence guys, sure things happened in the past, but now it's serious, it's time to crack down on the hate and radicalism! How do you think that conversation goes?
I think you are being a little unfair here. I do not remember anyone on the Motte (even Blue folks like me) reacting to the attempted Trump assassination with anything other than disapproval. Maybe I didn't express enough horror and disapproval for you, but no one thought it was no big deal or worse, something to be encouraged. And by and large, I did not see that reaction even among my most leftie friends. Sure, TikTok was full of people screaming in dismay that the shooter missed, but do you think that actually represents mainstream Blue tribe thinking?
I think more Americans of all political stripes think trying to assassinate politicians (even politicians they dislike) is bad, than you are willing to credit.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2mo ago
A check of Trump's false claims about white genocide in South Africa
I really hate this. There was a time when even if they absolutely loathed the president, journalists would at least put a fig leaf of journalism over their hit pieces. Now this is journalism.
(1) There is a genocide of white farmers in South Africa.
Supporters of the theory point to murders of white farmers in remote rural parts of the country as proof of a politically orchestrated campaign of ethnic cleansing, rather than ordinary violent crime.
Yeah, okay, it probably doesn't meet the legally accepted definition of "genocide" (a particularness which doesn't seem to apply to Gaza).
The high court in Western Cape province ruled that claims of white genocide were "clearly imagined and not real" in a case earlier this year, forbidding a donation to a white supremacist group on those grounds.
Most of this article is "This isn't happening because the South African government accused of doing it says it isn't happening."
The government has a policy of attempting to redress inequalities in land ownership that are a legacy of apartheid and colonialism. But no land has been expropriated, and the government has instead tried to encourage white farmers to sell their land willingly.
Again, it's probably true that the government has not formally "expropriated" any land. Again, it's easy to point at what's happening in the West Bank - what the government is doing as a matter of official government policy and what's happening in an informal, extra-legal way is certainly examined in a much less sympathetic light.
Three South African courts have ruled against attempts to have it designated as hate speech, on the basis that it is a historical liberation chant, not a literal incitement to violence.
How many of these journalists believe in "microaggressions" and "words are violence"?
In a statement following the meeting between Trump and Ramaphosa, the EFF said it was "a song that expresses the desire to destroy the system of white minority control over the resources of South Africa" and that it is "a part of African Heritage".
Yes, I am sure those people chanting "Kill the Boer" were actually thinking "Destroy the system of white minority control over the resources of South Africa."
The video was made in September 2020 during a protest against farm murders after two people were killed on their farm a week earlier. The crosses did not mark actual graves. An organizer told South Africa's public broadcaster, SABC, at the time that the wooden crosses represented farmers who had been killed over the years.
Once again, his enemies take him literally but not seriously. Whether or not Trump actually believed those were literally burial sites, that wasn't the point of the crosses. They don't even try to debunk the fact that all these farmers have been killed, just say it's a lie because that's not where they were actually buried, so Trump is wrong.
Some land has been illegally occupied over the years, mostly by millions of desperate squatters with nowhere else to go, although some land seizures are politically motivated.
So, it's happening, but it's not politically motivated, except when it sometimes is.
The land is usually unused and there is no evidence the EFF orchestrated any land invasions.
"Usually." And they can't even say with a straight face that the EFF isn't behind it, just "no evidence they orchestrated any land invasions" - there's some weaseling in every word there.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2mo ago
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that we accept all your characterizations are accurate, can you give any examples of countries waging war in the modern era whom you would not consider to be "fighting dirty," using the same criteria by which you are judging Israel?
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2mo ago
Might be true, might not - one thing I am sure of after reading Caro's biography is that absolutely nothing LBJ said about himself could be taken at face value.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2mo ago
Supporting your point, LBJ was very much a non-combatant officer who did a minimal stint as an officer during World War II because he knew his political ambitions required it. His one encounter with enemy fire (he was on a plane that got shot at by Japanese) became embellished in his retellings until years later he was giving speeches about how he "fought in the jungles with our boys." And no one can deny that LBJ was an extraordinarily effective politician.
Undermining your point: LBJ was also a cocksman who cheated on his wife constantly. He might not have run through as many starlets and secretaries as JFK did, but he did flaunt mistresses in DC.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2mo ago
I read Robert Caro’s series on LBJ, and a major part of the story is how much LBJ hated the Kennedys, and especially RFK. And Caro hates LBJ, and worships RFK. And reading Caro, I rolled my eyes a lot, at one point he talks about how RFK despised LBJ because LBJ was a liar and RFK had “an essential devotion to truth” or something like that.
I think Caro is very critical of LBJ, but I am not sure "hates" is the right word. In his own interviews, he says he admires and is fascinated by LBJ. Of course he's also very critical of him and one of the things that makes his monumental biography so much better than most is that it's not particularly flattering (having read a lot of presidential biographies now, I think it's hard for most biographers to avoid sympathizing with their subject). But it's hard to see a 4+ volume magnum opus being motivated entirely by hate. (OTOH, I think Caro probably does hate Robert Moses.)
I don't remember the exact line you are referring to, but my impression from volume four is that Caro probably does view RFK through a political lens and cares less about his sexual misdeeds. As you say, many politicians have been honorable and principled while not extending that to their marital relations. Reinforcing this is Caro's general blind spot in this area: he certainly talks about LBJ's affairs, but is far less critical of them (almost treating him as a horny rascal with Ladybird being a long-suffering but complicit wife) than he is of his electoral hijinks or his political dealings or his failures on race issues. Caro cares a lot about politicians' politics, and not so much about them screwing around.
Your OP was bad, pointless, and seemed like nothing more than an opportunity to dunk on an outgroup.
You then piled on with
This entire conversation is satanic.
Bro you are just a communist, in my humble opinion.
In response to someone engaging with you reasonably and civilly.
It's been six months since your last ban, but every time you pop up in the queue, it's for shitty exchanges like this. You just don't learn and you're obnoxious.
Another two week ban.
ETA: Escalated to 30 days for using report tool to throw insults.
ETA2: Toddler threw a tantrum. Permaban.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2mo ago
Thanks for the link - missed it when you posted it before. I have added my own thoughts there.
I agree "demisexual" is probably a reasonable description for the modal woman, just that there is more variety in the female experience than a lot of men (and women like Holly) want to acknowledge.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2mo ago
I missed this review when you first posted it, but having just read Rejection, my thoughts:
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I generally agree with you that the first few stories are the strongest, and the metafictional ones at the tail end are weaker.
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I enjoyed the AITA? story more than you, but I took it as the absurdist satire it was. Yes, dunking on Elon Musk expies is kind of old now, but I still thought it was funny.
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About the third story, Ahegao. I agree that the final sequence, describing the main character's increasingly deranged and over-the-top sex fantasies, went on longer than necessary. At a certain point I kind of checked out, just chuckling going "Really? Really?" I think Tulathimutte was probably having too much fun writing it, and the point was that the main character had gone so far down his fetishistic rabbit hole he could no longer see sunlight, and the fact that he just went on and on was hammering home the absurdity. Did it go on too long? Sure, probably could have made the same point with 30% less jizz.
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I am not sure how accurate your assumptions about Tulathimutte are. Unless you have some external sources for this, I am always a bit wary of projecting too much into an author based on what they write. Some authors do bleed their hearts out onto the page, others very deliberately write characters and themes that are not reflective of their actual beliefs at all, and some try to fake you out about it, with varying degrees of skill and success. R.F. Kuang, for example, in Yellowface, writes about a white woman stealing an Asian woman's manuscript and literally appropriating her story about the Chinese experience in World War II. Kuang makes it very obvious that the Asian woman is a self-insert, and then tries to hang a lampshade on her by making her kind of unlikeable and fake (and also killing her off in the first chapter), and then she has another Asian woman make a big obvious self-serving villain speech about how hard it is for pampered rich Asian girls with Ivy League degrees to get respect in the publishing industry, but Kuang isn't fooling anyone, it's still an angry book about the publishing industry privileging white women over Asian women. So as for Tulathimutte, he's smarter and a better writer than Kuang, and obviously is, like Kuang, trying to anticipate and deflect inferences like yours (hence the metafictional final story, which I agree did protest too much). But the stuff about him being a rage-filled incel who especially hates white men who date Asian women? I mean, maybe? But I don't think the short stories in Rejection are enough evidence of that.
I have not read Private Citizen, and I think I will.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2mo ago
You may be right that AI basically creates a new sort of entertainment experience (e.g., tooling together a pipeline to create your own homebrew fanfiction). And there is nothing wrong with just doing what's fun. My reaction was mostly just, I guess, a defense of actually caring about literary quality. Not that everything you read/enjoy has to be high quality (I like my litrpgs and cheesy space operas too.)
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2mo ago
I like Holly Math Nerd, but she's got... some issues (as she readily admits). She insists that the number of women who enjoy sex for sex's sake and will not be damaged by having sex without an emotional bond is nearly an empty set. I... have enough experience to believe that is not the case. I absolutely believe Women Are Different and that most women need/desire an emotional bond in a way men generally do not. But there totally are women who enjoy being sluts, and I don't think that number is so very small (though they may come to regret the physical and social costs of their behavior later).
"Demisexual" is a stupid term, and especially stupid to lump under the anything-but-boring-straight rainbow umbrella, but it's not a universal descriptor for a "normal" woman.
nonetheless, a growing body of empirical evidence suggests that such woman are atypical, and that the modal woman’s self-esteem takes a hit after a one-night stand, while the modal man sees a boost to his.
Tangentially (and fitting my theme of Literary Snobbery), a while ago we had some Discourse about Tony Tulathimutte's The Feminist. I just got done reading his complete collection, Rejection. It's very good, though very Online and Of The Moment. The first story is The Feminist, but the second story is basically a gender-reversed version, with a female incel who goes completely off the rails after an ill-fated one-night stand with her best friend. I think the whole collection is fun reading, and rich Culture War fodder. Tulathimutte, being a Thai-American Stanford grad and feted Literary Author, both capitalizes on and leans into/satirizes every stereotype and assumption you are projecting onto him, in a much more clever and intellectual way than, say, Rebecca Kuang's entertaining but subtle-as-an-anvil-launched-by-catapult Yellowface.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2mo ago
This was a response to @cjet79:
I am willing and happy to read AI generated stories.
But I decided I would make it a top comment, because it's my second favorite subject after sci-fi bullshit: literary snobbery with a side of AI.
First, I like AI. I mean, I like it as a tool. (And yes, I know that "AI" is still a misnomer, I understand that LLMs are just token predictors, and I think people who believe that any neural net is close to actually "thinking" or becoming self-aware, or that really, what are we but pattern-matching echolaliac organisms? are drinking kool-aid). I've used ChatGPT to build applications (I don't do "vibe coding" but I have found it increases my productivity because with the right prompts it helps me use new applications and libraries faster than I could by going through tutorials and manuals). It cannot build a fully functional application (beyond the simplest) by itself, though. It often goes back and forth recommending obsolete or unavailable libraries or suggesting moving a line to the wrong place, then recommending I move it back in the next iteration. It's smart and often makes very good recommendations for improving and optimizing code, and it spots subtle bugs and typos very easily. It's also stupid and often makes terrible recommendations that will break your application.
On the hobby side, I've been making AI art, building Stable Diffusion on my PC and even training some LORAs. The vast majority of AI art is, as they say, "slop" and very recognizable as AI, but that's mostly because the vast majority of AI art is "Type a few sentences into text box, copy picture that results." "A cat making a face." "A cute catgirl with an assault rifle giving a come-hither look to her incel AGP fetishist fans." You will get a picture that meets your requirements, but will be very obviously plastic AI digital slop, like a Walmart t-shirt or a Subway sandwich. If you take the time to learn about inpainting and outpainting and ControlNet and upscaling and advanced prompt engineering and model selection and what all the parameters actually tweak, you'll get good pictures, pictures good enough to win Scott's various AI challenges.
Are they good enough for an AI to become a renowned professional artist with a unique and recognizable style? Not yet. But artists are rage-coping hard insisting they aren't good enough to replace the vast majority of commercial artists who just need to draw hamburgers or cars or Corporate Memphis HR posters, or commissioned MCU fanservice. The sticking point now is no longer extra fingers or shadows going in the wrong direction (though most AIs will still make little mistakes that are tells for the observant- but these can be easily repaired!) but just the fact that it's still painful to go back and forth to get exactly the pose, position, expression, color shade, background, accessories, species of flower, that you want. With real artists you can talk to the artist, and the artist can do rough sketches and ask clarifying questions. With AIs, you generate 100 images, let GPU go brrrrr, and maybe you get one or two that are kinda close and still need extensive inpainting and photoshopping. Conversely, though, I have commissioned some artists in the past and while I was generally satisfied with the results, even a human will never be able to really represent the picture that's in your head. Enough time with Stable Diffusion and some photoshop ability will often actually come closer to the mark. AI art is getting better all the time, but IMO, it is not close to replacing truly talented high-end artists, just as AI is not close to replacing actual rock star programmers and innovators.
It is close to replacing the print shoppers, the commercial graphic arts majors, the SEO optimizers and storefront webapp builders, though.
So, can it write?
Yes and no. I've tried out some of the NovelAI apps and gazed upon the sorry state of Kindle Unlimited, already flooded with thousands of subpar self-published romantasy-written-while-fingering-herself slop and power-fantasy-written-while-jerking-himself slop, and now that has been multiplied seven and sevenfold by AIs churning out the results of all those Udemy and YouTube courses promising you can now make a living on Amazon without actually writing anything. Throw a million books out there with pretty covers and even if you make pennies per title, it adds up. AI has been devastating the short story market for a while now.
If we get to the point where AI can generate good stories, then... I guess I'd be happy to read AI-generated stories? I think we are a long, long way from there, though. And I have experimented. LLMs can generate coherent stories at this point. They have a plot, and some degree of consistency, and I suppose they have all the traditional elements of a story. I am not sure if they are up to generating an entire novel with one prompt yet - I haven't tried, but I know there are tools to let you coach it along to get a whole novel out of it.
But everything I have seen so far is crap. In fairness, most of what's on RoyalRoad (and Wattpad and A03 and Scribd and all the other open platforms) is crap, but you can still tell what's human-written crap and what's AI slop.
I may be in the minority here; it often seems readers just don't care much anymore and want to consoom entertainment units. But waving my snooty literary tastes here, I sometimes despair at the writing some people think is good just because it tickles their fetishessweet spots. Some genres (progressive fantasies, litrpg, a lot of romance) are written so, so badly that if they aren't AI generated, they may as well be. An AI has no prose style except very poor mimicry of other styles; it has no ability to truly craft words and turn a phrase in a way that makes you say "Ah, yes, that is totally how that author writes." It has no way to embed themes and metaphors that echo throughout a book, it has no thematic consistency (often not even tonal consistency). Character arcs, such as they exist, are flat and linear; LLMs cannot grasp "character development" or complexity or nuance in any real way.
If you want a book that's mental bubblegum, a linear power fantasy about a guy getting ever more powerful and punching bigger villains in the face, or a hot chick being fought over by two smoking alphas, and nothing more to it and not even any clever writing to sweeten the experience, just "thing happens and then thing happens and then thing happens" and maybe some purple descriptive modifiers mimicking a high school creative writing exercise, I suppose AIs can do that now. But nothing that even approaches the most derivative pastiches of true classic novels.
And that's just to produce one book. How about a series, a multibook arc preserving plot threads and MacGuffins and character development from one book to the next? An AI cannot do that, and I doubt their ability to do that any time soon.
If you're not really a reader and consuming stories is like popping open a beer and you don't care how it tastes as long as it gives you a buzz, maybe AIs will fill that entertainment need. I sometimes put AI-generated soundtracks on as background music, and while the first few minutes can be okay, after a while it sounds very samey and droney and repetitive, even to my extremely unsophisticated ear (and my musical tastes are, in contrast to my literary tastes, utterly banal and horrible).
I don't doubt AI will continue to improve and eventually we'll have the first award-winning novel completely written by AI that even experts agree is actually... kinda good. But I am skeptical. I think it will take a while. I think even when we get to that point it will be a very particular kind of novel that uses some tricks (like being a surrealist or post-modern experimental novel or something else that avoids the usual conventions of narrative structure and story development).
I think it will be a long, long time before we have an AI Stephen King or Kazuo Ishiguro or Margaret Atwood. But I think we will have AI "authors" doing a "good-enough" job for the proles. Whether the slow-motion death of traditional publishing is a good thing or not I guess depends on how much you hate traditional publishing. I think gatekeeping is good, and that's what traditional publishing does. Publishers put out a lot of books I am not interested in and even think are very bad, but I can at least tell from the cover, the blurbs, and the author if it's likely to meet my minimal standards of readability. It's not like sifting through sewage for something sparkly. More like picking a few good apples out of a bin of mostly rotten ones.
I celebrate the flourishing of platforms for anyone to put their work out there and a handful of indie authors are killing it on Amazon, but increasingly they are no different from the handful of authors who make it big in trad publishing- there are a handful of big winners, but most earn below minimum wage for their efforts, and now many thousands who basically earn beer money if that are competing with LLMs who can scratch the same itch they do.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2mo ago
To be perfectly honest, while @HereAndGone is being a bit snide, his characterization is really not far off from what Takacs actually said at the time: he/er really did have a meltdown about feeling unsafe over being referred to as "he."
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2mo ago
AI DESTROYS THE HUGOS!!!
Okay, that's totally a clickbait title and not really accurate. But hey, it's not as high stakes as a potential nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan, or Trump's tariffs, or even whether or not polyamory is ruining society, but it's my beat: nerdy sci-fi bullshit.
It's a year beginning with a 2, which means there is drama over this year's WorldCon.
What is WorldCon?
We're all nerds here, but I know not all of us are SFF nerds, so for @2rafa and the handful of others who'd never lower themselves to reading shit with elves, WorldCon is the annual science fiction convention, held in a different city every year, that awards the Hugos, at one time considered the most prestigious award in science fiction. The drama and controversies over past WorldCons and Hugo Awards have been enumerated here often; at this point, as my lede says, it's practically an annual tradition. I don't collect links but maybe if you ask @gattsuru nicely he'll post some of the past dirt.
Usually these controversies are something Culture War-related. The Hugos are widely perceived to have gone fully Woke, and I must admit that I am one of those heavy SF readers who not only no longer cares much about the Hugos, whereas at one time I would have at least checked out the latest Hugo winner, I now consider them to be almost an anti-recommendation.
Just to give you an idea of the state of the Hugos: it's been ten years since a man won the Hugo for best novel (Cixin Liu and his translator Ken Liu (no relation) for The Three-Body Problem in 2015), and most years since then have seen between 0 and 2 men even nominated. This year actually features three men on the ballot (including Adrian Tchaikovsky nominated twice)! I'm rooting for Tchaikovsky since I actually read his books but, well, John Scalzi is the last white guy to get a Hugo, in 2013 (for one of his worst novels, Redshirts).
So anyway, technically this year's drama is not (so far) about the Hugos themselves, but about WorldCon (which this year is being held in Seattle).
What did they do this time?
Short version: They used ChatGPT to vet WorlCon panelists. Several WorldCon committee members resigned in protest, and the list of authors and other program participants doing likewise is growing.
https://file770.com/seattle-worldcon-2025-hugo-administrators-and-wsfs-division-head-resign/
https://www.patreon.com/posts/128296070
https://gizmodo.com/worldcon-2025-chatgpt-controversy-hugos-2000598351
Longer version: Reportedly there were as many as 1300 people applying to participate in various WorldCon programs this year: this would be book signings, readings, panels, workshops, etc. Obviously not everyone who wants to be on a panel can be, and WorldCon has to be selective about who it invites. The vetting is done by volunteers, and researching 1300 people must be pretty time consuming; apparently they had the bright idea of using ChatGPT do a search and summary of all prospective participants as a "first pass."
I assume they mostly want to weed out obvious crazies and literal Nazis and pedos, but given that WorldCon skews very woke nowadays, the vetting almost certainly includes looking for any "problematic" public statements or other transgressions in someone's background that might lead to a Cancellation or Drama.
Honestly, using an LLM to summarize and categorize your list of randos seems like a pretty good use of AI to me. Supposedly all final decisions were made by humans, but nonetheless, the concom is imploding.
If you're unaware, most artists and authors hate AI. This has also been covered extensively in past CW threads, but the stated reason for the disdain towards AI is that authors' and artists' work was "stolen" to train LLMs without compensation, but there is also a very real fear of being replaced.
This generalized antipathy has basically been extended to any use of AI at all, so even though the WorldCon committee is insisting there has been no use of generative AI, no final decisions made by AI, and that AI has nothing to do with any Hugo nominations or decisions, people are still Very Very Angry that it was used at all.
If you read the commentary, it's not just general AI-hate (though there is plenty of that), but also concern that the LLMs might have made Problematic Decisions. Obviously, people are bringing up hallucinations (what if ChatGPT made up a racist Twitter post?) and the possibility of false negatives, but, there is also concern about false positives. What if ChatGPT missed something Problematic? Again, supposedly humans were supposed to make the final decisions, but cynically, I think they're worried that ChatGPT might approve too many cishetwhitemales. Also much outrage at "Entering private data into an AI without permission" (i.e., typing someone's name into ChatGPT and asking it to do an Internet search).
This isn't as juicy as past WorldCon/Hugo dramas, but it's very Current Year. I cannot help finding it ironic that we're now at a place where science fiction fans are demanding that we ban AI tools.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2mo ago
Not really, he just mentions his wives regularly. Afaik he's the only penis in the mix.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2mo ago
This reply is very PUA or maybe more classically 'RedPill' adjacent. Which I found surprising considering the crowd one might expect to find following a pastor. But reading more of Pastor Fosters work, it looks to fit right in.
Devon Eriksen is an indie sci-fi author. He's a polyamorous libertarian with multiple wives. He's "redpill adjacent" in the same sense that folks like Eric S. Raymond are - anti-woke and evpsych aficionados (when it fits their priors) but not really part of the manosphere.
Ironically, Eriksen came to my attention through TracingWoodgrains, who positively reviewed his book. (I thought it was good enough that I'll read the sequel, though it's got some rough edges.) Eriksen also hides his power level a bit, probably because he wants to sell books.
This isn't the first time I've seen a somewhat improbable coalition of vaguely right-aligned people online, conservative Christians rubbing shoulders with libertarian atheist SF authors, united mostly by their hatred of woke. Often these affiliations fracture on their fault lines - KulakRevolt probably lost a fair bit of his audience once he started going hard on "Christianity is a pussy simp Jew religion," and the only time Eriksen gets pushback from his mostly rightie followers is when he reminds them he's a polyamorous atheist. (He probably gets a bit of a pass on the first because his situationship seems to be closer to "harem" than "polycule").
Let's not do this.
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