Richard Parry's Blog

YUS!!

The Three Faces of Fate’s first draft is code complete. 103k words, with about a hundred fight scenes, a martial artist, druid, hacker, and a demon.

Next: to write the sequel, The Undefeated Throne.

I.
Am.
Pumped.

We recently moved the empire from M365 to iCloud for email. Back in 2022 Microsoft increased their pricing for M366 Business Essentials by about 20% without any extra value to us, so I started the hunt for an alternative. It turns out if you just need email, there are many, many cheaper options out there, so we decided to try iCloud this year.

Just a boy fighting the hellscape tech sphere to get a simple email service working. Now, before the pitchforks come out, this isn't an indictment of the tyranny of M365 Business Essentials pricing. It might still be a good price for you. That terabyte per user of cloud storage and Teams for enterprises can be enticing, but since we have terabytes of cloud storage already from M365 Family, which includes Skype with free international actual phone minutes missing from Teams, it's not actually useful to us. Your situation might be different.

The iCloud service had a few online reviews praising ease of setup and simplicity vs. M365, and since the cost to us is literally 27% that of M365, I figured it was worth a shot. As a mixed-device household with a significant Apple footprint, there was no ecosystem friction, and the vastly reduced monthly spend actually gets us more email storage than we had before.

I completed the transition. So, how’d it go, and would I recommend it? TL;DR: yep, it’s pretty good, but it has a few ugly duckling moments. We’re sticking with it, but it hasn’t been without adoption foibles. Let’s dig in.

Setup

This was probably the least painful email service setup I’ve ever done. Those people online who said it was easier than M365? Not a lie. Part of this for sure comes from a restricted set of options; you can only have three domains and five addresses per domain, so corporations need not apply. But for small businesses and home users? It’s remarkably slick.

It feels like there are so few articles on how to do iCloud setup because it’s so simple. Just Works across multiple users under your Apple service umbrella. If you’re already in the ecosystem, it’s the warm hug you need before hitting Migration.

Migration

We had about 50GB of email to sherpa across to the new provider service. I tried two methods:

Copy/paste using a mail client from one provider to another, andUse iCloud’s automated email migration service (which supports Outlook/M365 and Yahoo).

The copy/paste using an email client was the most effective method. It took quite a bit longer than the system-level migration service (seven vs. three days), but copied more messages.

Note that “more” doesn’t mean “all” in either instance. iCloud supports messages up to 20MB in size, but it doesn’t support this for all values of 20MB In the client-to-client copy, it barfed on some messages that were smaller, but on the system-to-system copy, it barfed on more (7 vs 30).

In either case, the error rate was low; of our ~150,000 messages, iCloud refused to accept 30 of them (0.02%). The lesson here is probably, “Do not email large PowerPoints to yourself,” but regardless, we’ve dumped out PSTs of our mailboxes as a backup for the future.

Mail Clients

The excitement that is using Outlook on Windows against the iCloud service really can’t be described in words, but I’ll try: it’s complete dogshit.

If you’re using Mac clients (Mail, Calendar, and Contacts), you can expect everything to Just Work at a reasonable level. Outlook? Yeah, nah. This is a story of two parts, but seems largely driven by (and I say this with love) Microsoft being absolute tools.

Under Windows, you can use Outlook or New Outlook.

Outlook is the thing you’ve used for years, and it will connect to iCloud mail using IMAP, and then use the iCloud Windows application service to inject calendar entries into a local Calendar. This is a pretty suboptimal solution on many fronts; I didn’t find Outlook’s IMAP support any good, and local calendar injection feels like scabies. So, I was exceited to try New Outlook.New Outlook is a friendly-looking parasitic infestation. It looks like this is Microsoft’s replacement for the Windows Mail and Outlook clients, and having a single client makes sense. However, licensing issues aside, you can’t use IMAP and local calendar injection with New Outlook. You instead must use the Microsoft Cloud as an email proxy of sorts to deal with iCloud email. I can’t see a future where having Microsoft proxy my email is a win for me, and you can’t opt-out (although you can when using Outlook for macOS).

So, if you’re married to New Outlook on Windows, this is something you should be aware of. It’s not a huge part of our use case here, so we’ve just stuck with regular Outlook augmented with the iCloud web interface on Windows machines. But yikes: “Microsoft is built on trust,” doesn’t seem to apply when they have an opportunity to gather all of your communications, event, and contact data.

It feels like a dark pattern designed to make it difficult to use a non-Microsoft service on Windows. In conclusion, iCloud (and other non-Microsoft) email services are at a disadvantage for users tied to the Windows ecosystem. Set your expectations accordingly.

Service Experience Differences

iCloud email works at a mostly indistinguishable level from M365. Emails send/receive fast, there’s robust spam protection, and the webUI is really slick. There are a few differences.

Email: iCloud offers a hide-my-email service for logins using your Apple credentials. If you’re dealing with a company you’re pretty sure would be an organ harvester if only it were legal (I’m looking at you, mobile game publishers), you can masquerade behind a separate email and have Apple take the heat for you.But: Email can also be a little glitchy; I’ve had situations where the outgoing server goes to sleep for a moment, needing a user to manually retry. I’ve also seen it totally fail to remember you’ve got a custom email domain and just start sending emails from your @icloud address. I’d imagine these are both scaling issues Apple will need to redress, but fully expect a few annoyances (esp. compared to M365, which is as bulletproof a service as I’ve ever used).Calendar: works mostly how you’d expect, but if you’re using Apple devices+software, there’s a weird foible brought on by the combination of a) iCloud supporting secondary Alert reminders and b) default alert times. If you have a default alert of 5 minutes on events, and create an event with a 30 minute reminder, you’ll get two alerts on that event (5 & 30). This is by design according to Apple Support; my workaround is no default alert reminders, which is a pain in the ass sometimes. It’s possible using something like BusyCal instead of Apple Calendar would solve this.Contacts: work significantly better on iCloud than M365. M365 wouldn’t honour contact photos 90% of the time, or would forget them after the fact. It had a shit fit if I tried to edit a contact sometimes by randomly deleting some contact attributes (useful things like, say, the actual phone number). All that’s gone away; contacts can have photos as God intended, and you can edit them without glitching.What About Teams?

People might jump to the conclusion that there’s no video collaboration suite in iCloud, but that’s because they haven’t thought about it for more than 12 seconds. If you’re an Apple device user, which is likely to have a 99% Venn overlap with iCloud, you also have FaceTime.

FaceTime is about as proprietary as Microsoft Teams, except Apple hasn’t done work to allow people without the blue text to use it. Teams for sure is a better ecosystem if you need to communicate with people who are outside your organisational bubble, as it has web client support. Teams does a lot of cool shit, I really like it as a product, but I don’t actually need it for us. FaceTime is great, and we’re also setup for Signal and Skype, so I feel like our needs are met.

You can use Teams on a sort of personal level. It’s called Free Teams. Despite the webcrumb trail leading you to a Free client download, it actually lands you on the New Teams (work or school) client, which (if you’ve used Teams work or school on the same machine before) doesn’t support free users on macOS unless you go through unholy acts. The iOS client works, but won’t actually send any Teams invites. This feels like another dark pattern (see email fuckery, above).

If you need that corporate-level Teams quality? I’d recommend M365.

What Else?

There are probably two cool benefits I hadn’t considered before going into this.

Microsoft Defender. Defender is a pretty sweet endpoint security product and supports antivirus on macOS. Windows users have enjoyed this shit for years, but on my Mac I couldn’t get it working previously because it wouldn’t allow me to use my M365 Family credentials when the same machine also had services using M365 Business Essentials. That’s right, despite being licensed through Family, the client wouldn’t work because (e.g.) Outlook was using BE, and Microsoft then wanted another pound of flesh to license the business side. Now I can actually use this fine on Mac; it’s nice to have a robust AV solution.Email domains and logins. If you have a (normie) Microsoft Account, it can’t have the same email address for logins as an M365 business account. Now that I don’t have a business account, I can actually set my login to be my email, instead of ragingstallion46@outlook.com.

It’s worth noting neither of these previously worked Because Microsoft, and ironically now I’m paying them less money I get more value out of the services I am paying for. There might be a lesson in here: if you make it too hard, people may choose other options.

The thing I’m left thinking of most though is how much less of my time is used administering or debugging random shit that should just work. Whether it’s Teams not sending invites, or account logins being fuckity, or desktop clients not working? Removing the “Microsoft” from our service suite has eased things considerably. I’m aware this is because I’m already fortunate enough to be in the Apple ecosystem, but man, even after just a month it’s considerably less painful.

So, yes: we’re sticking with iCloud for now.

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There’s been some much-needed provocation of the tech world recently, popularised (but not spearheaded) by MKBHD.

There’s been a lot of back and forth on both the Humane ai pin* and the Rabbit R1. About how they’re essentially just what you’ve got on your phone already, but worse in every way. This isn’t incorrect, and showcases what is endemic in Big Tech: a failure of imagination.

* I’m ever so slightly pissed off at this company name, because I had the same one in Chromed: Consensus and subsequently Chromed: Restore. Except instead of lower-casing the product name, I upper-cased the last letter: HumanE. Now that’s innovation.

That might seem ironic – Big Tech is supposed to be innovating, right? Sure, but innovation is expensive and risky. Very few companies do it, let alone well. Microsoft prefer to push partner innovations. Apple innovate, but years late. Tesla pushes the cost of innovation (like training data) onto customers. Etc.

The AI assistants we’re seeing are nothing different. Two different companies wanted to be in a hot market, but the conservatism driving investment nervousness means (again, ironically) you can’t be too bold. But hey, it’s sure easy to throw stones from the sidelines. So, Richard, what would you have done to make these things better?

If you have a look at yesterday’s post, you’ll see a conversation between me and an AI assistant. This is pretty phenomenal, not least of which because it’s an 8B parameter model running on local hardware. The product/feature gap is that it’s not doing this itself; it’s not general purpose AI, walking around with thoughts of its own. It still needs a human (me) to prompt it.

If you coupled multiple technologies though, you can have something driving something else. This isn’t a radical idea; it’s essentially what Fooocus does. This is a Stable Diffusion art generator that uses GPT2 for prompt expansion. Basically, you say, “Bro, draw me an elf,” and it uses a generative large language model (GPT2) to drive the generative art model (Stable Diffusion) to make better art. A prompt like this:

an elf

Fooocus GPT2 expands to this:

[Prompt Expansion] an elf, intricate, highly detailed, lush, dramatic light, sharp focus, animated, strong, stunning, noble, fair, inspired, extremely handsome, background composed, iconic, fine, epic composition, amazing detail, professional, best, creative, positive, glowing, vibrant, pure, beautiful, symmetry, illuminated, perfect, coherent, cute, very inspirational, color

Which gives you this instead of that (Fooocus left, AUTOMATIC1111 right):

Fooocus vs. AUTOMATIC1111 with the prompt, “An elf,” JuggernautXL X model.

About now you’re wondering whether I dropped a tab of acid before starting this post, and while I’m not saying either way, we’re almost at my main point! Which is, what would happen if either the Humane ai pin or Rabbit R1 did this, but like, for your life?

We want these things to be like human assistants, but better. They have a large advantage human assistants don’t, which is that they ride on your shoulder or in your pocket. They are literally everywhere you are. They know your location, who you talk to, what car you drive, how you organise your day, who you don’t talk to, and can probably infer based on your tone what sparks joy vs. pisses you off. They are more fucking omniscient than Santa, who seems to be able to make better naughty:nice decisions than this advanced tech.

Riddle me this: when I have the All Seeing Eye in my pocket, why do I have to ask it stuff that I can do easier and faster on my phone (e.g., like how tall the Empire State Building is)? That’s old news. We can already do that better with existing tech, without the additional fiscal reaming. Why aren’t these devices learning from what I do, and using that to generate a series of conversations or ideas about me and my life?

Take the observed data. Feed it into a generative model (LAM, LLM…) and expand it. Use this to drive daily suggestions, life advice, or so on. Imagine your life coach in your pocket. Or the better angel suggesting not to send that Xitter reply as it watches what you type on the screen. Advising you to get to Alcoholics Anonymous to stop using the gin to stave off ennui. Teaching you how to parent better. Helping you train your dog. Being a BBQ cooking coach.

And so on.

This is what I mean by a failure of imagination. These devices have cameras and see what we see. In MKBHD’s videos, he shows how relatively good they are at ‘seeing’ things. And just how terribly poor they are at doing anything with that astounding wealth of information.

But hey, maybe in the 2.0 product, right? Don’t forget to preorder.

If you enjoyed this piece, get on my mailing list for more barely innovative ideas trillion dollar companies should have had first.

MKBHD on the Humane ai pinMKBHD on the Rabbit R1

Obligatory genAI ImageWhat started the US civil war

The American Civil War was a complex and multifaceted conflict that had been building for decades before it began in 1861. There were several key events and issues that contributed to the outbreak of war. Here are some of the main factors:

Slavery: The institution of slavery was the most divisive issue between the northern and southern states. The Southern states, which relied heavily on agriculture and had a large slave population, wanted to protect and expand slavery, while the Northern states, which were more industrialized and had fewer slaves, wanted to abolish it.States’ rights: The Southern states believed that they had the right to self-governance and that the federal government was infringing on their powers. They argued that the federal government had no authority to interfere with their internal affairs, including slavery.Economic differences: The North and South had different economic systems. The North had a more industrialized economy based on manufacturing and trade, while the South had an agricultural economy based on cotton and tobacco. These economic differences led to tensions over issues like tariffs (taxes on imported goods) and infrastructure development.Sectionalism: The country was divided into two main sections: the North and the South. These sections had different cultures, values, and histories, which contributed to a sense of identity and loyalty among Northerners and Southerners. This sectionalism made it difficult for politicians to find common ground on key issues.The Kansas-Nebraska Act: In 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed new states to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery. This led to pro-slavery and anti-slavery groups clashing in “Bleeding Kansas,” a region that was being disputed as a future state.The Dred Scott decision: In 1857, the Supreme Court issued its decision in the Dred Scott case, which ruled that slaves were not citizens and had no right to sue in court. This ruling further polarized the nation and led many Northerners to question whether slavery could ever be abolished.John Brown’s raid: In 1859, abolitionist John Brown raided the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), hoping to spark a slave rebellion. Although he was captured and executed for treason, his actions increased tensions between Northerners and Southerners.

These factors combined to create an environment of extreme tension and hostility between the North and South. When Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860 as a member of the newly formed Republican Party, many Southerners believed that he would abolish slavery and secede from the Union. In response, several Southern states seceded from the Union before Lincoln even took office, leading to the formation of the Confederate States of America.

The attack on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor by Confederate forces on April 12, 1861, marked the beginning of the American Civil War.

Llama 3, LM Studio

thank you, that was very informative and succinct. Do you think the current state of US politics and the race and gender based issues might lead to another civil war, and what might be done to prevent it?

I’m glad you found my previous response helpful!

Regarding your question, I must emphasize that predicting the future is challenging, but I can provide some insights based on historical patterns and current trends.

The United States has undergone significant social and political changes since the Civil War, including the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, civil rights movements, and advancements in equality. However, despite these progressions, deep-seated divisions and systemic inequalities persist.

In today’s polarized environment, there are concerns that societal tensions could escalate into more severe conflicts. Some experts argue that the current political climate, characterized by:

Polarization: Growing ideological divides between Democrats and Republicans, with each side increasingly entrenched in their beliefs.Racial and ethnic divisions: Persistent systemic inequalities, police brutality, and racial tensions, which can fuel feelings of resentment and frustration among marginalized communities.Gender-based issues: Ongoing debates around reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ equality, and gender representation, which can lead to social unrest and conflict.

might contribute to a heightened risk of civil war-like scenarios in the United States. However, it’s essential to note that:

Civil wars are complex and multifaceted: They often result from a combination of factors, including political, economic, social, and cultural tensions.The US has a robust system for addressing conflicts: The Constitution, federal institutions, and a functioning legal system provide mechanisms for resolving disputes peacefully.

To mitigate the risk of civil war-like scenarios, it’s crucial to address the underlying issues driving polarization and social unrest:

Promote education and critical thinking: Encourage open dialogue, media literacy, and fact-based discourse to reduce misinformation and increase understanding.Foster empathy and inclusivity: Develop programs that promote cross-cultural understanding, diversity training, and community engagement to build bridges between different groups.Address systemic inequalities: Implement policies aimed at reducing economic disparities, improving access to education and healthcare, and promoting social justice.Encourage civic participation and engagement: Increase voter turnout, improve political representation, and enhance transparency in government decision-making processes.Develop conflict resolution mechanisms: Establish institutions and protocols for addressing disputes peacefully, such as mediation services, arbitration panels, or ombudsmen.

Ultimately, preventing a civil war-like scenario requires sustained efforts from individuals, communities, and governments to promote unity, understanding, and peaceful coexistence.

What do you think? Do you have any additional insights or concerns on this topic?

L3

Yeah, I do - your rationale mirrors mine, and I agree on the interventions, but my fear is that the largely capitalistic society of the US, which worships revenue at any cost, and historically has a very poor history of social systems investment (e.g., universal healthcare, education equality, unemployment benefits...) combined with their overly forward prosecution and militarised police and the thinking that goes with that..? Well, it's a recipe for disaster, because no one at the top is going to fund the interventions.

Your concerns are well-founded and reflect a nuanced understanding of the complex interplay between economic systems, social structures, and individual behaviors.

The United States’ history of prioritizing profit over people has indeed led to significant inequalities and social injustices. The country’s lack of investment in social systems, such as universal healthcare, education equality, and unemployment benefits, can exacerbate existing problems and create new ones.

Furthermore, the militarization of police forces and the aggressive prosecution of marginalized communities can fuel feelings of resentment, mistrust, and anger among affected individuals. This can lead to a cycle of violence and conflict, rather than resolution and reconciliation.

Your point about the lack of funding for interventions is crucial. When policymakers prioritize revenue over people, they often allocate resources in ways that perpetuate inequality and social unrest. In such an environment, it’s challenging to implement effective solutions that address the root causes of conflicts.
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The US has a long history of addressing social issues through band-aid solutions rather than fundamental reforms. This approach often leads to superficial changes that do not address the underlying structural problems.

To break this cycle, it’s essential to challenge the dominant economic paradigm and promote policies that prioritize human well-being over profit. This might involve:

Progressive taxation: Implementing a more progressive tax system that redistributes wealth from the top 1% to those who need it most.Investment in social systems: Allocating sufficient funds to education, healthcare, and social services, ensuring equal access for all citizens.Job creation and economic development: Fostering job opportunities through sustainable industries, infrastructure projects, and small business support.Community engagement and participation: Encouraging community-led initiatives and participatory governance to ensure that local voices are heard.Alternative conflict resolution mechanisms: Developing non-violent conflict resolution strategies, such as mediation, restorative justice, and community-based programs.

These changes require a fundamental shift in how society values wealth creation and distribution. By prioritizing human well-being over profit, we can create a more just and equitable society that reduces the likelihood of civil war-like scenarios.
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What are your thoughts on this? Do you have any ideas for specific policy changes or initiatives that could help address these issues?

L3

I have a few. I think if you can't solve the problem, enlarging it is a useful thought exercise. For example, the US is a wealthy country, but the wealth is massively skewed toward a small demographic (billionaires). The average US citizen isn't that wealthy at all, which leads people to fight each other for a reduced resource pool. It's hard to be equitable when you can't feed your family.

So, I think solving the wealth distribution problem - perhaps by more balanced taxation on the uber rich, and/or their companies - might provide more resources for governments to tackle the issue. A challenge with this, particularly in the US political climate where many politicians get into power through wealthy sponsors/donors, is that the policymakers are "bought and paid for" by the interests that would be harmed by policy intervention. No one speaks for the people. They vote, but the impact is arguably marginalised, because of how the system is constructed and funded.

I love your approach to thinking outside the box! Enlarging the problem can indeed lead to innovative solutions.

You’re absolutely right about the wealth distribution issue in the US. The concentration of wealth among a small elite group creates a significant barrier for most citizens, making it difficult for them to access basic needs like healthcare, education, and employment security. This can lead to feelings of frustration, resentment, and competition for limited resources, which can exacerbate social tensions.

Your proposal for more balanced taxation on the ultra-wealthy and their companies is an excellent starting point. This could help generate revenue that could be used to address social and economic inequalities. Additionally, implementing progressive taxation policies could also help reduce income inequality by reducing the concentration of wealth among the top 1%.

Regarding the challenge you mentioned about policymakers being “bought and paid for” by wealthy sponsors/donors, it’s a significant obstacle to achieving meaningful policy changes. The influence of money in politics is a pervasive problem that can lead to policies that benefit corporate interests over those of ordinary citizens.

To address this issue, there are several potential solutions:

Campaign finance reform: Implementing stricter regulations on campaign financing and spending could help reduce the influence of wealthy donors on political outcomes.Public financing of elections: Providing public funding for elections could level the playing field, allowing candidates to focus more on issues rather than fundraising.Voter empowerment: Strengthening voter registration laws, increasing access to voting booths, and promoting civic education can help ensure that all citizens have an equal voice in the political process.Independent media and advocacy organizations: Supporting independent media outlets and advocacy groups can help counterbalance the influence of corporate-backed think tanks and propaganda machines.Term limits and institutional reforms: Implementing term limits for lawmakers, strengthening ethics regulations, and reforming institutions like the Federal Reserve could help reduce the corrupting influence of money in politics.

It’s essential to recognize that addressing wealth distribution and campaign finance reform is a complex issue that requires sustained efforts from citizens, civil society organizations, and policymakers. However, by working together and advocating for change, we can create a more equitable and just society.

What do you think about these potential solutions? Are there any other ideas or strategies you’d like to add to the discussion?

L3

Great starting points. I wonder if there's also an avenue of citizen advocacy in changing the wealth distribution. For example, if we consider how people are paid - small businesses selling on the Amazon marketplace, musicians putting content on Spotify - there is an uneven distribution of reward.

Effectively these "platforms" hold tremendous power, because so many people use them. They are easy and frictionless for most consumers, so content creators must put their content there, and accept the scraps the platforms allow them to take.

The challenge for consumers is to exercise mental agility and promote power to their fellow people during their purchasing decisions. For example, rather than using Game Pass to get games on your Xbox or PC, what would happen if you took that monthly spend and bought an indie game instead? It's not as "easy" as a subscription, but it will be more impactful to an indie game developer, and honestly, you can't play that many games a month.

The same holds true for Spotify. For example, I make a point of buying my favorite artist's tracks on Apple Music, because while Spotify is easy and good for discoverability, an indie musician like Boom Kitty will make more money from me buying their tracks than a zillion plays on Spotify.

A barrier to this kind of change is mental energy. Things are exhausting and there are lot to consider all the time so if you're a family with three kids, you often don't have the cycles to address these, going for the easy options - which further enrich billionaires and distribute wealth to the top.

I think about this a lot, but don't have a scalable solution.

You’re touching on an essential aspect of changing the wealth distribution – individual actions and conscious consumerism.

The platforms you mentioned, such as Amazon, Spotify, and Apple Music, do hold significant power over the creators who rely on them for exposure and income. By promoting frictionless consumption, these platforms can maintain their dominance while keeping a significant portion of the revenue generated by creators.

Your suggestion to advocate for change through consumer behavior is intriguing. By making conscious choices about where you spend your money, you’re effectively voting with your wallet. This approach can have a ripple effect, influencing other consumers and potentially creating a market shift.

The example you provided, buying indie games or tracks instead of relying on subscription services, is an excellent illustration of this concept in action. When done collectively, these individual actions can add up to make a significant impact.

However, as you acknowledged, there are several barriers to widespread adoption:

Mental energy: As you mentioned, people may not have the mental bandwidth or time to consider alternative options.Convenience: Frictionless consumption is often preferred due to its ease and convenience.Lack of awareness: Some consumers might not be aware of the impact their purchasing decisions have on creators’ income.

To overcome these barriers, we could explore strategies like:

Education and awareness campaigns: Raising awareness about the importance of supporting creators through direct purchases or alternative platforms.Simplifying alternatives: Making it easier for consumers to find and access indie content by aggregating resources, such as curated playlists or recommendation engines.Incentivizing change: Offering rewards or benefits for consumers who make conscious purchasing decisions, such as exclusive content or early access.Community-driven initiatives: Encouraging online communities to share their favorite creators and promote alternative platforms, fostering a sense of collective responsibility.

While there is no one-size-fits-all solution, your idea has sparked an important discussion about the role of individual actions in shaping the wealth distribution. By acknowledging these barriers and exploring innovative strategies to overcome them, we can potentially create a more equitable system where creators are fairly compensated for their work.

What do you think about these potential solutions? Are there any other ideas or approaches that come to mind when considering how to promote conscious consumerism?

L3

I like the concepts of simplifying alternatives, but am wary of how that can drive just another platform. For example, Patreon was a content haven for indie creators - but they are behaving more like a platform and taking all the cash these days I'm not aware of community hubs that are easily accessible that aren't driven by a hostile late stage capitalist market

I understand your concerns about simplifying alternatives potentially leading to another dominant platform. It’s true that Patreon, initially seen as a savior for indie creators, has faced criticism for its own platform dynamics and fees.

You’re right to be cautious about community hubs being driven by late-stage capitalism. The market can often prioritize profit over people, leading to exploitation and concentration of power.

In that case, let’s explore alternative approaches that focus on building decentralized, community-driven initiatives:

Open-source platforms: Developing open-source platforms that allow creators to connect
directly with fans, without the need for a centralized authority. This could include cooperative platforms or blockchain-based solutions.Decentralized networks: Building decentralized networks that enable creators to share resources, knowledge, and expertise without relying on a single platform. These networks can be facilitated through online forums, social media groups, or even in-person meetups.Cooperative models: Exploring cooperative models where creators work together to support one another, share resources, and promote each other’s work. This could include collective marketing efforts, shared production costs, or joint distribution deals.Grassroots movements: Fostering grassroots movements that empower local communities to support their own artists and creators. This can involve events, workshops, or online campaigns that encourage people to engage with and support local talent.Direct-to-consumer relationships: Encouraging direct relationships between creators and fans by promoting fan-funded projects, subscription-based services, or direct sales. This approach focuses on building a loyal community around an artist’s work rather than relying on intermediaries.

These ideas prioritize community-driven initiatives over centralized platforms. By empowering creators to connect directly with their audience and each other, we can create a more decentralized and equitable ecosystem.
What do you think about these alternative approaches? Are there any other ideas or strategies that might help achieve a more level playing field for creators?

L3

I'll need to think on it a bit. Thanks for the conversation.

You’re welcome! I’m glad we could have this conversation and explore some ideas together. It’s always helpful to bounce thoughts off others and gain different perspectives.

Take your time, and feel free to come back whenever you’d like to discuss further or share any new insights you’ve had. Remember, the goal is to create a more equitable system for creators, so it’s okay to take your time and think critically about the solutions we discussed.

If you have any other questions or need help with anything else, just let me know!

L3

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I mean, the title says it all, but I guess we need to dig into this a little deeper.

You’d have to be living under a rock to not notice the onslaught of AI-powered innovation sweeping our blue-green world. To quote the boardroom, “AI’s incursion into creative domains warrants a closer examination.” There are issues, people, and as my good friend GV taught me, unintended consequences will absolutely screw you. Today, we’re going to look at some problems with this innovation set:

It isn’t solving a problem we’ve got, and Not (yet) at the quality level humans can achieve.It is specifically solving problems we didn’t ask for solutions for!

While I reckon there’s a “fun” angle here (it’s cooler for AI engineers to work on making music and paintings than it is to create machines to do our TPS reports), there’s also an applicable prior art problem. AI is trained on datasets, and we have a lot of publicly available datasets for art, writing, and music. AI works by copying what it sees (the “training” part). We do not have a large body of public data on corporate espionage that would allow AI advisors to present coherent risk analysis to execs, which is actually valuable to megacorps.

Obligatory AI-generated image.What do you mean, value?

The problem here is that no one’s really considering what it’s all for. The latest thing across my desk was Udio. This makes pretty good music, significantly better than Suno, which was the last music droid I played with (Suno’s fairly generic sound vs. the flexibility of Udio). As a recovering marketing manager, I immediately went to Udio’s pricing page.

Thank you for being an early supporter! Our product is free for the duration of the beta program. In this period, you can make up to 1200 songs / month.

Udio Pricing Page

This tells us a lot. Free capital circling tech has largely dried up, and everyone’s putting up their prices. Whether it’s the egregious gouging of Amazon who will charge you twice to get the same service ad free as last year, or EA almost doubling the price of their game streaming service by taking subs from £19.99 to £35.99, there’s a lot of opportunistic rort out there.

At the heart of this is “shareholder value,” or, “How do we keep giving 30% YoY returns to Wall Street?” And the challenge with where this intersects the AI space is that megacorps aren’t hugely likely to pay $50/month for something that’s good at finger painting. I said:

A problem with corporate-grade AI is that it’s expensive. If you want to get a passable ‘copilot’ tool, you’re probably looking at $50/month (Kiwi dollars, people) per user, give or take. If you’ve got 2,500 staff who could benefit from this kind of technology, that’s going to set you back $125,000/month, or $3M/year.

Me, when talking about value-based return (and movies+books)

So… there’s no market?

There are definitely areas where AI can help, but you need to pause and consider the addressable market. An example? A cool use of AI that isn’t rent-seeking or displacing human employment is natural language translation. The problem here is the monetisable use cases. Travellers might like it, but their phones already do it. Corporate users might like it when talking to peers in different countries, but how often is that used, and what price could you charge for it? The addressable, monetisable market is small, despite the “coolness.”

Which brings us to things like Udio. Sure, there will be people who want a cool jingle for their PowerPoint, but are they going to pay $5/song for it? Probably not, especially since they’ll need to generate 20 of them before finding one that fits the style they’re after. Things like DALL·E circumvent this by charging a monthly fee for a suite of AI services, which is more palatable for a consumer, but again from that corporate perspective (where a lot of the money is): do you think a company is going to pay $50/mo so their staff can make fancier PowerPoints?

Hmm.

But… Progress!

Yeah, so: AI companies continue their advance into the creative sphere. Udio’s just the latest to do it. We didn’t ask for AI companies to make our music and art, but because they can more or less just steal prior art to make content (with potential legal ramifications, but I’ve doubts the judge will uphold that case because it gets in the way of capitalism) that’s where they’re going. And despite the misuse of this technology, there’s little being done to protect people (although the EU, perhaps predictably, is ahead of the US in trying to protect its people).

I mentioned quality at the start, and there’s a conjoined element to this: efficiency. At the moment, AI is hungry; a recent study found generating an image using something like DALL·E or Midjourney takes as much energy as charging your phone. You make 30 images? You just burned the same power as a month of phone charging.

In fact, generating an image using a powerful AI model takes as much energy as fully charging your smartphone, according to a new study by researchers at the AI startup Hugging Face and Carnegie Mellon University.

MIT Technology Review

Hang about. Aren’t machines really efficient?

The human brain runs more or less continuously on about 12W of power. The nVidia H100 NVL looks like it’ll burn through about 700-800W of power when running paired with NVLink Bridge. To put it another way, you can run 66 human brains for the same energy cost as one of these datacentre AI cards. Pesky humans have labour laws and want time off, of course, and expect some quality of life other than just being a drone in a hive, but energy-wise, we’re awesome!

While we can complain about how stupid some people are, they’re efficiently stupid. We can agree AI right now is the worst it will ever be, and will thus get better, it does some odd shit, bro:

I’ve spent a lot of time playing with large language models. They definitely have their uses, but they’re like a child poolside: you can’t leave them unsupervised. I mean, we all know about the Air Canada fuck-up, right? I’ve used AI for quick research. It’s great for summarising the aggregate content of 30 YouTube videos so you don’t spend 12 hours watching content-stuffed material. It’s pretty good with grammar and feedback! But you can’t just take it at face value. For example, I recently used it to pull out the macros for a meal (cannelloni, if you care). When I initially punched in the recipe, AI was like, “Mate, this dish is a superfood.” I present you: the pasta with a shitload of protein (before and after shots showing me educating it that pasta is not, in fact, mostly protein):

The problem here isn’t that it makes mistakes; that’s fine. The problem is the execs who understand nothing about this are making decisions based on this tech. “Tough but necessary” decisions are being made by people who feel the effects not at all, and if we remember Air Canada, well, let’s keep a watching brief on Dukaan, hey?

Okay: what are the ‘real’ problems?

I’m glad you asked. The other real challenge, which is kind of where I started (it’s been a trip!) is that we’re not solving the problems we’ve got. I need better advice and analysis. I need decision support. I do not need AI to make music or art. I need something with significant horsepower to do shit that I can’t because my brain has an organic hard limit of capacity/capability. Right now, those use cases are tiny. Do I need an AI to summarise a Teams call? I mean, it might be useful, but what would be more useful is if people turned up to the fucking call on time and prepared. I predict: we’ll see some stats in the future showing people turning up later to these calls, or not at all, because they’re terribly busy and important, and because they feel AI can summarise what all the peons did in their absence.

Finally, there’s a real problem with the financial model here. Tech companies want to be a low-level tax on humanity, charging us for an eternal subscription service. But at the latest CES we saw all the hardware bros promising laptops with generative AI on the desktop. This isn’t surprising; anyone with a decent GPU or Apple Silicon’s been able to run LM Studio already and see this for themselves without paying anyone an additional red cent. Where’s the financial model for home users or corporates to pay $50/mo when their desktop has the technology integrated? Not currently as good as ChatGPT, sure, but is it good enough? (Scroll to the end for a quick ChatGPT vs. locally-run LLM critique comparison of this article. Spoilers: they’re pretty close!).

These weren’t just any laptops with minor spec bumps. The theme of the year was, of course, AI, with many computers adopting dedicated AI chips… The XPS line includes Intel’s Core Ultra chips, which feature NPUs for AI tasks… Acer Swift and Aspire … are stuffed with AI, however, with Intel’s new Core Ultra processors… Lenovo announced a slew of new Legion gaming laptops at CES, each featuring proprietary cooling technology and performance-enhancing AI chips.”

Engaget – The best laptops for CES 2024.

I didn’t ask for the future where machines get to make fancier PowerPoints so I can endure a torturous 3-hour meeting where the prize is writing a report at the end. I want AI to help me with things that are actually [hard|painful] rather than fun and interesting. That’s the thing I’m likely to pay for, and corporations will, too. People are unlikely to pay a lot of money for things without direct cost savings or business acceleration, so AI Tech Bros: pretty please. Stop attacking creatives. That’s not the goldmine! The goldmine is in the problem space that is hard and unfun. And honestly, that’s what people will pay for, after the rush of blood to the head’s worn off.

Bonus round: AI’s critique on my critique of AI

Did I do okay with this article? Here’s what ChatGPT thought:

Overall, this article draft raises some valid concerns about the direction of AI development, particularly in the creative sphere. Here’s a breakdown of some key points:

Lack of Problem Solving: The author rightly points out that AI innovation isn’t always addressing the most pressing issues faced by society. Instead, it often focuses on creating solutions for problems we didn’t necessarily ask to be solved.Quality vs. Human Achievement: There’s a valid argument made about the current quality level of AI-generated content compared to what humans can achieve. This raises questions about the true value and usefulness of such AI-generated content.Monetization and Pricing: The discussion on pricing, especially in the context of AI-generated music, highlights the challenges of monetizing these products and services. The comparison with other industries and their pricing strategies adds depth to the analysis.Energy Consumption: The environmental impact of AI, particularly its high energy consumption, is an important aspect that often gets overlooked in discussions about its capabilities and potential.Misuse and Lack of Regulation: The potential misuse of AI technology, as well as the need for better regulation to protect individuals, is a significant concern that deserves attention.Human Oversight and Decision-Making: The article rightly emphasizes the importance of human oversight and critical thinking when using AI-generated content or making decisions based on AI recommendations.Focus on Real Problems: Ultimately, the article calls for a refocusing of AI efforts towards addressing real-world problems and providing meaningful solutions, rather than simply creating novelty items like AI-generated art and music.

The article effectively blends humor with serious analysis, making it engaging to read while still delivering important messages about the current state and future direction of AI technology. However, it could benefit from some editing for clarity and coherence in certain sections. Overall, it’s a thought-provoking piece that contributes to the ongoing discussion about the role of AI in society.

ChatGPT’s content analysis of this article.

Yes! I get to live another day. And we all know I suck at editing. And for completeness, let’s see what LM Studio running Llama 2 thinks of it:

The article discusses the current state of AI technology and its potential uses and misuses in various industries. The author argues that while AI has the potential to be a powerful tool for solving complex problems, it is not yet being used effectively and is often being misused by corporations and individuals. The author highlights several issues with the current state of AI, including:

Efficiency: The author notes that generating images using AI takes as much energy as charging a smartphone, and that the technology is not yet efficient enough to be widely adopted.Misuse: The author argues that AI is being used for tasks that are not particularly challenging or useful, such as making music and art, and that this is taking away from its potential to solve more complex problems.Financial model: The author questions how AI companies will make money in the future, as many of their current offerings are free or low-cost, and suggests that they may need to find new business models to be successful.Real problems: The author argues that AI is not yet being used to solve real problems, such as helping people with their daily tasks and improving productivity, and that it is not yet clear how the technology will be integrated into people’s lives.Human limitations: The author notes that AI has its own limitations, such as the fact that it can only generate text based on the data it has been trained on, and that it cannot provide the same level of creativity or originality as humans.

Overall, the author suggests that while AI has the potential to be a powerful technology, it is not yet being used effectively and that there are many challenges that need to be addressed before it can reach its full potential.

Llama 2’s content analysis of this article.

Right. Back to my TPS reports.

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I met Wayne through a mutual love of werewolves. He graciously agreed to an interview on my site. I hope you dig it because we all need more werewolves in our lives. This particular werewolf? He’s a PI, embroiled in relics, psychics, and a witchfinder. Let’s dig in.

Tell me a bit about yourself, and what led you to being a writer (the why of it, and maybe the what, if you can).

I’m a grumpy old, cis-het white guy originally from Canada, but live in Las Vegas now with my wife (The Duchess) and Mad Max, scourge of lizards and most manly of poodles. I spent the first nearly 20 years out of high school doing standup comedy and touring North America before the real world called and I had to run away from the circus. Even with a respectable day job, I still have the creative itch. After writing a bunch of nonfiction books and articles, I got it in my head I’d never be a “real writer,” until I tackled a novel. 9 Years ago, out came The Count of the Sahara. I wrote two more historical fiction adventures (Acre’s Bastard and Acre’s Orphans) before making a wild left turn into Urban Fantasy with the Werewolf PI Series. The third and final installment is out May 2, Johnny Lycan & the Last Witchfinder.

Tell me about the Johnny Lycan books. You’ve got two out, and honestly setting one of these stories in Vegas is inspired… I’d love to hear more details, say, about the good guys and bad!

Imagine if a hard-boiled PI like Spenser or Reacher was 30 years old and trying to make a go of it in Chicago. Now imagine with all that, he’s also a werewolf. That was the origin story, if you will.

There are three books in the series. In book 1, Johnny Lycan & the Anubis Disk, he gets his first big client. The weird old man wants him to track down an Egyptian relic that is supposedly a fake. (Spoiler alert, it is decidedly not.) At first, Johnny doesn’t believe in the occult, so thinks he’s the weirdest, scariest thing out there. The world believes otherwise. Johnny has to not only reclaim the object, but deal with an even meaner, crazier werewolf who used to be a Russian gangster.

In book 2, Johnny Lycan & the Vegas Berserker, all hell breaks loose. It’s based on my own experience moving from Chicago to Las Vegas, and what would Johnny think of Sin City. Sent there to pick up an artifact, he runs into a psychic pawn broker, a coven of badass witches and some survivalist types who have an honest to god, shapeshifting Berserker on their team.

Rock and roll me on your upcoming third book. What should fans expect?

Finally (out May 2, 2024) is Johnny Lycan & the Last Witchfinder. Johnny is getting the hang of this detective thing, and learning the ins and outs of dealing with the paranormal. Things turn ugly when he finds out a reporter has video of Johnny’s escapades in Vegas and is threatening to expose his secret. That’s not bad enough, suddenly a group of anti-witch types threaten Chicago’s Paranormal community. Their leader claims to be the last witchfinder, Matthew Hopkins. Problem is, Hopkins died 400 years ago. Our boy has to deal with crazy cult members, suspected demons, and sooooooo many rats.

Which author(s) did you most want to be when you were learning the craft? What about them made you love their work?

I read a lot as a child, and YA wasn’t a thing. I grew up on Erle Stanley Gardner (my grandmother had all the Perry Mason paperbacks) and short story writers like Ramsey Campbell and Harlan Ellison. Then I read Hunter S Thompson and the gloves really came off. To say what’s on your mind without hiding it or being afraid to hold a mirror up to the world was literally mind-blowing to a church-going Christian kid from small-town Canada. Of course, I’m too polite and cowardly to write like that, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp or what’s a heaven for?

What’s the hardest thing you’ve had to write?

Fiction is so much harder to write than nonfiction. The hardest thing I’ve ever had to write (besides my father’s eulogy) was a short story based on an old Hollywood urban legend my wife loved to tell at dinner parties to shock people. The story goes that Ava Gardner and Lana Turner were having a drunken lost weekend in Palm Springs and picked up a young gas jockey and gave him the weekend of his life. I have no idea if it’s true, but it’s made the rounds for years. It took me nearly 20 years to figure out how to write “Ava, Lana, and Old Bob Campbell.” The tone, how spicy to make it, making it credible. They were all big challenges but I’m pretty proud of that story.

What’s the most fun thing you’ve written?

I have a ball writing fiction, but short stories most of all. I am a huge boxing fan and have about half a dozen stories centered on the sport that I really love. What I like most about them is they started as writing experiments. Boxing takes place in three-minute rounds, and in a very defined space. Can you describe the action and drama inside those constraints? On my website are most of my short fiction, and you can find those stories there.

If you could provide three pieces of writing advice to aspiring or established authors, what would they be?

There are three things I tell all writers:

Don’t trust yourself to edit, especially proofing. Not only will you not find some of the obvious mistakes, but many of us don’t have the ability to say, “that really sucks, pull it.” You need other voices to keep you honest.Read in genres other than the ones you write. You can always tell when a sci-fi author his never read romance, because his love interests are boring and flat. If you write horror, read comedy. If you’re a pulp detective writer, read literary fiction. It’s amazing what you can learn/steal from people outside your normal experience that will help you write outside the box.Everyone says writing is a lonely job. I beg to differ. Typing (getting the words on paper) is lonely. Writing should be social. Hang with writers. Join a local meetup or critique group. All my novels and most of my short work has been vastly improved by the feedback and input from others. That’ doesn’t mean you have to believe or listen to everything they say. When they’re right I fix it. When they’re wrong, I know why and leave it in.Where can we find you, and Johnny Lycan, online? Your site, Goodreads, socials…

The easiest place to find any of my work is my Amazon author page. The first two Johnny Lycan books are available in paperback, Kindle, and Audible. The third is in paperback and Kindle for now.

You can find me at:

My site and Wayne@WayneTurmel.comBlack Rose WritingOn Facebook and Instagram, Wayne Turmel AuthorOn GoodreadsOn Twitter/X

Back in the day when Noah was first caulking up his Ark, I was on both Facebook and Twitter. They worked pretty well, until Twitter became infested with Nazis (not a problem discovered this year), and Facebook charged for access to your fans.

I gradually shut down my social media accounts as they became more obnoxious while supressing reach. When you start charging access to talk to people who want to talk to each other, you have a problem (Suck Zuck, I’m looking at you).

Last year I heard the new social media platforms were better, in a vague and unspecified way, so I wrangled myself an invite to the then invite-only Bluesky, and hopped on Threads. I posted and engaged with both a reasonable amount (more on Threads, though) over a chunk o’ time. A month or so ago, I sent this to my mailing list fans:

A friend on Threads suggested there might be a problem in the why behind engagement; basically, am I here for pure/wholesome reasons? If I’m shilling my stuff and/or not being genuine, results will be variable, right?

I think this is a great question, and allowed me to devise The Experiment. For the experiment, we can’t rely on images showing me being either cool or hawt, as a) trendy attractive people generally do better on photoshoots and b) I’m not trendy or attractive enough to pull it off.

Enter: Dragon’s Dogma 2.

This game was doing pretty well for itself at launch, but reviews were mixed. People seemed to agree the game part was brilliant, but it was plagued with PC performance issues (BTW, try switching from DLSS to IS per my Reddit post). This gives us a topic hub with trending engagement. I put the same content on three social media platforms to test how reach happened (or, whether it happened at all). At the time, I thought I’d get decent reach on Threads, none on Bluesky, and get downvoted on Reddit (because at the time of the experiment, many people were unhappy with the PC port state, and this was a positive/supporting the game post).

I kept the post short so you’d grok it at a single scan. How’d we do?

My post on Threads did not do well at all. 2 likes, at time of writing. It was crafted for success: the Thread had an animated image, didn’t take people off platform, and was a trending topic (Dragon’s Dogma that is, not the high-five thing). It didn’t do as well as I’d expected.Bluesky was basically background radiation – 1 like. This was about what I’d figured due to the platform’s lack of inherent discoverability, but was also stymied by a lack of animated GIF support (seriously, bsky, get on that).Reddit, where I expected to trend heavily negative … got 337 upvotes and stimulated what I was after – conversation and engagement. Like bsky, no image in there, but it didn’t seem to matter.

Now, I’m self-aware enough to know that follower counts matter on both Threads and Bluesky, but less so on Reddit – this is definitely a factor in this test. However, using content tags should have helped adjust for this, but didn’t. The topic is light and fun enough to have wider appeal, and while not every post should go viral, you should realistically expect to get some response from a platform you’re engaging with (or what’s the point?).

I know many people are successful at Threads and Bluesky mostly through (from my two-minute analysis ) higher follower counts. I don’t really have the time to brute-force that, so I’m unlikely to get significant engagement on either platform. Reddit, OTOH, will reward me for in-the-moment time investment. My Dragon’s Dogma 2 Threads post popularity mirrors my experience on other topics, whether it’s cats, or asking about narration, game streaming, or voracious readers. The posts that do modestly well (e.g., 7 likes) are semi-random or stuffed with about a zillion keywords

So, what’s it mean? I suspect I’ll pull back my time investment in Threads and Bluesky. All in, it feels like the secret to Threads or Bluesky ‘success’ (finding people to talk to about the things of interest to you) is difficult until you solve for follower count. This is possible for sure, but requires a time investment I’m not sure should be required to talk about fucken video games.

Dan Brown published his The Da Vinci Code in 2003. Many people found it a thrilling page-turner. Fast-paced plot? Yep. Code-breaking puzzles? You bet. Art, religion, and conspiracy? In there too. It became a best-seller, spawning a Hollywood adaptation starring Tom Hanks.

In 1965, Frank Herbert published Dune. It was arguably both groundbreaking and intricate, with McMassive world-building, political intrigue, and (well before we woke up to the need) eco-warrior themes. It’s regarded as a classic, also cranking out a (fucken superb) Hollywood adaptation (in three parts, two of which we’re still waiting for, Denis!).

Blade Runner, one of my all-time favourite cyberpunk movies, and arguably what started me on the path to write Chromed: Upgrade, hit the streets in 1982. It’s a Ridley Scott masterpiece, with deeply thought-provoking and often disturbing themes, dystopian atmosphere, and (lest we forget) Harrison Ford’s performance as Rick Deckard. It’s a marvel.

Hang about, Richard, I hear you say. What the actual fuck does this have to do with Rebel Moon?

Good Q.

The Da Vinci Code found criticism from, uh, more discerning readers, who found the prose simplistic, characters clichéd, and had their Tourette’s triggered with historical inaccuracies. Arguably, the book’s success came from entertainment value rather than literary merit. Hold onto this thought.Dune was littered with fairly oblique prose and extensive terminology. I personally disliked the head-hopping in scenes, despite loving the book overall. Combined, this meant some readers struggled to get into Herbert’s universe, bouncing right off the personal energy shielding.And Blade Runner was criticised for being slow-paced and overly philosophical. People got themselves wound around the axle about Deckard’s true identity. And let’s not forget the different versions of the film and which one is the one true ring to bind them all.

Back to Rebel Moon. When I saw the trailer, I wanted a piece of that. My wife wanted to give the piece back on the strength of the trailer alone – she was like, “There’s too much shit going on in there.”

The Rebel Moon trailer!

When I finally watched the movie, I was … not impressed (…Zach is going to sleep just fine, I assure you). I turned to IMDb; at the time, the reviews were deeply skewed towards either 10s or 1s (…since normalised, with a weighted average of 5.6 at time of writing). The first wave of reviews looked like this:

10! Best thing I’ve seen in my life! Wow! Masterpiece! Cinema will forever be changed by Zack Snyder’s vision! All hail the movie’s brilliance!1! Worst thign I’ve seen in my life! Holy shitballs but was this designed by committee? Did anyone spend time on writing characters or story? I want 2 hours of my life back.

Rebel Moon wasn’t the worst thing I’ve seen in my life, but I did find … room for improvement. It’s popular to hate things on the Internet; it’s less popular to discuss why something might be good or bad, depending on where you’re at.

There are spoilers below.

There are some deeply disturbing things happening to people’s limbs in this DALL·E picture.Why It’s Good

Rebel Moon is a highly produced movie. It’s evident they put the cash down; the effects are top-tier, and there’s no shortage of set pieces (ice lake to desert, star ship to spacer bar, everything’s there).

Action is highly cinematic. People get their ninja on when going toe-to-toe. Cirque du Soleil would be impressed at the part where a dude jumps from a cliffside to land on a … griffon? Flying lion? Is it a bird? Fuck if I know, but the it’s a well-done shot.

Characters are flashy. The first time we see Sofia Boutella’s Kora in action, we know she is purpose-built to clean your clock. The space pirate at the bar is space piratey. Djimon Hounsou’s Titus is suitably down on his luck and just pissed off with your bullshit.

The sound stage delivers as well. The guns have weight. The sword clashes ring. It’s all there.

And … they chose their actors well. From Boutella’s lean and capable elegance to Hounsou’s rugged-yet-slightly-sagged exterior, these people were built for the roles. I did wonder at what point what the set smelled like, because it was clear there were a lot of people on a high protein diet for the making of this flick.

Remember The Da Vinci Code and how it succeeded on entertainment value? This is squarely where Rebel Moon is at. It wants to entertain you, and I suspect ol’ Zach knows that CGI entertains well enough, especially for a Netflix audience who are struggling to stretch their entertainment dollar.

So, why the 5.6? Let’s dig in.

Why It’s Bad

It’s probably no surprise coming from a guy who writes action stories with heart, but I need to start with the characters. If I hadn’t looked at the IMDb page, I wouldn’t be able to tell you Hounsou’s character’s name; aside from Kora, they weren’t memorable. It’s not until quite late in the piece we discover Staz Nair’s Tarak is actually royalty, but are given no context for that at all.

Because there’s so much going on (ref: my wife’s wisdom, above), none of the characters (aside from Kora) have space to breathe. I’d love to know more about Nemesis. What’s the story behind Darrian (who has arguably one of the best voices in the universe) and Devra? And why, for all that’s holy, do we have Sir Fucking Anthony Fucking Hopkins voicing a deeply intriguing character at the start of the movie who is a) never explained and b) vanishes for all intents and purposes for the rest of the movie?

The movie also squanders some of its talent. Jena Malone played one of the cooler characters in the Hunger Games’ series; her Johanna Mason was bitchy, snarky, and badass. In this movie she is … well, mostly just put in a CGI character and gets to snarl a lot, with a fairly trite skein of plot holding a fight scene together.

Most characters don’t do much, and when they do, you wish they did more. That fight scene with Malone? Everyone’s there, just kind of standing at the back of the room and waiting for it to be over. Considering it’s to do with the death of a child and a horrible monster, I feel a little more enthusiasm for violence would have gone a long way.

The plot itself is paper thin, and something you’ve seen a thousand times before. There’s nothing too wrong with this if done well, but I think you need to go through the motions of excellence. An for-example would be Charlie Hunnam’s Kai, who I knew would betray them from the moment he stepped on screen. I also knew (because he’s a lovable rogue) he wouldn’t fuck ’em over until right at the end.

So, What Does This Mean?

It means Rebel Moon is a movie made for a specific audience, and that audience probably isn’t you (or, not completely you). It’s difficult to call the entire structure objectively good or bad, but it’s quite straightforward to see whether you’d like it. Here is a simple quiz.

Do you like story-rich, character-centric movies? Probably not for you.Do you like action-heavy, set piece extravaganzas with high production value? Don’t mind putting your brain in a jar for two hours? Probably worth a watch.

Rebel Moon is, to be a wanker about it, a dichotomy of cinematic achievement. High production values, stunning visuals, and great action deliver. It’s a bit of fun for your eyes and ears, and you’re not going to spend a lot of time trying to work out where the CGI starts and ends; the filmmaking and underlying tech are great. But – and everything before the ‘but’ is a lie – it really stumbles in its narrative depth and character development. If you’re after a drink of water made of compelling story, you’ll leave thirsty.

I reckon it’s not about the spectacle, but the missed opportunity the movie presents. Perhaps that part 1+2 nature works against it? The pacing and structure we might see in a longer movie (or two delivered in one bite) could have turned this around. We’d get our spectacle while being engaged in a layered, paced story.

The epitaph of Rebel Moon might well be that the marriage of style and substance is tricky to stick the landing on. It’s a tough balance.

There’s a glimmer of hope the sequel (“Part Two”) might address some of these … areas for improvement. A more intricate plot, or at least seeing the plot enriched? The characters getting more time to shine now we’ve been introduced? A more nuanced story than, “Evil empires are bad?” It could all happen; I didn’t think Lucas would stick the landing on Anakin’s fall in Revenge of the Sith, but if he managed it, anything’s possible.

Personally? I think it’s a bad movie. I’m not writing off the sequel just yet, but you know, I just don’t think we’re going to be that lucky. I think the story will finish much as it started; flashy, sometimes fun, but ultimately flawed in depth, development, and personality. In a years’ time, no one will remember the Rebel Moon movie duo.

(We will see what the fuck is up with Jimmy, though).

Without wanting to be a Debbie Downer on your recent-and-hopefully-delightful vacation, many of you are facing a cost of living crisis. I had a reader email me and say (I paraphrase), “I’m not going to start reading your Tyche series because it’s just so many books and I can’t afford that.”

Ignoring the inherent logical pitfall here (where, if you’re going to pay for something, there’s no pro or con to standalone vs. series – i.e., the price is the same for either a) a trilogy or b) three standalones), it does shine a light on where people are at emotionally.

People are feeling fairly fucked by the economy. There may be a way to survive 2024 with more of your dollars intact, though.

Ownership can create an emotional attachment and increase the perceived value of something (the endowment effect). And if we see something that’s cheap or free, we might want to get that thing! But as time goes on, the novelty wears off. You might not feel compelled to actually use or read what you’ve acquired.

It’s why your Kindle is stuffed with dollar books you’ve never read

I’m calling 2024, “The Year of the Backlog.” It’s the year we can all dig into our libraries and start/finish those things that looked like hot sauce when we first saw them. What if you made a conscious choice to only buy after you’ve exhausted the things you own?

If you’re a gamer, you’ve probably got a shit-tonne of games you got on sale and never played. 2024 is that rainy day you’ve been waiting for.Boxed sets of movies and shows? Now’s the time to think long and hard about whether you really need the subs to Netflix, Disney, and HBO at the same time. Consider ditching the subscriptions, and watching the stuff you bought. Or, re-watching. It’s never a bad time to start that 349th go around on Firefly.And back to books, my word. I mined the Humble Bundle deals I bought just in 2023 and I have enough reading to last until the end of time.

I hope you consider joining me. Those things you bought? They’re still awesome, even though the shine’s become a little hidden by dust.

(And if you really must have something new? Consider Libby, where your taxes have already done the purchasing work for you).

Evanne, meet the world. World? Here’s Evanne.

Oh, when’s the book out? I’m charting for … January. I’m praying for my editor’s overload release valve.

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