New story, plus a publishing fiasco
Book publisher Unbound went into administration (functionally, bankruptcy proceedings) last month. They've been behind on royalty payments to authors for a while (and openly intend to keep not paying them for the foreseeable future). It also looks like, in at least one case, they were deliberately under-reporting sales of books to stiff an author on royalties (which they weren't paying anyway).
Even in the world of commercial publishing, this is an act of soul-sucking evil. The author in question, Aaron Reynolds, apparently scrapped an entire book while operating under the belief that his previous one had flopped—when, in reality, it had sold out its print run.
Unbound (now Boundless) has announced they intend to continue operating. I have no idea how. After this clusterfuck, I don't see any author in their right mind signing with them.
New Flash Fiction: "Fifth of November"
From what Jay had heard, people who’d been in war zones tended not to enjoy fireworks all that much—especially when those fireworks were going off randomly in their neighbourhoods. Moran hadn’t said anything about it, but their relationship (for lack of a better word) wasn’t exactly at the trauma-sharing stage.
Jay Moriarty and Sebastian Moran spend Bonfire Night together in this brief interlude, which takes place between "Sebastian Moran Gets Mauled by a Tiger" and "Jay Moriarty Ruins Everybody’s Childhood." You can read it for free here!
This Week's Links
Builder.ai collapses after revelation that its "AI" was hundreds of engineers
For eight years, Builder.ai marketed its "Natasha" AI system as a fully autonomous tool that could build software "as easily as ordering pizza." However, internal documents and employee accounts reviewed by Bloomberg paint a sharply different picture. Engineers in Noida and Bangalore manually coded client projects while being instructed to mimic AI-generated responses.
‘It’s a Weird Time to Be Rich Right Now’
“In times past, wealthy people were considered aspirational figures. Now, it’s more like, ‘If you’re wealthy, you did something wrong. You cannot be a billionaire without being a criminal. The system is stacked against the rest of us.’ And that has gotten louder and louder, and my clients are hearing it, and it’s disturbing to them.”
Tim Friede has made it his life goal to help scientists develop a universal anti-venom by allowing himself to be bitten repeatedly by venomous snakes.
I think I've figured out how to engagement-bait on LinkedIn. There is no way to use this power for good. Only evil.
-K
