Journal

This journal is a daily account of my creative work. It's intended to be accurate, not entertaining. If you decide to read it you'll see how I actually write and compose. It's also freewritten, quite unlike my other writing. The ideas I express here are thoughts going through my head rather than definitive views or even solid opinions. So don't take them too seriously. To prevent AI scraping, older entries require a (free) subscription.

Listen to my most recent piece here:

January 5, 2026

Slow progress on the novel but progress; took a little time off for the holidays and also been doing a fair amount of research. Not much to say about that at the moment.

It's the end of the road for promoting DBL and also the end of the road for any point to posting about beauty on social media. The public is not interested in the truth about feminine beauty. That much I proved definitively with the beige mob fiasco.

More broadly, the days for social media as a cultural force are numbered. Bots are going to increasingly choke off new blood and clog the feed of old blood. I don't know what's next, probably it will just be impossible for individuals to reach the public and everything will be in the hands of a few established media orgs. As I've mentioned in the last post, I expect a cultural dead zone as AI gradually loots everything and chokes off new information production.

This cultural "great dying" is likely to be a popular story for the next five or even ten years. It's not something that's going to happen quickly. For a long time there will be debates about whether anything is even really changing.

December 30, 2025

Today I'm thinking more about how AI will change the information landscape, especially regarding independent information production including art.

One obvious consequence is a "flight to quality." But in practice this flight to quality will be a flight to established players. Big media brands and already-famous names. A flight to new and unvetted quality is increasingly impossible because discovery has been flooded with slop. So, I project a return to something resembling the 20th century media model with powerful gatekeepers who pick winners, often with considerable bias including political tilt and nepotism. This will likely concentrate in TV because its cost and controlled distribution inherently favor gatekeepers.

To the extent that anything will be left outside these gatekeepers, quality and personality will be two competing important characteristics of media-producers the public values. Competing, because content expressing everyday personality is, in practice, at odds with quality artistic production.

The forecast for independent artists and information producers is exceedingly poor. The "biased gatekeepers who pick winners" model will presumably take the market and the mindshare.

This model worked better than people today tend to assume. But, in an era of political polarization where media corps tend to be controlled by one faction, it's even more problematic than it was in the past, when the norms that were centrally enforced were strong, but more localized to a few specific taboos.

Nevertheless, the observations above won't be relevant for a number of years. The next five years will be the era of looting. Everything's going to be burnt down before it's built back in a weakened and constrained form.

I noted in the last entry that the main thing I need to do better is to choose the appropriate battles to fight rather than valiantly fighting the wrong battles. While I can make a reasonable guess about the coming media landscape, I don't see much practical application in terms of decision-making at present. For the next few years the chaotic environment means that there is no good, dominant strategy. It looks, unfortunately, like an environment where very few wins are to be had, and those few wins are going to be somewhat random.

My feeling is that the best that can be done in these conditions is to maintain quality, write things that are theoretically intelligible to a broader audience, and persist through the chaos. And, maintain my strength, because the opportunity window will shift in a few years in a way that may or may not be more favorable, but requires readiness. A sad reality is that any breakthrough is likely to come too late for me to personally enjoy the fruits even if I make good choices at present.

A big reason I'm not more optimistic is that I watched the filesharing debacle when I was younger. Veteran artists thought there would be a swingback of the pendulum that would restore recorded music to its former glory, but this never happened. Nobody really cared, and many wanted to pretend that there was no quality or cultural decline even though there clearly was. Even today the extent of the decline is masked by streaming corps reselling boomers music they'd already bought. In these situations optimism is, I think, unwarranted, because what's hard and slow to build is easy to destroy, especially when the dominant forces in society have a short-term profit motive to destroy. Which, they do. And will.

December 29, 2025

Despite the general negativity of my last entry, I'm in a reasonably good mood today. I have spent the last week and especially the last few days doing research for my upcoming novel. And, I am now about ready to get writing again.

I'm not sure how many details I want to record in this journal, especially as the novel won't be released until, likely, 2027. But in any case, it's going to be set in the Himalayas; and with this in mind I've been studying Vajrayana. Now, most writers who research a novel immerse themselves in history and local details. I'm not very concerned about these things as my fiction always takes place in a "fairytale" space where grounding the setting in precise authenticity is unnecessary. However, I need to thoroughly understand how the characters think, and some of the thinking in this region of the world is unfamiliar to me, and counterintuitive as well. By studying the core belief system and immersing myself in that I can understand them better, and this is more important than the specificity of the setting. In particular, I've been thinking about how dependent origination can be reconciled with Berkeley's idealism. Abstruse, but foundational details are important to getting into the minds of the characters, so I want to see how their system can be grounded philosophically. After some thought, I believe these systems are compatible, with a certain amount of modification that I won't go into here. More importantly, this philosophical exercise helps me to contextualize the worldview within my broader mental framework.

On a more personal note, this new year is time for me to rethink the issues in my year-end reflection from a more positive angle. As far as quality goes, I've done good and worthy work despite illness over the past year. My "failure" to reach the public wasn't really my failure so much as a consequence of public attitudes that are simply beyond the power of any one individual to resolve, and especially not a writer. My error, such as it was, lay elsewhere. Going forward I need to choose my battles more carefully, and for the sake of both social influence and material well-being, particularly choose battles that I have a reasonable chance of winning. And, I need to judge myself fairly. It remains possible that the new novel will fail to launch with the public even if I execute perfectly. The proper criteria for self-evaluation are: did I execute well, and did I choose the best battle available to me. If I remain satisfied that I met both criteria, then I will consider the project a success even if the material outcome is again lacking.

If one evaluates oneself solely on outcomes one fails to consider that some wars are much harder to win than others, and this is not a reflection on the general so much as the circumstances. If you choose your battles well and fight them well then you have reason to stand proud. In reflecting on the past I see that I have often fought well, but have also often chosen battles poorly. This is the main fault I need to correct. And, if I correct this fault, I ought to be satisfied with what I accomplish whether the outcome is discouraging or not.

December 28, 2025 - Year End Reflection

As 2025 draws to a close I'm going to write a wide-ranging reflection on the future ahead and the past year.

First of all, this wasn't a great year for me. As I've mentioned a few times in this journal, it was marked by some recurring health problems that prevented my productivity from ever taking off. I hope these will resolve, but much of it is out of my control, and to that extent it's not really worth talking about. However, despite these issues, I did get a fair amount done, much of it invisible.

The habit of most "content creators" these days is to produce a large volume of short-form work that's carelessly edited and really not very substantial. Well, it's clear from market data that this is what the public wants and presumably what I should have done. Needless to say I did the opposite. This year I expanded Dispelling Beauty Lies very substantially and put countless hours into making it as comprehensive and perfect as I could. Thus, it might look like I produced nothing new, but doubling the size of something that already existed - to the extent that the title was already in use - was quite far from nothing. Not to mention the 50-hour podcast.

Now, was my time well spent on this quixotic quest to write the perfect analysis of feminine beauty? No. Not at all. As I said, market data shows the public wants a steady stream of junk, which means if you create the reverse you're not going to be compensated in line with your time, and, moreover, no one will pay attention. As my foolishness in trying to create great things persisted, I became more and more cognizant of this, and ultimately the plug has to be pulled at least to the extent that I refuse to write any new nonfiction work. In fact, I sketched out an analysis of different strains of feminism that would have further developed my analysis of aggressive indifference in a way that could be very beneficial to public discourse. But, I held myself back from finishing it, let alone publishing it, because I can't continue to stupidly do charity work for an ungrateful public when I can barely feed myself.

I had intended to refocus on music going forward. However, for several reasons I've realized that would be a mistake. The fact that I don't have and can't develop a live show means I have no effective way to promote or profit from my music. The economics of streaming were never good, the chance of discovery without a live show was never good, and AI is in the process of turning those chances from bad to nonexistent. So, even if creatively successful, I will again run into the problem of creating great things that hardly anyone hears, let alone pays for. Well, that's not the kind of thing I want to do at this stage in my life. I want to make art that has some chance of reaching the public.

I've realized that my best bet is to write another novel that is more comprehensible to the average person than my first. Here the chance of success may still be remote, but it's much better than the alternatives. I will continue to work on music, but without the expectation that it will reach new listeners. (I'll also mention that music, at least the kind I produce, is the most difficult thing I can do, and requires immense mental energy. My health issues this year therefore impacted my ability to write music much more than my ability to do other things, slowing my pace to a very unfortunate degree.)

Thus, I am presently working on a novel built around the future of beauty and some of the related themes I discussed in ultrahumanism. I hope to balance work on this with more song production next year, but that depends on my health issues fading, as I hope they will.

The next issue I'd like to address here is AI. Now, in my opinion AI is in a bubble; but I also thought that the year before and maybe even the year before too. I think it's very unlikely AI will bring about the kind of productivity improvements its proponents are promising. Instead it will destroy the information-production economy, including the creative economy, which will have a net-negative real impact, though not one that will show up in econometrics.

I've given a little thought to ways AI's destructive effect on the creative economy could be mitigated. For instance, a platform could tie releases to real identities and limit the number per year. E.g.: one novel per year, no more can be sold here. This wouldn't eliminate the AI problem, but it would reduce the flood. However, my experience is that everything will always go the worst way possible for anyone involved in information production. So, I don't expect this, or any other solution, to be adopted in a reasonable timeframe. Instead we will live to see the looters' endgame I wrote about in AILOM. After the free stuff runs out, there's nothing left, because all the producers have been driven out of business. Instead there will be endless slop junkyards, and all mediated communication will be tainted. AI will produce a cultural landscape where the arts in general are devalued and defunded even more than they already have been.

Any artists who expect to work in this new landscape will depend entirely on a personal brand that differentiates them from slop. Whether anyone will care even if they can build such a brand remains an open question. Due to the zone-flooding issue, it will soon be extraordinarily difficult for anyone who hasn't already built a personal brand to break in to public consciousness, barring massive investment from a major media company. In other words, manufactured acts like kpop drivel, with a huge promotional machine behind them and a visually-oriented live show to boot. The new digital wasteland may also lead to a broader resurgence of live music, or at least live shows. As a non-performer who's never even liked going to live shows, this does very little for me.

In sum, the artistic and cultural landscape will go from bad to worse for the foreseeable future. AI will probably crash the economy in addition to destroying culture, which, I guess, is a double win. And into this environment the only thing I can actually do is try to write a good, entertaining novel and hope that a random twist of fate makes it somewhat popular. Unfortunately, that's as good as it's going to get for me.

Given these grim prospects, it's difficult to be enthusiastic. If I had known where all of this was heading years ago I would have certainly chosen a different path. Most likely I would have gone into a lucrative branch of finance and FIREd to spend my time studying metaphysics on the beach. But we can only live in one direction, and important aspects of the future are impossible to predict.

All this is very pessimistic. But, my drive and "inspiration," if that's a thing, hasn't disappeared. It's only in the process of reforming in face of the unfriendly landscape. I'm not at all short on ideas either. Nothing is more pointless than despair. I need to direct my effort and attention to producing quality fiction and music, and try to get as much enjoyment out of that as I can despite the poor odds. I need to make my struggle onward into its own reward.

December 19, 2025

Apologies for the rare updates lately. I haven't written much about it but I've been dealing with uneven health ever since the episode a few weeks ago. This isn't something I'm especially keen to detail here. In fact this whole year has been marked by uneven health and I sincerely hope I can turn this around soon and perform better next year.

In any case, Chapter 2 is underway, a few thousand words are done. Everything is looking good on this new novel. Though, I was a bit happier with how Chapter 1 went. In the first chapter I wrote very carefully whereas in this chapter I adopted the method of freewriting and then returning to the beginning to revise. Once in a while this works, but this wasn't that once and I think it was a mistake. Now I am spending even more time revising and the results aren't quite as sharp. So, I don't intend to do that again unless special circumstances really call for it.

A big disappointment is that I haven't had the energy to get back to music. I'm sad about this but I'm just not there right now. So many disappointments lately. Oh well.

December 12, 2025

Very productive day today. Finished chapter one of the next novel. It's pretty good. However, I haven't plotted this novel out in advance. I'm going to wait until chapter 2 or 3 is done to do that. Will the whole thing be good? Well, I hope so but you never know. So far it is sharp and different. A lot depends on how the characters shape up. I am thinking I may have to return to this chapter and make some tweaks after I can see the character more clearly. But this character is expected to change over the course of the novel so that makes it a bit tough. May need to come back to the start for a second draft later, though I don't like to work that way. Anyway, it's all an undiscovered country.

Would like to get back to writing music half the time. Haven't done anything on that since I was sick about three weeks ago now, which set me back more than I've bothered recording here - lots of brain fog, but it's been getting better very slowly for the last couple weeks. Writing good music is the hardest thing to do, certainly harder than writing good fiction, requires maximum clarity.

December 11, 2025

So, I have been remiss in updating for a while but I have not just been twiddling my thumbs. I added a summary of the beige fiasco near the end of DBL as an indicator of public reaction as well as a brief sequence on mirrors. But, more importantly, I am on the verge of finishing the first chapter of my next novel (in addition to the prelude previously posted). Unfortunately I won't be able to show this to you for a year or more because, as I wrote in a previous entry, I've become convinced that the serial release of my Memoirs caused people to underestimate that novel due to their stupidity about "blogs"=anything published on a personal website on the internet vs "books"=anything published on amazon (ALSO on the internet btw) vs "studies"=anything published in an academic journal even if total garbage (AND, ALSO on the internet, again). This distinction is ridiculous, and who is hosting the publishing website on the internet is irrelevant, especially as amazon and academic journals hardly discriminate; but I can't afford to cut the profits out of such a big project just to prove everyone's retarded, again. This has, in any case, already been proven very thoroughly.

Anyway I haven't yet decided how much I'm going to spill in advance about the topic of this new novel but I will say that I'm writing it in a very lovely new font and that it's a new series almost unrelated to my Memoirs, set in the near future and dealing with beauty.

For those who want a sequel to my Memoirs, well, all you have to do is arrange for the first volume to be popular enough that I can plausibly pay for food while writing the other four projected volumes. If you haven't read it though, don't worry, the first volume stands alone perfectly well and the sequels aren't necessary to enjoy the plot. I would have liked to write a sequel, but the public has other ideas.

Water under the bridge. The new series is going to be great and, hopefully, a lot more popular. The first chapter has shaped up excellently.

December 3, 2025

Feeling rather foggy this morning. Did some revision on the new novel. Added a new passage to The Illusion of Dominance called "The Delusion of Abundance." This is a passage I'd wanted to write for a while but I am not sure whether it over-lengthens this section despite its value. Also discovered that there were a number of broken links in my Trick article. This came about because I expanded the seduction section after writing it, which necessitated a change to the heading letters. In any case, it's fixed now.

Wrote a few pages of an addition to Trust Networks regarding associative cognition but then stopped and reminded myself I need to minimize work on projects that can't possibly pay. I am setting this aside for now, I am not sure what to do with it. There are many things I would like to write and believe have value but can't justify.

It seems the beige mob has died down. Praying for the clarity of mind to make good progress on my novel. Also very happy with my new font, which I have been writing in, though perhaps I should move the letters slightly closer.

December 2, 2025

Ok, time for some reflection on the last few days. First of all, I have been making progress on the new novel. Not fast progress, but good progress. So far it's going in the direction I want. I will write more about this later.

In the meantime, I had a surprise sequence of viral posts for a pretty bizarre reason. I pointed out that beige lingerie is ugly and women should stop wearing it. A pretty commonplace observation, you might think. But girls went wild with anger. Millions of them--literally millions. It was without doubt the most astonishing display of mob stupidity I've ever seen. And having spent too much time on social media over the last few years, I've seen plenty. I mean, the fact that beige bras aren't sexy is completely non-debatable. It's one of the most obvious facts about beauty. Why nobody's wanted to point this out, I don't really understand; or rather, now I do, all too well. Women get locked in place by fragile vanity and lose the ability to self-correct because they're unwilling to acknowledge the slightest mistake. In the past, I think, we had some moral standards that held back this tendency; but modern culture seems to have energized the worst people and given free rein to their worst instincts. They'll shoot the messenger over the absolute smallest things. Like bra color. If I told of the reactions I've just seen in a fictional format, everyone would think I was making up a completely unrealistic nightmare about the worst possible dregs of humanity; and yet, it actually happened. Hateful mob behavior and wild calumny--all because I pointed out the obvious about a bra color!

Anyway, my reaction to this is twofold. First, I've now fully done my duty to promote The Illusion of Dominance, an essay of great public interest. It got around 5,000 clicks, which is enough for the public to spread it by word of mouth if ever they're going to do so. Which I doubt. But, I've done my part. If it doesn't go further I won't take any blame for it.

Second, my skepticism about ever being able to reach the public with anything non-retarded has reached an all-time-high. The fresh surge of attention has not led to an actual surge of interest, due to the quality of that "attention" being very low, albeit probably near the full capacity of the minds in question. The public is simply much more retarded than even my most extravagant attempts to overestimate their retardation. I would go so far as to say that it's actually not possible for me to overestimate the stupidity of the public. I seem to lack the necessary instinct for hyperbole. (The public is more wicked than I expected too; but I haven't given up on properly calibrating that particular estimate.) In any case, all this casts a heavy shadow over any future projects, including the new novel, envisioned to be popular, or rather popular enough to be profitable. But, I am moving forward with it anyway, as I don't have good alternatives except to hang it up. A strange fate.

I have, by the way, written some notes for a brief addition to Trust Networks regarding the common man's habit of thinking by association rather than reasoning. This, I've realized, is a key reason why I've proven incapable of overestimating the stupidity of the public. Not sure when I will put these notes into proper form.

November 27, 2025

I'm in the stage of feeling out the main character for my new novel and trying to find her voice. Also I have still been sick which has wasted part of every day. Beyond that, not sure why I haven't been updating this journal but I will try to do better. I am making real albeit slow headway on chapter one.

November 22, 2025

Ok, now we're getting somewhere.

After wrestling the rest of last night and also this morning with fonts, I finally came up with a solution I liked. When I wrote the previous entry I'd almost settled on a dumbed-down web version of centaur and then when I saw it with blocks of text from my upcoming novel I just thought it was too boring and not distinctive enough, albeit serviceable if I couldn't find better. Next best alternative was a renaissance-styled font that had some character but I felt was less than perfectly suited to the story. I'd gone through pretty much all two thousand google fonts without finding better but I just don't like to give up with such a mediocre solution as picking between these two. I ended up solving this by using html code to create a semi-bold of a font that was too illegible in regular but too thick in bold, and to change the letter spacing as well as they were too far apart, creating a blocky effect in the original version. With these customizations I was able to make a more characterful font work. Then I did some further coding to fine tune the margins and page layout and justify it.

To show the result I'm going to include a (very short) excerpt from my upcoming novel, so, the rest of this post is subscribers only.