The Push to Ban AI

There was a discussion yesterday on SG about the RIAA’s new campaign to require the labeling of music in which the recordings are provided by AI, but not when the lyrics or composition are provided by AI. This is why I am against the labeling, because I believe that as with the registration of guns, it is a first step toward attempting to ban, or in this case, deplatform it. More about that at AI Central, as well as a new mix of ONCE THERE WAS SORROW in which I discovered that country rock with a double-lick drum works surprisingly well.

And in passing, I think it’s worth addressing the posturing of those who insist they are very special members of the 3 percent who can reliably distinguish between AI music and organic music, which I suspect has a lot more to do with the fact that since they avoid listening to it, they have no idea how much it has changed over the last 18 months, or realize that one cannot judge the technology by a single application of it; as much as Suno’s voices have improved, it has never been the AI system with the best vocals as its popularity stems from its compositional capabilities, not the vocals.

Soundwaves are soundwaves. They’re not magic infused with bits of the human soul. The “too perfect” problem has been solved before, multiple times, by audio engineers. It will be solved again. It is safe to assume that within 36 months, and probably within 18, even audio engineers will no longer be able to distinguish between human and AI vocals.

DISCUSS ON SG

Top 10 Epic Fantasies

The initial response to the Castalia AI crowdfund campaign has been, in a word, excellent. The full team has been assembled; two members of the community who have already been working on related projects have both agreed to share what they’ve learned, all of which is fortuitously in line with our initial development document. Interestingly enough, one thing that we had calculated, and one of the team member is able to confirm, is that too much training is potentially as problematic as too little. So one factor that will be very important is deciding which of the training works to overweight, or in our terminology, to assign the gold standard.

We’ve chosen Epic Fantasy as our test genre for four reasons:

  • It is a relatively small genre.
  • It is a high-profile genre that everyone knows to some degree
  • It is a genre in which one of the team members is one of the few qualified experts
  • It is a genre in which AI assistance would be particularly valuable due to the length and complexity of the works

So what I’d be interested in hearing is your suggestions on what the top ten epic fantasy books would be. Not series, books. Remember, the focus here is on writing style, not worldbuilding, not plotting, and not characters per se. So the limits are one author, one book. You cannot list The Lord of the Rings as one of the ten and you cannot suggest both A Game of Thrones and A Storm of Swords by GRR Martin as two of the ten.

With that in mind, please provide your list of top 10 epic fantasy novels.

DISCUSS ON SG

Europe’s Fake Democracy

It’s more than a bit ironic that both the USA and the European Union justify their wars on Russia and Iran as defenses of “democracy” when both organizations are observably anti-democratic in nature. All of their institutions are quite literally designed to prevent the will of the people from being enacted.

If anybody cares, what actually happened is that an extension of the European Union’s mass surveillance regulation known as Chat Control 1.0 failed to make it out of the European Parliament twice in March. Unable to summon a clear parliamentary majority, advocates (mostly in the centre-Right European People’s Party (EPP)) turned to the European Council, which adopted the failed Chat Control 1.0 renewal on July 2nd. The Council’s position hardens automatically into law unless the European Parliament can summon an absolute majority to stop it. To forestall any such majority from forming, the EPP on Tuesday moved with member state backing for urgent procedure, angling to force their scheme through in the last days before the summer holiday, after many MEPs had already left. The parliament narrowly approved the urgent procedure, and in consequence there were not enough votes to stop Chat Control 1.0 when it came for a vote today. Hours ago, a majority of 314 MEPs voted to stop Chat Control against the wishes of the Council, while a minority of 276 voted to let it happen. Because 314 is less than the absolute majority of 361, Chat Control 1.0 passed even though most MEPs present didn’t want it to.

It was a sleazy vote, not least because it’s far from clear this procedural manoeuvre was even appropriate in this case. Also, electronic surveillance is bad, but if we are honest with ourselves this battle was already lost.

Neither the EU Council nor the US Supreme Court are elected to their positions, so neither the EU nor the US government can even be considered representative democracies, much less genuine ones.

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Two Empty Aircraft Carriers

The USS Abraham Lincoln Aircraft Carrier has been moved to within 250 kilometers of Iran’s coastline and Hypersonic, anti-ship missiles — with NO DESTROYER ESCORTS to protect it. A SECOND Aircraft Carrier, the USS George H.W. Bush (our newest carrier) has now taken up a position even CLOSER to Iran’s coastline: 170 kilometers from Iran’s hypersonic anti-ship missiles. The George HW Bush is escorted by two (2) Destroyers.

I suspect the Iranians won’t take the bait. And even if they do, if Trump and the neocons think pair of aircraft carriers on the bottom of the Sea of Oman are going to whip Americans into a frenzy of support for Netanyahu’s war, I think they’ll be very surprised.

And it wouldn’t surprise me if all four ships have skeleton crews and no aircraft on them. This is exactly the sort of Very Clever Gambit that the eternal Smart Boys think is genius.

DISCUSS ON SG

Germany Bankrupts Itself

Apparently all those migrants did not, in fact, turn out to be good for the economy:

Germany has recorded its highest number of corporate bankruptcies in more than two decades, with nearly 5,000 companies filing for insolvency in the second quarter of 2026, according to the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).

A total of 4,996 companies filed for insolvency in April-June, up 9% from the previous quarter and marking the highest second-quarter figure since 2005, the institute said in a report published on Thursday.

The increase spanned almost all major sectors, including construction, real estate, trade, hospitality, and services, affecting around 45,500 jobs.

In June alone, 1,702 companies filed for insolvency, 20% more than a year earlier and 80% above the pre-pandemic average for the month.

The fundamental problem with all the Smart Boy reasoning about things is that they always try to reduce everything to a simple binary with no tangents or consequences. Even now, as services are overextended, housing prices are shooting through the roof, and unemployment is rising, you will hear the government policy-makers mindlessly intoning “we need more immigrants for the labor force”. And less-intellectually challenged ones will try to add a caveat about only “high-skill labor” or some other such nonsense.

But the reality is, has always been, and will always be that a high-skill foreign laborer comes attached with a low-skill wife, several useless children, three criminal cousins and two sets of useless parents. Except when the high-skill foreign laborer is coming from a similarly-advanced and compatible culture, the net impact is usually very negative, as we’re now seeing in Germany, the UK, the United States, and even Japan.

When Korean immigration into Japan continues to be an observable problem 70 years after the fact, there is no chance that the various third-world immigrations into the European world are going to end well for anyone. They never should have been permitted in the first place, and the ultimate responsibility for the inevitable outcome rests with those who permitted and encouraged it.

UPDATE: The current government isn’t going to fix the problem. Especially when all they have to do is rebuild the Russian pipeline and start buying Russian natural gas again.

The German government will introduce an energy levy to fund the construction of a national gas reserve. German industry, which is already struggling with soaring energy costs, will bear the brunt of the levy.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Castalia AI Project

One reason Castalia has been writing and releasing multiple AI-written books over the last month such as TOKYO TOKURYU 東京匿流 is that we’ve been methodically assessing not only the current state of textual AI, but the trajectory of that technology. And what we’ve determined is that the trajectory is the precise opposite of what everyone has naturally assumed, which is that mainstream textual AI would follow the path of music AI and continue to get better. It hasn’t, it won’t, and it can’t.

Modern AI writing has gotten worse at fiction for a specific reason: the companies made it safer and more reliable, and those turn out to be the same elements that allow AI to tell a story with stylish prose. Raw AI models learn to write by reading an enormous amount of human text, and straight out of that training they’re wild, crazy, and perfectly willing to say strange things, which is exactly what you want in fiction, but a problem if the AI is supposed to be function in a role doesn’t make things up or say something considered offensive or dangerous. So the companies put every model through a training stage that rewards it for being helpful, safe, and agreeable. That stage works by pushing the model toward the “average” acceptable answer and away from the risky, unusual ones. The result is a model that hallucinates less and behaves more reliably, but has had its range significantly flattened. That’s where the AIsms come from: the endless explanations of what was just described, the “he moved like a man who moves like that” filler, the “not this, not this, but that” repeated over and over again.

It’s why the older, cruder AIs wrote in a much more lively manner and were able to convincingly imitate various writing styles. Now, it doesn’t matter if you tell an AI to write like Shakespeare or Hemingway, the end result will be almost identical and soon will be indistinguishable from not providing it with any style instructions at all. Starting with Claude Opus 4.7, AI fiction became unreadable and it has continued to get worse with each new model. Textual AI functionality will keep getting worse for fiction because that training stage isn’t going away, it’s being reinforced. Every development cycle, the providers face more pressure to make their models more accurate, more controllable, and less likely to embarrass them with hallucinations, and every one of those improvements sands the edges down a little further.

That’s the difference between Claude, OpenAI, and Deepseek, on the one hand and Suno on the other. Suno put all of its efforts toward one goal: making the music sound good, judged by people who wanted good music. Or at least wanted Nickleback and Enya. The big AI companies are aiming ninety degrees away from that and AIs ability to write fiction is one casualty of their objectives. Suno chased quality, so their music got better. The text giants are chasing safety and reliability, so their text gets more careful and more lifeless. They won’t fix creative writing the way Suno fixed music, because for them, creative writing was never the thing they were trying to build and the very features they’re seeking to continue improving are the ones killing it.

So that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to prove the concept first by training a single genre, epic fantasy, because it’s a very limited genre with a relatively small number of excellent examples, a definite hierarchy of quality from JRR Tolkien at the top to Robert Jordan at the bottom, and a designer who has not only written in the genre successfully, but knows it as well as anyone on the planet. We already have two excellent programmers who are already working in the AI field committed to the project, regardless of how well the crowdfund goes, and there is one more very good and highly experienced one who is willing to at least consult on the project and lend his expertise to it.

What we need to raise funds for is a) the hardware, b) the purchase of the 100 or so electronic texts required, and c) paying for part of the time of one of the programmers. If you’ve read either Out of the Shadows, Death and the Devil, or Dorian Vane and the Vampire’s Blood, then you have an idea of what we’re estimating should be the quality that the Castalia AI will be able to produce in a non-curated, unedited text from a chapter-by-chapter outline. If utilized in the way that I’ve been using Claude Athos, in the integrated and augmented style, it should be able to produce results that will be one level below the very best that human authors can produce.

And obviously, once we prove the concept with a single genre, we will train additional genres, so that in much the same way Suno permits the production of different musical styles and voices, Castalia AI will allow the user to produce different literary genres and literary styles. We will, of course, be respectful of every author’s copyrights and trademarks, the objective is not to violate anyone’s rights, but rather, allow even the best writers to improve both their writing game as well as increasing their output.

There will be those who will absolutely hate that we are doing this. That’s fine, they are entitled to their opinion. There will be others who think we shouldn’t do it. That’s less fine, because you already know who is going to do it sooner or later, and when they do, they’re going to do it very differently and control access to it very differently and utilize it to further exercise their control over the publishing industry. This is what transforms this project from something that would be a cool tool to an imperative.

So if you think you might be interested in backing this project, which you can think of as a sort of Suno for fiction, please say so in the comments. If you have specific ideas or want to provide substantial support for it, shoot me an email. And if you have ideas for what sort of rewards we should provide for the backers, please suggest them in the comments too. This is probably the most important project we’ve done since building the bindery and turning it operational, and we would not be embarking upon it if we did not believe we have a reasonable chance of succeeding. We have a number of partners in the film and comics industries who are very interested in working with us on this, and so there will definitely be an Arkhaven link to this in time as well.

DISCUSS ON SG

They Were Never American

One can’t honestly call them traitors, or their actions betrayals.

Meta’s betrayal is crystal clear:

They’re firing 4,875 Americans on July 22 while filing for thousands of new H-1B visas in 2026 alone.

This is exactly why the H-1B program is dangerous. Big Tech uses it to replace American workers with cheaper foreign labor.

The H1B program needs to be abolished

Most US-based big tech is no more American than Alibaba or Deepseek. Which, of course, is why they’re perfectly happy to disemploy Americans and hire foreign labor, whether it is cheaper or not.

How many times do Paper Americans have to prove they are not Americans before Americans believe them?

Big tech shouldn’t be bailed out or awarded government contracts, it should be nationalized.

DISCUSS ON SG

Disorganized Crime

Having caught the occasional glimpse of the younger Yakuza in their leisure hours back in the day, I was fascinated with the effect that the Exclusion Laws of 2010-2011 have had in almost eliminating the power of organized crime in Japan, although I do wonder how much of that was related to the rise of the Clown World-friendly Princes of the Yen that took place over the same period. In any event, the vacuum left behind was always going to be filled, which, of course, is exactly what the new book, TOKYO TOKURYU is about. However, it occurred to me that since few would necessarily recognize what tokuryū is, or why it even exists in the first place, a basic primer might be useful.

Tokuryū (匿流) is a term coined by Japan’s National Police Agency (NPA) in 2024 to describe a new and growing form of loosely organized criminal groups that have emerged as an alternative to traditional yakuza organizations. The term combines the Japanese words tokumei (匿名, anonymous) and ryūdo (流動, fluid), reflecting the groups’ absence of hierarchy and their flexible, anonymous operations.

According to the National Police Agency (NPA), more than 10,000 people arrested between September 2021 and February 2023 are classified as tokuryū. Yasuhiro Tsuyuki, chief of the NPA, said shortly after the 2023 watch theft sentencing: “Such robberies committed in busy shopping streets in the city centre in daylight have reached unprecedented levels. The police nationwide need to cooperate on investigating quickly and effectively.”

In Fukuoka prefecture on the southern island of Kyushu, police last month established a 100-member division to combat the growing tokuryū threat. The prefecture is a former yakuza stronghold.

Violent crime is rare in Japan, and a string of dozens of burglaries across the country from 2021 to 2023, one resulting in the death of a 90-year-old woman, shocked the country.

The burglaries are alleged to have been orchestrated by a Japanese group operating out of the Philippines. Nicknamed “Luffy” after a famous manga character used by one of its leaders on messaging apps, the gang also ran telephone scams and extorted Japanese businesspeople working in Manila. More than 30 of its members have been extradited to Japan, with a handful still detained in the Philippines. Among the members are former yakuza. Other tokuryū groups have formed alliances with traditional gangsters, and are suspected of sharing profits with them.

After continuous crackdowns on yakuza syndicates, their membership fell to 20,400 last year, from a peak of more than 180,000 in the 1960s, as the older generations found it harder to tempt young men with promises of easy money.

Stricter laws, including those targeting businesses with links to gangs that had once operated with near-impunity, have made a life of crime increasingly unappealing: yakuza members are forbidden from opening bank accounts, obtaining a credit card, taking out insurance policies or even signing a contract for a mobile phone.

If you’re interested in the post-Yakuza Japanese underworld, or if you like Higashino novels, give TOKYO TOKURYU a try. There will be more Inspector Toda novels coming out this year.

DISCUSS ON SG

Too Crazy for Bluesky

Popehat, aka attorney Ken White, has been permanently banned from Bluesky, apparently for a post in which he suggested there was a moral upside to Elon Musk’s death. The Bluesky body politic, meanwhile, is losing its mind over this. Popehat is one of their heroes.

Because Mr. White, once deemed one of Salon’s 25 conservatives worth following on Twitter, is, quite literally, mentally ill, he naturally doesn’t see why he shouldn’t be able to advocate murdering a man who opposes the violent invasion of the UK by foreigners. Also, a correction – he wasn’t permanently banned, he was only suspended for four days.

Elon Musk is the world’s richest man — a trillionaire, briefly, until a market correction. He and his ideology are also supported by the administration of the most powerful nation on Earth. He is immune to normal social, economic, political, or legal limits. He can use his hugely influential platform to encourage pogroms without social, economic, political, or legal consequences.

It’s simply factual to say, as I did, that the only thing that will stop him is dying. Because my medium was a short Bluesky post, I mentioned him being killed. I suppose it would also stop him if he overdosed on Ketamine or choked on a piece of steak or got ass cancer or crashed one of his vehicles or something. But that would make a long post. Though the post has drawn plenty of criticism, nobody has explained to me how I am wrong about the limited circumstances that will stop him from encouraging racial violence.

I wonder if he would apply that logic to other rich people, particularly those who advocate racial genocide in the Middle East?

Regardless, and presumably because Mr. White is mentally ill, he clearly doesn’t understand that he shares what he believes Mr. Musk’s position to be. By his own logic, if there is no way to stop poor, non-white, downtrodden people from invading the UK and victimizing the English people through normal social, economic, political, or legal means, then the only thing that will stop them is the very fate that he is advocating for Mr. Musk.

Of course, Mr. White’s position isn’t the same as Mr. Musk’s position. Mr. Musk wants those poor, non-white, downtrodden people who are invading the UK, and other countries around the world to be repatriated to their home countries, peacefully and legally. And he is warning people, as I have warned people for more than two decades, that every failure to repatriate the immigrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers will eventually result in large scale violence and war, regardless of whether the country invaded is the UK, Palestine, Germany, Japan, or the United States.

So, ironically, we have a mentally ill individual advocating the killing of someone who is not advocating death for anyone. And, unsurprisingly, Bluesky decided to unsuspend Mr. White after four days, because it is a safe space for mentally ill people who want to be able to publicly advocate the death of public figures on the basis of their positions on social policy in other countries.

Now, I would be remiss if I failed to give Mr. White a chance to defend himself concerning his mental illness.

I’ve made an effort for years to be open and honest about things like depression and anxiety, because I know it’s healthier, and because the social stigma around it should be crushed. This incident resulted, as is often the case, in losers mocking me for being crazy, and slightly more pretentious people obliquely referring to my mental heath. 

Mr. White wishes that we would stop observing that he is, by his own admission, mentally ill, and instead pay attention to the illogical incoherencies and death wishes produced by his mental illness. And, presumably because he is mentally ill, he does not comprehend that doing the latter leads invariably to the former.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Useless College Degree

It used to be that at least the possession of a university degree meant that you weren’t an innumerate, half-illiterate peasant. This is no longer the case.

Gone are the days of university freshmen reading classical philosophers like Plato or contemporary pedagogues like Ta-Nehisi Coates. These days, incoming college students are lucky if they can get through Judy Blume’s “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing.”

According to a new “Survey of Adult Skills” conducted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development – a forum for 38 high-income, predominantly Western countries – a not insignificant number of adult students enrolled in higher education are now reading and doing math at a level which, in a more functional society, would be alarming for a middle schooler.

The survey, first spotted by the Economist, tested around 160,000 people of all ages, across all 38 member states. It found that across all OECD member countries, a full 8 percent of college students are reading at the level of a ten-year-old, if not worse. While countries like Germany and France rang in at under 5 percent, countries like Poland, Israel, and the United States blew the curve at 21, 20, and 14 percent, respectively.

The numbers aren’t much better when it comes to math.

Across OECD countries, 9 percent of college students do math at or below a ten-year-old level. In Italy, the US, and Slovakia, that figure jumps to over 15 percent — only outdone by Israel, where roughly 21 percent of college students were underachieving at the same low benchmark.

This certainly puts the lie to the concept of Progress, or the idea that we are smarter than our ancestors because Science. But giving pieces of papers to peasants no more makes them educated or intelligent than giving pieces of paper to foreigners modifies their genetics.

Part of the reason for the decline of the Western countries is the mass importation of sub-100 IQs bringing down the average. But a more significant element is the convergence of the schools and universities, neither of which are still capable of performing what used to be their primary functions.

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