I finally published a book I’ve been working on the past 4 or 5 years. It’s definitely inspired by Wheel of Time, basically like a sequel where the son of Rand has to finish what Rand started.

However, the magic system is very different, the world is its own thing and the dark one, Yanesh, is an actual being that does really interact with the world.

Bruce, the main character has to deal with significant trauma before he can even start trying to deal with Yanesh. He’s got to sort out what’s going on in his life and his found family in Alata.

I hope you check it out!

Yesterday, Marc Andreesen published a Techno-Optimists Manifesto. You can find it here. It’s pretty clear from reading it that Andreesen does not understand that he’s picking a pretty extreme position with his stances. He claims he’s neither left nor right, but he’s very far right. He may actually support some leftist leaning candidates, but all the candidates he would support are neo-liberal far right capitalists.

He’s pretty open about this as he quotes Milton, Hayek, Von Mises, and Mokyr in his manifesto. Milton is the intellectual force behind Ronald Reagan’s policies. Von Mises is a force for austerity. Along with Hayek, these three thinkers were the reason we had austerity and sequestration in the 2010’s. These thinkers, they are the reason why our scientific efforts in the National Labs and in universities slowed to a crawl. We had fewer PhDs, Post Docs, and other positions for fundamental research as a result.

A techno-optimist should not support policies that stop basic research in new ideas. They should not support policies that encourage basic research. They should not support policies that force people to chose jobs in industry rather than continue to move their research from the lab into a start up. It’s antithetical to what technologists or innovators want.

Andreesen is against a very specific set of ivory tower academics. He might think, you know what it’s fine, let’s push all these academics out of the university and get real jobs. They can get jobs at start ups, or get money from me to start their new venture. The problem is there’s always a strong selection bias in VC’s that lean towards the latest hype. This is evidenced in Andreesen supporting Web3, Generative AI, and Crypto still.

In fact, some of his enemies, Tech Ethics, are rightly pointing out that Generative AI can cause significant harm. Writers like Timnit Gebru, Ruja Benjamin, and many more are right to argue we need intersectional thinking around technology development.

Technology has never been a neutral force.

Technology has never been a force for good.

Technology has always been used in a way to reflect the people that wield it.

Luddites, didn’t want to destroy technology because it was bad. Luddites wanted a fair share of the profits gained through automation. Automation can be used as a tool to liberate employees to work on more complex tasks. Automation can be used as a tool to control employees to drag their work to the least complicated and simplest. So they can be eliminated and removed.

Marc Andreesen’s techno-optimism is full of dog whistles. Two stick out to me almost immediately. The first, like Musk, he argues that the world population is declining. This is patently untrue. All evidence points to steady increase in population past 2100 at the least and likely well beyond. However, if you know, you know. He means, white population. Western Population is in decline. That’s the cause for concern. The great replacement.

The second is a title, “Technical Supermen.” This sounds like he’s arguing the VC’s in Silicon Valley are the Ubermensch. That they are the superior thinkers. That the techno-optimists will be the ones to save humanity. This is, yet another white supremacist line of thinking.

Finally, his list of enemies are the last dog whistles. Tech Ethics, is first and foremost driven by intersectional thinkers. Black women. People of Color. Tech Ethics forces technologists to answer questions like

“What sort of bias did you instill in your technology that causes the car to drive INTO black people?”

“Why does the soap dispenser not see a black person’s palm?”

“Why does Generative AI produce sexualized images of women of color?”

These are the people that he believes are enemies of technology. People that ask questions about why technology is causing harm.

He believes the Trust and Safety organizations at companies like Twitter are the enemy. Trust and Safety keeps the Nazis out. If you do not want your social platform to become the Nazi bar, then you use Trust and Safety to allow people to remove the Nazis. If you do not, then your social media platform is for Nazis. This is what’s happening at Twitter. Twitter has become the platform for racists. For Neo-Nazis.

All this is bad. It’s doubly bad, because Andreesen has a lot of money. It’s triply bad, because he is the person that will fund the next round of entrepreneurs. He is a very influential Venture Capitalist. If these are the ideas he’s espousing that his next round of funded CEOs must adhere to, Tech is only going to be more dangerous. It’s only going to get whiter. It’s only going to get less ethical. It is only going to be a weapon for the future that Marc Andreesen wants.

I don’t want to live in that world.

A few months back, Corey Doctorow wrote a blog about Enshittification, which is a process of taking a good, fun, and useable product and gradually, through a clear set of steps, make it terrible. Or a shitty product.

HERE IS HOW platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/

It is likely you favorite App will go through this process. First, you have a great app that seems like it brings you a lot of value, then it gets a little crappier, clunkier to use, more logins more data tracked, then you’re getting charged a subscription, then you feel like you’re getting ads in the app you’re subscribed too.

This is part of the reason why Google dropped the “Don’t Be Evil” motto. They were doing things previous versions of themselves would have considered Evil. Case in point, moving into China and censoring part of the internet. They still do, just on a much more limited basis. It’s the “Cost of Doing Business.” If that’s the cost of doing business, then they’ve already gone to the point of abusing their users.

I don’t think this is the only way platforms/apps die. I think they are often left to rot and die through neglect after a purchase. If a larger competitor gobbles up a smaller one, the larger competitor can extract the best bits of the smaller product and put them into their Enshittified product. This leaves the original smaller more innovative app, much worse off.

Fighting against Enshittification is hard. It requires collective action. It requires users to demand regulation to protect the user from Enshitification. It’s a constant battle, this isn’t a one time set and forget action.

Section 230 is one of the best things for any internet platform, but it’s been under constant attack. It’s under attack because it allows businesses to keep Nazi’s off a platform. It keeps Right Wing Fascists off a platform. The problem for Right Wing Politicians in office is that their talking points line up or are softened versions of Nazi rhetoric. So, those platforms, if they use automation for moderation, will kick Right Wing voices off, because they sound like Nazis.

Section 230 is very far from perfect, but it protects businesses that do not want to Enshittifiy the way eXTwitter has Enshittified.

Call your Senator and support actions to block mergers. Call your Representatives and support actions to protect users

Over the past couple years, I’ve been struggling with some really significant health issues. I have been dealing with some sort of allergy since I was a kid. I had reactions to Swedish Fish, it was my first real experience of cutting food out of my life and just kind of moving on. When I was about 9 I loved Swedish Fish. I’d eat them as often as I could get my grubby mitts on them. However, my throat would swell up. After the second time it happened, I just stopped eating them.

Almost two decades later, I was having issues with wheat. I’d been having those since I discovered wheat beer while in undergrad, but it’d escalated to the point of impacting bread. I’d also started to have issues with cheese. Dairy was also not something I’d enjoyed for a while, so it just kind felt like time to cut them both out.

This was hard, much harder than giving up Swedish Fish.

About 5 or so years later, I finally went to an allergist. From there with immunotherapy things just kind of blew up. I’ve had my diet restricted to about 6 or 7 different things. It’s been tough. I’ve shed about 90 pounds on this diet. However, I’ve been able to get into shape a lot, because of my indoor cycling trainer.

I’m currently going through the process of trying a couple new drugs. Right now I’m testing out Orladeyo. This one is interesting, since it was generally made for Hereditary angioedema, which is a very significant swelling disease. It looks pretty challenging to live with.

So far, I’ve been only it only a few days, the immediate Gastro side effect aren’t too bad, just a bit of burping and discomfort, which is significantly better than the potential. I’ve already seen some benefit of it, I’ve shed about 3 pounds of water weight in just about 2 days. Clearly, the medicine is doing something for me. I’m pretty happy about that. I’m hoping that this will work for me to allow me to resume the immunotherapy.

This year I’ve been struggling to do any writing or editing, in general. I hope to get back to the editing this month and finish up Goat’s Legacy. I’d like to get it published early next year. I plan to turn the Good Goddamn into a Vella for Kindle. I also hope to get back to writing a blog on here once a week or once every two weeks. Just to get back into the swing of writing.

Things have just been hard.