Month: December 2025

Merry Christmas Day 2025

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner, Reclaiming the Family ,

Well, here we are.  We made it to the end of the year and now we get to spend a few days reflecting on the year and looking forward to the next one.  Christmas Day will be a family gathering here at the Compound and we’ll be stuffing ourselves with rich foods and desserts and basically enjoying each other’s company for the day that the kids and those who are young at heart wait all year for.  It sounds like we’ll be lucky and have a day without snow.  The grass is still covered with the two inches that are left over from the last few days but the driveways are pretty clean for the cars to get in and out.

Camera Girl has worked mightily for the last few days shopping and cooking and baking up a storm and there will be a roast beast and lasagna and all the fixin’s.  My oldest grandson is graduating college and we’ve been talking about applying for jobs and also all of the latest technical innovations in the computer and information fields.  He told me about the computer that is now available that uses a chunk of brain cells to play pong.  That had me shaking my head.  But I’m sure crazier things are in the future.  Maybe someday they’ll grow an entire brain in a vat and then the Matrix will be for real.

Well, I’ll try to look in on the site sometime tomorrow.  But here’s hoping everyone has the best Christmas Day they can.

Merry Christmas to all of you and yours.

The Age of the Machine and the Vested Interest

photog Current Events, Trump

JM – The world is on the verge of new and great changes, Mr. Scrooge.  Some of them, of necessity, will be violent. Do you agree?

ES – Oh, l think the world is becoming a very hard and cruel place, Mr. Marley.  One must steel oneself to survive it.  Not be crushed under with the weak and the infirm.

JM – l think we have many things in common, Mr. Scrooge.

ES – l hope so, Mr. Marley.

Even in the 1820s the Industrial Revolution was dislocating people from their familiar environment.  A blacksmith now had to compete with a factory that could mass produce metal artifacts.  And textile mills were replacing hand-made garments to an astonishing degree.  These changes caused huge dislocations in the business world and also for craftsmen who previously could depend on their skills to earn a good living.

And now two hundred years later the breadth and scale of the tech revolution threatens to completely remake the commercial landscape again.  Globalization threatens the very existence of industries in the First World as manufacturing and even service industries are completely transferred to developing nations in Asia.

So, what does the future portend?  Well, we are reaching a point where rapacious capitalism has begun to undermine the existence of the middle class in both America and Europe.  What remains to be seen is whether national governments will step in to protect their citizens from impoverishment.  I think we’ve seen the beginning of this in the United States where Trump represents middle- and working-class interests with a sort of populism that questions the rights of the corporations to off-shore their manufacturing activities and now even their other employment opportunities.  It’s possible Trump will be successful in forcing the return of jobs for Americans.

But even if he is, the world will continue to change and evolve in response to the capabilities that advanced automation has provided and will continue to innovate at.  One of the challenges that everyone will need to recognize is that we’re all facing enormous competition that previously didn’t exist and an entrepreneurial instinct will have to be developed to allow people to compete with the lowest common denominator reality around us.  We’ll all have to get a lot smarter about how we find business opportunities and retain them.

Maybe a part of this change will be a strategy to capture local business.  After all those cheap knock-offs from China are often shipped by slow boat to keep their cost down.  If that means weeks of delay, a local metal shop could capture business by being able to provide same day delivery for some mission critical parts for a manufacturing business.

And even if AI allows foreign companies to compete in information sectors of the economy it is still the case that AI is far from fool-proof and still requires human oversight to clean up the inaccurate and inept mistakes that seem built into the machines.  And in those oversight positions foreign unfamiliarity with American culture could represent the disadvantage that allows local businesses to excel.

So, this is all a long-winded way of saying Americans are going to have to use all means at their disposal to survive the changes going on.  Government can certainly be part of the solution but we also have to recognize that we no longer have a guarantee of affluence.  We’re going to need to work harder and with our heads.

Maybe I’ll Swing Down to Mar-a-Lago

photog Life in Dunwich, My Fiction, photog's Corner, Reclaiming the Family, Science Fiction / Fantasy , ,

Today was an interesting day.  The younger grandkids came over with their mothers to make Christmas cookies with Camera Girl.  In addition to the real cookies, they also got to make “sugar cookies.”  This is some kind of sweeter cookie dough that they then adorn with multi-colored granulated sugar and other impossibly sweet ingredients like chocolate sprinkles.  And they didn’t just sprinkle it on.  They poured it on like cement coming out of a truck.  It was horrifying.  No one but a child could stand the saccharine sucrosity of that unholy concoction.  But of course, no one would force me to ingest that mess so I smiled indulgently and feasted on a few of the legitimate confections that were created in the kitchen.  And they were very, very good.  Sure, they’re not good for me but it’s Christmas and this is the time to overindulge.

And later on, my proof copies of “The Sniper” were delivered by the Amazon truck.  He brought them to the bottom driveway and then had to skate across the ice that had melted from the snow and then refrozen over-night.  I apologized to him for the hazard but he laughed it off and said he’d seen much worse today.

Now these “proof” copies have a watermark across the cover that says “not for resale” or something like that.  But seeing my work (or Jake Barter’s anyway) in the flesh, as it were, was kind of fun.  After all, what could be more official than finding your product inside of an Amazon box?  Why, that’s the very definition of American commerce in the twenty first century.  Thank you, Jeff Bezos!

And after a cursory inspection it looks pretty good.  The cover art is clear, the text lines up well on the pages and the paper feels right.  I’ll page through it and make sure nothing is missing or marred.  But I think everything looks like it’s a go for next month.  I’ve applied for Author status on Goodreads and I’ve authorized my marketer to set up my ad campaign and choose the keywords or whatever they call the bait that’s meant to entice the algorithm to catapult me to viral ubiquity.  I wonder if this magic requires the sacrifice of a hecatomb or at least a black lamb.  All of it seems like black magic to me.  But I figure it’s definitely worth my while to give the whole thing the old college try.  After all. What has Brandon Sanderson got that I ain’t got?  I mean other than $41.7 million dollars of Kickstarter funding, that is.  By February I may be waist deep in royalty checks.  Movie studios may be fighting each other to get me to sell them the movie rights.  I’ll probably get a call from the White House begging me to use my vast clout and get involved in the negotiations to end the Ukraine War.  I’ll probably spend a few hours in Oval Office advising Donald about domestic and foreign affairs and signing autographs for Marco and J.D.  Who knows, maybe I’ll swing down to Mar-a-Lago and advise the President on how to lower his golf handicap.

Well, we’ll see.