The Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)

Why yes, Virginia, what the AI companies did IS theft...

2026-06-01T15:58:24Z

... or as close to it as makes no difference.
( Read more... )

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Why it was EASY for the Inmates to take over the Asylum...

2026-06-01T14:15:38Z

This of course links back to my detailed discussion of Project 2025, but the point of this post is to summarize the ENTIRE PROJECT in a few basic principles, which in turn show why it WORKED -- aside from the fact that the Heritage Foundation and others put decades of work into trying to prepare the ground.

( Read onward... )
I'm not sure how to get out of this, but it's important to realize that the entire course of events was really built on approaches so simple and yet opposed to our system that the system had no way to properly respond.

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The trap of optimism (AI relevant)

2026-05-22T13:41:33Z

Another problem...

( .... a more serious discussion than some... )

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Why AI (as currently designed) HAS to lie...

2026-05-17T20:11:43Z

( Read more... )

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Why current AI can't actually write one of my books...

2026-05-11T15:18:23Z

I have to remember to put in cuts so I don't post walls of text.

( Read more... )
(while I've been writing this it's also become clear to me that there would be a major problem with current AIs whether or not they were actually sentient/sapient and I suppose I should write that one soon to make sure I don't forget, because it has a big bearing on all the reported "the AI lied/tried to escape/blackmailed" events and how that kind of thing is bloody inevitable because of the way the things are trained. But that's a different post)

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Stopped clocks and all...

2026-05-08T13:37:19Z

Elon Musk made a statement recently that was very interesting, and even in concept true:
( Read more... )

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The Enforced Hypocrisy of Life in a Big Society

2026-04-30T13:58:20Z

One of the common tactics in debates-- on both right and left sides -- is to point out some inconsistency on someone's stance with respect to their actual behavior.

This is sometimes absolutely valid -- if someone claims to support one thing but then clearly is doing the opposite, this is certainly an indication that they aren't serious about their initial claim (or possibly they're flat-out lying).

However, in many cases, especially larger political or economic stances, the very facts of existence and the rules and requirements of society and one's business within it puts people in a position where it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to avoid participating in various activities that may in specific elements contradict your personal stances or preference.

I, for instance, am against exploiting and mistreating workers. This means I have a LOT of dislike for many large corporations, if not all of them, including Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and so on and so forth. Yet I'm sitting here typing on a machine that was undoubtedly to one degree or another made by underpaid, mistreated workers. My books are on Amazon, and if I want them to have any chance of selling halfway decently they had BETTER be there because that's the biggest single market for books anywhere, making up the vast majority of ebook sales and a huge chunk of physical book sales.

Similarly, someone can be a full-on Taxation is Theft libertarian, but if you have a family and the only support you can get to keep them going is Social Security, then you bloody well take it, because you have a much more direct and personal responsibility to keep your family safe and fed than you do being a purist.

Politicians are in some ways more subject to this than anyone else. You may sincerely, like Bernie and AOC, want to fight against the entrenched elitism in the society, to address global warming and other environmental concerns, and believe firmly in reining in spending on various areas while increasing spending in others that you believe will help the most people. But in order to do that job, you have to talk WITH the elites -- civilly -- and maybe even concede something in one area in order to get something you think is more important. You have to go to meetings with other politicians and such that may be widely separated but close in time -- and so, like everyone else in your business, you will be getting in a jet and flying there when you'd pollute much less if you went by car or train. You will even likely prefer to take a charter rather than a standard commercial jet because you can get a lot more work done, and done privately, on the way.

None of these mean that the beliefs are insincerely held. They mean that even if you want to fight the system, you're still IN the system, and unless you're already at the point where you can step outside of it -- so rich and powerful that you need not accommodate anyone else -- you will have to do what the system requires even while you're trying to change it.

You can use the system to support you while fighting it, and indeed, for almost everyone, you HAVE to.

This is true of, say, celebrities who are trying to promote social or political change. The fact is that their power to change anything is directly dependent on the wealth and exposure OF being a celebrity -- and so the common "gotcha" of "if you were serious you'd have given away all YOUR money" is directly ignoring the fact that in our society, that would mean giving up the strongest lever you have to try to affect change.

In that situation, we're all apparent hypocrites by necessity.

The important thing is to avoid DELIBERATE and OPTIONAL hypocrisy -- when one reasonably can. That's where you see whether people actually believe what they say.

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And one thing we absolutely HAVE to do...

2026-04-27T14:34:05Z

... is HOLD EVERYONE ACCOUNTABLE for this absolute disaster that has been foisted on the world.

Every single perpetrator involved in the Epstein trafficking network needs to be arrested, tried, and if convicted put away for a long, long time. (I do not support the death penalty for a number of reasons, but if I did...) This is first in my list because it's absolutely GOBSMACKING to me that this hasn't already brought down dozens if not hundreds of people. It should, and it must.

Trump and his entire administration need to be impeached (if possible after the midterms) or arrested afterwards, tried, and if convicted also put away for life. These people haven't just screwed the USA, they've hurt most of the world -- even our supposed allies AND our supposed enemies -- in inexcusable ways.

Elon Musk and his DOGE boys need to be brought up on charges of data theft and espionage, at the least, for their vandalizing and thieving ways in their illegal "DOGE" activities. (Musk also probably needs a lot of treatment for bad drug use)

A large number of those in Congress need to be investigated for their activities that have supported the criminal President and his people.

The Supreme Court Justices who've been clearly working against the very CONCEPT of justice need to be impeached and kicked out of office and then put on trial for corruption.

It's hard to FATHOM the degree and extent to which the current administration and its people have corrupted and damaged our institutions, and ALL of that needs to be fixed.

We need to re-instate AND make more clear and powerful the regulations that prevent companies from casually damaging our environment.

We need to revoke any Trump-derived licenses to exploit our national forests and parks and monuments and re-establish the protections on those invaluable resources.

We must strip away all of the Evangelical-inspired changes to our health, education, and general welfare supporting agencies.

We need to do all this, and a lot more -- while, as I posted earlier, also GOING BEYOND -- PLUS ULTRA! to make the USA a GOOD place to live, and not a Bad Example for the rest of the world.

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"We can't do all that!" Actually, we can.

2026-04-27T13:51:12Z

Behind the cut...

( Read more... )

We need to explicitly, in law, make it clear that ANY organization -- commercial, nonprofit, government -- has its FIRST responsibility to the people and region in which it exists. Its SECOND responsibility is to its CUSTOMERS -- the specific people or organizations that its products or services will be used by. Its THIRD responsibility is to its WORKERS -- the employees who do all the work. (I'm not sure if that shouldn't be the second, but I think this is the best setup). The FOURTH responsibility, then, is when we reach the investors, the stockholders.

There are currently data centers being planned which will take up a vast amount of the water and energy resources of the area they'll be built in -- enough to seriously impact the hundreds of thousands of people living in the area, making such resources more scarce, and more expensive, perhaps even seriously restricted in availability. THIS SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN. This should be ILLEGAL. A company that wants to build something with so great an impact should FIRST have to demonstrate how they will INCREASE the carrying capacity of the region -- how they will generate more power, how they can bring in more water, etc. -- without damaging the environment OR putting the burden of their operations on the general populace. Expenses of a company should be ON the company.

There are many companies whose employees often require public assistance just to survive. This, ALSO, should NEVER happen. A company whose employees take X billion dollars in public assistance should have to pay that X billion dollars straight back to the government. Plus a penalty for making people jump through hoops just to live (see "Basic Human Value" below).

*Universal healthcare. Every other civilized country on Earth has this. Yes, you can find horror stories of waits or mistreatment or whatever for all of those countries, but -- no surprise here -- you can find worse ones in job lots HERE. I can tell you some of ours, and ours haven't been nearly as bad as many other people have experienced. In actuality, people in comparable countries with universal healthcare are paying less for better care and are healthier. The USA's life expectancy is LOWER than that of most of the first world, because most of us are afraid to go to the doctor unless we're deathly ill or in some kind of major accident. This will NOT result in "unpaid doctors" -- the bloated healthcare costs in the USA are almost entirely due to the parasitic insurance industry. The taxes I'd have to pay for additional universal healthcare would be TRIVIAL compared to what I currently have to pay just to insure me and my wife (fortunately, NYS has programs that have generally covered my kids). You could (and probably should) double nurses' and doctors' salaries and STILL drastically reduce the costs of healthcare here. While NOT reducing the quality -- likely improving it.

*Universal bodily autonomy. The sad thing is that this is an assumed fact in a LOT of law. It's just that there are specific areas that a relatively small, but very vocal, group of people keep insisting that bodily autonomy shouldn't apply to, and of course most of this gets put on women and other minority groups. The right to choose whether or not to continue a pregnancy is one of the most obvious, but this issue also applies to trans people, and also to the general ... well, shocking APATHY that seems to apply to the abuse of women and girls in general. The basic principle needs to be explicitly and universally written into law so that there's literally no BASIS for people to deny others control over their own body.

*Universal Human Value. We have this stated in various documents, in different ways, most obviously in the Declaration of Independence ("...that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness..."), but the LAW has been rather patchwork about this, and because of that an awful lot of people suffer who shouldn't.

Specifically, we need to directly, and forcibly in law, recognize that EVERY SINGLE HUMAN BEING has these rights that we declare above, and that these are not PASSIVE rights, but ACTIVE ones. Every human being has the right to live. Every human being as the right to liberty. Every human being has the right to be able to pursue their own happiness. AND THIS MEANS EVERY HUMAN BEING MUST HAVE THE RESOURCES TO MEET THESE RIGHTS.

There is no "right to life" if your ability to LIVE is at the mercy of someone else. If you have the right to life, you have the RIGHT to eat. You have the RIGHT to be sheltered from bad weather. You have the RIGHT to healthcare to keep you from dying or suffering.

There is no "right to liberty" if your existence is so constrained that you literally have no choice but to spend all of your time surviving. There is no liberty in a grinding bare existence. You have the RIGHT to a life that gives you choices beyond "suffer and live" and "suffer and die".

There is no "right to the pursuit of happiness" if you have neither time nor resources to apply to the pursuit. You have the right to a life that allows you leisure, that allows you pleasure, that allows you, in short, to LIVE FULLY as a human being. Happiness ITSELF cannot be guaranteed -- that's partly due to our own natures and choices -- but there's a big difference between existing hand-to-mouth and actually LIVING in a way that might give you a chance to be happy.

*Explicit separation of religions and government. We've had too much trouble from having to argue whether that provision is actually in the Constitution; it needs to be put in specifically. This includes not merely eliminating the use of religion as a justification or framework for how government should act, but also explicitly eliminating any assumptions that any one religion is superior inherently to any other and therefore able to be used as a tool to oppress others. The Heritage Foundation and their apocalyptic Evangelical associates have made it clear that this is a necessary change.

It is absolutely possible for us to ACHIEVE ALL OF THIS, and not in decades. And we need to be TRYING to achieve it, and a number of other goals, from this very moment onward, not talking about maybe, someday, after we've slowly dragged things back to the very unsatisfactory way they used to be ten or fifteen years ago.

We need to follow Mamdani's example, and work on changing things at the local and state, as well as the Federal, level. Local social support programs can be invaluable; my own Rensselaer County has a number of services that help a lot of people maintain their basic living dignity. This isn't something that HAS to be dumped entirely on the Federal government. It is something that can, and should, be supported from the local through county through state level up to the Federal level.

Yes, of course, there's a lot more to write on all of the above, and a lot more to write on other important subjects we need to address, but I think for now that's more than enough to chew on!

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Fight for the best world, but don't be stupid about it.

2026-04-21T13:47:23Z

A cut for length...

( Read more... )

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One Piece Live Action: As Close to Perfect As It Gets

2026-04-02T15:07:54Z

Realized I hadn't cut this and it's long, so I add a cut ...

( Read more... )

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Repost:Project 2025 Commentary

2026-03-27T13:24:21Z

Because it’s even more relevant now than it was a year ago, I post the link to my detailed review/commentary on the blueprint the current administration is following in its quest to destroy the country.

http://grandcentralarena.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Ryk-Spoor-Project-2025-Commentary.pdf

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Why I do not, and will not, use AI (as it exists now)

2026-03-27T12:22:18Z

I posted this previously on FB, which is a reversal from my normal; I usually write my long posts here and point to them from FB. So, onward...

I do not use AI. And I will not use it.

This isn't because I don't see what I could do with it -- yes, despite its current limitations and flaws.

It's because (A) all the current AIs are built on a foundation of stealing other people's work in the name of "research" and then using it for commercial purposes -- including quite a number of my own books, and the artwork of many artists I know, respect, and have even in many cases used the services of.

(B) Our current society is structured such that the use of AI is in no way beneficial for anyone except a very, very small fraction of the population. From the point of view of its deployers, it's a money and time saving system. But the money and time it saves is in the work of the majority of the workforce.

There are those who will argue that X profession or Y profession will be resistant to AI intrusion (for instance, plumbers or electricians) because of the physical limitations of the job. And that's true, to an extent, but ONLY to an extent. We already have automated cars. They kinda suck in various ways, but there's no doubt that people are working constantly on improving autonomous driving; when that reaches the point that it's as safe or safer than human drivers, good-bye to 99% of the driving-based jobs. White collar jobs are far more vulnerable, and make up a HUGE portion of total jobs.

If we had a society that valued PEOPLE, this wouldn't be a big deal. Okay, you can't spend your time in an office filing forms, so now you can go home and have fun, maybe do some hobby you've wanted to do but didn't have the time for.

But our current society REQUIRES that you have "A Job" unless you're already quite wealthy.

And AI is a *general* innovation, not a *specific* one. If you have a specific innovation that, say, kills off the buggy whip market, there are usually new emergent jobs that will absorb the relatively small fraction of the population that used to work in that industry.

There is no possible way that AI will create more jobs than it disrupts, if it is at all effective in its roles. It WILL cause -- and is ALREADY causing -- significant layoffs, and eventually an unheard-of spike in unemployment.

The current administration and the techbros around them will have a "solution" to this, but it's most likely going to be "slave labor" with a new label. I'm not exaggerating; Elon Musk suggested that his proposed colonies would be populated by people from all walks of life... under what was just a relabeled form of indentured servitude.

So unless, and until, the most fundamental problems with it are solved, I do not, and will not, use AI for anything I can possibly avoid. No matter how fun it might be.

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Inescapable imperfection, or You Use What You Have, Not What You Dream

2026-03-26T15:24:07Z

Rant behind a cut for space...

( read onward... )

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Mask of Ares: Third Snippet for the Re-Release!

2026-03-10T12:00:13Z

Let's look in on the young lady who we only saw briefly in the prior chapter...

( ... she was a bit upset... )

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The Mask of Ares: Second Snippet for the Re-Release!

2026-03-03T23:03:24Z

GODSWAR is now released. The Mask of Ares and The Spear of Athena are now available!

We continue snippeting with the first main chapter...

( Let's meet our actual protagonists... )

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The Mask of Ares: First Snippet for the Re-Release!

2026-03-02T21:02:06Z

The GODSWAR dualogy is re-releasing tomorrow, and I'm doing some snippets and such to celebrate.

Today, it's the intro and first chapter of The Mask of Ares!

-------
( Click for more... )

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Resolving the Paradox of the Bad Dog

2026-02-25T00:30:30Z

To take a completely different tack today, here is a scientific study performed by my family, particularly Gabe and myself.

All of us who own or are around dogs have experienced at least one, often many, moments in which the dog performs actions that may cause us to say they are a "bad dog".

This is, however, in direct opposition to the fact that all dogs are good dogs. If all dogs are good dogs, it follows that no dog can be a bad dog. Yet we are faced with evidence of the existence of naughty dogs quite often.

After extensive research, late-night discussions of theory, and probably too many cans of 1980s JOLT Cola, we are proud to report that we have successfully resolved this paradox with a breakthrough in canine physics.

Consider a dog D, traveling through a house H. D has a potential for Naughtiness, N, which is a complex function derived from multiple factors including the amount of attention A that D has received in time T, the presence of aggravating factors such as mail carriers, birds, vacuum cleaners, and such (or more serious ones such as mistreatment), distraction factors such as balls, squeaky toys, and stuffies, how hungry D may be, and the presence of temptations T such as unattended food, an unguarded trash can, and so forth.

Normally, N is relatively low. However, when the various factors align, N can rapidly rise to the point that it approaches a probability of 1 that D will perform a Naughty action and thus be a Bad Dog. For instance, D enters the kitchen where multiple dishes have been prepared. D is hungry, and the proximity of food increases N in synergy with this condition, but there are humans in the kitchen who pay attention to D, drawing off some of the potential N.

Consider, instead, if the food were laid out on the counter in preparation for a meal but the humans were not present. D is then unmoderated by additional attention, and as D's proximity to the food increases, N rises -- in this case according to the inverse square of the distance to the desired food item. D places their paws on the counter to examine the food more closely, and we can see that N quickly achieves a value at which Naughtiness is inevitable.

This is, however, in direct conflict with the inherent Goodness G of dog D. Goodness is, however, a single state, not a spectrum, as all dogs D are Very Good Dogs.

As we can see, then, this is a parallel situation seen in particle physics. A state transition must follow in which the Good Dog is no longer present.

But conservation of matter and energy requires that SOMETHING be present.

That something is the unitary quantum of Naughtiness, the inherent opposite to Good that is required by symmetry.

More importantly, as can be seen by the preceding discussion, despite there being many different factors and paths towards the accumulation of potential N, all of these eventually converge to a single value. There is only ONE such state, despite there being so many different dogs D in varied conditions of health, repletion, attention-gaining, and so on.

This entity we call the Negadog.

When the potential N reaches a unitary probability, a state transition occurs in which the Good Dog is replaced by the Negadog, which then performs the Naughty action. However, in the instant of performing the action, the potential N is discharged and the Negadog drops back to its potential state, returning the Good Dog.

This explains all the puzzling aspects of the paradox. The Good Dog is aware that something Naughty was there, but also that they have failed to stop the Negadog, because of course the Good Dog cannot coexist with the Negadog. Unfortunately for many Good Dogs, human perceptions are of course inadequate to perceive quantum transition phenomena, and to our slow perceptions it appears that the Good Dog has performed an action that makes them at least for the moment a Bad Dog.

Thus the common puzzlement of a dog when scolded. They know they have done nothing bad, but they know something bad has happened.

With this scientific breakthrough, the next step will be to determine ways in which the Negadog might be observed. Research is ongoing.

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Another AI Post -- on Assumptions and the Future

2026-02-15T20:17:41Z

A discussion with a knowledgeable friend on this triggered the following post, which will cover a number of elements of both the technology and, perhaps more importantly, its uses and impacts.

( Read on... )

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"Traditional Publishing" -- what I expect when I hear that.

2026-02-05T15:55:42Z

So here's todays discussion. It is in fact related to some personal experiences, but I'm not going into those here.

( Read more... )

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The Duty of a Civilization and Weaponized Naivete

2026-01-13T14:25:55Z

Cut for length...

( Read more... )

The "demand for perfection -- but only on one side" approach is, in fact, a major tactic and stumbling block in modern politics, and I should probably make that another post.

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What current AI should, and should not, be used for -- ideal and realistic

2025-12-23T18:08:13Z

Regardless of whether "AI" ever actually becomes intelligent, rather than just being an increasingly good "predict the kind of thing you want or should see out of this query" machine (a completely separate and also increasingly complicated subject), LMM and related "huge trained neural network" AIs are here and people have invested unfathomable amounts of money into them. Even if the bubble explodes, these AIs will still exist.

So what SHOULD they be used for?

Well, right off we get a conflict between "in the ideal world" and "in the current world".

You see, an awful lot of the conflict about AI right now -- the copyright suits, the arguments about using it for doing desk work, for finding ways to emulate dead, or even still living but aged, actors, etc. -- REALLY boils down to this:

Our society has no support network. So anything that humans do that sustains them is specifically a matter of SURVIVAL.

It's not just a matter of writing fun stories or making silly pictures. It's a matter of that being a significant survival element, perhaps the ONLY survival element, that many people have to keep them from disaster. Thus, any device or method that looks to make the individual's contribution to this work less valuable is a direct threat.

For AI, the problem is that it is QUALITATIVELY, as well as quantitatively, different from prior technological advances. It is GENERALIZABLE to tons of tasks that were until now almost entirely the domain of human endeavor. Trained LLMs are getting better and better at recognizing and copying and adapting multiple different types of writing - not just individual human styles, but different kinds of writing -- professional proposals, book reports, novels, patents, etc. -- and there's a LOT of people that threatens, and the number of people whose jobs are at risk is increasing with every improvement of the technology.

It is also inherently FAR more deployable for such tasks. If I want to make, say, a Terminator bot, even assuming I have the AI for it available, building a militarily robust, armed, flexible, powerful independent robotic platform is TOUGH, and takes a long time, just like retooling a factory.

But if your AIs are already generating text and can format it into Word, it takes basically NO effort to replace the guy at the desk with the AI writing software package.

In the IDEAL world, human survival and basic happy living would be ensured -- the robotic deployment and increase in productivity would be partially diverted to supporting all the people involved. Such people could then write what they wanted, paint what they wanted, with or without AI assistance or interference, and it would not impact their ability to live well.

That's not the way it currently works, though, so I am very much against the current trend to try to find ways to use AI to displace existing human workers in areas the humans depend on.

However, there ARE areas in which modern large-trained-neural network systems absolutely can and should be used even now.

For example, AIs are extraordinarily good at pattern discovery, and can also be trained to ANALYZE the patterns to see if a coherent framework emerges.

This is ideal for things like mathematical and physical/materials research, especially in the theoretical areas or the design realms where much of the problem is that the overall subject area is far, far too huge for a human being to comprehend. An AI properly designed could, at the least, pull out multiple "huh, that's funny" areas in a given field and draw a human's attention to them for further analysis. Some AIs are already showing the ability to perform what appear to be solid mathematical proofs, which is quite an interesting capability and has implications not just for mathematicians but for things like quantum computation and materials design.

AIs of this nature can also probe and model the structure of an astonishing number of chemical compounds and, perhaps more importantly, metamaterial structures, to discover materials that can do things we didn't know were possible -- or ones we did know were possible, but were having problems finding practical methods to achieve. New antibiotics, perhaps; optical metamaterials with negative indices of refraction; superconductors and super-insulators of both electricity and heat. This is the kind of thing AI is properly made for -- locating patterns within masses of data or of processes that are far too complex for human beings to view as a gestalt.

The same thing applies to medical advances; understanding the complexities of modern medicine is mindboggling, and what's needed is a way to somehow locate the important anomalies within a vast ocean of data. AI can do that.

Back in the 1700s-1800s, it was possible for one bright person to know pretty much everything in the sciences, and thus be able to make cross-connections between the fields, synthesizing knowledge from the combination. That's an impossible thing for one human being to do now.

But a human with an AI to help make the connections? That's not ridiculous at all.

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A personal record...

2025-12-11T15:37:57Z

... I don't think I've ever been working on FIVE books at the same time ever before. Currently in-process are:

Light of Reason: The next Jason Wood novel/collection, this one starts with "Bait and Switch" and so far includes "Burnout" and, in process, "Feet on the Ground", with one bridge section. Not sure if there'll be one or two more pieces in this one or if those will be for the third and probably last purely Jason collection.

Adventurer's Academy: The story of a group of would-be Adventurers at the often-mentioned Academy during the same time period as my other fantasy series on Zarathan, featuring Lalira Revyne and Spinesnarl Mudswimmer from my short story "The Adventurer and the Toad".

The Impractical Quest: The tale of Enochlis Book-Bound, a bilarel (ogre) who wants to be a wizard despite the limitations of his people. Enochlis is seen also in the second book of the Spirit Warriors trilogy.

Articles of Faith: Fifth book in the Arenaverse series, picking up shortly after Shadows of Hyperion left off.

Unity of Vengeance: Xavier Ross actually gets to go after the people who killed his brother.

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AI, Testing, and Intelligence

2025-12-06T22:53:17Z

Below, with a cut for length...

( Read more... )

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Elon is right, and also very wrong.

2025-12-04T16:34:56Z

A fairly long lecture...

( ... click here to read the rest... )

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