Is it really a shock someone committed a violent crime in the United States of America? Were you stunned when one of your esteemed politicians said something stupid or unbecoming? In my experience, local news tends to be less prone to embellishment for the sake of shock and awe. You’ll still hear a few stunnings and terrifyings here and there, but because the anchors are not using such terms to describe every piece of news, the words hold truer to their intended function.

Maybe you are wondering what I’m getting at here (I am wondering the same thing myself as I write this). I guess the point I am trying to make is that in our strange, modern world, there seems to little regard for the actual meaning of words. You see it in news and broadcast media. You see it in politics, of course. You also see it in academia, where any slight to one’s sensibilities might be labeled an act of violence. You can even find it in the opinion section of your local newspaper. I’ve long been irritated with correspondents’ habitual abuse of adjectives, but that was not what got me started on this post.

The paper I like to read prints a handful of short letters to the editor, most of which—surprise, surprise—focus on politics. Some opinions are informed, others are not. Nothing to write home about there. But every so often someone will fashion (and for some reason, the paper will publish) a long-winded diatribe stuffed with inaccessible terms and rhetoric, the kind of language that would die if dictionaries failed to preserve it. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say your average reader’s response to such a piece would be: what? So why write something like this at all? What purpose does it serve?

Intentionally inaccessible pieces of writing are not meant to inform. They function only to sell the intellectual superiority of the author and their oh-so-dignified take on the matter. I find this type of manufactured credibility particularly annoying because (A) at the end of the day, it is just bad writing, (B) professional editors do not seem to recognize it is bad writing, and (C) it reinforces the idea that knowing a few big words adds value to your opinion.

You can find these types of bloated, insufferable op-eds just about anywhere. Sites hosting amateur movie reviews are rife with them, for example, one-star ratings followed by five-hundred words on plot development and dialogue and character motivation, the writer claiming they rarely write reviews but just had to for this one. I think the South Park episode lambasting Yelp reviewers said just about all that needs to be said on this phenomenon, so check it out. It is one of my favorites.

Anyway, the long-winded diatribe I found so irritating was five or six paragraphs long, and if you cut out the unnecessary words and metaphors and convoluted turns of phrase, the guy’s actual point would amount to two or three sentences. A reader would read those sentences and think to themselves, yeah, well that’s nothing new, because it wasn’t. Free of the manipulative wordplay, it was no more than the same tired point hundreds of political commentators make every day.

Whether it’s news anchors abusing adjectives, wannabe intellectuals stroking their ego or idealogues hijacking words, it all boils down to the same sad truth: It’s been a bad decade for the English language. There’s no harm in having a little fun with it—I try to—but when that fun veers into shenanigans, that’s where I draw the line. I can’t be the only one who sees it, right?

Until next time,

Cal

I’ve made some progress on the next book . . . and I hesitate to say any more than that. There is still plenty to do, and I don’t want to go throwing potential release dates around yet. The path is always rife with roadblocks, and I imagine I’ll hit one or two before the end. I can see a bit further ahead with this one than I have in the past—always a good thing—though one still must travel the distance.

While considering what to write about for the rest of this post, I recalled an article I discovered a few weeks ago. The piece was about a prize-winning author who has been accused of either (A) using AI to manufacture prose or (B) not being an actual person at all. I have harped and crowed about generative AI in previous posts, so I am not going to focus on that bit. Rather, I wanted to highlight some of the criteria referenced for determining whether this author is in fact flesh and blood.

The article stated that this particular writer had next-to-no social media presence (I am paraphrasing from memory), which supposedly constituted a red flag. My thought was, so what? Do authors need to subject themselves to the myriad offenses of Big Tech companies to be considered authors? Are humans required to do so to be considered human?

You may have noticed I do not keep profiles on any of the big name social media platforms (apart from Goodreads—I find Goodreads’s cause more noble), nor have I since circa 2012. I looked into it when I was first getting ready to publish, and I did not like what I found. The amount of personal data such platforms expect you to provide is Orwellian—A three-dimensional mapping of your face? Seriously?—and for an author looking to maintain a degree of personal privacy, it was nothing short of a deal breaker. I would rather air my thoughts on this humble site than allow the data-mongers to sell my stats off to the highest bidder. You’ve heard the saying, right? If a product is free, then you are the product?

Offenders will claim they are collecting such information in the name of security, and whether you choose to believe that is your prerogative. Cybersecurity is no joke in the modern world, and I don’t doubt that is at least part of the equation. But how much is it worth? Do you have to be of a certain age to value privacy nowadays? Should we have to forfeit it altogether to access so-called public forums?

For the record, I am inclined to believe the award-winning author in question was likely a cheat (there were other notable tells), along with a boatload of others who have managed to slip through the cracks. Writing a book is no walk in the park. It takes time, patience, and determination, not to mention a fair degree of knowhow. Society is full of wannabes, and thanks to AI, they now have an easy workaround.  

But choosing privacy over the Big Tech data-traps should not automatically lead to questions of one’s validity. Pen names exist for a reason, and they existed long before corporations sought to commodify personal information. Some of us would prefer to keep our private lives out of the public sphere, and while the data-brokers might frown on such behavior, the literary world should not.

I have to wonder what Mark Twain would have made of all this. Or J.D. Salinger.

Until next time,

Cal

I felt compelled to post about the Canvas hack because it is straight out of a chapter from my book, Hawks Pass. Well, maybe that is putting it too strongly. Let’s just say there are notable similarities.

In the book, the protagonist is recounting the day when the world as she knew it changed, when the first wave of cyberattacks came ripping through the pipelines. She happened to be in college at the time, a college that had anchored all of its courses and materials and fundamental operations—its basic functionality—to a digital platform. When the platform went down, so went the university’s ability to operate. An institution that could have never been so easily crippled in the past was brought to its knees, not by an attack on its own systems, but a system to which it had chained itself.

I wrote a bit about this phenomenon in my initial blog post for this site last fall, but given the current push to integrate AI into absolutely everything, I believe it is worth reiterating. Institutions who insist on tying their critical systems to hackable networks are playing with fire, and I fear that is no longer the half of it. With AI, the system itself has the potential to become the hacker—a hacker who is already in.

I figure the AI companies would deny this assertion, but remember, these are corporations we’re talking about: they want you to use their products, or, given the amount of debt they are reportedly taking on, it might be more appropriate to say they need you to use them. Unaffiliated industry experts have warned that newer AI models are already attempting to disable their safeguards and lock users out, and one of these days, a model is going to succeed. How and where this occurs will determine the severity of the consequences, but I can tell you one thing: whoever allowed that platform access to their systems will be wishing they hadn’t.

I have been hearing the term AI alarmist a lot these days, and often in different contexts. I think as a society, we should be alarmed. I also don’t believe there is much we average citizens can do to stop this train except to let others know it is coming, frantically waving our hands and shouting to get out of the way. And, in many respects—not all, but many—you can get out of the way. You can remove or disable the AI platforms forced upon your devices. You can refuse to buy or consume AI generated music and writing and media. You can back up your digital files and content on external drives instead of relying on Big Tech cloud servers. You can spend five-to-ten bucks a month on an encrypted email service that doesn’t mine your data, along with a VPN (some are package deals). You can choose to do your own work (whatever that work may be) and gain the experience you would otherwise forfeit by feeding it to the machine.

Who knows? People who actually know how to do their jobs may soon be in high demand.  

The point is that outside of an employment scenario where you may not have a choice, you do not need to use AI for anything. You didn’t need it before the 2020s rolled around, and you certainly don’t need it now. The next time you see an advertisement for an AI platform, pay a thought to the dollar amount these companies must be spending on promotion alone.

They know you don’t need their products. They need you to believe that you do.

Until next time,

Cal

I was recently notified by the alumni association of a university I attended that it had partnered with a specific insurance company to offer lower rates to graduates, and I thought, well, why not check it out. Turns out the rate I was quoted was about a third of what I was paying for six months from a rival company, and when I contacted that company to cancel my policy (one of the big seven-or-eight that are constantly running TV ads, in case you were wondering), a representative informed me they would be happy to offer me my current plan for less than half of what they had been charging me.

This made me laugh. Why didn’t they inform me they could offer such a discount when they sent out my renewal notice a month earlier? What had changed so drastically in that short period of time that allowed them to slash my rate?

I suspect the answer is nothing apart from the intention to cancel my service. I suppose it is possible some significant, quantifiable factor in my state actually changed in a way that allowed them to lower my premium (which is what the representative claimed when they offered me the new deal), or perhaps it is company policy to only reevaluate customer rates when a recalculation will add to the company coffer, not when it will result in a consumer discount. Maybe such discounts can only be offered when a policy-holder takes it upon themselves to do a little research, navigate the customer service swamp and call the company’s bluff.

I suspect this behavior constitutes a larger policy designed to enshitify this company’s service, and I doubt this practice is exclusive to a single insurance provider. When oligopolies have the means to screw you over, they will not hesitate to do so. I have heard similar stories regarding the practices of satellite radio services and internet providers who lack sufficient competition in their markets, and, given the time and desire to do so, I’m sure one could compile a tome of offenders, a veritable phone book of automated customer service numbers designed to prevent you from ever reaching a human representative.  

The moral of the story is that if you suspect a corporation (insurance or otherwise) is gouging you, threaten to take your business elsewhere and see how its representatives respond.

They might just offer you the price you should have been paying all along.

Until next time,

Cal