A thread to address Drew's very important question here. He's asking this in response to my claim that competition is a temporarily necessary evil that we should do away with as soon as possible.

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https://twitter.com/DrewMelbourne/status/1638215952725581831

Competition has served a vital role in determining prices, demand, levels of service, etc. for a long time. It's been so useful in so many ways that it has become entrenched as an Objectively Good Thing.

But it's not. Competition is a stopgap until better tools emerge.

THREAD on why people are crazy and we all can't just get along:

Social Theory of Division theorizes that TRIBES are designed to replicate the same way cells and individuals replicate. In other words: messy AF We accept the absurdity of cellular and individual replication because they are everywhere around us, but objectively both are absolutely insane.

Any institution or movement that spends its time looking backwards rather than forwards is bunk. Think about how Republicans spend their time idolizing slave-owning founders and trying to roll back regulations rather than coming up with new ideas to help the most number of people.

The #1 question I get from readers is: "When is your book getting turned into a movie or TV show?"

The #1 question I get from fellow writers is: "How do I get Hollywood interested in my story?"

A THREAD on adapting novels to the big & small screen... Over the years, I've had at least a hundred authors reach out to me asking for advice about a pending movie or TV deal. Is the money they're being offered enough? Should they be involved in the creative process? How long will it take to get the show/film on the air?

[thread]

Folks at Marvel were trying to figure out how to launch phase 4 of the MCU, incorporate the addition of the X-Men, the relaunch of the Fantastic Four, and help the MCU on Disney+ get off the ground, and Feige was like: The meta goes deep on WandaVision. This bit might be unintentional, but there's poetry in Marvel Studios launching its first foray into TV shows with a show about TV shows. Some history:

I used to wear Wonder Woman Underoos as a kid. My mother would make me behave by telling me I wouldn't be able to watch the original Lynda Carter show. I was OBSESSED.

Which makes the current DCEU version of WW downright depressing for me.

/THREAD The problem with Wonder Woman in the live action DCEU has similar roots to the problems with ALL the live action DCEU. There isn't a single person in charge who understands and LOVES these characters. So no singular vision. To whit:

indiewire.com/2020/12/patty-…

I write speculative fiction for a living, so let's do something fun. I'm going to tell you a story that takes place in an alternate universe, one in which Trump wins reelection in the biggest landslide since Reagan carried 49 states. It goes like this: All his life, Donald Trump has hated anything *not* him. A classic narcissist, this hate of the "other" made him xenophobic and racist. He started his campaign decrying Mexicans. One of his first moves was to ban the entry of Muslims.

9/11 used to be a somber day of remembrance for me. Ground zero was a hectic place.

But then we started having two or more 9/11s every week without much action from our leaders, and now I realize that 9/11 wasn't about the loss of life.

1/x 9/11 was about feeling violated. All those people who passed away 19 years ago were killed by a handful of religious extremists. Humans did it. And we wanted vengeance.

That thirst for blood cost trillions of dollars and thousands of lives in a war that continues today.

2/x

Frost's greatest gift -- and the one most difficult to access -- is his use of the unreliable narrator. His poems lie to us. These untruths conceal deep and profound truths. Frost's most famous poem is perhaps the most famous poem of all-time, the Mona Lisa of poems, his THE ROAD NOT TAKEN.

People are worried about book pirates and I'm over here worried about people not reading.

Other things I don't vilify that bypass author and publisher income:

Handing a book you love to a friend.

Used bookstores. There are several different kinds of pirates:

1) Hoarders. People who steal just to amass large amounts of 1s and 0s on hard drives. They consume .00001% of what they steal. They weren't going to pay for it anyway.

These are the pirates people fear the most, for no reason.

When I was 19, I was pulled over by a cop because I didn't have an inspection sticker on my windshield. I was on my way home from community college. I wasn't breaking any law, wasn't speeding, didn't run a stop sign, didn't fail to indicate. Just a sticker missing. When the officer told me why I was pulled over, I pulled my inspection out of the glove box. I'd just had my windshield replaced that week due to a crack. The letter certified my inspection until I could get a new sticker. Figured that would be the end of it. Nope...

A THREAD about the stock market:

Let me start by saying that I know nothing about the stock market.

Let me follow that up by saying that neither does anyone else. What I love about the stock market is that it's made up of us. It's a bunch of deranged humans trying to guess what a bunch of other deranged humans are thinking.

Some of the valuation is based on economic activity. But a lot is human psychology. Hence the booms and busts.

Since the entire United States is going to grind to a halt, now would be an excellent time to discuss whether we want to reboot it or install a new operating system.

THREAD One of the reasons we haven't simplified the tax code here is because it keeps CPAs employed. That sort of forced inefficiency isn't good. It's like paying someone to fill holes because we're paying someone else to dig holes. Better to find other uses for our shovels.

♦️TEN YEARS♦️

It's been 10 years since I wrote and published my first novel. 10 freakin' years.

When I started this adventure, I told myself to give it 10 years before I took stock of any success.

Let's take stock. It's time.

THREAD The idea of taking this long view was to not get frustrated if success didn't come quickly and easily. Labor in obscurity. Spend more time writing and improving and little time promoting and begging.

My goal was to write 20 novels in 10 years.

I'm expanding on my thread about living in space for a blog post, and I'm realizing how very little of the argument against living in space has anything to do with the actual difficulties of living in space. Instead, it has to do with two great fallacies:

https://twitter.com/hughhowey/status/1134540120877649921

1) Overpopulation is not going to be a problem. A century from now, world population will be in decline:

medium.com/@kevin2kelly/t…

🚀 A THREAD ABOUT LIVING IN SPACE 🚀

We aren't going to do it. Not by the millions, and probably not even in the thousands. There's something deep in our DNA to explore and push out into brand new niches, to see what's over the horizon. This drive is powerful because it compounds itself: People who feel it go out and make lots of copies of that same drive, and so it keeps spreading and spreading.

⛵️ A THREAD ABOUT SAILING ACROSS VAST DISTANCES ALONE ⛵️

I'm lying here on my sailboat in New Caledonia, having just sailed 800 miles across from Australia, and I figured I'd share some thoughts about going to sea alone. As a science fiction author and a huge fan of the genre, nothing makes me feel more steeped in the genre than long solo passages at sea. The ocean and space have so much in common. Both are beautiful from a distance and deadly up-close. Both are killers that we take for granted.

THREAD about my personal higher education experiences that you really don't need to read:

Not everyone should go to college. I'm one of those people. I learned a lot in college, but not more than I would've learned during those same years elsewhere. I've been to 4 different schools since graduating high school: I went to UNC Charlotte for a semester, went to a computer science trade school for a year, went to the College of Charleston for 3 years. And took classes at Appalachian State while working there in the bookstore.

Socialism = Fire departments

Socialism = Police Departments

Socialism = National Guard

Socialism = National Defense

Socialism = Paved roads

Socialism = Public schools

Socialism = Healthcare

Socialism = Higher Education

Socialism = Medicare

Socialism = Social Security All of these social programs are paid for by taxes. The more successful you are, the more you pay into this system. It is this system that made your success possible. It is educated, healthy, and safe people who do the work, buy the goods, and make the world go round.