I have a-maze-ing ideas. They're not good, but people who hear them often feel like they're trapped in a labyrinth without hope of escape.

Every time I’ve tried to involve AI in one of my creative pursuits it has spit out the exact same level of meh. No matter the model, no matter the project, it simply cannot match what I have in my head. Which would be fine, but it absolutely cannot match the fun of making the imperfect version of that idea that I may have made on my own either. Instead, it simulates the act of brainstorming or creative exploration, turning it into predatory pay-for-play process that, every single time, spits out deeply mediocre garbage. It charges you for the thrill of feeling like you’re building or making something and, just like a casino — or online dating, or pornography, or TikTok — cares more about that monetizable loop of engagement, of progress, than it does the finished product. What I’m saying is generative AI is a deeply expensive edging machine, but for your life.

…

If we are to assume that this imagination gap, this life edging, this progress simulator, is a feature and not a bug — and there’s no reason not to, this is how every platform makes money — then the “AI revolution” suddenly starts to feel much more insidious. It is not a revolution in computing, but a revolution in accepting lower standards.

I recently stumbled on a serialized webnovel (that I will not name for reasons that willl soon be clear), and got invested. I mean like, invested. I was reading it nonstop, blowing through the first 300,000 or so words (of the total ~1.6m) in about three days.

The characters were quirky, if sometimes missing their specific characterization and instead acting in accordance with the plot rather than their own internal narrative. The story was interesting (think geting dumped into your own D&D game and needing to survive), along with plenty of meta-commentary and humorous bits that kept my interest.

It was about the 300K mark that I realized I was reading a Rationalist novel. I finally twigged after one-too-many cutscenes where one character would word-vomit up a strawman situation only to be Rational-splained about it before I finally picked up on where the weirdness lay. I don't have a problem, per se, with Rationalist content, though in my experience it tends toward boring, repetitive and (often) condescending explanations of questions that no one asked. I'm legitimatley not trying to slag on it, merely giving you my history with it.

It wasn't enough for me to give up on the book, because I was still enjoying myself for the most part and the author seemed to be aware of some of the failings of pure Rationalism (that I have zero desire to discuss further) and specifically noted them.

200K words later, my favorite character had an out-of-character-for-her interaction and promptly died. Sure, it was in service of the plot and, yes, we did have the subsequent Fridging discourse (again, very meta novel). I was very much on the edge of putting the book down. I looked up to see whether the character would be revived (very doable in a LitRPG), and saw that they did come back, which ameliorated my anger somewhat. I was still a bit apprehensive but chose to move on.

Two pages later, the protagonist talked about statutory rape he committed before getting sucked into the game world, and I prompt deleted the book from my ereader.

I wrote out my thought process mostly to show that it was a difficult decision to abandon a sunk cost of 5-600K words read. It felt like something of a waste. But it's important to remember that there are so many good books/TV shows/movies out there, you have absolutely no need to stick with media that for whatever reason (content, authorial dickishness, price increases) you no longer find joy from. It's perfectly acceptable to set media boundaries and enforce them; doing so doesn't make you any less of a fan/reader/viewer.

Lunch @ Bastardo was delicious and a lovely place to just enjoy

San Miguel de Allende, the last day of 2025.

The Lost Bookstore in Glendale, CA.

I love the concept of reviews. To me, it’s creating art in response to art, which – as a person who struggles to “create”art from nothing, who is more comfortable editing and remixing and iterating – is the highest form of art I see myself producing.

But reviews have so many jobs to do. They have to establish the credibility of the author to even be reviewing the material (“who the fuck are you to criticize someone who can actually create?”). They have to convey the author’s feelings about the art under consideration. And they also have to be well-structured and well-crafted enough to stand on their own - after all, the vast majority of criticism is read by people who have not yet (and, in all likelihood, never will) experienced the original work themselves. And, bonus, if it’s a rave, I believe the critic owes a responsibility to find a way to convince more people to experience it on their own.

But reviews are also so much, always, about the reviewer as much as the title under scrutiny. Only a fool or a narcissist believes themself an objective arbiter of taste or quality, and so the reviewer must grapple with how much to reveal. Hide behind too many academic terms or in-depth readings and you lack vitality and relevance to anyone worth knowing or interacting with.

I am writing this alongside my review of The Three Lives of Cate Kay, because the book hit me I’m sitting at an outdoor cafe on the dock while the boat from Speed 2 is bearing down, except I’m actually in a Final Destination movie. There is no escape. Every dodge, every distraction only seems to bring it barreling toward me ever faster, looming ever larger.

I don’t feel destroyed by this book, I feel deconstructed into component parts laid bare. I need to have this wholly separate piece of work so that I might start trying to gather those pieces together, while still trying to write a useful review of the book that can do even a shred of work toward pushing people to read it. I feel like my various internal organs are scattered at my feet, and I need to step thoughtfully among them in order to write something important (to me), while taking care not to step on anything important.

I know this book is already somewhat to actually popular, so my piddly efforts amount to very little in terms of getting more people to read the book.

But to me, the act of reviewing is also reaching out, trying to connect. To show through my art (the review) how this art (the book) made me feel, so that we (whoever you are) might be able to connect in some small way, to feel less alone. Yet another job on the pile, I suppose.

I have made no secret of my displeasure with a lot of the hype and uses for AI. I still feel that way about a number of things that AI is used for, but I've also found some areas where it has shown some legitimate use-cases (the automated code review we're using at work as part of a larger, human-involved code review process frankly blew me away). As a result, I'm trying to stay open-minded and test out various scenarios where it might be beneficial to me.

I created a small Gemini gem to automate the process of making book quotes. My rationale here is that the alternative is my manually creating them in an image editor (and I never feel like going through all the effort). It's not taking away the work of a human except my own, and the artistic expression is about as much as I want.

I really wanted to automatically include the cover of the book, but the current version of Gemini doesn't have that ability - I'd have to upload the cover manually, which is the sort of effort I'm trying to avoid. But it did offer to try to recreate covers manually for me, and then use the accompanying representation.

I'm not gonna lie, I almost went for it. It's close enough to impart the general idea of the cover, and for a minute I was even tickled by the idea of having custom covers for the books, similar to the generated UX I keep hearing lurks just minutes away from sweeping away all design, ever.

But upon reflect, that's just a bit too far for me. Those covers were (hopefully) made by humans with an artistic eye and vision they were trying to impart, and to replace it with an AI imitation is to cheapen their work and lessen the impact of it.

It is, however, super annoying that this version has a much better layout overall.

I like how Wicked: For Good ends with Elphaba and Fiero, a green lady and a man made of straw, are traveling to (presumably) earth. Where no one’s ever had trouble because of their skin color or looking different

Saw Twenty-Sided Tavern at the Balboa last night. This is immediately after the DM (the woman in purple) rolled, with disadvantage, a nat 1 AND a nat 20.

After we went to two bookstores, we wanted to get some food on the way home. So we stopped at the mall, where we found ... a book fair?

I’m not sure if this is a special section or an ongoing series, but it’s basically the entire who’s-who of good digital journalism of the 00s/early 10s. Mostly I’m just mad about how difficult it is to find the work of most of them nowadays.