No one would have believed, in the increasingly stupid years of the 21st century, that I would open my daily scroll of doom to learn that James Patterson—the literary equivalent of a haunted fax machine plugged directly into the overflow tank at a Red Bull factory—was ‘co-writing’ a thriller with MrBeast, a man-child YouTube trolligarch who gamifies human desperation for likes, filming acts of weaponised charity to unlock a giant personal loot box in the winner-takes-all game of late-stage capitalism.
And here was me thinking this was all a lead-in to you announcing you were co-writing a cooking-based romance thriller with Nagi Maehashi. Tentative title: Live and Let Fry.
lol. The latest recipe email from Nagi came out today. The first sentence is: “JB made this blindfolded with one arm tied behind his back.” I think I’m onto something! 😂😂
The profound utterings of Sir Les and his predeliction for scratch mark stickers based on a kids movie belie the urine stained reality of his very existence.
"It MAY spawn" pulling a laconic phrase there JB. For those wanting exposition and after all who doesn't? After invading southern Greece Philip II of Macedon upon receiving the submission of other key city-states, turned his attention to Sparta and asked menacingly whether he should come as friend or foe. The reply was "Neither."
Losing patience, he sent the message:
If I invade Laconia, I shall turn you out.
The Spartan ephors again replied with a single word:
I gotta confess when I see a notice in Substack of <insertexistingpublicfigurehere> as a person I might want to follow - my instant visceral response is "Realllyyyy! The greedy pricks shown up here now to keep their goddamn grift going - fuckin' vampire what!"
It's good to know that others despise celebrity writers too. I think memoirs aren't as bad, although generally I dislike memoirs. There are exceptions: Ducks on a Pond, Parcel tied with string, Journey from Venice. But generally I dislike the genre.
But this thing with celebs writing books? Hell no. I think I read a few as part of my work on DMZ about ten-ish years ago. Since then, when I see a "actor wrote this fiction book" my reaction has been to shudder and turn away. Again, there have been one or two exceptions: Fynn and the Fireflies, for example. But, generally, if you're a celebrity then IMO you're going to be "Late stage rowling". And I'm not talking about Rowling's war on women, I'm talking about how, in the Goblet of Fire, she had clearly reached the "she's too famous to edit" stage of her career. And her books, which previously had been ableist, started showing racism as well as OMG IS SHE DONE YET sloppy writing. Yes I read the last HP book. My son loathed the wedding portion. I loathed the camping portion. It reminded me of camping trips as a kid: NOTHING TO DO, UTTER BOREDOM. (Unless I had enough books, which - from memory - must have been generally banned from camping trips. I could read paper books back then without electronic devices like an ipad or a desktop magnifier so I generally carried two books with me on a normal day and I'd take a library for a camping trip if allowed.) I digress.
If your career has been as a "famous for being famous" person or an actor or something and now you're suddenly writing fiction? Hell no. I'll save my $ and my time. Especially because, in this day and age, I reckon a lot of those books are AI written. Once, they might have been slop or ghost-written but now it's worse!!
“AI cuts costs, corners, jobs, and joy as it sands down the edges of creativity with its global blandifier engine. But the fact that it’s so shit is also our salvation. To tell a good story you need to be able to think and feel, and AI simply cannot. All it can do is assemble probability chains from old Usenet threads and public-domain IKEA instructions.”
Damn, JB, a fantastic description that will screw up the AI algorithms of the AI sent to poach it. I was recently asked to give feedback on an AI setup that will likely make me redundant in the ever-accelerating future. The samples I was shown were both terrifying and depressing. Then I had a closer look at how it worked, and discovered the shallowness of the AI’s capabilities - it can do the job on a superficial level but can’t do the job properly or even adequately, and likely won’t be able to. And that made me feel better…briefly. Because odds are our clients will be so happy about the massive time and cost savings of the AI versions that the massive decline in quality won’t even register with them.
AI’s gargantuan appetite for energy is rapidly consuming our dwindling energy reserves. With a bit of luck, it’ll cause a zombocalypse, destroying itself in the process. That seems to be the best-case scenario here. Hopefully it’ll happen before Trump hits the big red global destruct button.
When I first started reading this, I thought for one glorious moment that you were referring to Australian Senator James Patterson... who always reminds me of Harry Ellis, the coked up sales exec in the original Die Hard who gets popped by Gruber when McClane doesn't hand himself in.
I kind of want to know how much an author gets from a kindle sale...
And I say author because i really hate the term writer. We all write... , well most of us do.Maybe the 44%of Tasmanians who are functionally illiterate don't but we aren't all authors. Authors are are rare breed. They are published , loved, stalked and romanticised
Writers are the rest of us sending fkn emails with warm regards , thanks in advance, hi folks or a passive aggressive fuckwit who's desperately trying to hide the fact some one could come along at any moment and pull down his house of cards around his bull shit job...
This reminds me that only days ago I received an offer from a small German book publisher to provide AI-generated translations of our work for only 500 Euros. I wonder if he's aware that he is about to dig his own grave ...
And here was me thinking this was all a lead-in to you announcing you were co-writing a cooking-based romance thriller with Nagi Maehashi. Tentative title: Live and Let Fry.
I'd buy that: intersection of several of my interests
lol. The latest recipe email from Nagi came out today. The first sentence is: “JB made this blindfolded with one arm tied behind his back.” I think I’m onto something! 😂😂
The profound utterings of Sir Les and his predeliction for scratch mark stickers based on a kids movie belie the urine stained reality of his very existence.
"It MAY spawn" pulling a laconic phrase there JB. For those wanting exposition and after all who doesn't? After invading southern Greece Philip II of Macedon upon receiving the submission of other key city-states, turned his attention to Sparta and asked menacingly whether he should come as friend or foe. The reply was "Neither."
Losing patience, he sent the message:
If I invade Laconia, I shall turn you out.
The Spartan ephors again replied with a single word:
If.
I gotta confess when I see a notice in Substack of <insertexistingpublicfigurehere> as a person I might want to follow - my instant visceral response is "Realllyyyy! The greedy pricks shown up here now to keep their goddamn grift going - fuckin' vampire what!"
Where can I get these Existential Dissapointment kits?
It's good to know that others despise celebrity writers too. I think memoirs aren't as bad, although generally I dislike memoirs. There are exceptions: Ducks on a Pond, Parcel tied with string, Journey from Venice. But generally I dislike the genre.
But this thing with celebs writing books? Hell no. I think I read a few as part of my work on DMZ about ten-ish years ago. Since then, when I see a "actor wrote this fiction book" my reaction has been to shudder and turn away. Again, there have been one or two exceptions: Fynn and the Fireflies, for example. But, generally, if you're a celebrity then IMO you're going to be "Late stage rowling". And I'm not talking about Rowling's war on women, I'm talking about how, in the Goblet of Fire, she had clearly reached the "she's too famous to edit" stage of her career. And her books, which previously had been ableist, started showing racism as well as OMG IS SHE DONE YET sloppy writing. Yes I read the last HP book. My son loathed the wedding portion. I loathed the camping portion. It reminded me of camping trips as a kid: NOTHING TO DO, UTTER BOREDOM. (Unless I had enough books, which - from memory - must have been generally banned from camping trips. I could read paper books back then without electronic devices like an ipad or a desktop magnifier so I generally carried two books with me on a normal day and I'd take a library for a camping trip if allowed.) I digress.
If your career has been as a "famous for being famous" person or an actor or something and now you're suddenly writing fiction? Hell no. I'll save my $ and my time. Especially because, in this day and age, I reckon a lot of those books are AI written. Once, they might have been slop or ghost-written but now it's worse!!
“AI cuts costs, corners, jobs, and joy as it sands down the edges of creativity with its global blandifier engine. But the fact that it’s so shit is also our salvation. To tell a good story you need to be able to think and feel, and AI simply cannot. All it can do is assemble probability chains from old Usenet threads and public-domain IKEA instructions.”
Damn, JB, a fantastic description that will screw up the AI algorithms of the AI sent to poach it. I was recently asked to give feedback on an AI setup that will likely make me redundant in the ever-accelerating future. The samples I was shown were both terrifying and depressing. Then I had a closer look at how it worked, and discovered the shallowness of the AI’s capabilities - it can do the job on a superficial level but can’t do the job properly or even adequately, and likely won’t be able to. And that made me feel better…briefly. Because odds are our clients will be so happy about the massive time and cost savings of the AI versions that the massive decline in quality won’t even register with them.
AI’s gargantuan appetite for energy is rapidly consuming our dwindling energy reserves. With a bit of luck, it’ll cause a zombocalypse, destroying itself in the process. That seems to be the best-case scenario here. Hopefully it’ll happen before Trump hits the big red global destruct button.
I liked James Patterson when he wrote books. I will not buy another book with his name as co-author on the cover.
I used to run a secondhand bookstore. I have Thoughts and Judgments about authors like MrPatterson et al.
Noooooooooo!!!
When I first started reading this, I thought for one glorious moment that you were referring to Australian Senator James Patterson... who always reminds me of Harry Ellis, the coked up sales exec in the original Die Hard who gets popped by Gruber when McClane doesn't hand himself in.
I kind of want to know how much an author gets from a kindle sale...
And I say author because i really hate the term writer. We all write... , well most of us do.Maybe the 44%of Tasmanians who are functionally illiterate don't but we aren't all authors. Authors are are rare breed. They are published , loved, stalked and romanticised
Writers are the rest of us sending fkn emails with warm regards , thanks in advance, hi folks or a passive aggressive fuckwit who's desperately trying to hide the fact some one could come along at any moment and pull down his house of cards around his bull shit job...
Crap, I though you meant the shadow Treasurer!
https://x.com/MikeCarlton01/status/1927830800218698077?t=LfGUFhxjwhGKqg6FdXo8wQ&s=19
This reminds me that only days ago I received an offer from a small German book publisher to provide AI-generated translations of our work for only 500 Euros. I wonder if he's aware that he is about to dig his own grave ...
Speaking of necrosis, isn't it time to move off Substack?
How could I? After all, you're here.