Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
> it's very clear this dialogue is always a recap, rather than a
forecasting event.

I think we include both. We don't say that we focus on the future or
the past, but the "state." And we have to discuss past, present, and
future to explore that state.
  

    
I'll admit my court-jester foolishness, but that's my fool's game,
all right.

Serious discussions in Moldova now about how they might avoid the
grim fate of neighboring Ukraine, by dissolving their nation and
joining free Romania.  If that feat somehow happens, it'll be the
first time that the people of a modern-nation-state abolished their
own nation in order to become European Union.  That's the polar
opposite of Brexiting.  A trend that'll bear watching.
  

    

Of course the Europeans are incandescent about the Greenland
provocation.  They just signed a comprehensive free-trade deal with
most of South America, after decades of dawdling about it.  The
Europeans are notoriously slow about coherent achievement.  However,
they have an elephantine memory and they don't lose track.

If you're into aggressive European internal-hegemony politics,
Francesca Bria and Evgeny Morozov are in top form with this polaring
manifesto that decries American techno-authoritarian Trumpist
zillionaires, naming their names and drawing network diagrams.  I've
been watching these two operators forever and a day.  I think they
may finally have the political-wind at their back.

https://www.authoritarian-stack.info
 
  

    

If you're a Yankee and you read this bitterly-bracing European
screed, you're like:  "Hey wait a minute... We're NOT a "republican
democracy" any more?   Statue of Liberty, City on a Hill, that's all
yesterday's news for USA?   We're a kleptocratic oligarchy run by an
authoritarian tech-junta?  We're Viktor Orban but with more
crypto??" 

 Okay, I wouldn't claim to believe that myself -- but it won't take
much to convince other people.  Not this year.
  

    
Maybe in next year's SOTW I'll have carpal tunnel and not type quite
so much.  But I did, and I do.  

 I have a Medium account where I've been doing an unusual amount of
writing recently.  I'm a novelist and a futurist, but I've noticed
that when I feel compelled to do a lot of writing that nobody's
asking me for, and nobody's paying me for -- (even diaristic
writing, where I'm privately telling things just to myself)... This
isn't "me" indulging my logorrheic, chatterbox tendencies.  It's a
sign that something large-and-poorly-formulated is breaking loose.  
A futurist fool is a tuning-fork for unheard vibes.
  

    

 I have an intuition that, in particular, these large and diffuse
"Everyday Weird" manifesto-article-essay-confession screeds that
I've been writing every year lately... 

https://medium.com/@bruces/ancient-everyday-weirdness-591955f40a2d

I think they're some kind of book.  I think they're a book that I
myself am unable to write.  They're a nonfiction book describing
rather common, conformist, everyday lived experience in a couple of
decades, maybe 25 years.
  

    
They're about a cultural sensibility that doesn't yet exist. It's
not a far-out science fiction experience, or a freaked-out
hippie-dropout experience... Instead, it's about a very staid and
stable and everyday  cultural sensibility that has to seem "weird,"
but merely happens to belong to a quite alien mid-21st-century
society.  I suspect they're vague precursors to some commonsensical
way-of-life that can't be clearly described with today's language.
  

    

I don't know where these essays come from, or why I write them. 
They're not hugely popular.  They don't seem to have much of
purpose.  They're not persuasive, or reformist... They barely have
an "argument," and seem to have no agenda.  I thought they were
"whimsy" at first, just hobbyist meanderings and cracker-barrel
sententiousness... but these "State of the World discussions" have
always been rather like that, too.

And they're getting more urgent, more heartfelt and consequential
rather than less.

I guess we'll have to see next year.  "Every day is a gift!"
  

    
This makes me think how for so many years I carried a bulging wallet
in my hip pocket, filled with money, credit cards, notes, pictures,
etc. It was pretty thick, and no doubt contributed to the lumbar
dysfunction bothering my later years. But I haven't carried a wallet
in years. In fact lately I've been wearing comfort sweats with no
hip pockets. It's been liberating.

I still have a wallet, and it still has cards and money in it, but I
never carry it with me. It's storage. It holds cards that I rarely
use and can retrieve when needed, and it holds cash. I'm not sure
why I keep cash around, I never use it. In fact many places won't
accept it. All my money transactions are electronic these days, and
I mainly use cash to hand to temporarily (one hopes) unhoused folks
standing on various street corners around town. They're always happy
to get it.

I don't need to carry hardcopy photos, because I have two decades of
digital photos stored on a sophisticated computing device I still
call a "phone," though I rarely use it for phone calls. I found that
I could buy a silicone card holder that I could attach to the back
of my phone, where I can put the essentials: health insurance card,
credit card, and driver's license. It's all I need. I carry the
(rather heavy) phone in a front scoop pocket. In the other pocket, I
have car keys and other things, maybe pills. 

So I'm traveling light. I have a multitool and a pocketknife, but I
keep those in a large bowl on my dresser, along with sundry keys,
tools, and other items that I want to reach easily when needed.  I
should carry the mult-tool, just haven't made the habit.

I think we're all traveling lighter these days, and using digital
storage for as much of our lives as we can fit onto various hard
drives and online services.

Which means, I suppose, that we're one electromagnetic pulse away
from the dark ages.
  

    
That is, the new dark ages, possible if we lose access to electrical
power. 

We take persistent electrical power for granted - maybe less so in
Texas since the power grid collapsed four years ago during Winter
Storm Uri. Since then I've often considered the fragility of our
lives and lifestyles: it could all collapse. I read recently that
power grids might collapse as we continue growing our demands for
electricity, especially as we add data centers to support our
growing use of AI. Most of us don't consider what our lives would be
without electrical power, and especially without running water.

During Winter Storm Uri, because we live just outside our city and
are served by a co-op, our electrical power was restored within a
few hours - unlike folks using the City of Austin's power grid,
which was out for days.

But we were without water for almost a week, and that was pretty
scary. We filled a bathtub with snow and used it to flush toilets,
but we had to ration our drinking water. I don't know how long we
wouldn't lasted, if the outage had persisted.
  

    
We take so much for granted.

We took American democracy for granted, those of us living in and
depending on the USA. We took all sorts of bureaucracies for
granted, they were in fact invisible to us - though we're almost
certainly going to become more aware that they were here, as they
disappear. 

The people running the show now are cutting whatever pieces of
government they can find, as much as they think they can, without
any thought about what we might be losing as a result. Services and
protections that have been the fabric of government and have evolved
over decades are disappearing overnight. It's a complete
transformation. 

They're removing immigrants, too, including immigrants who do jobs
that will now be hard to fill. And apparently not considering the
consequences of those removes. Texas has just canceled 6,400
commercial driver's licenses for legally authorized immigrants
(refugees, DACA, asylum seekers). This action aligns with federal
efforts targeting immigrant workers.  This will have all sorts of
impacts - fewer drivers to carry loads could mean disruptions, but
it also means that those drivers don't have jobs, can't pay
mortgages and other bills, which will have economic impacts. That's
just one example of actions taken with little regard for economic
consequences. There's also the broader set of deportations across
the US, which means the housing and other industries are losing
significant pools of labor.  The supposition that American citizens
will step into those jobs overnight is a fantasy.
  

    
This is Putin's wet dream manifested.
  

    
Which part?
  

    
The US-eats-itself part.
  

    
Yeah, that part is proceeding nicely.  Although I don't like
Russia's future either.
  

    
No mention of income inequality.  

<<The share of wealth held by families in the top 10 percent has
reached 69 percent, while the share held by families in the bottom
50 percent is only 3 percent...

(snip)

Over the past four years, the University of Michigan's monthly
survey of consumer sentiment has shown those in the bottom
two-thirds of income to be deeply pessimistic about the economy --
with rock-bottom ratings more common during periods of deep
recession, including the 2008 financial crisis.

(snip)

Drawing on data from the Survey of Household Economics and
Decisionmaking, conducted annually by the Federal Reserve Board, Mr.
Bruenig noted that "if we define someone as living paycheck to
paycheck if they either say they do not have three months of
emergency savings or say they cannot afford a $2,000 emergency
expense," then 59 percent of American adults are "living
paycheck to paycheck."
>>

lots more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/business/economy/wealth-cash-inequality.htm
l?unlocked_article_code=1.FlA.KowH.M2ukxGSZ6cFO&smid=url-share
  

    
I suspect that the people directing the economic policies of the
Trump administration think that the best way to even out income
inequality a bit is to let the poorest people die off as quickly and
as young as possible. When there are fewer poor people, the median
and mean income and wealth all rise.
  

    
Today is the final day of our two-week asynchronous consideration of
the State of the World as we tumble into 2026. Taking a minute to
say thanks to all who were reading and all who joined the
conversation.

Let's keep hoping.
  

    <scribbled by jonl Mon 19 Jan 26 07:39>
  

    
Via email from Michael Brockington:

The times do seem dire.

The current US administration is not acting like a group of people
who ever expect to have to win another election.  That makes their
dismal polling numbers cold comfort.   

What comes to mind is Cortez burning his ships after landing in
Mexico.  I think they're going for it.

On the other hand, I've been ruminating about the US military.  No
doubt a self-selected group of very conservative people -- you would
expect them to be reflexively sympathetic to a right-wing
administration -- yet it seems to me they may be more resilient to
authoritarian takeover than most other arms of the state. 

Anyone who's been in the military long enough to rise to command
rank is probably not going to share my political views, but I
believe they are quite likely to have a strong sense of duty,
service, honour.  Every one of them has taken an oath to uphold the
Constitution, and I suspect their solemn word means quite a lot more
to them then it does to the politicians who do the same.   

Despite the chain of command, the ultimate duty of the military is
to something higher than the president.  That's a firing offence for
the current adminstration.  And sure, Trump can get rid of some top
commanders, promote others, but all of his potential choices have
risen through the same system.  He can pluck an anchor off Fox News
and make him Secretary of Defence, but he can't turn Hegseth into a
5-star general.

I don't know if the same ethos prevails in the National Guard; it
seems a very good thing that the Supreme Court blocked the Feds from
deploying them from one state to another.  That had disturbing
echoes of Tiananmen Square, with the regime bringing in troops from
the countryside when the local military units were reluctant to
slaughter their friends and neighbors. 

The US military has proven itself more than capable of atrocities in
Vietnam, Iraq, and elsewhere, but the targets were foreigners,
people whose lives mean nothing compared to Americans.  Acting
against their own citizens would require a radical shift in mindset.
I don't think the propaganada attempts to dehumanize (that is to
say, de-Americanize) political opponents have had enough runway to
make that thinkable.
  

    
Via email from Michael Brockington:

Are current policies designed to just get rid of poor people? 
Because they also seem designed to generate more poor people, as the
middle class gets squeezed away.  So really, that suggests they are
aimed at getting rid of most people, no?

From the ruler's perspective, we might ask, what is a large
population good for? 

Historically, I can think of a few answers.

1.) Lots of people means lots of workers.  The people at the top
take a slice of the productivity of those below, so more workers
equals more goodies for the wealthy.  But this relationship inverts
if unemployment gets too high -- or at least that's true if there's
a social safety net for the unemployed. And if there isn't, that's a
good recipe for revolution.    

2.) More workers means more consumers.  As workers pay their bills
and buy stuff, their earnings trickle back up to the owners of
stuff. 

3.) Lots of people means you can have a big army, to protect your
stuff, or take other people's stuff.

4.) In a democracy, where the currency of power is votes, if you
want more power you want more voters.

5.) A big population will throw up more outliers -- more geniuses
(and more monsters?)

BUT...

If human workers can be replaced in large part by AI, then #1 falls
apart. 

Unemployed workers aren't much good as consumers, so #2 falls apart.


Embodied AI means #3 falls apart.  It's hard to trust all those poor
people with guns to guard you; an army of droids is far less likely
to turn on you.  The earlier discussion around Ukraine and Russia
also suggests that in the environment of high-tech warfare, a big
army is just a big target, not necessarily much of an advantage.    

The elite disenchantment with democracy means #4 is falling apart.

AGI promises to make genius ubiquitous, so #5 falls apart -- and we
already have more monsters than we can use.

What's left?
  

    
Maybe it's clarifying to ask a different question: what tasks can be
done by AI ghosts?

They're quite capable on the Internet because it's an immaterial
realm. But ghosts aren't physical. Sometimes they can control
machines, but this is still quite difficult, and someone has to
build the machines for them and hook them up. Seems like there's
still going to be plenty of schlep work for people to do?

I'm fascinated by them, but when I close my laptop and look around,
nothing has changed. Although, I do plan to install some cameras, so
I guess that will change it a bit.
  

    
As a retired hobbyist programmer, I am feeling the AI and can relate
to this:

My agents are working. Are yours?
<https://importai.substack.com/p/import-ai-441-my-agents-are-working>

> As I walked into the hills at dawn I knew that there was a
synthetic mind working on my behalf. Multiple minds, in fact.
Because before I'd started my hike I had sat in a coffee shop and
set a bunch of research agents to work. And now while I hiked I knew
that machines were reading literally thousands of research papers on
my behalf and diligently compiling data, cross-referencing it,
double-checking their work, and assembling analytic reports.
>
> These agents that work for me are multiplying me significantly.
And this is the dumbest they'll ever be.
>
> This palpable sense of potential work - of having a literal army
of hyper-intelligent loyal colleagues at my command - gnaws at me.
It's common now for me to feel like I'm being lazy when I'm
with my family. Not because I feel as though I should be working,
but rather that I feel guilty that I haven't tasked some AI system
to do work for me while I play with Magna-Tiles with my toddler.
>
> At my company [Anthropic], people are going through the same thing
- figuring out how to scale themselves with this, to figure out how
to manage a fleet of minds. And to do so before the next AI systems
arrive, which will be more capable and more independent still. [...]

But I expect I'll get over feeling like I gotta build more software.
Sometimes I've gotten very into certain video games, but it passes.
  

    
Meanwhile, I guess crazy attracts more crazy in the immaterial
realm:

<https://steve-yegge.medium.com/steveys-birthday-blog-34f437139cb5>

> There is a lot of money in AI, deserved or no. And even more money
is sniffing around trying to get in to AI. The world's money is
like a conscious thing, and it exerts pressure as it sloshes around.
Money has a good nose, and it smells big changes in the air this
year. First and foremost, it smells changes for software devs. But
that's just a precursor to all knowledge workers being changed
somehow by AI. Soon. Money knows this. Money wants the fuck in.

...

> [...] someone created a meme coin about Gas Town and within a week
I had made $300k USD in cryptocurrency transaction fees [...]

...

> High-end vibe coding is fucking with our sleep cycles. All though
December I had weird sleeping patterns while I was building Gas
Town. 

...

> Jeffrey, as we saw from his X posts, has bought so many Claude Pro
Max $200/month plans (22 so far, or $4400/month in tokens) that he
got auto-banned by Anthropic's fraud detection. He has become
inhumanly productive. Among other things, he has recently ported a
large number of popular libraries to Rust. All the Charm TUI
libraries, fastapi, fastmcp, sqlmodel, a bunch of other stuff. Huge,
polished libraries, completely cloned. And we're just seeing
Jeffrey's exhaust, the projects he spins off as he works towards
his bigger ambitions [...]

...

> Gas City is what I'm calling my next iteration, where you can
define your own custom roles in addition to patrols etc. I've got
some stuff in the queue to finish up first, such as switching Beads
to use the amazing Dolt database, which I'll post about soon. But
Ralph's on the docket. And I keep adding Claude Pro Max
subscriptions, so I may get to it sooner than later.
  

    
And apparently after he posted that, the meme coin crashed and
people who lost money are complaining on Twitter.