A Grab Bag of Mini Rants!
Sorry, I just got back from a ton of travel and don’t have the spoons to write a proper newsletter today. Plus it’s my birthday! But here are a bunch of random thoughts that I have been wanting to share for a while now…
Please Call Your Senators about KOSA
I wrote before about the Kids Online Safety Act, which is supposed to protect kids on the internet but will actually censor the internet. Queer content, in particular, will be suppressed on platforms, in the name of “protecting” kids. There have been some changes to the bill since I wrote about it, but still not enough.
The Senate is trying to vote on KOSA now — so please call your Senator and beg them to oppose this bill, or make some changes. Get rid of the whole “duty of care” standard, clarify that platforms shouldn’t collect private information in the name of proving that users aren’t minors, and especially don’t let right-wing state Attorney Generals file lawsuits under this bill. Please call now!
Random Doctor Who Thought
Now that Steven Moffat has mined “Genesis of the Daleks” for two different Doctor Who stories (“The Magician’s Apprentice”/”The Witch’s Familiar” and “Boom”), I keep wondering what other bits from “Genesis” he could spin into an entire episode.
Perhaps the bit where Sevrin debates his fellow Muto and declaims “Why must we destroy beauty?” could turn into a whole episode where people have a long, elaborate debate over whether beauty is only beauty if it’s destroyed. So many aesthetic arguments could be explored!
For that matter, we could get a whole two-parter about the giant clam that tries to eat Harry’s foot. Whatever happened to that clam? Will it ever be (so sorry) happy?!
Actually, I do think the scenario where prisoners of war are forced to work on a rocket that is killing them with radiation poisoning and will eventually kill all their friends is one of those beautifully grim Terry Nation scenarios that really does spark all kinds of interesting story ideas.
Did I mention I’m jet-lagged? I am.
This Week’s Complaint About Fake A.I.
I have often used a form of machine learning to write my newsletters: speech to text. I often write my newsletter by talking into my Pixel (Android) phone as I walk around San Francisco and letting my phone turn everything I say into text. It’s somewhat messy, and in any case there’s always a lot of clean-up involved in making it legible later. But it’s been tremendously useful — and depending on how loosely you define “A.I.,” you could say I’ve used A.I. to write my newsletter. In fact, large chunks of Never Say You Can’t Survive were written this way as well.
But the past few months, I’ve noticed the quality of speech-to-text has gone way down, after having been stable and decent for several years. Whereas before, my phone would take literally any words I spoke out loud and transcribe them verbatim into a document, now it’s started to second guess me. I’ll say a phrase, and the phone will transcribe it — but then the software will go back and change the words that have already appeared, rearranging them into what the phone thinks is the proper order. You can actually watch the words disappearing and being rewritten, in real time, after I’ve already stopped speaking. It’s a bit horrifying.
So instead of getting an actual transcript of what I’ve said to it, I end up with mangled bits of garbage that are often wrong in bizarre ways. As far as I can tell, this is because they’ve added more “A.I.” to the speech-to-text software, and it’s stopped simply trying to turn speech into text. It’s extremely frustrating, and I can’t even imagine how much this sucks for people who depend on this software for all of their daily activities.
But also, this feels like two clashing versions of machine learning: one basic and functional, the other overcomplicated and frustrating. I have a feeling this is emblematic of trends in software generally, in which something that simply works is replaced with something that tries to do too much and fails terribly.
Welcome to the future!
The Flash and Time Travel
I just watched The Flash as an in-flight movie, and was amazed to see how much it depended on your knowledge of Tim Burton’s Batman films as well as 2013’s The Man of Steel. So much homework.
But in particular, I was annoyed by how it used time travel. (Vague spoilers ahead!) There’s that whole scene where Michael Keaton abuses some spaghetti in the name of explaining that when you travel back in time and change the past, you don’t just create a branching timeline from the moment of the change. Instead, you mess up time both backwards and forwards, so that changing an event in 1973 could result in massive changes to the 1950s. Which… okay, I guess that’s what we’re going with.
Except that the ending of the film completely tosses that notion aside — suddenly Barry believes that he can make a more minor change to the past that only really comes into play in the present. And Barry thinks (and the movie seems to support) that this will be okay and cause no harm. The only change in the end is that weird bearded George Clooney cameo. I know why they introduced the “spaghetti” thing: as a means of justifying why Keaton is in the movie in the first place, among other reasons.
But I am begging big franchises: pick a time travel mechanic and stick to it. If you explain how time travel works in your world, don’t change your mind a couple hours later for the sake of convenience.
Music I Love Right Now
Aubrey Logan is NOT the co-host of the “Maintenance Phase” podcast, no matter how often I confuse her with Aubrey Gordon. Rather, Aubrey Logan is a jazz singer and trombone player who has a very upbeat, cheery vibe. I love some of Aubrey Logan’s original songs, especially “Tom Bradley International Terminal” and “L.A.” But I am become addicted to her jazzy cover versions of pop, soul and hip hop songs. Just watch her covering “U Can’t Touch This” by MC Hammer:
Or here she is covering “Give It Away” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers:
I also love her versions of Dua Lipa’s “Levitating,” Michael McDonald’s “I Keep Forgettin’” and Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood.” She also has a whole album called Your Mom’s Favorite Songs where she covers Hall and Oates, Jimi Hendrix, the Doobie Bros. et al. It’s very silly and light-hearted and it’s just what I need right now. But seriously, she turns “I Keep Forgettin’” into a whole other song with all these new layers to it, and it actually hits harder and feels sadder than any version I’ve ever heard. Oh, one more. Here’s her version of Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal”:
My Stuff
A while back, Broke Ass Stuart asked me to help put together a one-off literary anthology celebrating San Francisco. The result is The Dream I Dreamt, which you can pick up at coffee shops and bars all over the city. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, and how much folks were able to appreciate what’s great about this embattled town while also launching harsh critiques of gentrification and tech supremacy. (I donated my editor’s fee to The Phoenix Project, which tracks the influence of dark money and right-wing billionaires in San Francisco — you should donate to them too!) Anyway, we’re doing a wee release party in Kerouac Alley (next to City Lights) on Sunday 7/28 from 2 PM to 4 PM, and I’d love to see you there.
My latest book review column in the Washington Post covers books by Aliette de Bodard, J.R. Creaden, Tobi Ogundiran and Miye Lee.
The latest episode of Our Opinions Are Correct features a conversation about absurdism in science fiction, plus an interview with Victor Manibo, author of Escape Velocity.
I’ve got some books you can buy. There’s my young adult Unstoppable trilogy, which has now been nominated for three Lodestar Awards and has now won two Locus Awards. Plus New Mutants Vol. 4 and New Mutants: Lethal Legion. Not to mention my writing advice book Never Say You Can't Survive and my short story collection Even Greater Mistakes!