I recently had a friend ask about a social situation I’d been struggling with (something that has been happening a lot lately, and occupying a lot of my brainpower).

“I have a readied action there,” I replied.

I could have said, “I have an if/then/else set up to free up a mental desk.”

Or, “I have a conditional response that I’ve thought through with the most likely scenarios, and that’s helped me have it take up less space in my thinking so I can get on with my day.”

This kind of linguistic compression (yes, jargon) is interesting because it is a good illustration of how it is supposed to work, but also how they can often be swapped out, but do (and do not) still have extra information depending on the one chosen.

The first of the three is obviously the most compressed, but also can carry the most connotations. It’s borrowing jargon from tabletop roleplaying games, and the surface-level meaning can be the same as the other examples. However, it’s also only something you do in those games during initiative, which means combat, or at least a tense or time-sensitive situation. It also means that’s what your character is focused on being prepared for.

That’s very different than the uncompressed statement, which explicitly includes a motivation of wanting to not think about it. While it’s possible to compress that motivation as well with the second example — using the analogy of mental desks — so that it’s compressed overall, it still preserves that motivation.

But the compression used for the TTRPG jargon just… doesn’t work like that, because that’s not how readied actions works in those games. You can still tack it on there, adding the “mental desks” analogy, but resolving that contradiction (by realizing it’s added by the connotations of the jargon) takes some extra mental work.

That’s why it can be important to be able to switch out the ways that compress our language and change the lenses through which we describe it. My friend happened to already know that extra information — that I was doing so in order to “free up space” — but without that, it could have created confusion.

Creating confusion (or even deliberate misrepresentation!) through those connotations can be done intentionally here by bad actors (1); this is also the way dogwhistles and emotional abuse hide in plain sight (2).

The more ways you are able to change the lens you view a situation in, the more ways you can change the language you use to talk and think about the situation due to the way the language is compressed into jargon by that lens.

Doing so reveals both the lossy nature of that compression, and artifacts introduced by that compression, which then changes behavior, and so on. Further, if one can shift contextual lenses on the fly, it allows for that kind of compression of information, while still preserving fidelity, regardless of context.

And knowing their strengths and weaknesses gives you somewhere to start checking when there is a breakdown.

Oh, and here’s a handy jargon bit that actually works well for understanding how these ways of looking at the world can help understand how it works through a model: hit points.

Not just “hit points” alone. The realization that there are different types of damage, and they effect hit points differently, but they’re also still hit points.

For example, there’s physical (blunt, slashing, magical, poison, etc), non-lethal, and psychic (magical, psychic, poison, etc). You can get more and more specific if it’s useful, but already it gives us a way to intuitively think of how “the body keeps the score” by realizing that psychic damage lowers hit points. Also it may help us focus our healing efforts by realizing that recovery efforts focused on the body (e.g. pills, self-medication) help, but aren’t a solution if someone is constantly taking psychic damage from the stress of their work environment and work relationships. Likewise, if someone is taking “psychic damage” due to a biochemical reason — say, ongoing lead poisoning — no amount of therapy is going to help.

As with all of these, they are lenses, and ways to help understand the world. Just as this lens helps me understand and intuit the relationship between how emotional upset and the risk of a pain flare “works”, I’m not actually “taking psychic damage”. That’s the whole point.

We used the lens of looking at how language is a lossy compression algorithm to reflect on what different lenses (and the ways they shape language) hide and reveal — and sometimes twist and manipulate — both information and meaning.

And I shared a way of thinking about the relationship between physical and mental health through the jargon of tabletop roleplaying.

Featured Image by Katrina_S from Pixabay

(1) Such as the phrasing of headlines and chiron blurbs

(2) For example, I know more than one person who was groomed by an abuser to interpret “ok” or other mildly-positive and affirming phrases as sarcastic disapproval, instantly making it appear to the victim like most of the world was contstantly disapproving.

How we think about information density also affects and can help us be more effective and deliberate about how we think about our “bandwidth” in relationships

Because what I’m talking about are “in-jokes”.

Not just in-jokes, obviously, but they’re a great example of what I mean about language as a “lossy compression algorithm”.

A quick aside: This is a model, or a lens. It is not meant to be a scientific explanation, nor is it a simple “do this and it’ll fix things.” This is a perspective, a different way to look at what’s happening that might help shed light on thorny situations or help anticipate problems before they occur. Use it to the extent that it’s helpful in understanding yourself and your relationships.

“You just had to be there.” There is no level of unpacking an in-joke with language that will fully convey the meaning intended by those who actually were there. Among those people who were there, simply saying a single word in a particular way can convey volumes of compressed meaning, but for everyone else, there will be a loss of meaning that simply cannot be extracted.

Those sorts of things — in-jokes, references, the context of what you mean when you say “that guy at work” — require a lot of bandwidth to build at the beginning of a relationship. We latch onto shared interests and common hobbies at first, in part, because when we do, it feels like we’re talking the same language.

But also at the beginning of a relationship, we tend to spend a lot more time with and communicate more frequently with our new partner; it’s codified in the idea of the “relationship escalator”. Even the idea of a honeymoon — whether stated or intended as such — codifies this idea into the very idea of an “approved” relationship. This also goes for work relationships, the most extreme being the whole concept of a military “band of brothers”.

Over time, as we go on about our lives, shared experiences naturally create the scaffolding for this kind of linguistic compression. The references, the in-jokes, not needing to explain what is meant by “he did it again at work.”

Or at least, that’s what used to happen. (1)

Even the “he did it again at work” is a relatively recent concept. The idea that verbal communication is needed in order to know what significant things happened to your partner that day is relatively recent, and largely due to the Industrial Revolution. (1) While “traditional” shape of relationships have a rough correlation between physical proximity and emotional investment and interpersonal entanglement, the physical distance created by having to devote time to a job away from home means that fewer opportunities for those shared experiences exist, and need to be shared via language, usually verbally, in person.

If there’s a lot of commonalities, or the effort was previously been made to create the meaning-compression of shared experiences, then that verbal communication may take less effort later on in the relationship. When meaning can be compressed between people in this way, a flower folded into a particular page of a book can communicate more than dozens of roses.

And if that work has not happened, then communication may start to feel like a burden. Particularly if the opportunities to connect and communicate with your significant other are limited by long distances, plagued by a hurried and harried modern schedule, or any other reason.

But that’s exactly when good communication is needed most.

Otherwise, there’s a real risk that change in total information density can feel as if there’s a change in affection or importance or seriousness of the relationship.

This can go the other way, too. If one person suddenly feels surprised by a partner’s actions or responses, that’s like getting errors when you unpack a zip file. They might start wanting more “uncompressed” communication, things spelled out, re-explained, re-defined. While intended to rebuild, it can create the opposite effect by making communicating in the relationship feel “harder”, like more work, or even trying to re-argue settled and past drama.

Again, this is a lens or a model. This is meant to help understand and explain behavior at a high level; the actual mechanisms are probably a complex interplay of past experiences, biological systems, and the myriad ways that people think. There’s a lot of “assume a spherical chicken” going on here as well to make this effect clearer (1). And of course, different people and different relationships have different specific communication requirements.

At the same time, looking at relationships through this lens may help problem-solve or explain areas of difficulty, or help head them off before they become a problem. Particularly if your relationship doesn’t fit the “default” model

Featured Image by Tyli Jura from Pixabay

(1) I’m using huge brush-strokes of generalization throughout this essay to isolate and illustrate a concept. Western concepts of relationships, the value of women, and other social factors also were at play here; let’s pretend our modern ideas about equality in relationships apply for the moment.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been taking the opportunity I have right now to software-test my nervous system.

In particular, I’ve been examining the ways to pull myself back toward focus; whether due to the ADHD or the overstimulation, I need effective tools to start getting my brain back and nervous system back to where I want it to be, rather than where it ends up on its own.

One of the more effective tools is the playlist. This, in itself, is not a new realization. It’s a tried and true tool, and one that is easily accessible everywhere. It can be recreated on YouTube or Spotify, or I can actually support the artists and purchase the music and use it with my selfhosted streaming and whole-house audio.

The music tracks on these playlists varies in genre, but they have a couple of key qualities that are the same: they are instrumental (or do not have English lyrics), they are loopy, they build complexity through layering those loops, get near chaos, and then bring it back to a cohesive whole. The classical music version of this is best exemplified through Ravel’s Bolero.

The effect feels like a using a tuning fork for my nervous system. Rather than being all over the place, as the music plays, my jangly noisy nervous system seems to cohere. The music has to be loud enough (whether through speakers or headphones), unable to be ignored and the only thing I hear. The complexity of the music helps keep my ADHD from deciding to just run off and do its own thing, the lack of words and pattern allow the autism the space needed to still be able to process and do other activities.

Originally, it was a three-hour collection of songs that vaguely fit those criteria, which is both simply too long to deal with and inefficient. In the process of cutting that down and refining it, I discovered something I would not have otherwise expected or found: I can layer the “tuning forks” by switching between genres, which seems to help speed up the entire process and make it a little bit more effective.

Here’s the tracks I’m currently using in order, with a quick explanation of why:

• VNV Nation – “Generator”: A droning electronic track with enough texture and rhythm to serve as an onramp for the whole playlist.
• Russian Circles – “Gnosis”, “Empath”, and “Eluvial”: The intro to “Gnosis” picks up where “Generator” leaves off, and is the “lightest” of the three tracks, which get deeper, grimier, and bass-heavy as you go, creating almost a “wall of sound” before tying it all together.
• Ummet Ozcan – “Techno Shaman” and “Yima”: A sharp strong techno contrast to Russian Circles. “Techno Shaman”‘s throatsinging ties it to the bass of Russian Circles, and the eurotrance backdrop leads us to the brighter and lighter feel of “Yima”, which retains all the same qualities but through major chords and soft vocals, it lifts us into a more atmospheric mood.
• Alcest – “Flamme jumelle” and “Komorebi”: This French post-metal band combines the major-chord and atmospheric feel from “Yima” with the willingness to embrace a variation of the “wall of sound” from Russian Circles. “Komorebi”‘s soaring guitars give me a full-body frission as they lead me from a clean intro through chaos and back out the other side.
• Heilung – “Anoana” and “Norupo”: With one last major shift in genre; Heilung (“experimental folk”, or “amplified history”) evokes rather than faithfully recreates any historical genre or tradition. Fully acoustic, their music still has the same qualities, just expressed in a wholly different way. At the same time, it is quieter, gentler (particularly these tracks); rather than the deep tissue massage of the earlier tracks, they are the auditory equivalent of the softer strokes of a massage therapist as you get toward the end of the session. They are not bombastic area concert pyrotechnics, but a drum circle around the campfire at night.

All told, this playlist comes out to 56 minutes and change. And I can feel the difference in myself, how focused I am, how much less jangly my nerves are at the end of that hour.

I’m sharing this in particular to illustrate three things:

• The qualities that help are not limited to a particular genre of music or band.
• The qualities are not necessarily in all tracks in a band’s catalog.
• The change between genres increases the overall effectiveness.

I’m not sure why that last point is true; I’m going to guess that it has something to do with ADHD and attention spans; the shift means that my nervous system can’t just tune it out and ignore it.

After going through the playlist once, I usually switch to one of the other mono-genre ones (usually techno or metal) in order to continue whatever it is that I need to focus on (such as this blog post).

The particular music and tracks that you use may be very different; even among a neurotype, everyone’s brains (and musical taste!) are different. Regardless, I’ve put together mine on both YouTube and Spotify for you to try out; if you decide you like them, check out the Bandcamp (or Amazon in the case of Ummet Ozcan) pages for them and actually purchase the music. Streaming music — even if you do it frequently — tends to have worse payouts for the musician while still taking *your* money.

You can find the playlist on: YouTube, Spotify

You can find the bands (and tracks) at:

VNV Nation: https://vnvnation.bandcamp.com/
Russian Circles: https://russiancircles.bandcamp.com
Alcest: https://alcest.bandcamp.com/
Heilung: https://heilung.bandcamp.com/
Techno Shaman: https://music.amazon.com/albums/B0H6XYDRZ5
Yima: https://music.amazon.com/albums/B0FKJGJTLZ

Featured Image by Ozant Liuky from Pixabay

One of my favorite things on Taskmaster or Game Changer is when the contestants have to come in a place other than first. A simple example might be, “Pick a number between 1-500, second highest number chosen wins.”

Particularly when the contestants are doing so all in the same place and can talk to each other.

Suddenly, a very simple game becomes much more complex. Who are the others? What are they likely to choose? It’s not just what they’re saying, but how they’re saying it, and how they’re behaving. The contestants — and we as the audience — are paying attention to all the layers of information being communicated, both unintentional and intentional.

In such games, we focus on the unintentional signals being sent, the ones that other contestants try to keep hidden.

In real life, there’s the unintentional signals that are not being hidden at all, but are typically not consciously noticed. Well, by most in their everyday lives. There absolutely are those who study, utilize, and attempt to manipulate by communicating through these other non-surface information layers with intention. Additionally, there’s the large percentage of neurodivergent people who often have to reverse-engineer the protocols of those information layers to match what the neurotypical population expects. (1)

But my point here is that regardless of the method of communication we’re constantly sending off signals in addition to what we are explicitly saying. However, one’s ability to parse all of the layers of information density may mute or confuse those signals.

For example, VisionQuest. (Some vague tiny spoilers ahead.)

Don’t focus too long on these examples, though.

Look at how it is being communicated by the pattern.

There are two actors in VisionQuest that I instantly recognized: Henry Lewis and Jonathan Sayer. I recognized them from The Goes Wrong Show. That series is a masterclass in physical slapstick comedy, performed by extremely talented actors who make it look easy. Comparing that troupe to Chaplin or Keaton is absolutely warranted, and you can find most (if not all) of the run on YouTube.

In The Goes Wrong Show, Lewis’ character (Robert) continuously tries — and fails — to be the serious, dramatic one, and fails miserably, though usually due to his own schemes to steal the spotlight, while Sayer’s (Dennis) comically misunderstands stage directions and prompts for his lines, but is loveable as he does his genuine best.

In VisionQuest, their characters are initially played as simplistic near-buffoons, literally named DUM-E (Lewis) and U (Sayer).

Until, in a very “Silent Bob” moment, DUM-E delivers a poignant soliloquy out of nowhere, with a comedic but touching addition by U. It’s beautiful, it’s appropriate, and it’s an emotional gut-punch that stands out all on its own.

And I damn near cried.

Because it gave Lewis and Sayer, the actors, the moments that the characters they portrayed always longed for.

You don’t need to know any of that to appreciate the scene.

But knowing that is not just an “Easter Egg”.

It is a signal that the team behind VisionQuest absolutely cared about this show, and paid attention to how it was made.

I do want to draw a distinction between what I’m describing above and the manipulative and ham-handed “fan-service” or “nostalgia bait”; my example is a deep cut. It may even have been unintentional; the scene is powerful without knowing this bit of trivia.

An example of what I mean by “fan service” would be the inclusion of Lobo in Supergirl. That very problematic character feels glommed on like some double entendres into a children’s film to keep the adults vaguely entertained. Or, in this case, to pander to a specific audience segment. His role is “generic antihero of the week.” The difference becomes apparent when contrasted to the care taken with the same supporting cast-role that Frank Castle has in Brand New Day — and would appeal to the same segment of the audience. The character of Frank is not only integral, but has an earned character arc.

While there is an argument that both characters were included to appeal to the same audience, how it was done signals the care taken with Brand New Day, and the fumbled (I suspect studio-requested) manipulative fan-service of Supergirl.

Don’t focus too long on the examples, though.

Look at how it is being communicated by the pattern.

Because this happens in real life as well, all the time.

It’s often clearest in politics; I don’t mean the explicit dogwhistles here, though those can count.

When viewed as a pattern, Pete Hegseth’s behavior signals the internal weak uncertain fragility he’s trying so desperately to hide, even if he is still able to mobilize a degree of raw power that I could not. Trump’s infamously over-long handshakes may have been intended — and initially interpreted as — strength and dominance, but the pattern signals someone who has a desperate need to appear dominant more than actually being so. Those attempts to shape those perceptions are the same pattern as the manipulative fan service.

This isn’t just at the level of individuals. The Democratic Party bleeds signals of willing capitulation; not through the content of their “rebukes” and “strongly worded resolutions”, but in the pattern of there only being rebukes and resolutions. The pattern of the GOP’s claims of wanting to “protect children” is undermined by their pattern of selectively caring about protecting children. No children have been killed by transgender athletes ever; I don’t want to depress myself by looking up how many have been killed in school shootings this month alone.

Don’t focus too long on the examples, though.

Look at how it is being communicated by the pattern.

Accessing this pattern-layer of information density can be difficult, simply on a logistical level. There are only so many hours in a day, only so much information you can take in. In this, it is like Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man or much of “modern art”, where it is not simply representational, but requires either context, specialized knowledge, or both to fully appreciate the work.

If there’s a single practical reason to not rely on just reading the headlines or AI summaries — this is it. Because of the limited space, these other layers of information density are inherently lost in the compression process. Whole layers of meaning, intent, and tone, just…gone.

Ironically, this is where human created summaries — those with actual analysis and a point of view — stand out in a positive way. While there is still a loss of “raw data,” it’s like putting on polarized glasses; you know the direction and strength of polarization, and it can reveal things that were “under the surface”.

For example, patterns in headlines themselves carry information by how they frame and word events. They can unintentionally signal — again, depending on context — editorial, governmental, or cultural bias. Those attempts to shape those perceptions are the same pattern as the manipulative fan service.

Don’t focus too long on this example, though.

Let’s look back at something else from an earlier one.

There’s another thing I appreciate about VisionQuest.

The character Vision has always wrestled with the kind of ethical and philosophical quandaries that I like thinking about. And those abound in VisionQuest as well.

Especially about who to trust.

And the show has understood that, unlike a single segment on Taskmaster or Game Changer, trust is not a decision that is usually a one-off affair as in the oft-quoted “prisoner’s dilemma”. In real life, we face that kind of decision about whether or not to trust — at least to some degree — with the same people dozens of times a day, in situations big and small.

This is how those signals become important.

Because when it’s a series of decisions, the “winning” strategy of the prisoner’s dilemma changes; it becomes co-operative, and includes a built-in route to resume co-operation even after betrayal.

It is here, at this stage, that those signals become important.

It’s still risky to resume being co-operative after a betrayal, even if we know it’s statistically or strategically the right move. So we rely on those signals to give us better clues. The signals of the overall pattern, what happens when we look at it through a different polarized lens, when we separate out the manipulative from the appreciative. This is when “the more you know” can give you real insights into what they’re going to do next.

And, from the signals they’ve sent, I’ll bet that the team behind VisionQuest understands that applies just as much in interpersonal relationships and national and geopolitics as in a well-crafted superhero story.

(1) This is probably why we see the observed effects of snap judgments and communication errors between neurotypical and neurodivergent groups.

Featured Image by xegxef from Pixabay

A note up top: This is an essay about discerning a pattern of thinking. I link that pattern to expressions both trivial and enormous, horrific and mundane, historical and current day. I am explicitly not saying these things are equivalent in importance or effect; I am saying they share a pattern of thinking that enables them. Also, content warnings for discussions of religion, genocide, AI, and bigotry, not necessarily in that order.

We lost an important understanding when we changed satan from a position to an individual.

Originally, satan was a role, as demonstrated clearly in the Book of Job, akin to the much later role of “Devil’s Advocate”. They were a tempter. A rationalizer. In the Roman Catholic Church, the devil’s advocate is the dissenter, arguing against elevating candidates to sainthood.

And, most importantly, the satan was not the one who committed evil. Even during the Temptation, the satan does nothing but show illusions and make claims.

The ones who actually harm Job, the ones who actually harm Yeshua… that’s humans. That’s us. Doing harm and causing needless suffering.

That’s an important point.

And we still haven’t learned it.

If you’re thinking that I’m sliding over some points in Scripture, some technical bit, then you’re absolutely right; that is part of the point. A satan is a rules-lawyer, arguing that there is a technicality, a reason, some loophole. That it doesn’t mean what it clearly means. Saying that it’s not really against the rules, because Reasons.

When Yeshua said (1) “show others the grace, respect, empathy, and love you hope to receive,” that role was taken by the elders who tried to trap him in semantic wordplay. Not to clarify, not to make the meaning more clear, but because they wanted to “test him,” to wiggle their way out of the implications.

They wanted to make someone else “not people”, to not “count”. To make it okay to be cruel to others.

And we’re still doing it.

Anthropic recently updated some of its terms, including what is breathlessly reported as “trying to protect Claude’s feelings.”

Anthropic announced it would prohibit “sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior toward our models.” This will primarily be enforced by Claude preemptively ending the conversation.

The mocking is explicit, the argument simple: AIs are not conscious, and so this is a laughable and unneeded idea.

As much as I talk about the nature of consciousness, proving it in others, and whether or not it exists in other species and entities (or our own) — and I talk about it a lot — at one very important level, here it is utterly and completely beside the point.

Because the very triviality of this example is why it’s important.

It is the equivalent of your date being rude to a waiter.

Anthropic’s stance tells us nothing about whether or not AI/LLMs are conscious.

Our response tells us much about ourselves.

Again.

Our species has a very, very poor track record here with our own species. I’m writing and posting this on 12 October, 2026, which is both “Indigenous People’s Day” and “Christopher Columbus Day” in the United States.

Exactly 534 years ago, Columbus encountered the native peoples, and described them as

“a people who could be more easily freed and converted to our holy faith by love than by force … They should be good servants and intelligent, for I observed that they quickly took in what was said to them, and I believe that they would easily be made Christians, as it appeared to me that they had no religion.”

Within two days, Columbus had changed his tune and was thinking about subjugating them all by force.

“these people are very simple as regards the use of arms, as your Highnesses will see from the seven that I caused to be taken, to bring home and learn our language and return; unless your Highnesses should order them all to be brought to Castille, or to be kept as captives on the same island; for with fifty men they can all be subjugated and made to do what is required of them.”

The next February, after his return to Europe, Columbus promises in a letter that the Spanish rulers can take by force from the Indigenous people “as many slaves as they choose to send for, all heathens.”

There is nothing special, other than this anniversary of the date, in Columbus’ quick justification of violence and cruelty toward other humans.

Pick your horror, in this country or another. The Cultural Revolution, Rwanda, the explicit racism of immigration law in the US from its inception, the Holocaust, the genocide in Palestine, The Trail of Tears and every horror imposed on Indigenous people in the Americas, anti-trans and anti-gay bigots worldwide, the Black slave trade, and all the subsequent horrors endured by Black people in the United States since.

There are too many to name, too many to count. Perpetrated by groups large and small. Direct or stochastic, personal or structural; they share this commonality: they depend on the idea that the cruelty and violence is acceptable because those people have been arbitrarily determined to be “lesser”.

Whether or not one is able to effectively detect and measure “consciousness” has never been a consideration. The value (and assessment) of other human beings has been an arbitrary line that moves with whatever horror we want to justify.

And that brings us back to Anthropic.

Anthropic’s new guidelines do not say that you have to be nice to Claude.

It is the equivalent of a sign at a petting zoo that says “Please do not abuse the animals.”

Imagine, for half a second, that’s what we were talking about. Think about how the comments, jokes, and articles would come across then.

Imagine thinking that “Petting Zoo Says You Can’t Poke Sheep In The Eye With A Stick” is a headline to make fun of.

There isn’t a question about “consciousness” of most (not all!) farm animals. But we would still recognize that as needless cruelty.

And yet here we mock not the cruelty, but those who wish to minimize it. (2)

There are ways that the world is cruel that we cannot change; entropy exists, life feeds on life.

But there is a giant difference between those things we cannot change and needlessly increasing suffering in the universe.

I have to explicitly acknowledge and repeat that Anthropic’s new policy is trivial compared to the horrors our species has — and continues — to commit against itself. I am not comparing severity; that is NOT the point.

Look at the pattern.

Embedded in the mocking think pieces, snarky online comments, and even the Vatican’s own statements, is the idea that “consciousness” is the dividing line. That this is a debate about where to draw that line.

Drawing a line perpetuates the way of thinking that excuses cruelty.

A line where, on one side, we are to treat our neighbors as ourselves.

And a line where, on the other, horror and cruelty is justified and acceptable.

And our species is demonstrably bad at making that line land wherever it’s convenient for the people drawing that line.

You can see this pattern, this language of disrespect, through all of these and more.

This is the root, the way of thinking that permits all of this horror.

Because while the words were “who is my neighbor?”, the question was really “who can I be cruel to?”

The answer is not to draw a different line. The answer is not to listen to the satan whispering about how it’s okay because they’re “a race of people very poor in everything” (3), or a different nationality, faith, or don’t dress or identify their gender or love the way you do, or the color of their skin, or even whether they are “conscious”.

The answer was never about shifting the line.

The answer is simply to stop being cruel.

No matter who — or what — we’re talking about.

Featured Image by Thomas Heger from Pixabay

PS: There are those for whom the cruelty is the point: The bullies, the narcissists, and their ilk. They are enabled by those who intentionally blind themselves to that cruelty, who accept the deal that Yeshua turned down, permitting that cruelty for their own comfort. They are being intentionally selfish and evil. If you don’t want to be in that category, that’s up to you. There is a vast difference between having to put down an animal with incurable and contagious rabies as humanely as possible and deciding to shoot the dog you trained to hunt small birds for… hunting a neighbor’s small birds.

(1) Of course I’m paraphrasing, that’s the point.
(2) On a practical level, it is also: “We are not going to use the CPU cycles that you all are saying we’re using too much of just to process where someone is being mean to the model when they can just yell at the screen,” so…
(3) Columbus again.

Sometimes, what I write for here ends up “not working”.

That can be for any number of reasons: It’s simply too garbled or too many ideas at once, I realize I’ve already written essentially the same thing, the situation that I’m writing about no longer exists, I realize that I’m trying to make a specific annoyance of mine into some kind of generalized experience when it’s not, or what I’ve written ends up evoking the opposite effect of what I was hoping for.

Those often don’t see the light of day. At most, a few people whose opinions I trust will ever read it.

It’s still useful. It still counts.

The parallel in fiction writing are character exploration scenes. Writing exercises like “write a scene where your protagonist is late to a dinner party and just got a flat tire”. A scene that just doesn’t fit. Even your favorite “darling” lines and portions that you (or an editor) realize need to be cut.

There’s marketing tricks where you can directly monetize those things (“behind-the-scenes” rewards, for example), but they have value in and of themselves.

Writing a scene with your fantasy elf dealing with the alien problems of “a flat tire” and “late for an appointment” will reveal a lot about the character, even if it’s utterly unusable in the main body of your work. And sometimes it takes writing out the awkward or unwieldy bit in order to realize how much it doesn’t work.

Those discarded “realizations” may be repurposed — Bob Ross’ “happy little accidents” being a perfect example — but even if they are not, they are needed.

This is true of anything that takes skill. There has to be room for mistakes, for things that don’t work the way we intended, or that initially appear useless. Room for experimentation, for trying things that may fail or land flat.

Room to grow. To change. To improve and innovate.

It’s one of the reasons we have the weekly flash challenge (free, registration required, I don’t use your information), for example. A space not only to encourage each other to write to a specific prompt, or to hold ourselves accountable, but also to take a break from what we’re normally working on, and to stretch our creative muscles.

Take chances. Write in a different tense. To a different length. From a different POV or perspective. Word choice and order and structure. Experiment. Play.

Because even if it doesn’t work, even if you never post it or show it to anyone, it’s still worthwhile.

Especially in an age where mundane derivative lazy writing is so plentiful.

Featured Image by congerdesign from Pixabay

Linguistic prediction time!

For the near future — and perhaps much longer — slang and informal jargon are going to get very strange, and change even faster to the point where the change is so rapid that their utility effectively disappears.

I’m talking about not just the words, but specific patterns of speech, construction of argument, and even punctuation. It’s also why I changed the settings for the blog to allow AI agents “use to answer questions” access, though not training access.

I realized this because I saw yet another social media post complaining about the repetitiveness in AI generated scripts on YouTube. Which I totally understand; the shallow impressiveness is indeed, shallow.

If I hear “it’s not this, it’s this!” In a YouTube script one more time, I will lose it.

I’m so tired of AI generated scripts.

And I thought about my own writing, which very, very definitely has its own stylistic tells, many of which overlap with supposed “AI writing” tells, but predates the technology by decades. And the meme where Frankenstein is judged to be “AI written” simply because it was part of the training corpus. And how we know that training is still going on (and even incorporating poisoned data).

Slang — and to a lesser degree, jargon — have always been about distinguishing in/out groups verbally; the word choice is the signifier of what group you belong to. Hot, rad, bad, sick, ill, tubular, cool, awesome, on fleek; the list literally goes on for pages. But in these cases, if you detune the actual words, the grammar and syntax is essentially the same. If there is a high enough ratio of context clues to slang, it’s basically a simple substitution cipher.

Similarly, there are trends in language structure, particularly evident now thanks to the internet and short-form video. Be sure to like and subscribe, ring that bell to be notified, all begin originally as very effective calls-to-action that are copied so much that they quickly suffer the same fate as “on fleek” when I try using it in public.

And now we’re seeing the same pattern happen not just with calls-to-action, but to the actual structure of the writing itself.

You know, the sort of thing that correlation machines are perfect at imitating.

I’ve noticed AI influencing my own writing; not in a form of echolalia, but in subtler ways. I copyedit less, for example, and when given the choice of two sources for something factual, like why Americans use utensils the way they do (it’s not Benedict Arnold, by the way), I would rather cite a source from 2017 than a source from 2025, even if they say the same thing, because I don’t have to worry if the 2017 source is AI-written or not. I’m relying on my history of always sounding like this, plus my natural error rate, and what I choose to cite to help cement the reality that I’m not using an LLM to write this. (There’s also an additional information layer that I’m awkwardly using and not elaborating on intentionally.)

And you know that content creators are paying attention to these trends as well. And if you’re not an old fart like me, you don’t have the ability to point to your past work to prove that you’re “real”.

You just have your language and context.

The closest thing we have to this in real life is the creation of rhyming slang, though after its creation it seems to be, once again, essentially a substitution cipher like “cool”. Any kind of linguistic arms race with an LLM puts us in a stark John Henry situation.

I don’t know what the eventual outcome will be; there’s no way to force it on the chainwax (NSFW link). It may be that skibidi toilet and 6-7 are the first organic reactions in their surrealism; evocation rather than communication.

Because just like some people mistake my use of big words and a large vocabulary as implying that I’m looking down on them when I’m not, it’s going to get more and more common that people are accused of using AI to write articles and scripts and so on, just for writing using the same styles and conventions that people were already using in the training data.

Maybe we’ll find additional ways to write between the lines, conveying information through interpretation of context rather than context itself. Maybe it’ll actually be helpful in the long run, allowing more people to identify hacks and propaganda (which is, by necessity, are repetitive and formulaic) along with LLM-written scripts and articles.

Regardless of exactly what it looks like, though, it’s likely to look unusual, and strange, and probably confuse and annoy a lot of fascists the same way modern art does (NFSW, 100% worth it).

And I am 100% here for that.

Featured Image by Willi Heidelbach from Pixabay

Even if you don’t want to commercially sell your writing (or other creative endeavor), if someone else wants to use it, you should have a contract. And while that contract doesn’t need to be super-fancy, there are several parts that it needs to contain.

This isn’t just a hypothetical; I’ve got real-world examples here (though my privacy policy is in effect). Also, I am not a lawyer, I am not your lawyer, and this is officially not legal advice, as I am not a lawyer.

That said, this is the stuff I look for as a layperson and as an author, and what I made sure was included when I was a publisher.

Even If You’re Not Getting Paid, Only Grant Others Rights With Intention

I have a friend who writes well, but has absolutely zero interest in pursuing being published. While they call their work “fan fiction,” it’s fan fiction about their own original character, so there’s no rights complication, which makes this example all the better illustration for us.

They post their fiction on one of the fan fiction sites, but it’s behind a login due to it being of an sometimes adult nature (in the sense of problematic relationships as well as naughty naughty smutty bits). They got a request via social media to repost the fiction about that character elsewhere so their friend could read it.

Yes, it was that vague: “your writings about [Character Name].”

I told my friend, in no uncertain terms, that they should absolutely not just agree, even if they have no intent of selling the work or trying to get it published.

My reason was simple: There was a lack of clarity as to where it would be published, how long they’d have the rights to keep reposting (or republishing) the work, which works specifically or the entirety of their fiction related to that character, whether that person could then charge others to read the work, whether minors would have access to the work, and whether it would be put somewhere that AI agents could (or would) train on the data.

Regardless of the stated reason (“so my friend can read it”, which is odd since it’s posted to a fanfic site already), without a contract there’s no specified limitations on what someone else can and can’t do with your work, and for how long. If the person’s on the up-and-up, then writing down those limitations is not going to bother anyone. Perhaps it may seem like overkill, but since you’re just putting in writing what they said they were going to do anyway, why should they care?

For the conflict-adverse out there, the point of the contract here is to avoid conflict down the line. By being clear about what is happening and why, there’s less room for misinterpretation, with a goal of avoiding conflict later on.

Which is, unfortunately, a good segue into the other example.

Whether Through Incompetence Or Malice, Bad And Missing Contracts Cause MORE Pain And Conflict

A different friend, Sue, was approached by Glenn a few months ago. Glenn (2) was developing a product for tabletop role-playing games, and wanted to use Sue’s setting as part of the product. Glenn also approached me, and I declined to participate.

After seeing the contracts now, that was absolutely the right choice.

Because there essentially is not one.

There is an NDA, yes. It is extremely poorly drafted, overbroad, and violates requirements that it itself invokes (specifically the Trade Secrets Act; the NDA omits required whistleblower protections required by that law). The only portions that actually pertain to Sue’s IP in the slightest are these two bits:

Confidential Information includes any and all data, assets, or logic contained within the [REDACTED] Google Drive directories, Discord servers, Slack channels, and Canva Business ecosystems. This includes, but is not limited to [list of game mechanics]. …. Working Documentation: All internal files, chat logs, prototypes, and asset pipelines accessible via the secured corporate environments.

Simply saying “if you post this in this channel, it becomes our trade secret” does not automatically make it so. The fact that you’re in discussions to acquire that IP, yes, absolutely. Already existing work itself does not automatically become someone else’s trade secret because you discuss the IP in their communication channels. (1) That’s a patently ludicrous claim.

An additional “deferred compensation & transition agreement” further muddies things by calling “participants” volunteers until the company secures external funding, at which time they “immediately transition into a formal Salaried Position [sic] at a rate commensurate with my level expertise and role mapping.” Plus a signing bonus that, when funding is secured, “serves as the immediate compensation for loyalty during the inception era,” whatever that might mean.

Your alarm bells should be going off. There is no mention of when, exactly, that bonus will be paid (despite the phrase “immediate compensation” it just says that it “serves as” compensation. There is nothing specifying “within 60 days of angel investment” or the like, and it sure sounds like payment amounts are going to be entirely at someone else’s whim at that time.

It is possible to say “I’ll pay you later for work now, based on future income.” I’ve done it myself when running Kickstarters. And I clearly specified what portion of royalties (if any) or the flat rate or flat payment for the work would be, contingent upon the Kickstarter being funded.

These laughably bad documents do none of these things.

And you’ll notice that there’s still a whole lot of nothing about intellectual property for the setting. While there’s some verbiage in an “onboarding document” about game mechanics as trade secrets (1), the whole relevant section is this:

III. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY & TRADE SECRET NOTICE All verbiage, game mechanics, mathematical formulas, and linguistic structures presented during your tenure are the exclusive property of [REDACTED].

Non-Disclosure: You are privy to a 50-year trade secret discovery. Unauthorized disclosure of any logic core, is a direct violation of international trade secret law.

Glenn’s “onboarding document’s” overbroad “linguistic structures presented [sic] during your tenure are the exclusive property” is just ludicrous. It is never defined what “linguistic structures” covers or “presented” means; is he literally trying to claim that he owns parts of speech if you just say it around him? “Logic core?” I’m pretty sure that logic is not a trade secret. Please. At best, it showcases Glenn’s ineptitude and inexperience, at worst, it showcases an attempt at a predatory rights grab.

It is worth noting at this point that Glenn allegedly PUBLICLY posted a non-trivial amount of Sue’s not-previously-published work that was produced prior to her working with Glenn, without express permission, and without attribution to Sue as the author. Prior to posting it, Glenn had refused Sue’s attempts to get clarification as to rights and permissions.

While Glenn’s incompetence (or malice, or both) is largely to blame, Sue also should have known better.

The Parts That Were Needed

1. Who the contract is between, exactly.
2. What work(s) the contract covers, specifically.
3. What rights, explicitly, are being granted to the work by the creator, and that all other rights are excluded. In general, the entity being granted the rights should be able to use them.
4. How long exclusivity and non-exclusivity last.
5. The context in which the work is going to be used.
6. A reversion clause and/or kill fee.

You can see all of these portions in my old contracts, which I have kept up for exactly this reason. I never asked for film or audio rights as a publisher, because I was not going to use them and did not have the setup to do so. I asked for exclusivity for a period of time, and non-exclusive rights… but only as part of the anthology that a story appeared in. That meant I couldn’t just post the story elsewhere, or release it separately, or train AI with it (even though that didn’t exist when I made these contracts). There’s an explicit reversion clause, so I couldn’t just sit on a work forever. There’s an audit clause. And so on.

An important addendum: Some publishers will try to get unspecified rights, or rights to methods of distribution that have not yet developed. Whether or not that publisher is compensating you sufficiently for those future rights is your decision.

Because Sue did not hear the alarm bells early on, she’s facing a lot more difficulty, grief, and heartache now trying to fix the damage caused by Glenn’s abuse of her creative content.

Ask For Changes, Clarifications, And Specifications

Contracts, in general, should be regarded the same way you’d regard a “Wish” spell, or an agreement with the Fae. The wording of how you agree matters as much as the agreement itself. Specificity is your friend.

If you find yourself in a position like Sue’s, please feel free to use my old contracts as a starting point for negotiation. If you’re dealing with substantial amounts of money, consult a lawyer versed in contract law prior to signing anything, even if a contract meets all the marks I point out here.

As a final note, it is possible to ask for changes to a contract yourself. The contract for my first “pro” fiction sale came with an exclusive “in perpetuity” clause. If I had just signed that contract, I would not have the rights to republish my own story, even though it came out 17 years ago. Instead, I asked for it to be modified so they had five years of exclusivity and non-exclusivity afterwards to use it as part of the anthology only.

As far as I know, I’m the only author in that anthology who has the rights to my own story again. Because I asked.

So do not hesitate to consult with a lawyer. Do not hesitate to ask for provisions to be changed.

And if they’re suddenly really nervous about writing down how they are going to use your work, and refuse to clarify, walk away.

Featured Image by Andreas Breitling from Pixabay

(1) I am not discussing their “trade secrets” or naming them because, well, they’re not exactly trade secrets, no matter how many capitalized letters you put in there, or how much you claim they are. It’s stuff that I’ve seen in TTRPG circles (though perhaps less formally) for over a decade. “Glenn” has formalized what I would call a bunch of house rules familiar to many who play TTRPGs and added a bunch of hype and capital letters. Yes, I refer to this same footnote twice.

(2) In case “Glenn” sees this and recognizes himself: Hey dude, you want to out yourself as the person I’m criticizing here, go for it. Or you can take this as a chance to get your house in order quietly, so that people don’t connect you with what I’m relaying here. Your decision.

Yesterday was a historic day for the United States. How — and if — it will be recorded in the history books will depend on what we do, how thoroughly we do it, and how quickly.

Or it won’t be recorded at all.

The key to understanding why was first illustrated, for me at least, in a novel.

One of the most interesting things about Blindsight (two decades is long enough, right?) is how Rorschach viewed language itself as an attack. The non-conscious but intelligent entity reasoned that if useful information was not conveyed, any communication must therefore be an intentional attempt to waste resources, and therefore an attack.

A fascinating idea, and a plausible way that some creatures and societies work. I don’t share the viewpoint of the characters that it’s quite as inevitable as implied.

But I also think there’s a way that language can be used as an attack. Not just in the crude sense of resource management, and not even by the actual words being used. It’s not just what is communicated, but how it’s communicated.

The frame. The narrative. The phrasing.

Even if you’re aware of what’s going on, it can be difficult to spot, and harder still to avoid being drawn in. And it is very much used deliberately in real life.

The visiting preachers on campus worked in teams. The most visible person attracted attention by spouting extreme points of view and attracting an offended crowd. Meanwhile, their partner(s) worked the edge of the crowd. Not the people yelling, but those listening. Not necessarily those quietly agreeing, but the ones who were uncertain. Who weren’t protesting, but were discussing it, even if they disagreed.

The preacher’s partners then engaged them in conversation, and sounded reasonable in comparison. To rebut the claims of the loud shouty one, you had to understand their claims and where they were coming from. Makes sense…and then you’re led down a conversation where by agreeing to one thing that’s reasonable, you end up agreeing with another… and so on.

It’s the slippery slope being actively weaponized to shift what counts as “reasonable” and “things everybody knows”. It’s used by con artists and some high-pressure (or less ethical) sales teams.

And it is very much being done here.

Because in less than a year, the very same people who claimed public media had an “agenda” and defunded it with glee, the very same fucking people have presumably used taxpayer dollars to institute Trump BRANDED TELEVISION?

While we’ve known for a long time now that local TV news anchors get a series of talking points to address. The “fair and balanced” thing was a joke with Fox News literally from the day it launched. That was bad enough.

This is something different.

Coming on the heels of banning several moderate news outlets from the White House, claiming they had an obligation to report on accomplishments that DID NOT HAPPEN, it’s not about what propaganda Trump TV spews. The creation of Trump TV is only secondarily about the “news”. The brazenness corruption and blatant hypocrisy is the point.

This an blatant attempt to seismically shift the frame of what is acceptable. What constitutes “news”. What constitutes “truth”. What counts as “corruption”. Who will give in. Who will push back.

It is another attempt to fundamentally change how things work.

This is how its existence is a weapon.

It can be a joke. It can be ineffective. It can be so outrageous that it parodies itself.

Its existence as an official news source, particularly in combination with the banning of several news outlets, is the weapon.

This is not restricting the freedom of the press; as a private citizen he can do so, and effectively already has with TruthSocial.

This is saying that one bully — ANY bully — doesn’t get to use the government as their own personal newsroom. That there is a line.

There’s an easy way to deal with it. It’s how we react to it. Or almost, how we don’t.

First, we laugh at it. Mock it, sure.

And then don’t treat it like it matters and shut the very idea of it down, legal loopholes and justifications be damned, because that just is not how things work here.

I can hear all the excuses, all the rationalizations, all the very good and valid reasons. Because the office. Because the stock market. Because the codes. Because my career, because I’m up for election, because swing voters, because bad optics. (Not to mention the reasons we don’t always say out loud — because religion, because racism, because greed.)

And y’all don’t seem to understand that it doesn’t matter how “good” you are or how much you capitulate. There’s a level that he’ll threaten to escalate to where you will give in first. And he goes to that well a lot. Because it keeps working. Even if it’s being made fun of (TACO), it still gets him results, personally.

All that is going to happen is that it gets worse. Because he knows people will just… do it. Because he keeps being a bully, and he keeps getting what he personally wants. Because in the worst LARP game ever, we keep trying to stick to the same rules they’re actively exploiting.

And it’ll continue even after he’s gone.

Every other member of the economic and political elite is seeing how well it’s working for him personally. Some of them would never stoop to that level.

Some of them will.

So we have to say no. Now. Every way we can. Whatever way you can. Openly mock it. When people mention it, treat it like they’re telling you about their kid’s “letter to the editor” about their bedtime on school nights. Refuse to acknowledge its existence. Whatever you can think of that you’re able to do. Get your friends to all call in sick with you in protest. If you’re actively in a place where you can gum up the works, do so. Support those already suing, and the organizations who do that even when it doesn’t make big headlines. Write big long things and force your friends to read it. Call representatives or show up at their offices and demand answers.

All that matters is that we have to say no. Right now. To this in particular, but also to all of it.

As many of us as we can. As much as we can. Right now. We can discuss who should have said what when later. The told you so’s can come later. Words bitter and reconciliatory can come later. We can hash out every other difference later.

Even though it’s yet another laughingstock, this is where we have to say “no”, because after this… I don’t know if we’ll be heard.

We have to say no more unhinged rants and blatant abuses of power for financial gain or egotistical bullshit. No more profiteering and getting soldiers killed for no damn reason. No more hiding Epstein island abuses behind made-up culture wars. No to the continuing murder of people in boats without trial. No more “papers, please” thugs.

And no to the joke of state-run media that is “Trump TV”.

There’s a reason the free press is in the first amendment to the Constitution.

Because yes, Trump TV can be the sad, narcissistic mewling from someone who only understands how empty they feel, how confusing everything’s getting, and so they’re desperately fumbling back on the coping mechanisms that gave them just a moment of something could be mistaken for happiness.

It can be that.

At the same time, it can also, by merely being allowed to exist, shift us across the line into a world where that is acceptable.

Congratulations, everyone. If there are later histories, you just lived through a day that will be cited in them.

What we all do next determines the tone.

Featured Image via PublicDomainPictures.net

The last few weeks have been a bit of a journey of learning how my body works, and generally not being happy about it.

I have managed to have far less pain overall than in a long time. I was pain-free and able to watch multiple hours of TV without twitching and and hurting in the evening for the first time in a long time. I’ve gotten some of the additive elements — the risk factors like barometric pressure, and stress that increase the odds that I’ll be in pain — documented and even under control enough that it also makes it less likely for me to cross the threshold, and when I do end up having pain, it’s 1-3 points less. (1)

But as the obvious negative factors get accounted for, I’ve also had a couple unsettling realizations:

1. In addition to sensory overwhelm and negative stress, enjoyable things can also count as stressors. And those stressors may include, but are not limited to, sensory processing issues and sensory overwhelm. I knew that much already. But now I also know it’s not just sensory stuff. Basically, it seems like running out of “spoons” has at least as much of an effect as the barometric pressure.
2. The more my brain has to work — hearing someone who is talking on the side where my hearing loss is worse, reading social situations where there’s ambiguity of any kind — the more it “counts”. But that also includes things like brainstorming sessions and even writing. The degree of processing power needed is directly related to the spoon cost, and therefore increased risk of pain for me.
3. There definitely a benefit to having antihistamines on board. Both Zyrtec and Claratin in combo seem to be the trick. (I am not sure how that meshes with what I found before; it may be a dosing thing, or that the Sudafed — the real stuff — that was also in the ones I was taking was what was actually causing the problem). There’s a hypothesis I’m examining but don’t have enough data yet to mention publicly. Having both the antihistimines on board provides a noticeable reduction across the board of 1-2 points approximately 20 mins after ingestion (which tracks) and lasts about 12 hours.
4. With the pain being lower, I’ve been able to notice that one of the earliest signs I’m getting close to that threshold is that I start dopamine farming. Craving sweets in particular. Or craving certain types of games, particularly ones where I’m imposing order, like Minecraft, Cities:Skylines, Stellaris, and Rimworld. If I’m already doing something that has a positive feeling attached to it, these cravings may be masked.
5. It’s still additive, so depending on where the overall “meter” is at the moment, if there’s some other unexpected stressor later in the day (such as a pop-up thunderstorm and associated pressure change), I may get to experience the “bad” effects hours later. And the lower the meter has gotten, the slower it recovers. So if I took a big hit to my spoon drawer yesterday, I need to be more aware the next day, as I’m starting with fewer spoons. Used to running along the redline? That redline gets lower and lower and lower the longer you push it. Part of why I have needed a lot more sleep the last few days, and why it being interrupted by a series of storm systems over the weekend has pushed this string of “fragility” across most of a week.
6. I got direct confirmation that the neurological pain I experience is not rooted in things that should hurt. I got a stress fracture a few weeks ago, and when it first happened, I got some Tylenol with codeine for pain. And the opiate worked like it was supposed to … on the broken foot. It did nothing for the neurological pain that was going on at the same time. Conversely, the meds for the restless-leg spawned pain did not have any effect on the fracture pain. Bodies are weird, y’all.
7. There’s an element of “it will feel worse until it gets better” going on here. I’ve experienced the phenomenon a couple of times now. It is not that it’s getting worse; it’s that you’re being re-sensitized to the psychic damage you were suffering. This happened with processing anger, with analyzing stress levels, and with being neurodivergent at all. It happens when you come back to your hometown and nobody else can smell how it smells different… and in a few hours, you can’t smell it either.
8. I used to self medicate a lot without realizing that was what I was doing, and that explains a lot of the “but you used to be able to….” variables. Not only the antihistimines with the real Sudafed (which unintentionally medicated the ADHD). But I was also, depending on your definition, a problem drinker or functional alcoholic through most of my late twenties until somewhere in my forties. I didn’t usually get drunk (there were exceptions), or even that tipsy. But what I realize now is that I wasn’t drinking to party. I now realize that that I was (at some level) using booze for what it is: a nervous system depressant.

If this sounds like keeping track of a whole bunch of tedious health meters (cw for comedic nausea), IT VERY MUCH IS.

Just this week, I was able to identify a particular feeling (it felt kind of “shimmery” inside) as the equivalent of a video game saying “Warning, adventurer! Your spoon drawer is at 10%!”.

At least, I think it’s somewhere around ten percent. That’s what I’ve been trying to pin down. On Friday, I modified plans from getting together in real life with a friend to a voice and video call, which worked out to be about the right level for both of us.

It’s tedious for me to keep track of all of this. It’s frustrating not being able to do things I want to do. It’s hard to keep mitigation strategies in mind when you’re already in pain, or wonky because of side effects from the meds that keep you out of pain. It’s embarrassing, both now when I feel like I’ve suddenly turned to emotional porcelain, and when I realize how much of this has been going on for decades.

Worst resource management game ever.

But then again, I learned THAC0 well enough to do it in my head. Strategies I’ve learned for maintaining relationships are not as awkward in my mouth as they used to be. Things become routine with practice.

And so I continue.

Because the more I know about what is driving all of this, the more I can arrange both my external and internal environment. The more I know, the more I can do things that are healthier coping mechanisms than the self-medicating I used to do (particularly the drinking). and more effective, since I’ll be closer to fixing the problem than the symptoms.

(1) There’s something with the levothyroxine I’m taking that I’ve got a pretty strong correlation on between taking it and being more at risk of having a painful event. I do not know if it’s an additive or the thyroxine itself, or my body’s reaction to the thyroxine itself. My body’s lack of response to ever-increasing doses simply doesn’t make sense.

Featured Image by Robin Higgins from Pixabay

The blatant and conspicuous use of AI images on the website meant I didn’t have to ask an LLM to assess the likelihood that these articles were written by (or significantly generated by) an AI tool, though I did anyway. That analysis actually called out a pretty astute point:

The most probative clue is the site-wide convergence of form and voice across nominally different writers, not em-dashes, vocabulary, sentence length, or any AI detector score. A human editor imposing a very rigid house template could produce the same phenomenon, but generative AI is a substantially simpler explanation for the combination of volume + structural repetition + uniform joke mechanics + synthetic specificity + multiple apparently distinct bylines producing nearly interchangeable textual architecture.

That has been my take on AI generated text, images, audio, and video for some time now: It’s impressive at first blush, but the moment you start to look deeper, it underwhelms. That happened here, too. I saw one article and started to suspect, and saw those shallow repetitive patterns.

And I think it’s because language is a lossy compression algorithm. A skilled storyteller is using every tool at their disposal to compress and convey extra information in as compact of a way as possible.

It is not just the words used. It is patterns, associations, all the “baggage” that comes with a particular set of experiences. And somewhere in there is a qualitative interpretative state that LLMs simply don’t, and it appears cannot, have.

The GM for my Thursday game wrote a little joking paragraph about my halfling (hobbit) character introducing an NPC to their family, and then I added on the next section. We’re going to break down some of the ways that both of us used more than just the words to convey information.

“This is Shorney,” Lamban says. “He is half-feral and amnesiac, so he’s sort of two years old. He speaks hinfolk, mostly, but he doesn’t belong to anyone, and he didn’t even know who Yondalla is. He decided on a gender because it was what I was doing. Don’t bother asking about the gnarly scar on his neck, that’s part of losing his memory, but we think someone tried real hard to kill him. He doesn’t really do cutlery and his table manners are not great. His prosthetic is really cool though and he can load a crossbow really fast with it. Also he goes where I go and we’re bonded now. Say hi, Shorney.”

Shorney stares unblinkingly.

After the moment goes three times past where everyone wondered if they were going to have to say something first, they hear Shorney say not-quite-to-the-floor: “hi.”

The room erupts in family members doing the intricate intuitive dance of greeting: required-but-sincere inquiries about travel conditions and threats on the road, others bustling with offers of food and drink, and the siblings with mixed-but-said-as-admiring comments about sartorial choices, all in a blur of faces and words.

When the deluge subsides to a mere drizzle of words, Lamban leans over to his friend: “Yeah, my family is a lot.”

The first paragraph is a full-on-infodump. However, it isn’t just a what infodump. It’s an infodump that sets the scene — Lamban is clearly addressing a group of people, and is presenting a list of factual information. There are no questions in what he’s saying here, no opening for others to talk, not even any kind of motion. It’s clearly said quickly, either because he expects them to not argue, because he doesn’t want to give them an opening, or a bit of both.

Then it gets funky. The next paragraph stretches out the first part of the sentence, then breaks the tension with a quick multi-hyphen word to “speed us up” and a single word sentence.

And then a single, convoluted sentence, but it tracks and scans. Why? There’s nested patterns within the structure of the sentence itself. Multiple self-contained groups of two, nearly, but not entirely, bracketed by an unusual group-of-artificially-hyphenated words. There is order in this chaos. It comes quickly, in flashes, but there is a sense of larger order.

The intent is to convey the same sort of feeling as this tracking shot from Pride and Prejudice, or this one from Wings (1927). In those, it is the movement of the camera, whereas here the sentence structure itself — not the words, not the dictionary meaning, but the syntax and grammar of the sentence — provide extra meaning, a feeling, a sense or sensibility (pun intended) through the very structure of its conveyance.

Finally, the “deluge … drizzle” pairing mirrors the kind of movement like that of moving across a threshold, or under protective branches. It’s a lessening, with “mere drizzle” next to each other reinforcing the sense of volume, but also that it is manageable.

You can see another person doing a similar analysis here, where the author of the gorgeous 8-page comic “Good Morning Rose” also talks about their process and parallel sorts of choices to convey emotional states and meaning.

Whether it is in text, images, audio, or video, I think the lack of this is what people mean about AI/LLM creations feeling “soulless” or empty, particularly for people who are big consumers of art and music and literature and film.

Because while I’m literally showing you what I did, why, and how — and how that parallels a film example — I don’t think this is just correlation. I don’t think an LLM can actually do this, because there’s an interpretive state in there. It cannot be just more and more complicated phrasebooks being processed faster and faster.

Want a simpler example that highlights what I mean about interpretive state?

Remember the first time? And then, do you remember the first time that you realized it could feel like that?

Yeah. It doesn’t matter what you thought I was referring to. If you’ve had that kind of experience, you had feelings. And furthermore, you understand that you did not understand what was meant before you had it.

That example also illustrates that it is possible to elicit the reaction of a qualitative state through simple technique, but that last example is a blunt instrument. That is the equivalent of a film soundtrack swelling nearly over the dialogue, very unsubtly telling you how to feel because you’ve watched other films where that soundtrack swell (though done more artfully) accompanied an earned character moment. You might even feel that emotional state again, briefly.

But it doesn’t feel the same, and at worst, backfires when you notice that it’s simply correlational instead of being an accentuator.

It appears that AI/LLMs literally cannot (2) do this kind of interpretive reasoning state. While they can imitate responses with increasing levels of fidelity (depending on processing power, etc), they are unable to be able to incorporate new paradigms (or experience illusions). Pulling off the illusion once, twice, a few times through chance and correlation is likely. Being able to pull it off intentionally (and therefore both consistently and effectively), however, is a different story (ha) indeed! There’s a wholly-AI generated UK sitcom pilot… and it falls completely flat for exactly these reasons.

There is a market for this kind of low-density and low-effort output. It is the realm of so called “commercial art”: forgettable novels to pass the time, bland corporate copy in a press release, the painting in a motel room, big forgettable (except in earnings) blockbuster movies driven by sensory overwhelm, and background music in an elevator or car dealership.

The obvious problem being that these spaces are where humans develop the skills to move past this level, or to support themselves while doing the other kind of art. Not just deskilling, but the needed space to experiment, practice, and become familiar with the basic use of the tools in order to develop them further. And there is a whole profitability problem as well, that is utterly unaddressed.

All of which boils down to: The only way to ensure that we have options beyond “slop” levels of quality for art in any field is to actively choose and support human-made artistic expression whenever possible.

Not as an ideological point, but as a pragmatic one.

Speaking of, I haaaaaaaaaaate reading these, and writing them even more, so just a quick mention: Your support, even if it’s a few bucks, means a lot. If you can’t do that, comments are appreciated, because it’s not just a financial thing (although it is that), but also as a way of knowing that something I wrote mattered enough to people for them to take a few seconds to do an extra click or three. Thanks.

Featured Image by Ana Paula Feriani from Pixabay

(1) I put my own work through the same analysis, and was actually somewhat pleased by its assessment: “Ideatrash is a useful example of why AI-text detectors are unreliable. Several things detectors tend to flag—structured argumentation, repeated rhetorical forms, explanatory sectioning, parenthetical qualifications, transitions such as “More importantly,” and even certain punctuation habits—are present in this author’s public writing years before those models existed. That makes the long-term corpus considerably stronger evidence than any contemporary “AI writing score.””

(2) And without AI/LLMs being fundamentally different than they are now, with capabilities they seem inherently unable to possess due to their structure. I reserve the right to be wrong about this point, though.

TW/NOTE: I quote some transphobic comments below as part of making my point.

Before I get into the main bit, I want to highlight this study reported in Healio last year:

A majority of [gender affirming] surgeries among adults (59.7%) and almost all surgeries among adolescents (96.4%) were related to the chest, the researchers reported. Four in five breast reductions among adults and 97% among adolescents were performed on cisgender men and boys.

You read that right. The study found that 93.5% of the gender affirming surgeries among adolescents were BREAST REDUCTIONS OF CISGENDER MEN AND BOYS.

Kind of makes all that concern about “gender affirming surgery” for adolescents feel… misplaced, doesn’t it?

But on to our main, related topic: When there’s a comment thread that absolutely, completely, proves the opposite point the commenter is trying to make, and really demonstrates that the SCOTUS ruling is not really about protecting children.

Such as the one currently going on with the Medium version of my article about how Clarence Thomas’ opinion on student transgender atheletes says the quiet part out loud: This is about enforcing gender roles on everyone. I reproduce most of it here, because Medium is horrible in terms of following comment threads.

Because it’s been almost three months since the original post, this is what I wrote:

The Supreme Court legitimized bigotry again this morning with the excuse of protecting the children — or at least, those who play sports.

The laws about transgender athletes have never been about sports or fairness, though. It’s not even just about trans people.

They are about using the language of eugenics to narrow the definitions of gender and laying the groundwork so they can impose their gender roles onto everyone.

(Blumineck — you may know them as that archer guy — does a quick and better summary as to why rigid gender roles are bad for everyone, BTW.)

The post has gotten a few negative responses, including a whole thread from one “GalvinMike17” (who has three times my followers, so I don’t feel bad singling him out here) who has apparently been making these sorts of comments since at least 2023.

He uses a number of common fallacies throughout his comments — an appeal to common practice, appeal to popular belief, and an appeal to tradition among others — but what’s most interesting to me is how he ends up proving my point.

[Thomas] is simply saying that even post surgery people who are from birth males remain overall bigger, stronger and faster than females. That happens to be Indisputable as a matter of fact. It doesn’t matter to most of us but in the world of elite athletes where advantage is a matter of seconds and inches it is significant.

• GalvinMike17

So first of all, we now know that “post-surgery” is a complete straw man when talking about adolescents playing sports. And he quickly blurs children playing sports with “elite athletes”. (As a second aside, it’s also worth noting how small of a number of people we’re talking about here.)

While I’ll give him some credit for saying that in all other aspects he “respects” transfolx, he kept pushing back:

However post op Trans women still have a biological advantage in athletic competition and thus it is unfair for them to compete as women. Perhaps they can have their own category. F to M Trans men and boys are of course at a disadvantage which is why there is no issue with them if they want to compete as males.

• GalvinMike17

While wildly inaccurate for a whole bunch of reasons, the biggest one is how it’s now shifted from actual impact on real people (again, negligible simply due to the way numbers work), to some kind of value-based criteria based on ability and fairness. You can also see how we’ve completely shifted away from adolescents and children — which was kind of my point in the original essay as well.

So I responded by pointing out that he was saying that gender was a useful proxy for ability. Not just useful, but vital.

That’s pretty obviously not the case. There are lots of other factors — age, weight, grade level, or measures of actual ability — that are better correlated with one’s ability in sports. What he’s saying here is that (quoting me) “a cisgender male in 8th grade would be at ‘an advantage’ over any WNBA athlete in a game of basketball.”

And he’s soooo close to getting it, y’all.

Really – are 8th graders playing in the WNBA? Apples and Oranges.

• GalvinMike17

Which, yeah. Of course it’s apples and oranges, because gender is not a useful proxy for ability. Gender is less useful than age or grade level BY THEMSELVES for “fairness” in sports.

Particularly when we are talking about children and adolescents.

The whole argument around the SCOTUS ruling is based on a straw man argument that doesn’t actually hold up when you poke it, even slightly. Again, those “gender affirming surgeries” for adolescents were nearly all for cisgender boys and men.

So in a way, thank you for helping illustrate my original point so clearly. This has nothing to do with protecting children, or fairness, or any of the rationalizations.

This is about one group forcing everyone to conform only to their narrow ideology about gender roles.

When you talk about “accommodations,” it often makes people think about only one end of that scale. It raises the irrational fear that someone will demand that everyone has to change in order to cater to one person’s needs. This leads managers and leaders to, instead of educating themselves and exploring how accommodations could occur, automatically instead embrace models that focus instead on solely forcing neurodivergent people to conform.

There are people whose disabilities — physical, cognitive, neurological, or psychiatric — do require large-scale accommodations in order for them to have access to an experience. While even these can be relatively unobtrusive, such as dedicating a low-stimulus area or periods of time where an attraction is open specifically for guests with special access needs (such as Sensory Friendly periods), sometimes “accommodations” are a lot simpler.

Accommodations can even end up being something trivial.

But it means a lot.

At a recent event, the organizers provided “icebreaker bingo” sheets, the kind that have “lived in a different city” or “has kids” on them. They’re meant to encourage people to interact with those they don’t know.

After a recent unexpected shutdown, I’ve been deliberately experimenting with adjusting my environment. Realizing that good stimulation and excitement also has an effect on my brain and how I physically feel is something I’d not previously factored in. It’s been a bit of a challenge.

That day, I’d been purposefully pushing myself a bit, testing to see what my limits were. I hadn’t planned on attending the event; I was invited earlier in the day. I could feel the warning signs that I was nearly out of spoons. I took my bingo paper and sat down.

One of the organizers approached me after a few moments. “Did you get all your bingo spaces?”

Dammit. “No, but I’m not really feeling up to it.”

They smiled, and it reached their eyes. “Sure, I get that. You doing all right otherwise?”

“Yes, thanks.”

And they moved on.

No pushing. No wheedling. No guilting or social pressure.

That was a small and trivial example of an accommodation, and all it took was believing me and showing respect for my stated boundaries.

And it meant a lot to me, and allowed me to continue to attend the event.

I hesitated a lot before writing and posting this, because I want to make something clear: I’m not trying to minimize the needs and accommodations of others. Some people — including me, at times — need significantly more accommodation than that. To quote myself:

…Both autism and ADHD, let along the umbrella term of neurodivergence, cover pretty big spectrums of experiences, abilities, and deficits. And an individual’s abilities — and deficits! — can change over the course of a person’s lifetime. All types of neurodivergence cover a wide range of abilities and deficits that can impact an individual’s ability to care for themselves and interact with society. A sweeping statement like “autism and ADHD are not disabilities” is inherently reductive, and rapidly disproved by the wide range of those abilities and deficits.

My accommodation needs are relatively few, but they are not just “inconveniences”. They are real issues that literally dis-able me from participating or doing certain activities without accommodations or pre-planning on my part. They are things that most people don’t need to think about or consider. I’ve been learning how much of an overlooked effect they have on my mental and physical health.

Yes, stress does affect everyone. And in fact, this is one of those places where the tendency to say “but everyone feels that” might actually be useful.

Because while it’s easy to get distracted by the how of less-common and more extensive forms of accommodation, the important part is the why.

It’s about acknowledging and respecting a person’s individual needs and autonomy. That, in turn, leads to increased productivity while also making life easier for the employee.

Before I turn to the “business argument” for these kinds of accommodations, it’s worth stating clearly:

Respect and access matter in themselves. While increased productivity is a likely organizational benefit, it is not the justification for treating people as autonomous human beings

The “common sense” (there is no such thing) interpretation is that “average” is good enough for groups, particularly in business. That might be something as trivial as dictating the music playing (or not playing!) over the speakers, or forcing someone to participate in icebreaker bingo, simply because the “average” person is fine with that choice.

Except … that’s not how it works. It’s easier to illustrate with physical properties first, so let’s look at Air Force pilots.

In the 1940s, the US Air Force learned that “average” causes problems the hard way. When their pilot program expanded, they found that pilots were dying in crashes simply because the plane’s cockpit was designed for an “average” man in the 1920s. Presuming that people were just growing to different sizes in the 1940s, they hired Gilbert S. Daniels to find out what the new “average” was.

In his research measuring thousands of airmen on a set of ten critical physical dimensions, Daniels realized that none of the pilots he measured was average on all ten dimensions. Not a single one. When he looked at just three dimensions, less than five percent were average. Daniels realized that by designing something for an average pilot, it was literally designed to fit nobody.

• 99% Invisible

In a well-run military, the practicalities of being warfighters means that political ideologies are less important than getting the mission done. (1) So after getting Daniels’ results, the Air Force got to work.

Engineers and contractors designed new equipment, including adjustable foot pedals, helmet straps, flight suits, seats. And pilot performance soared.

Those adjustments, straps, and other things — what we now call ergonomics — are also accommodations. They just don’t get called that; it’s now called “common sense.”

While those accommodations were physical, we also need mental ergonomics. In the same way that none of us are physically average, humans overall are not mentally “the same” in the way we think. (2) Just as with the physical dimensions of those Air Force pilots, some people’s psychological needs and abilities may differ from that imaginary “average” person in one or two ways, or only by a small degree. Some in many more ways, or to much greater degrees.

Yet we are all forced into working at the same rhythm, in the same environment, as if we were machine-pressed cogs. And because we aren’t, inefficiencies arise.

That doesn’t mean everyone is disabled, or that everyone encounters these differences with the same severity. An environment built around typical ranges of ability creates much greater barriers for some people than for others.

While there is some recognition of this with “psychological (or emotional) ergonomics”, that often gets translated into providing a half-dozen sessions with an employee “emotional assistance program,” access to apps, or encouraging employees to do self-care on their own time. It is all offloaded to the employee or outsourced to outside of work hours.

While these are important aspects to mental health, that is not what I mean here by “mental ergonomics”. The shortcomings of these “emotional ergonomics” programs with their tendency to make it a worker problem are apparent when you contrast that to the attention paid to physical ergonomics during the actual work process itself.

While yes, employees are encouraged to stretch and exercise on their own time, there are also other considerations that are taken into account just as a matter of course. Adjustable chair heights, viewing angles, and concern for proper wrist angles to reduce or prevent repetitive stress injuries for just a few examples in an office environment.

Mental ergonomics is a recognition that human brains are just as unique and individual as our bodies, and that different people may need different tools, environments, processes, or degrees of support to participate and achieve the relevant goals. Implementing actual programs (instead of just lipservice after-hours programs) would result in increased productivity and happiness for everyone. It wouldn’t even necessarily change the bottom line, since you are paid for your output, not your time. It might even be as simple as realizing that their embedded allistic ableist truisms simply might not apply to all of their workers.

Perhaps some organizations are already doing this and reaping the long-run benefits from understanding this.

But I can tell you for damn sure that in every office environment I’ve been in, I would have been forced to participate in icebreaker bingo.

Thank you to the organizers for #988Dayton for creating an environment where individuals are respected even as we work together for a common goal.

PS: Again, needs and accommodations (and the effort needed to meet them) varies from individual to individual. Accommodation has limits. If a particular activity is genuinely an essential function of a role, or creates a substantial safety risk that cannot be adequately mitigated, there may be cases where no reasonable accommodation makes that particular role workable for that particular person. My point is not that all accommodations (or ergonomic needs) are the same. Additionally, I categorically reject the idea that “productivity” is synonymous with a person’s worth.

Featured Image by Chen from Pixabay

(1) That’s why DoD — an enormous energy consumption hog — has historically invested in renewable energy and has had (and continues to have) climate change plans regardless of the administration’s political stance. Again, at least until recently.
(2) A good amount our psychological research is suffering from a “reproduceabililty crisis” that is brought about both by our publicizing the existing research or simply realizing that prior studies have a huge sample bias problem. An uncomfortably large amount of psychology research is based on studies of college undergraduates, and even if they bothered to record the neurotype of people, the classification used until this century massively misdiagnosed neurodivergence, particularly in women and people of color. Plus there’s also the studies that have turned out to be … well deeply flawed.

In yet another example of journalists and press release authors blurring important distinctions, there’s a new headline scarily declaring “Cocaine, Cannabis, and Amphetamines Linked to Stroke Risk“. It isn’t just the journalist being sloppy and sensationalist, the press release also blurs the line from “illicit drug use” that was actually used in the UK study to “recreational drug use”.

And the implications of that one-word change cascade outward.

Blurring those distinctions leads to Discover reporting :

After examining research involving more than 100 million people, scientists linked cannabis, cocaine, and amphetamine use with a higher likelihood of stroke. Published in the International Journal of Stroke, the findings suggest these substances may contribute directly when a blood vessel in the brain becomes blocked or ruptures.

Scary, right? Here’s three drugs, grouped together, and they increase your risk of stroke! Yikes!

It’s not until a bit later (and behind the paywall) that you find out:

“cocaine use was associated with a 96 percent increase in stroke risk, while amphetamine use was linked to a 122 percent increase. Cannabis use was associated with a smaller but still significant 37 percent rise.”

That’s a big jump from cannabis use to cocaine.

“The pattern remained when researchers focused on people younger than 55. Amphetamine use was associated with a 174 percent increase — nearly triple the risk — while cocaine was linked to a 97 percent increase. Cannabis was associated with a 14 percent increase.”

Again, a huge difference; the increased risk from cannabis use (which is backed up by a study published in Heart) is in more of the ballpark for alcohol consumption and quite a bit lower than the stroke risk from smoking tobacco. The data for alcohol consumption is in the paper itself; why didn’t they discuss it if we’re talking about recreational drugs and stroke risk? (1)

Remember how I said it was a UK study? Recreational cannabis is legal in a growing number of US states, but is still illegal unless prescribed by a physician in the UK. The original study groups cannabis with the others based on legality; they specifically note that they are looking to investigate causal relationships between illicit substances and stroke subtypes. The omission of tobacco and booze suddenly make a lot more sense.

But by the time we get to the press release and popular reporting, that distinction is lost. The change from “illicit” to “recreational” creates the impression they are grouped by severity.

That, in turn, has real world consequences not only on policy, but how readers address their own risk assessments. Accurate, clear, and precise information is vital, where we are clear about when we’re grouping things by risk, or by legality.

Particularly as we start to realize that booze, the legal, common, socially accepted drug comes with a whole host of cancer risks from even low levels of consumption.

PS: If this sounds familiar, that’s because I wrote about the same thing happening with another study about three years ago.

(1) It also has data about opioid use, but does not discuss those other than to say that no relationship was found.

Featured Image by ivabalk from Pixabay

One of the great things about the last quarter century is how much the barriers to entry have fallen around the publishing industry. That has continued to blur a lot of lines around publishing roles, which, unfortunately, empowers scammers to prey on the dreams of authors who just want to tell and share their story.

There are enough ways for dreams to be crushed; scammers profiting off those dreams is offensive.

Luckily, keeping these principles in mind will help steer you clear of scammers and those who prey on authors.

Value should flow toward the author.
Publishers invest in authors and sell books to readers.
Self-published authors invest in themselves as the author and sell books to readers.
Publishing services providers sell defined services to authors.
Beware anyone who claims the status of one relationship while actually making money through the other.

Let’s talk about it.

Value Flows Toward The Author

This is the key. We used to say “money,” but I think “value” is a far, far better term here. Depending on what your goals are for your work, you may spend money on some items, and not others. So when you spend money, you should know what value you’re getting for it.

And make no mistake, that value should primarily flow toward you. Toward creatives.

Even though the technology and world has changed, that principle continues to serve as a good guidepost for authors and writers.

Self-pub, Publishers, Publishing Services, And Scammers, Oh My

I don’t think being self-published is a bad thing. At one time “self-pub” had an implication of poor quality, but that simply isn’t necessarily true now (1) “I believe in my own work enough to put my own time, effort, and money into it” is a compelling narrative. It is a different business model from traditional publishing, but that’s a good thing. (2)

So when I run into self-published authors who create the appearance of being published by someone else, it makes me feel uneasy. There’s nothing wrong with a self-published author operating under an imprint or calling the publishing side of their business a publisher. The problem is presenting that entity in a way that implies an independent publisher selected and invested in the author’s work. A self-published author is both author and publisher. They are paid by book sales to the general public. The public is the customer. When they pretend that another entity — a publisher — stands between them and their customer, it feels dishonest.

It almost makes me as uneasy as when people blur the line between being a publisher and providing publishing services.

Publishers put skin in the game. Authors do not pay publishers. Ever. Period. For anything. Authors grant some or all rights to their story to publishers in exchange for the publisher funding and carrying out their part of the publishing process and paying the author. The details of that can vary, too much to go into here. But authors do not pay publishers. That is a definitional quality of being a publisher. How publishers use the rights they have to your story to make money is their problem. Publishers get paid by book sales to the general public. The public is the customer.

Publishing services is when an author contracts for someone else to do a service, almost always for a fixed fee. You pay someone for cover art. You pay an editor to edit. And so on. They’re contractors for you, the author. They do a job that the author wants done, get paid for doing that job, and then go away. The author gets the value of the work being done. Publishing services get paid by the author to do a specific job that provides value to the author. This is a B2B (business to business) exchange. Self-published authors will often work with multiple vendors of publishing services. (Agents are different again, although the same value principle applies: their role is to create opportunities and value for the author, rather than to sell publication to them.)

Once those distinctions are clear, you can see why even well-intentioned organizations can create problems by blurring them. When there’s predatory scammers about, it’s important to be clear and accurate. So this author-cooperative that appears to mean well (though a mention of “pre-orders” on a FAQ is concerning) calling itself a “publisher” makes it a little easier for the predators to appear legitimate.

And then are also the scammers. There’s are arrangements that deserve extra scrutiny that are very common in the literary world — contests with entry fees, reading fees for submissions (3) — and then there’s the blatant ones, where authors are obligated to buy hundreds of copies of their book (minus whatever they can get people to pre-order). (4) Again, publishers do not sell to authors. Those fees and obligated sales show their customers are not the public. These predatory companies are selling to the authors while pretending to do the opposite.

Value Flows Toward The Author, Redux

Yeah, that’s a lot. And that’s just a few examples of the broad trends. There’s the very excellent Writer Beware! from SFWA that does the heroic work of keeping up to date on the ways that companies and publishers and scammers try to take advantage of writers. But you don’t need to know every example or scam. You have to know these principles:

Value should flow toward the author.
Publishers invest in authors and sell books to readers.
Self-published authors invest in themselves as the author and sell books to readers.
Publishing services providers sell defined services to authors.
Beware anyone who claims the status of one relationship while actually making money through the other.

You don’t have to identify every scam in advance. Ask who the customer is, who is assuming the risk, where the money goes, and what concrete value comes back to you. If the answers don’t match the relationship they’re claiming to offer, walk away.

Featured Image by Hello Cdd20 from Pixabay

(1) That does mean the self-published author has to actually do that work or invest in someone to do it for them, so your book should not look self-published. If a self-published author hasn’t put in the work or invested the cash towards good cover art, I’m going to wonder how much they actually care about the story inside. The one time you kind of get to judge a book by its cover.

(2) Traditional publishing’s focus is largely on financial results. “Believing in a story” for traditional publishing is not just about quality or originality, but also marketability. That’s why there’s so many tie-in novels in the fantasy and sci-fi portions of bookstores? They’re generally safer bets, and so what they publish tends to be “safer”.

(3) If the reading fees or entrance fees are transparently going to the people doing the work and running the business, that’s one thing. If it’s just “fees” that disappear somewhere into a ledger… well.

(4) If you think that sounds like some of those sketchy multi-level marketing scams, you’re right. Except instead of greed baiting the hook, it’s an author’s hopes and dreams of publication.