The "threat of AI to the profession of writing" is actually two completely different things that are being conflated by both the media and older, less tech-savvy writers. One is real and the other is fictional marketing hype. A large language model chatbot CANNOT replace tv or film writers. Not now, not in the near future, I personally believe not ever. That is fiction. However, the real threat is bosses using this fiction as an excuse to turn writing into low paid gig work. That is real.

I truly don't understand this journalism belief that if you have evidence of wrong doing, you must get a comment from the offending person/org or your reporting doesn't count. The evidence exists. Some person/org mumbling "I refute these allegations" adds nothing

https://twitter.com/kcrw/status/1364315916985507840

I was reminded by @happierman yesterday that a podcast was once cancelled by WNYC because they reported on offensive emails by a professor but didn't reach out to him for comment. My question: who cares? They have the emails. Why do we need to hear him lie that they don't exist?

Yesterday I tweeted about how they ditched the fact that Marvel's Wanda is the child of Holocaust survivors in the movies/tv. Multiple people made the excuse that it's because the child of Holocaust survivors would be very old, which is an interesting error to make Let's do math. Someone leaves the camps at 7. They have a child at 47. That child was born in 1985. There are absolutely children of Holocaust survivors who are in their 30s and 40s.

I am so proud to announce this new memoir co-written by @LadyBash and I called The First Ten Years: Two Sides of the Same Love Story. Out on May 11. It is available for pre-order right now, so please consider doing that. In it, we take each of the ten years of our relationship and write about them without consulting the other person. The result is a single love story full of differently remembered moments and different feelings about the moments we do agree on.

The policy of the US government is that rich gamblers are not allowed to lose. If they win, they get 100% of the winnings, but if they lose, the US government always steps in to cover their losses (but not the losses of any regular people who get caught up in it) A really radicalizing fact for my generation is that Obama could have done the exact same stimulus in 2009 but just called the cash given to the banks payment on underwater mortgages. Just that change in label would have prevent so much suffering, and his admin just...didn't.

Here are some new podcasts I've been listening to that I really recommend: Lolita Podcast by @jamieloftusHELP is absolutely my podcast of 2020. Just doing something new and exciting with the podcast form. Part literary criticism, part personal narrative, part comedy, all really really smart and listenable.

a really good explanation of what happened with Gamestop

https://twitter.com/andraydomise/status/1354406807737933826

it's not so much that what the redditors did is good (playing casino games with people's jobs sucks), it's that they exposed that this is all the stock market is. the stock market is a casino and we are the chips that rich people play. they bet on our lives to get worse.

A thing that no one told me about being an author and that I've never seen brought up, but is very useful to know, is how the copy-editing process works. Copy editors are wonderful people who save authors from looking stupid in a 1000 different ways. Be very thankful for them. BUT: they apply the same standards to every book, and they just don't know your book the way you do.

This is advice for artists that want to make a living with their art in our current society. If you just make art for you, or you're happy to work a day job until the socialist revolution, that's great, and this doesn't apply. Learn the basics of business. Learn how to make a spreadsheet. Learn how to make a budget. Learn how your taxes work. You're not above understanding the business you're in, which is selling your art.