ncase
patreon
If on an autumn night, a Nicky (Update on 5 projects)
🕑 Added 2023-10-28 21:14:22 +0000 UTC(⏱️ reading time: 20 min)
— — — — —
IMPORTANT: Patreon has finally succumbed to that awful trend: feeds in non-chronological order. Please turn on email notifications to make sure you can actually get my updates.
Why Patreon keeps screwing over its users & itself, I have no idea. I am very, very sick of Patreon. I'll keep my Patreon up, but from now on I'll primarily use Ko-Fi, which allows both one-time and monthly support. I recommend supporting me there instead! (Note: my Ko-Fi's still bare-bones; in the middle of fleshing it out!)
Also, apologies for any weird formatting in this update post. Patreon's interface is... bad.
— — — — —
In Italo Calvino's novel, If on a winter's night, a traveler, "You" are just trying to read some nice books, but You keep getting interrupted mid-story. You never find out the endings of those stories. Only the beginnings. If on a winter's night, a traveler is the literary equivalent of blue balls.
In September & October, I made a lot of progress on several projects!... Too bad they're all beginnings and no endings. (so far!)
In total, I wrote ~40,000 words. That's over one Animal Farm!
This was spread across 5(ish) projects. In no particular order:
- 🤖 AI Safety for Fleshy Humans [3-part series]
- 😽 Why all the trans furry programmers? A scientific analysis [2-part series]
- 🤔 Rational, or Rationalizing? On not fooling yourself [3-part series]
- 🧠 The Lolita Meets Clockwork Orange Story [my debut novel, released chapter-by-chapter?]
- 😵 (misc "controversial" essays)
Re: #4, your thoughts may have been:
So — before I explain each project — let me back up & explain my motivations; how I want to grow as a creator in the coming year...
— — — — —
In which I explicitly tell you my utility function
I turned 29 last month. It's the last year in my twenties.
Fuck!
Fuuuuuuuuuuuck!
There's so much character growth I haven't done, that I want to & need to! I know base-10 is arbitrary, but something about "I'm gonna hit my thirties" makes me feel, I gotta fix myself before the deadline, right?
So, here's three personal/professional Growth Goals:
- Quantity over quality
- Doing science, not "just" teaching it
- Being willing to piss off my friends & supporters
1: Quantity > Quality (or: Ship smaller stuff speedier)
My productivity's been shit ever since the pandemic. (Last major project I shipped was Nutshell, a year ago.) I dunno if I caught brain fog after all.
So, to re-build a habit of "shipping", and to explore more topics & iterate on ideas faster, I want to shift my process from "one big project every 6 months" to "one small thing or more every month". (ideally)
This motivation is 1) why most of the above 5 projects are all "series" of small articles/chapters, and 2) why I spent July/August revamping my blog, so it can be the home of quick-explainers-with-some-interactivity-made-fast.
2: Doing science, not "just" teaching it
"Just" in scare quotes, of course: it turns out teaching is hard. That said, I do want to try doing independent research, too! (In the style of Slime Mold Time Mold or Aella)
It seems like the next logical step in my work, and besides... "explain science visually & accessibly" may be automated in 10 years. As for the day science itself gets automated, well... either way that goes, I won't have to worry about paying rent anymore.
3: Being willing to piss off my friends & supporters
One of my biggest character flaws is I'm too high on "Agreeableness". This isn't a humblebrag of how well I get along with others, it's a real flaw. If a room starts filling with smoke but everyone's acting like it's fine*, I'm not sure current-me can get over the awkward-barrier of telling people they're being idiots and we need to leave.
(* This is the famous "smoke-filled room" study. The original 1968 study found that passive bystanders makes "reporting the smoke" drop from 75% to 10%. Unlike other famous psych "findings" that don't replicate, a) yes this one replicates, and b) the effect size here is huge. (1981 review, see Table 1). The most recent replication I could find is this independent 2016 replication-extension study, see Figure 2, finding that passive bystanders makes "evacuate the room" drop from ~70% to ~10%.)
Sure, "be willing to piss people off" is already standard advice for artists/scientists. But it's easy to want to piss off folks you don't like nor vice versa. It's much, much harder to be ok pissing off folks you like and they like you back.
I've learnt the hard way that, if there's anything sadder than people hating you for who you are, it's people loving you for who you aren't.
(I recommend reading Gurwinder's 9-min long "Audience Capture" essay! "Getting audience-captured" is in my Top 3 deepest fears. Is it bad form to write, in a post to you fans who pay my rent & food, "btw you're one of my deepest fears"? Probably!)
So, going forward, I want to write more "controversial" stuff. As in, controversial amongst my own peers & community, not controversial "to society" or whatever.
(This is not for the sake of being "contrarian": if society's judgment is as bad as a coin flip, and the contrarian says Heads when society says Tails and vice versa, then the contrarian is also as bad as a coin flip. If the broken clock says it's noon that doesn't prove it's midnight.)
That said, I'd like to practice being "controversial", to train my courage, and "filter out" fake-friends and fake-allies from my life: the people who love me conditional on toeing the ingroup party-line. People who love me for who I'm not.
(I'll still make regular math/science explainers, of course! And if/when I make "controversial" posts, I'll omit the Patreon Supporter names from the credits, to not imply endorsement from y'all. This is the same policy Kurzgesagt does for their occasional political video.)
. . .
To recap, my 3 Growth Goals are:
- Re-build a "ship early & often" habit
- Do science, not "just" teach it
- Practice a willingness to piss off my own friends & supporters
Thus, the five projects to help me achieve these goals:
— — — — — —
🤖 [Project 1/5] AI Safety for Fleshy Humans
This is the project I've been teasing y'all since January. Sorry it's taking so long. -_-
The pitch:
So. Artificial Intelligence.
~Everyone's talking about it, but there's far more noise than signal. Alas, to understand AI with nuance, we need to understand lots of technical detail... but that detail is scattered across hundreds of articles, buried six-feet-deep in jargon.
Hence, I present to you: AI Safety for Fleshy Humans: a whirlwood tour guide! Your one-stop-shop for understanding the core ideas of AI Safety / Ethics / Risk / Alignment / Not-Kill-Everyone-ism... with friendly accessible explanations, and comics about a Robot Catboy!
(Also, it's in collaboration with Hack Club, a non-profit that helps teens help each other learn how to code! I'll be collaborating with Lexi Mattick, a 17-year-old who's already co-authored code/paper on AI interpretability. Kids these days scare me.)
Excerpt:
Here's a couple infographics I made last month for this!
And one stupid meme:
How's this tie into my Growth Goals?
Being willing to piss off friends & fans: It's been aggravating & disappointing to have gotten shade from my friends for working on an AI Safety-related project. Mostly side-eye, but in one case it was hostile condescending sarcasm. (I am no longer friends with that one. This project aside, their hostile sarcasm had already been a problem for years.)
Why side-eye over AI? I try not to strawman people, let alone my friends, but it really isn't anything more than: “Rich techbros worry about AI, therefore worrying about AI is bad.” I had hoped all of my friends were above “Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian, therefore vegetarianism is bad” guilt-by-association logic, but apparently not.
So if you're wondering why it's taken me so long to finish this project, that's been one chronic de-motivator. But if I can't even overcome this small amount of ingroup-shade — and AI Safety isn't even that partisan a topic (yet)! — how am I supposed to be an authentic artist-scientist?
Percent Completed for Part One: ~75% done. It's... a 40 minute read, ~9,000 words, in total. And that's part one, of three.
Left to Do for Part One: Edit words, send to domain-experts for feedback, make standalone website, animate cute header of Robot Catboy doing the AI Safety Dance... then publish!
— — — — —
😽 [project 2/5] Why all the trans furry programmers? A scientific analysis
(source: famous meme)
The pitch:
No seriously, what's with all the trans furry programmers? It's anecdotally well-known that transgender women, fans of the furry fandom, and computer programmers all seem over-represented in each others' communities, despite no obvious link between them. (Seriously, how does being trans or dressing up like a dog make you better at C++?)
- Part 1 does a data analysis to confirm that it's not just stereotype, the correlation is real.
- Part 2 is a survey of a convenience sample of trans-furry-programmers, and exploring hypotheses for the causations behind the correlations.
Excerpt:
Here are the headline results for Part One's data analysis! (Sources & calculations will be in full post)
- In America, there are almost as many trans folks (~1,600,000) as computer programmers (~1,800,000)
- There's probably around ~200,000 furries in America
- Trans folks are ~2x over-represented in Programmers & vice versa
- Furries are ~10x over-represented in Programmers & vice versa
- Trans folks are ~20x over-represented in Furries & vice versa
How's this tie into my Growth Goals?
- Doing research: This was a fun & low-stakes way to dip my toe into survey design, data collection & analysis!
- Being willing to upset folks & incur stupid internet mobs: I am very aware trans folks like me are a political football right now. All these culture wars will be lost in time, like piss in a swimming pool. Also may be controversial: for Part Two, I want to discuss stuff that's less convenient to trans acceptance, such as the link between being trans & autism, trans & kinkiness, trans & dissociative identity ("split personalities").
Percent Completed: ~50%. Wrote 10,000 words, spread between Part 1 & 2. Did a bunch of data analysis for Part 1.
Left to do:
- More surveys
- Draw infographics + a cute banner image of trans furry programmers
- Make a Guesstimate statistical model, for lulz
- Calculating a data-based estimate for how many trans furry programmers there are in America. (Other results estimated from existing data: Trans Programmers: ~23,000. Trans Furries: ~24,000. Programmer Furries: ~13,000.)
— — — — —
🤔 [project 3/5] Rational, or Rationalizing? On not fooling yourself
The Pitch:
Alan Turing, the gay Nazi-fighting codebreaker who founded Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence... believed in ESP/telepathy.
Kary Mullis, Nobel Prize-winning inventor of PCR (a tool that is to modern biology as the telescope was to astronomy)... believed HIV did not cause AIDS.
John Rabe, the "Living Buddha of Nanking", a man who personally put his life on the line to save ~250,000 Chinese lives... was a high-ranking, true-believer Nazi.
Rational, or Rationalizing? is a 3-part series on how smart, good people fool themselves, and (maaaaaybe) what we can do about it:
- Part 1: Smart & kind isn't enough. (Anecdotes like the above + scientific data to back it up)
- Part 2: Battle & Builder mindset. (Basically Julia Galef's Scout Mindset but "re-made" with a new metaphor that resonates with me better)
- Part 3: Habits of mind. (Some "when -> then" mental habits to reduce one's chance of fooling oneself)
Excerpt:
The Battle Mindset: “They're trying to attack our values. We need to defend our values. Hey, whose side are you on? Don't give ammunition to the other side. That argument is easy to shoot down. Don't share that data, it can be easily weaponized. NEW VIDEO: Watch [pundit] DESTROY hated opponent!”
The Builder Mindset: “Let's build this idea from the ground up. Here are my foundational values. Here are the core pillars of my beliefs. Does it hold up to scrutiny? What's your supporting evidence? Here's how stuff fits together. Here are my argument's weak points. Let's look at this from multiple angles. Here's the birds-eye view. Here's a concrete example. Let's experiment. Let's think step by step.”
[. . .]
In the Battle mindset, you help your people by shooting those bastards. Anything is fair game: sloppy statistics, associating them with Nazis, insulting their pee fetish, anything goes. Criticizing or questioning your own side is as insane as turning a gun on your own troops.
In the Builder mindset, you help your people by building a solid house you can all flourish in. Good intentions are not good enough. You need to triple-check and stress-test your own house's construction. Being precise & nitpicky isn't a "well, actually" ego-trip, it's just making sure the damn roof doesn't fall on your head.
[. . .]
"Battle Mindset" comes from a natural motivation: the desire to help your own people. But Battle Mindset sucks at persuading those on the fence, often pushing them away, and it makes your own side a bitter, paranoid place to live. Builder Mindset lets you redirect that good urge – to help your own people – into a good strategy.
How's this tie into my Growth Goals?
Being willing to challenge my community's values & beliefs: This would be easier if I could modify or filter for my community to be the kind that enjoys having their values/beliefs challenged in good constructive faith. Hence, this series is my "sales pitch" for my community (well, every community) to actively seek out deep constructive criticism.
Percent Completed: ~30%. Wrote 6,000 words. (spread across Part 1 and 2)
Left to Do for Part One: Draw art. Finish footnotes. Edit words, get beta-reader feedback, edit words again.
— — — — —
🧠 [project 4/5] The Lolita Meets Clockwork Orange Story
(⚠️ CONTENT WARNING ⚠️: child sexual abuse, conversion therapy, fascism. Feel free to skip.)
~ ~ ~
The pitch + excerpt:
“The year is 2030. After years of pundits yapping, "groomer groomer groomer, fascist fascist fascist", it finally happened: I have to choose between a literal actual pedophile, or a literal actual Fascist. God fucking help me.”
Hazel Simmons is a convicted child molester. She was a brilliant Computer Science grad student... until she tutored a 12-year-old boy, fell in "love", then groomed & fucked him. Hazel was let out early on parole, on condition she enroll in an experiment with the CharI/O – a device that can read & re-write your deepest emotions. (The experiment is secret, to avoid political backlash from both sides: “they're helping pedophiles”, and/or, “it's conversion therapy on prisoners”.) With the CharI/O, Hazel hopes they can cure her pedophilia (technically, "hebephilia")... and cure the trauma leftover from when she was groomed & sexually abused as a kid.
Klaus Liao is the main researcher behind the CharI/O. He's seen A Clockwork Orange, so he took the obvious step to prevent totalitarian abuse: the CharI/O only works if you actually want the change. (the "individual consent" safeguard) With it, his team's treated trauma, addiction... and now, pedophilia! Klaus hires Hazel onto the team, because of her technical brilliance, and because she was a first success case. The two develop a weird relationship: friend + colleague + therapist/client + scientist/guinea-pig.
Garry Gomez is someone Hazel meets through her VR-based support group, Minor-Attraction Anonymous. Garry is playful, friendly, has a genuine faith & love for humanity... he just happens to be a closet pedophile (who, unlike Hazel, has never acted on the desire). He also happens to be a multi-millionaire founder of a VR game company, which is why Hazel & Klaus try to court him to fund the CharI/O. Because, despite its success, the CharI/O still struggles to be funded. Which is a dire threat to humanity, coz there's others who want their hands on it...
Olympia Carver is a rising politician, and self-described Moderate Fascist. In the year 2030, the majority of people are finally sick of the majority of people. Democracy's voting itself out. Power corrupts, and "power to the people" just corrupts the people – look how nasty we are to each other over politics. So: Olympia's offering to take the wheel, and get shit done. Of course, she knows the two failure modes of benevolent dictators: they stop being benevolent (corruption) or stop being the dictator (coups). But the CharI/O can solve both problems: by re-writing herself daily to stay benevolent, and re-writing all her subordinates to stay loyal to her. And once she's Empress of the World, she can use the CharI/O (with consent-safeguard removed) to rewrite everyone to be more compassionate & collaborative. World peace, whether the world's ready for it or not. Humanity, as one unified super-organism.
All Olympia needs to do is gently persuade Hazel, Klaus, and Garry to work with her. Or use... other methods.
~ ~ ~
My motivations for writing this novel:
1)
An angry scream at this current moment in history.
“Groomer groomer groomer, fascist fascist fascist”. That's really the best Western democracy has to offer? Two (or more) teams of monkeys hurling shit at each other? Well fuck y'all, here's a plausible near-future story where you'll actually have to choose between rooting for an ex-con child molester, or imperialist eugenicist Fascist.
Imagine a sinking boat. Both sides claim the other side's the one that's sinking faster. When confronted with, "but you're sinking too", it's called "what-about-ism". The people in the middle smugly point out both sides' hypocrisy, while they're sinking too.
Aren't I also being meta-hypocritical? Maybe. I don't yet know what "plugging the holes" or "bailing out the water" or even "building a lifeboat" looks like, in the context of a sinking civilization.
All I know right now, is how to scream.
2)
Processing some stuff from my childhood.
The first time I had sex, I was 15 and he was 40+. It wasn't traumatic, just... weird.
I want to use this novel to process/share stuff I've thought about for a long time: What would drive a full-ass grown adult to fuck a minor? What would drive a minor to willingly seek out someone almost thrice their age?
Hazel Simmons being a victim-perpetrator lets me explore both sides of "grooming": but in a way that's less sensationalist, and more sensitive, than Lolita was. (At least, the Kubrick film was sensationalist. Book was more ok.)
3)
Updating A Clockwork Orange and Lolita for current scientific knowledge:
- A Clockwork Orange's "behavior-modification device" was based off a caricature of behaviorism, not the actual science. (To be fair, a lot of practitioners trying to apply behaviorism end up with its cruel caricature.) But as the book Don't Shoot The Dog explains, actually effective behaviorism (on both human & non-human animals) is gentle, playful, and feels great. I want my story to reflect that, plus the most up-to-date science on cognition & emotion. There's also cool new work in safe, reversible brain stimulation!
- Lolita wasn't based off scientific data on pedophilia or child sexual abuse (CSA). Close to no data existed at the time. But we now know: 91% of CSA is done by family or trusted community members, not strangers. (source: CDC) Pedophilic attraction is not chosen (who would choose it?) and most(?) pedophiles don't act on the desire and do not want to. (see this 2016 lit review on "non-offending pedophiles") And finally, ~20% of child molesters are women! (If you measure by actual interviews of child victims, not merely by who gets caught. See Table 2 of this lit review) That last very under-known statistic is why I want to write a female pedophile main character. It's a story far less-told.
4)
An idea-dump on topics close to my heart: trauma, sexuality, the science of emotion, neural networks, meta-ethics, philosophy of free will, questions about justice & statecraft, faith in humanity, whatever the hell "human nature" is, etc.
5)
An extreme exercise in overcoming my fear of "the audience", practicing a willingness to piss off people I like and respect and vice versa. Just... rip off the band-aid. So hard, skin comes off.
6)
An extreme exercise in "steelmanning" and perspective-taking.
- Think about it: what habits-of-mind lead one to fascism? Maybe: not even trying to critique one's own beliefs. Not even trying to make the defence cases for other ideas, just insult & censor & violently threaten 'em. Fighting fascism without fighting these habits-of-mind, would be like cutting weeds without pulling up the roots. Thus, we must instill the opposite habits-of-mind: making good cases against your own beliefs, and for opposing beliefs...
- ...including good cases against democracy and for Fascism. Yes, I just 5D-Chess'd my way into arguing that arguing for Fascism is anti-fascist. So in this story, Olympia Carver will make strong arguments against democracy & for Fascism — and other characters respond with strong counter-arguments, back & forth, etc.
- (Seriously, have you read Mussolini's original Fascist Manifesto (1919) or The Doctrine of Fascism (1932)? The Manifesto included radical demands like... an 8-hour workday, and letting women vote. Change the F-word, and I could see The Doctrine of Fascism being published today in a mainstream moderate magazine like The Atlantic.)
- Also in my novel, characters make "steelman" arguments for: abolishing the age of sexual consent, committing mass infanticide, white nationalist lesbian separatism, imperialism, eugenics, thoughtcrime, trans-racialism & trans-specieism, buying & selling kids, necro-bestiality sex dolls, requiring a license to be a parent, why fictional characters are as conscious and morally worthy as "real" people, why steelmanning is a stupid idea, and why you, dear reader, should kill me. (Again, with other characters presenting counter-arguments, back & forth. Please, uh, don't kill me.)
- Basically, imagine A Modest Proposal turned up to 12, over and over again.
~ ~ ~
This novel may seem like a mess of topics, and it kinda is. But here's the "core sentence" that ties it all together:
“Trust no one, not even yourself.”
- Groomers: Again, the vast majority (90+%) of child sex abuse [CSA] is done by people the child trusts. One of the worst impacts of CSA is realizing — correctly — that you cannot trust the people in your life, or even your own emotional compass.
- Fascists: When Fascism comes, it's not going to be obvious stormtroopers boot-stomping down the streets. It's not even going to be elite think-tankers in smiling suits. It's going to your trusted friends and community, trusting a charismatic person who seems to care about y'all, and promises to fight "Them" for you.
- Self-modification / Therapy: "Your feelings are valid!" Really? The feeling that I'm a burden to everybody, is valid? A bigot's feeling that race [X] is sub-human, is valid? The only way to grow is to realize your errors, which means not trusting your feelings. (At least, not fully.) In this story, the CharI/O isn't a device to be "true to yourself" – it's a way to discover your true self, then cut up and alter it.
- Steelmanning disgusting ideas: Trust your intuition? Trust common sense? Trust the experts? But two centuries ago, it was intuitive, common sense, and expert scientific opinion that slavery was good, and race-mixing was bad. If you want to be the kind of person who could've realized race-mixing was fine 200 years ago, you need to be the kind of person who seriously considers insane, disgusting ideas now.
An old joke: Once upon a time, a man was driving down the highway, when he gets a panicked call from his wife. “Look out honey!” she says, “the radio says there's this one crazy asshole speeding down the wrong side of the highway!” And the man replies, “Pffft. One crazy asshole? There's hundreds of them!”
The worst part is, there have been several moments in history where everyone else was in fact "speeding down the wrong side": e.g. slavery widely considered okay. From what it feels like on the inside, or what it looks like on the outside: being sane in an insane world, and going insane, look exactly identical.
Trust no one, not even yourself. It's a fine line between a healthy skepticism of yourself, your community, and your loved ones... and just falling into a pit of bitter paranoia.
~ ~ ~
Genres: Dark comedy, Sci-fi, Psychological drama, Philosophy.
Publication: I'll probably publish one chapter at a time on the internet, like The Martian was? I do not expect to get a "real" publisher with something this controversial, so I may self-publish with print-on-demand. Or Kickstarter? Or Unbound? I dunno, I haven't looked deeply into publishing options yet.
Percent Completed: ~5%???. Created character bible with visual design, bulletpoint-outlined all 13 chapters. Wrote 10,000 words for the third-last chapter, the emotional climax. Wrote 5,000 words for Chapter 1.
Left to Do for Chapter 1: Write the rest, draw art, get beta-reader feedback, edit. (...also I need to practice drawing human faces, not just furries all the time.)
— — — — —
😵 ["project" 5] Misc "controversial" essays
- Puzzle of the time-travelling abolitionist, or, A wiser future is both prudish and disgusting (to us). A dilemma: someone against slavery abolition in 1800 could say it's a slippery slope to mixed-race marriage & a Black president, and they'd be correct. More general dilemma: What do you do when your values logically lead to something horrifying (to others)? Do you admit it, and scare people away from your values? Or do you shut up, or lie, or betray logic itself? [progress: wrote 4,000 words]
- On non-reproductive, similar-in-age, consensual adult incest. Exactly what it says on the tin. Discussion of the ethics of it, and summary of the real-life anecdotes of consensual adult incest, and the (very, very limited) scientific data. Yes, Jon Haidt's "moral dumbfounding" incest story makes a cameo. [progress: wrote 1,000 words]
- Pro-consent, pro-LGBTQ conversion therapy: desirable, doable? I have an acquaintance (let's call her Sam) who "was a straight man" married to a straight wife. Eventually, Sam realized she's transgender. Sam's wife was supportive! As Sam got further & further in her transition, Sam's wife saw Sam more & more as a woman – but that meant she was less attracted to her, coz she's straight. In the end, they broke up on good terms, but damn... this could've been solved if you could "just" convert folks to bisexual. In this article, I argue "modifying one's own sexual orientation" is probably desirable & doable, it's just that everyone in the past who did it were bigoted idiots. I don't like dismissing scientists that quickly, but really, all the past research on conversion therapy is comically shite. [progress: wrote 4,000 words]
- Does running away from home save lives? While researching the history of conversion therapy for the above, I... didn't realize conversion therapy is still happening, and still contributing to teenage suicides? What the fuck. (Not to mention, perpetrators of child sex abuse are FIVE times more likely to be family members than strangers. [34% vs 7%, source: RAINN].) I wonder... No-fault divorce laws in the U.S. caused (not merely correlated with) a 8–16% decline in female suicide, ~30% decrease in domestic violence for both men & women, and ~10% decline in murdered wives. By analogy, does making it easier to run away from home save lives? ("No-fault child emancipation"?) I can't find any existing study on this, concluding in either direction! Seems like doing a correlational pilot study should be straightforward; causal inference can be saved for later. [progress: not much, some data collection]
— — — — —
That's all, folks! Please let me know your honest reactions to the above possible future project pitches.
I know that was... a lot... so, again, if you don't feel comfortable supporting my work anymore: no hard feelings, we're not a right fit, etc etc. Here's how to unsub from my Patreon.
If you have thoughts you don't feel comfortable sharing in a public comment box, you can email me at:
I prefer email over Patreon messages; the Patreon site keeps screwing up message notifications. (Right now, the Patreon Messages doesn't even load for me. God this redesign is awful.)
Speaking of which, again: Patreon continues to shoot itself in the foot. Make sure email notifications are turned on, and consider switching over your support to Ko-Fi instead.
Thank you! See y'all again soon!
🚀,
~ Nicky Case
— — — — —
P.S: after 3.5 years I finally caught Covid earlier this month. cough cough nooooo
Comments
Conrad Wong
Explains a lot of software, period!
Chris K
I once heard a story called "Why are they not coding" in which the group or individual who created version 1 of the software was bought by a big company. With the new resources, they fulfilled their vision of the product with versions 2 and 3 and then they were done. The CEO comes through and asks "Why are they not coding?" (answer: they are DoneTM) and so a product-manager is hired to produce a product-map to make them coding again. Of course, everything goes downhill from there. Explains a lot of Microsoft software. =)
Chris K
Pseudonymized stories. What a cool idea! Yes, I know about non-violent communication and I like the idea a lot. But wife is passive aggressive and does not care about my "mind games" when upset ^^ yes, cross-posting was clearly relayed, no worries. Patreon now does multiple transactions per month now?! But why! Cheers!
Jacques Frechet
Do try! He's absolutely right.
Conrad Wong
My theory is "consultant making changes to justify hundreds of thousands being spent on them at the expense of millions."
Nicky Case
Thanks Rachel! And ha ha haaaaa yeah in hindsight I should have turned on a Virtual Private Network during my research sessions. (IT WAS ALL LEGAL, TEXT-BASED MATERIAL ON THE PUBLIC CLEARWEB, I SHOULD VERY HEAVILY STRESS RIGHT NOW. Legal, but distressing. And mostly academically-published stuff.)
Nicky Case
Oh wow! Congrats on coming out & being more authentic to yourself, and thank you for sharing your story. And that is a wise message, thank you -- I'll *try* to internalize that. No promises, but I'll try.
Nicky Case
Thank you shubi! So actually, *I* am (ex-pat) Singaporean! Spent the first 11 years of my life there. And one of the novel's four main characters, Klaus Liao, will also be canonically from Singapore. A good way to mention all the fun lil' things about Singapore, like Teh Tarik, Mr. Kiasu comics, True Singaporean Ghost Stories, Mr. Midnight, durians, the bubblegum ban, "Singapore is a Fine City", how Santa climbs up the rubbish chute, etc. But *also*, having an ex-part Singaporean main character is a good way to mention the "steelman" case of a "benevolent dictator", Lee Kuan Yew. (I certainly strongly disagreed with his regime on many things, e.g. especially LGBTQ acceptance, but I guess compared to the rest of South-East Asia, still much better.) The "Moderate Fascist" character in the novel is very much, "Lee Kuan Yew but as an internet-poisoned Gen Z'er". Do you remember that whole Amos Yee thing several years back? Teenager mocks Lee Kuan Yew after his death, gov't couldn't handle one edgy teen, so they threatened Amos with jail, so he fled to the U.S., and became a worldwide poster boy for free speech, got the support of Amnesty International etc? Apparently, Amos later became a pro-pedophilia advocate, and is now currently in U.S. prison for grooming a 14yo + possessing *you-know-what* kind of videos. Point is: maybe "ped vs dictators" really is one possible terrible future we'll get. ~ Nicky
Nicky Case
Yes! (Apologies for late reply) Ko-Fi doesn't have a built-in email feature, but I *can* export emails as a spreadsheet, then email everyone myself (WITH BCC ON, OF COURSE. No Reply All-pocalypse from me, no thanks)
Nicky Case
Thanks Conrad, I am feeling better! And yeah, I dunno why big companies spend more money to make things worse. "Inner misalignment" inside a company?
Nicky Case
Thank you Jacques! I agree; let's both try to be less quick to over-agree. :P
Nicky Case
Thanks, Gal! Let's hope being Scout-y is enough of a good-luck charm to ward away vultures 🤞
Nicky Case
Fingers crossed for both of us! 🤞
Nicky Case
Re: arguments & "am I the crazy one" -- A tip I've used twice so far (from Julia Galef's *The Scout Mindset*) is when I'm describing a bad interaction/argument I had to a friend, for 3rd-party impartial feedback, *I pseudonymize everyone including myself.* e.g. Instead of "I said this, then my partner said that", I explain the pseydonymiziation-for-impartiality scheme, then say: "Alyx said this, Bo said that", then get their feedback. Both times though, my friends figured out who was me, so, lol, whatever (p.s: also re: arguments, I've heard good things about the book, *Non-Violent Communication*, but I haven't read/tried it yet.) . . . Re: Ko-Fi, yeah that's weird and unfortunate about their minimum. Don't worry, I'll be cross-posting on both Patreon & Ko-Fi! (Did I make that clear enough in my post?) And your support is coming through fine; I think you got in *before* Patreon changed their charging to no longer have the "all in one go to reduce transaction fees" thing; Patreon now charge support for different creators *on different dates, not all the 1st of the month*. On one hand, sure, "charge on date of signup" is how all other platforms do it & "hey I got charged today and a few days later on the 1st" was the largest complaint from supporters... but, still. Goodbye, ~5% to the banks & PayPal. . . . Re: Cory Doctorow Ooh, thanks for the tip! I didn't know about that novel, let alone that he published advice. (I mostly only knew about Cory through BoingBoing and him CC-licensing everything) I'll check out his advice, especially since ideally I'd like to also CC-license my book. Cheers! ~ Nicky
Chris K
Oh. check Cory Doctorow. He self published the novel "with a little help" and put up loads of stats and advise (I think).
Chris K
Holy shit that sounds great! I'd love to read that novel. It tingles me somehow. The feeling is so vague that i cannot even put it in words. maybe an example will do. when my wife and i get in a fight, I am kinda sure that she started it, but it could also have been me. I've had this thought so many times, that I started thinking that I am starting all the fights, altho everyone i talk to says it's her fault. but maybe I am just telling the story in a way that makes it look like it's her fault - without really wanting to? hmyeah. I am slowly going crazy. Elon - being the greatest engineer alive (?) - starting to spew stuff that seems batshit crazy to me? or is he? or am i? WTF is going on. Please fix me. I wanna be a good cookie. I'd move over to kofi, but they want a 3 bux minimum monthly contribution, while i am on 1 buck here. is anything even showing up with you from only 1 buck? (i got lots of other 1-buck-things going on, so bank-transaction-fees shouldn't be that bad)
Rachel Helps
your projects all sound really interesting! you've tapped into some ideas I've wanted to think about but was afraid to Google.
Nathan Borson
Re: "I gotta fix myself before the deadline" and "if there's anything sadder than people hating you for who you are, it's people loving you for who you aren't." (Quote of the day 👍): As a 62-year old gay man who came out just a year ago, and who has been experiencing much "character growth" of late, I suggest "fixing" is more of a journey than a destination, with the deadline, the end of the journey, being death, not before. At your age I figured people my age either had things figured out, or weren't going to. I have learned otherwise. Case in point from an epiphany just a month old: What might be even sadder than people loving us for who we aren't, is feeling we are OK only if we are loved. My message to you, Nicky, is that you are OK. There's no asterisk to that sentence, no footnote like "as long as you are loved," or "as long as you ship," or "as long as you meet (your own and/or others') expectations." You are intrinsically OK, regardless. 🙏❤️
shubi
40,000 words is no small feat, congrats! I've always enjoyed the objective way you criticise yourself and work towards resolving them, your concrete goals and structured thinking process (like tying your processes back to thise concrete goals) is rlly satisfying to see, keep it up! Maybe this is just me being "agreeable"... but I'm also curious/perhaps excited? to read your big middle finger of a novel. Firstly as someone who enjoys using art as a means to interrogate myself, it's nice to see you approach these undoubtedly daunting topics in a creative way. Secondly while I am interested in dissecting the arguments for your long list of jargon hell, I'm more interested in how you add a personal feel to this novel. With that pitch that was the equivalent of a punch in the face, my brain sort of prepped itself to read an argumentative essay, but I feel even the best research paper or statistics will miss the humanity that underly these topics. I feel like using a character and narrative this explore these conflicts could be really refreshing. The outline seems more or less focused, I'm just curious/worried? on the "trust no one" message. Like you said, it's a fine line between healthy questioning and paranoia, rational thought and rationalising. Even when trying to do socratic dialogue, I find myself sometimes spiralling into the same shit slinging monkey fights. I hope you don't find yourself chasing your own tail. p.s., that dictator character reminded me of this video that happens to also talk about the advantage authoritarian states have with their ability to, well, get shit done. It's this video (https://youtu.be/EZg1XBjinLw?si=W2G4qZJSMj15cC7r) and as a singaporean I can confirm it's description of my country is at least 70% accurate (mostly... the authoritarian part)
LKMJ
Will I still get email updates like these if I switch to Ko-fi ?
Conrad Wong
As far as Patreon's confusing no-longer-chronological feed goes, I switched to using the Notifications sub-tab as a substitute... But jeez, what is with big companies unilaterally switching the UI up on their users without an option to switch back? Also yikes, hope you feel better soon!
Jacques Frechet
From one overly-agreeable person to another: Good job noticing! Working on that sounds like an excellent goal; I approve, and I wish to support you in doing things that I and others might disapprove of! The AI safety explainer for example -- I'm pretty sure I voted against it, and I'm really looking forward to checking it out. I'm so sorry about the Covid -- people act like it's over and/or no big deal but it's not. Speaking of driving down the highway etc. 3.5 years is no mean feat.
Emelin Ringuette
Currently having my midlife crisis at 41. No joke :( will email ya.
Gal Green
I have a lot to say but it's 4AM even after changing the clock an hour back due to daylight saving time. In short, this is all super interesting, and I'm glad you're purposefully venturing into more controversial territories, I don't know about others, but there's no reason to fear losing my support any time soon. My guess is that as long as your general attitude remains curious / "scout-y" / "good-faith-y" (unlike that "hostile condescending sarcasm" person) most supporters would keep supporting your stuff.
TV4Fun
Don't worry, I turn 39 in a couple months and have done waaaay less character growth than you.
