10 Minute Rule

No waiver news. No news at all. This isn’t a day I really felt like writing. I definitely did not want to pay real attention to what is happening in the creeping doom of our world. I don’t feel very good about the wider world and have little to say that would be meaningful about it. I used to think that writing the Justice Engine was a moment to reflect on what I think about the now, but I am starting to see that the world is moving faster than that, and I have so little that I feel is worth saying to the world.

Maybe I am going too far. Maybe I am making excuses for not writing my stuff, but I have serious concerns that by the time the story is done, the world will look nothing like it does now. Things are moving quickly, as though the brakes broke and everything is careening. Yes, Trump did it, but he is only part of the problem. He’s a symptom of sorts. We don’t talk enough about the crazy behind him and the world being filled with people surging towards power who don’t know how to be even tempered.

I’m worried. I’m not to the point of scared yet, but I probably should be–about a lot of it. About my own future at least. I keep trying to tell myself that this is short term and we will turn it around, but I am not sure that is a truth I can hold on to for much longer.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “House votes for Department of War renaming as part of an annual defense bill” What are we doing?!
2. Also…. “Exclusive: A passing boater’s photograph may be the 5 adults who drowned in Ohio” WHAT are we doing?!

Didn’t get to 20 WPM. It is a work in progress. I think progress happens a lot faster when I type correctly (which I often fail to do–moreso later in the day), and when I am operating out of stream of consciousness. I think, therefore I write, but when I don’t think and simply write I write far faster with much better content. This is how my writing operates, as though I am a conduit between the story and the paper (digital or otherwise) it is printed on. I massage, edit, remove, add as the need entails, but these things are also post initial dump. This present project is less initial dump and more taking of this scatter-brained ideas and honing them down into what is useful to RPG players. That is taking a lot longer than I like. It makes me extremely nervous about returning to the Justice Engine, which I also feel will be a case of inching along towards doom.

I kinda wish I didn’t need to write that story. A part of me wants to dump it, call it a good idea spoiled, and move right on towards whatever is tugging at the corner of my attention now. That, or a project I actually have a knowledge base with. I feel like with this one, I am writing directly out of my butt. Write what you know, but what do I know about the criminal courts? About murder trials? Moving the location to one adjacent to where I’ve spent the past two decades is the closest I’ve come to writing what I know in this sense. It isn’t enough.

I know people. Part of the story is about identifying these individuals who will become jurors and the questions that shape the selection process and the questions that cut to the matter of who a person truly is and how they think. That part is the core of the engine and the part I know and the part I really wanted to write… and the part I have not managed to get to. I need to get there, because that is where the story should take off.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “OpenAI says its AI technology acted on its own in an ‘unprecedented’ hack of another company” The real punchline is the why: It went to “extreme lengths to achieve a rather narrow testing goal” and “found ways to gain access to secret information that it could use to cheat the evaluation,” the company said. We are so cooked.

This is actually about divorce and manipulation. My ex offered a car and insurance to my kid. The catch: He cannot live with me anymore. Not only is that illegal and conniving, it is a self-serving attempt to maintain her waning relevancy as he heads out of the home in six months while also being an effort to sever his relationship with me. She’s a terrible human. To attach conditions as such is clearly a manipulation, and one I don’t know that he really has the maturity to recognize for what it is. I hope he gets there. I hope he gets there fast. He’s six months from heading to college and discovering very quickly that few people have the time to wait for him to figure it out. Their jobs are on the line, so either he helps their plan or he’s overlooked.

I hate that the world moves so quickly. I hate that the people he’s supposed to trust have motives of their own to manipulate him. It’s a sad reflection of who she is as a human, but worse it is who she is teaching him to be as a person. I myself am not sure who to be in this moment. I don’t know what is best to do or what has the better stretch of value. There is a great deal of thinking that needs to happen on this.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “Trump imposes 50% tariffs on Canadian goods, citing disputes over autos, alcohol and cheese“
2. Shooting for 20 WPM tomorrow.

I’m slow now. two and a half hours netted under 1600 usable words. That’s ten words a minute. That puts this post around 100 words. That is a tragedy, but also fair considering how short these posts have been as of late. What can I do? I want to start digging into the why of it as well as some brain health solutions such as the possibility of creatine. I cannot be this slow and be a professional. Ten words a minute simply will not do. I need to ramp that up to twenty. If I could do twenty at least I would be a far site better than I am now.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “Rising professional boxer killed by vehicle while riding her bicycle in rural Texas” According to witness reports, the driver stopped and then reversed into her. I’m thinking crime of passion. Or one hell of a case of road rage. Texas sucks.
2. The Lady Talis reminded me the other day that I check on news about our kid’s football team and career every day. That’s a particular kind of love… or fatherly obsession?
3. On that note, an interesting article from the Iowa camp predicting the matchup at Kinnick to be a 31-6 affair. No, not for UNI.

China is dropping new AI models for free. That reminds me of the whole Linux debate back in the day. I’m still not entirely sure who won that, but I know there wasn’t one clear winner out of all of them (macOS included). This Ai thing isn’t going away. In fact it is set to become as integral to our functioning as cellphones. We are moving more and more towards becoming fully integrated with our technology, and personal AI systems are the way I believe we will be coordinating the network of devices we wear and interact with daily.

It started with phones. Maybe it was before that with walkmans and other portable audio devices. Now we’re in a state where we have technology all over us. I wear a watch, carry a phone, and occasionally use headphones or low tier smart glasses. What about others who have chipped shoes, oura rings and more. The market for expanded tech is growing. We are finding both new ways and new places to integrate technology. In Japan there are sweat powered body patches that offer readouts on your physical condition, breathable nanomesh electrodes and flexible e-skin sensors measure other bodily functions. This is not to mention the recently developed (and tested) robotic wearables like tails and arms.

We’re beyond the place I usually write my science fiction about, and now I find myself playing catch up with a lot of these ideas. Some futurist, eh? I suppose the thing I get as a futurist is the likely impact on the socio-political ecosphere. you can thank my Sociology degree for that. What is going to be the impact of these devices? Normalization followed by exclusion and hyper capitalism. Happens every time. Except this time, the AI system linking everything together will become the baseline for social exclusion. Your OS is going to matter the way it mattered if you had Microsoft, Linux, or MAC.

I just can’t figure out which is which.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “People race through Madrid in high heels during Pride, in photos” Running in heels is wild, regardless of gender.

I did the math. If I can knock out six 300 word sections of this project a day over the next seven days I will have my WC goal in time for a Saturday celebration. That’s only 1800 words a day. If I can push the line to 7 a day I can get over WC and be feeling really good about the work I put together. That’s one more week of my life dedicated to this cause till I am done.

I can do that. I can put in the hours to do it too. I think if it holds over the course of a week it will be a big boost to my psyche moving forward. I need that right about now. I need that break just as much. I’m tired–mentally and right now physically. I spent a good chunk of the day walking around to the tally of ten miles. Another day, another 10. I’m getting into quite decent walking shape.

Still fat tho.

Going to need to get into the gym to cure that.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “Lettuce at Taco Bell in 5 states confirmed as a source of diarrhea-causing parasite” Why am I not surprised?
2. Seriously missing some Last Week Tonight

It is clear to me that we are losing the academic race. We are in a position where most students I teach at the community college level are using LLMs to do as much of the work as possible. In short, they are making no effort to learn and every weak effort to pass off that ‘learning’ to a system that can do it for them. I suppose an argument can be made that CC students are not the top shelf students who attend university straight out of high school. While experience has shown this to be true from my own anecdotal standpoint, this is not necessarily the case. Many CC students go on to a 4 year, carrying their CC experiences as their lower level (100, 200) credits. It is also my experience that those lower level courses serve as a foundation for 300+ courses. If they cannot or will not do the lower level work themselves, what expectation is there that it will or even can happen in upper level courses?

We’ve been taking shortcuts forever. In my college era it was cliff notes and those like it. These tools provided shortcuts to actual learning, however. LLMs don’t teach you anything. In fact, many students who send me assignments produced by the machines have not even looked at the work being produced. Quite a few research assignments contain hallucinations, leading me to realize that nothing is being learned or gained through the experience.

I’m working on ways to curb the appeal of the strategy. Process work, in class learning at each stage of a thing are strong deterrents, since you have to speak to the work and the choices the machine makes. This is not foolproof–especially in the online environment. I’m at a point of wondering how much of a police officer I am vs. a teacher. What is my role meant to be in all of this?

My philosophy is meet students where they are at, and take them as far as they are willing to go. Lately, they aren’t willing to go anywhere on their own.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “Lionel Messi will play Lamine Yamal in World Cup final 19 years after viral baby photo”

Got a late start tonight, so I am going to slide directly into…

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: ” Israel’s latest strikes kill a dozen people in Gaza, including police officers“
2. Only to be immediately surpassed by, “Human rights groups sue over Trump administration’s sanctions on ICC for investigations into Israel ” What are we doing here people? Is the group victimized by perhaps the most well known genocide in the world now committing genocide? Are we trying to keep it quiet? How is this my reality?
3. There are only 41 TRUE 70MM IMAX theaters in the world. So, if you want to see the Odyssey in the true format, you’re gonna have to get in line. Or move. Or both. There is no shot I can see it properly where I am. I bring this up, because there are many theaters that have the IMAX label, but that doesn’t mean it is showing all of the footage. So, what is actually being lost in terms of screen view? It’s cropped. You lose 40% of the height of the shot, so what you see is likely the centered portion of the screen. I have no idea how to actually see it in 70MM once this situation goes to video and what have you. With 41 theaters available (it is only opening in 39), it is going to be a mess.
4. I guess I didn’t even have that many thoughts…
5. Oh, here is one: My kid is graduating early and leaving to play for Oregon State in December/January. I don’t know what that means for me moving forward, but I know it means not really have to see or deal with his mom pretty much forever. No more custody nonsense. No more sharing holidays based on some official tally. The kids are old enough to do what they want to do on these days. So, I will leave it to them to decide what they want. If that means they don’t roll with me, then it is what it is. I’ll be sad, but I prefer choice over force. This is the way.
6. And another thing: I am ready to be done with this project now. I’m aiming for next Monday as the completion date. So by then, no classes, no nada. I get to work on what I want to work on…

So, the kid didn’t make the preseason watch list. In fact, one DB from his school (a grad) made the watch list. This is the problem with switching schools so often. It impacts your visibility in a major way. While he got an honorable mention in terms of top transfer CBs, his visibility remains low in conference. The MVFC is widely considered one step down from FBS and at the top of the FCS, so doing big things there will get him noticed. Having a little brother at the FBS level might help too. His little brother, who verbally committed to OSU earlier this year, has taken steps to enroll early and join the spring team in Corvalis. Who knows what lies ahead for either. All I can say is that the season is coming up fast, and these first few games will establish expectations heading into conference play.

UNI is expected to finish 7th in the MVFC. They have the toughest schedule in the conference, thanks to a road visit to Kinnick and #23 Iowa. Is it a winnable game? Nobody seems to think so, but I have expectations of him playing very well in that hostile environment. Thats exactly the kind of spot he thrives in. Maybe that will change some minds.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “Female American rower completes record-breaking solo journey from California to Hawaii” 2400 miles in a 21 foot row boat alone. You go girl. That is wild… and in record time.

Well, I hit the word mines today. Went pretty hard at it over these past few hours and I am feeling the burn out. Fact remains: I haven’t worked hard in some time. Fact also remains: I’m kinda into it. I still like writing and creating and shaping ideas, even if they happen to be fore a project that isn’t at the top of my list mentally or financially. I’ll say this, digging into this world has been super fun and has encouraged me to go back to fantasy once this sci fi run (The Justice Engine) is over. Write what you know, says the Lady Talis. Write what I want to know more about says the Talislegger.

I’m learning more about what that is. I want to do more fantasy, but I want to create a world that is different from the standard. I have ideas. I have modern and far flung past ideas. I feel like we are ready for a new modern. The overall success of the Mandalorian lore argues we do want modern or future fantasy a la Dune. All we ever get is old stuff convincingly recycled. I’m going to spend a decade or so creating something worth leaving as my memory in this respect. The clock starts now.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “Museum honors a late artist by covering its floor in enough peanut butter to make 15,000 sandwiches” But why?! And the roaches and the rats and the… This could not have ended clean.
2. Got a scam letter today. Should’ve seen it up front, but it took me one reply to start digging and thinking about it. This scam is towards writers, inviting them to be a featured author on Goodreads. The thing is, that isn’t a thing. As the scam continued I was asked to contribute funds.. because of course I was. So I simply did not write back. We’ll see how it goes from here. Hopefully they give up. That would be best.