Jaauthor

When it comes to storytelling and suspension of disbelief, I’m a fan of Ogden Nash’s advice. Wanna hear it? Here you go: Here’s a good rule of thumb; too clever is dumb. The art of storytelling – especially science fiction – must contain some suspension of disbelief (SoD). Otherwise you’ll have idiots in the theater going ‘wait, why did Iron Man punch the Hulk? They’re supposed to be friends. Worst movie eVar!!’

But too much SoD ruins the story. Take for example, the movie Arrival by Denis Villeneuve from 2016. The entire plot (Spoiler alert) hinges on a suspension of disbelief on our part that human beings can alter time simply by changing their perception of it. In the last act of the film, the protagonist learns the alien language alters humans’ linear perception of time, allowing them to experience memories of future events. Banks’s visions of her daughter are revealed to be premonitions; her daughter will not be born until sometime in the future.

That never sat well with me as the audience – like, all this time all we had to do was ‘change our perception?’ That seemed awfully familiar, but I couldn’t figure out why. Then it hit me – ‘Arrival’ has the same plot as ‘Somewhere in Time.’

Sitting around on a Sunday morning – started thinking about solarpunk and Andrew Carnegie. Wealth inequality and the problems it causes dominates our headlines. Common media topics include re-enacting the French Revolution or ‘eating the rich,’ but is there a better way? Are we doomed to repeat the failed hatreds and phyrric victories of the past?

Not necessarily. You know, some ultra-rich people decided to use their wealth to make others’ lives better. Modern examples of wealthy philanthropists include people like Taylor Swift, Dolly Parton, and MacKenzie Scott come to mind, as do Chuck Feeney, Gordon and Betty Moore, and Barron Hilton. These are great, but they all remind me of one historical figure – Andrew Carnegie.

Where current events lead us to believe that apathy and cynicism are expected, average behavior – it’s more important than ever to remember that being mean isn’t normal. Kindness is normal. Even if the world makes being kind feel weird, it doesn’t matter. Kindness matters. Kindness is normal.

What if you're an author and the products you launch are short stories. Can I participate?

QModem was my first modem program and I can still hear the sound of that little DOS-based 2400 BPS modem ringing in my ears. My best to you and your family and I'm so sorry for your lost.

'may be' ...

Meanwhile, climate change is definitely impeding our long-term survival. Yes, we’ve got a planet-sized problem in climate change. 21st Century malcontents aren’t helping us figure out how to solve climate change or champion solarpunk solutions. If you aren’t prepared, or willing to do that, then please do us all a favor and shut up. The world has enough misery due to malcontents. Don’t be part of the problem.

I was preparing my usual Tesla Weekly until Aaron Greenspan dropped his explosive filing on Wednesday against Musk and Tesla, which highlighted loads of details from the “Tesla Files” on their egregious accounting frauds.

Lots of topics to cover this week aside from the headline story, but here is the breakdown for today’s Tesla Weekly:

Bombshell Complaint Filed Against Musk & Tesla—The Main Story Of This Report: An amended complaint in the Greenspan v. Musk et al trial was filed on Wednesday with damning internal data from Tesla highlighting a vast array of accounting fraud. It’s an explosive report, which is why it is the focus of today’s Tesla Weekly.

Trading Thoughts: Tesla is down 6.4% on the week through yesterday on lower-than-average volumes. Break outs to the upside were swiftly sold down, but there was an effort to keep the stock above $203, its 200-day moving average.

China Weekly Sales Suddenly Dropped Last Week: Despite 0% loans from Tesla and $2,800 incentives from the PRC, Tesla’s sales last week dropped by 17% YoY. This is odd given the low hurdle from Q3 2023.

That doesn't make a lot of sense to me - how could an avalanche travel that far without running out of kinetic energy?

The first challenge, for High School students, is to develop and design an “intermediate space settlement” on the Space Elevator’s Apex Anchor to house over 10,000 individuals. This will act as a “waystation” for missions to the Cosmos. You will need to consider what the design, missions, structure, organization, architecture, life support, etc., at such a waystation would be like. How big would it need to be? What would be the optimal size? How will it take advantage of the massive lift capabilities of the Space Elevator providing a Green Road to Space?

Super exciting to read about this! Building an off-grid mesh is the central premise of my scifi novel 'Mesh.' https://inkican.com/mesh-middle-grade-scifi-thriller/

I mean, yeah - but take a step back from there. Why is this technology only for commerce? Why is technology only useful if it can be economically exploited? That's a deeper issue and not one you can get a ChatGPT-generated answer to. Culturally, we're hostage to psychopath companies and the investors that love them. Nobody in a hedge fund somewhere is going "hey folks, we should add a 'this makes people's lives better' quadrant to our analyst sheets?"

Maybe they are and we need time to see the pivot in market forces. I just want to take this moment to go on record that only seeing technology as a profit-making machine defeats the purposes of human progress. Let this be a lesson to the rest of you trying to be the next Amazon - it's not working for them. They're losing billions on Alexa and it's all their fault. You aren't bigger, faster, meaner, or better than Amazon. The only thing you can do - the only thing you must do - is focus on your customers as human beings, not just as cash registers.

I ran across a supercool resource yesterday – a Solarpunk-style High Speed Rail is moving forward in California and you can see a bunch of HD concept art / videos right here! Of course, your first question might be ‘how is this solarpunk?’

The answer is simple. ‘Solarpunk works to address how the future might look if humanity succeeded in solving major contemporary challenges with an emphasis on sustainability, human impact on the environment, and addressing climate change and pollution.’ Human transportation is a necessary part of that future. High-speed rail (HSR) is a sustainable, low-carbon solution to a contemporary problem. Choo choo gonna woo woo!

By the way, thanks very much for the suggestions!

The thing is, I don't know that MTV news was much of a resource and I don't know that losing it is going to change life for anyone.

If you want to understand the decisions of AI companies, it’s pretty easy – just think like a psychopath. Safe Superintelligence, Inc. seeks to safely build AI far beyond human capability, according to Ars Technica but the decision smacks less of selfless humanity than it does ‘pivoting to avoid a market risk.’ No AI company has ‘human progress’ as a KPI, they have MARKET SHARE. AI is the new oil, and a lot of proto-robber barons are lining up to own the well.

If I’m being honest, I don’t care that ‘Ilya Sutskever is pursuing safe superintelligence in a straight shot, with one focus, one goal, and one product.’ Good for him, I still don’t trust him, nor do I trust any of these cats and with good reason. There’s a very narrow line between ‘visionary CEO’ and ‘criminal psychopath.’ Sutskever is on the ‘waiting and watching’ list until he proves himself one way or the other.

If humanity is going to get better, we need to act like we deserve it and stop taking ‘it’s gonna be okay’ for an answer. Prove it. Tell me how you know, tell me how we’ll know when we get there. If you can’t do that, then rushing your product to market isn’t going to make me feel better. Making me feel better about your product will make me feel better, but that would require you to have empathy for me, the customer. I don’t hear a lot of empathetic language out of ‘visionary CEOs’ and that’s a red flag.

When it comes to understanding the motivation of visionary CEOs, there’s a common narrative that ‘we can’t understand because we’re not geniuses.’ Then we get the bad news in a few years – the true motivation of these visionary CEOs is revealed and it’s a scattered form of greedy psychopathy (Looking at you, Elizabeth Holmes, Sam Bankman-Fried, Martin Shkreli, and now maybe Dave Calhoun). Their sad pursuit of growth at any cost is labeled as ‘part of the game of being a leader,’ but that’s an oversimplified excuse for lethally craven, cold-hearted behavior.

Corruption is a system of concentrated gains and diffused costs: cheaters make a lot of money, and their victims each lose a little. The cheater has a much larger pool of money to spend on keeping the scam going, and the victims need to pay again to fight the cheater.

It’s time to give the science fiction community help by creating a single page of toxic fan resources. I’m no authority on the subject, but I’ve been watching this phenomena for over twenty years. The experience has taught me one thing: we don’t stop toxicity by ‘destroying’ toxic fans. Rather, we should work to identify them, reach out, and heal them. My hope is that this virtual toolbox can be of help to you.