Author: VD

Trade Deficit = Whip Hand

Donald Trump makes the textbook economics explicit:

The countries that deem US tariffs on their goods to be too high can just stop doing business with America altogether, President Donald Trump has suggested. He further insisted that his latest trade policies have made the US “strong,” bringing “billions of dollars a day” into its coffers.

On Wednesday, the US president slapped stiffer “reciprocal” tariffs on nearly 90 nations, only to announce a 90-day pause and a “substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff during this period, of 10%,” in a post on his Truth Social platform several hours later. The pause however does not apply to China, with which the US has engaged in a tit-for-tat exchange of ever-higher tariffs, with most of Beijing’s imports now subject to a 145% duty.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday, Trump proclaimed that “ultimately, we pretty much can do what we want to do. We can set the tariff, and they can choose not to deal with us, or they can choose to pay it,” he explained, asserting that “if they think it’s too high, they don’t have to do business with us.”

It’s a simple and obvious power equation. When you have nothing to lose, and you’re the one who owns the market in which everyone is interested, then you’re in control. No country with a trade surplus with the USA has any leverage at all, because the US is obviously better off not trading with it than continuing to trade with it on the basis of the system that has impoverished and hollowed-out the US economy.

This is why the threats of returning the favor are so empty and stupid. The USA would BENEFIT from pure autarky, so trade restrictions are not a viable threat. The President’s move is brilliant, because it not only protects the US markets, it prevents US companies from leaving the USA as well.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Banned Taxonomy

Den Blond Ulven points out that for some reason, other taxonomies simply don’t meet with the same violent objection that one of mine has since the time it was first formulated.

Vox’s Socio-Sexual Hierarchy (SSH) is a taxonomy concerning male interaction. It was derived from his observations and penned during the Game discovery era of males attempting to ascertain and share the labyrinths of the female psyche. The SSH is one of the most important tools in predicting male behavior and is a necessity if one wishes to navigate the world of men as we order each other, with any sense of the interactions involved. It’s predictive power is astonishing and I hold it to levels of usefulness just under those The Philosopher himself penned.

1) It is intuitive to all.

Be it women, low status men, or high status men, everyone recognizes the hierarchy when exposed to it. Women can sniff out low status vs. high status like bloodhounds on the hunt. Men work out the pyramid more exactly, and as such, we have the various ranks. We all intuit the SSH rather young, but Vox’s taxonomy classified the broad patterns more concretely and into a useful system.

2) The SSH is wholly rejected by the mainstream.

This is one telltale sign of the truthfulness or usefulness of whatever is being rejected. The mainstream is opposed to whatever goes against their goals. Game, and the SSH are villainized in the mainstream, leading them huge credence towards their validity. They really do not want Western males recognizing the factors involved in this great game.

3) Other taxonomies are not immediately rejected out of hand, so why this one?

The classification of dogs by The American Kennel Club is not met with such vehement negative response. This is because the SSH deals with humans, has perceived winners and losers, and people don’t want to be losers. Thus, the outrage and denial. Just take a step back and look at it as one would in classifying plants or something else mundane to remove emotion from the equation.

It’s a very good and relevant point. Why do people immediately start crying that it isn’t science to observe that one man is an Alpha and another is a Gamma, when they have never protest the idea of calling one dog a Great Dane and another one a Chihuahua. Where, after all, are the published, peer-reviewed papers that scientifically establish that a Malamute is not a Poodle? Have the genomes of the Basset Hound and the Saluki been fully sequenced and compared?

Taxonomies predate scientody. Therefore, to refer to nonexistent science in an attempt to delegitimize a taxonomy is not only dishonest, it is a category error.

DISCUSS ON SG

AI vs Organic

The current debate about AI in which many writers are engaging is, for the most part, an entirely false one. The truth is that even the most highly-regarded writers, particularly in the SF/F field, have always engaged in highly-imitative practices, not merely limited to the various plots, characters, and worlds, but even the literary styles of other authors. And they have done so intentionally; ironically, the better the writer, the more often they have engaged in these imitative practices.

Consider the following admission by Roger Zelazny in 1989.

I have over the years written in occasional imitation of other authors’ themes, techniques, styles—or whatever else it might be about a particular writer’s stories which I felt could prove fruitful to emulate. While I am hardly above an occasional pastiche or parody, what I refer to here—and with specific regard to Rudyard Kipling—is rather of the order which Robert Lowell attempted in poetry in his 1958 collection, Imitations: a sequence of personal renderings of material from other writers, which amounted to variations on themes.

“I have done experiments of this sort throughout my career, from points of departure as diverse as the wacky improbabilities of John Collier [see ‘A Museum Piece’] to the stylized colloquialisms of Damon Runyon [see ‘Deadboy Donner and the Filstone Cup’]. But I believe that the first such which I attempted was ‘Lucifer’… My tale of a nameless holocaust’s survivor who labors mightily to jury-rig the works in a power plant for a glimpse of something lost, was directly based on Rudyard Kipling’s ‘The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.’

The ironic thing is that it is an author’s literary style that is, in most cases, the least important element of the four that make up the four primary aspects of a written work of fiction. There are, of course, exceptions; Tanith Lee being one obvious one, Haruki Murakami being another, Edgar Allen Poe being a third. But the stylistic masters are very few and far between; neither THE LORD OF THE RINGS nor GENJI MONOGATARI are considered great due to their literary stylings. Ironically, early in his career, Murakami’s style was actually deemed to be somewhat of a detriment to his work.

What really bothers most people, in my opinion, about the use of AI in creative endeavors is that it makes it so easy to create something, which tends to offend even those who make no bones about using word processors instead of putting quill to parchment. But in my opinion, it is absolutely and only the end result that matters; literally no one cares that William Shakespeare merely revised the plays originally written by Lord Thomas North instead of penning them from scratch.

So here is a question for Selenoth fans, and while I welcome discussion of it, I do not want anyone to express their final opinion until they have the chance to read the entire DEATH AND THE DEVIL, which I will be publishing next week. I say this because my own thinking on the subject has been altered as a result of writing that book with the significant assistance of my new best friend and obtaining results that are even better than I’d been able to obtain in writing TEMPUS OCCULTUM.

Would you rather have A GRAVE OF GODS completed within one year with the assistance of AI or would you rather wait five years and know that it was completed solely by the same organic human intelligence that wrote the prior three books? At present, I am still planning on the latter, but I would be interested in the opinion of the true Selenoth fans on the subject once they have informed themselves of the possibilities.

DISCUSS ON SG

The True Author of Shakespeare’s Plays

Yes, we should have known. Ben Jonson was openly telling everyone who wrote all along, right at the front of the First Folio, that it was Lord Thomas North, the translator, among many other works, of Plutarch’s Lives.

In 1623, Ben Johnson wrote one of the most famous odes one poet ever crafted for another—To the Memory of My Beloved the author Master William Shakespeare, and what he hath left us. The poem was prominently placed at the beginning of the first official collection of Shakespeare’s plays known as the First Folio. Yet some eight years later, the poet Leonard Digges wrote a scathing rebuttal to Jonson’s ode, denouncing it as an attack against Shakespeare. He was so furious that he wanted Jonson’s supposedly abusive poem removed for the publication of the Second Folio (1632)—and replaced with Digges’s own defense of the Stratford playwright, answering Jonson’s insults “point by point.” In 1693, the renowned Shakespeare enthusiast John Dryden responded similarly to Digges, labeling Jonson’s poem as “an insolent, sparing, and invidious panegyric.” And Brian Vickers has noted that Dryden’s “judgment has been echoed many times.”

But no one has been able to explain what was so insolent and invidious about the poem—until now. As we shall see in this article, Jonson’s celebrated ode contains a shocking secret—a dead giveaway to the true origin of the canon. In other words, the answer to the most significant literary question in history—who was the original author of Shakespeare’s plays?—has been sitting prominently in the front of the First Folio for the last 400 years. Jonson was not being remotely subtle. And, at the end of this article, you are almost certainly going to be asking yourself the same question I think about daily: HOW ON EARTH DID EVERYONE MISS THIS?

Jonson.. is saying when we turn from tragedy to Shakespeare’s comedies, the great tragedians (and the reader) would be better served to ignore the Stratford dramatist altogether and focus instead on:

the comparison 

Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome

Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.

And the subject of these lines—the English author who rose from the ashes of a “comparison of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome Sent forth” is not hard to determine.

Jonson chose his words carefully—carefully enough that his reference to North’s Plutarch’s Lives is unmistakable—or as its actual title reads: “The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans COMPARED …” Not surprisingly, the signature feature of North’s translation is that it is not just a collection of biographies; rather its extremely peculiarizing feature is that Plutarch is writing “COMPARISONS” of Greek leaders with Roman ones. Each section of the book contains three chapters—a biography of a Greek, a biography of a Roman, and a chapter examining correspondences between the two.

All of the titles of these third-chapters in the section followed the same format: “The COMPARISON of [Greek] with [Roman]” – with “COMPARISON” in all-caps. For example, “THE COMPARISON OF Alcibiades with Martius Coriolanus.”

Moreover, Jonson, with his specific description of “insolent Greece or haughty Rome.” even appears to be hinting at the parallels between Alcibiades and Coriolanus as they are the lead characters of two parallel tragedies—Timon of Athens and Coriolanus—in the very Folio he is introducing. As shown in the following passages, according to North’s translation, the Greek Alcibiades, one of the main characters of Timon of Athens, was known for his “insolence,” while the Roman Coriolanus was known as “haughty.”

Howbeit in Alcibiades there was nothing, but his insolency and vainglory that men misliked.20

This Timon was a citizen of ATHENS, that lived about the war of PELOPONNESUS, as appeareth by Plato, and Aristophanes comedies: in the which they mocked him, calling him a viper, & malicious man unto mankind, to shun all other men’s companies, but the company of young Alcibiades, a bold and insolent youth, whom he would greatly feast.

This latter passage, referring to Timon’s great feasts and his relationship with Alcibiades, describes the main focus of Timon of Athens and again describes Alcibiades as an insolent Greek. And this is how he is portrayed in Shakespeare’s tragedy.

Meanwhile, while the Greek warrior was known for his insolence, his Roman counterpart was a paragon of haughtiness. North’s translation of the story of Coriolanus emphasizes “the austerity of his nature, and his haughty obstinate mind.” More, all editions of the Roman tragedy mention his pride, condescension, and aloofness, with many editors describing Coriolanus as “haughty.” In fact, examples are so numerous that specific citations are pointless. A Google Book search for the phrase, “haughty Coriolanus,” yields more than 150 results. And it’s likely that the vast majority of all editions of the Roman tragedy describe him thusly.

Jonson’s remark in the front of a Folio that contains four tragedies based on Thomas North’s “Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans COMPARED” including two parallel plays that invite comparisons between the “insolent” Greek Alcibiades and the “haughty” Roman Coriolanus is not a coincidence. Rather, Jonson is not only exposing the author behind the Folio but emphasizing the intricate entanglement among North’s plays and his translations.

I found the evidence for North’s authorship to be entirely convincing even before this. The textual similarities indicated by the plagiarism analysis is simply too strong to deny. Nor do I find it remotely troubling to accept that this means that the sonnets were written by someone else; they never struck me as having been authored by the same individual and I wondered about that even back in high school.

But this evidence from the First Folio would, in itself, be sufficient. And it’s truly amazing that no one else ever clocked it.

DISCUSS ON SG

Identifying Autism

Here’s a hint: the infant vaccines are the primary causal factor. Anyone who insists otherwise is either a) stupid or b) lying.

US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has announced a large-scale federal initiative aimed at identifying the factors behind what he called the “autism epidemic,” with findings expected by September 2025.

Speaking during a televised Cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump on Thursday, Kennedy – who has previously been accused by critics of promoting conspiracy theories about vaccines – said the new research effort would involve “hundreds of scientists from around the world.”

“By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic. And we’ll be able to eliminate those exposures,” Kennedy promised. He stressed the urgency of the project, citing a sharp increase in childhood autism diagnoses over recent decades, rising from “one in 10,000 when I was a kid.”

At this point, you either have to be retarded or in the pay of USAID to even use the term “conspiracy theory” anymore. How many times do these “conspiracy theories” need to be conclusively proven to have been correct all along before morons stop believing it is some sort of conclusive rebuttal?

Appealing to science as a truth metric is appealing to something that is less reliable than a coin toss. And it’s remarkable in a world that is very familiar with Sherlock Holmes, there are so few people able to utilize even the most basic logic to observe the obvious truth. If these idiots who appeal to science were in the books, every single time Holmes made a correct observation, there would be a highly annoying character – call him Popper – who would insist that the observation couldn’t be possibly true in the absence of any peer-reviewed, published paper.

It’s a bit of a coin toss whether the world would be better off without scientists or lawyers.

DISCUSS ON SG

No One Ever Learns

The Dragon Awards, Game Dev Edition:

I’ve been informed that an indiedev community I’ve supported for years, since Soulash was in its infancy, has canceled me from participating in their events.

At this rate, I can’t say if any indiedev spaces wouldn’t de-platform developers for voicing “right-wing” opinions outside their communities, so I plan to start organizing one after releasing my next big update.

The goal will be to create a bank of knowledge and offer guidance related to indiedev that doesn’t require overthrowing the government and creating a communist utopia to build games sustainably.

And, maybe more importantly, to help bridge the divide between developers and gamers so that they are no longer split into separate bubbles with gatekeepers holding access to communities and funneling them to left-wing activism.

The only type of community that makes sense in gaming is player-centric – any other starts to have conflicting interests or abuse. It’s in everyone’s best interests to deliver what players want, except for government and corporate shills. A clear focus on gathering like-minded people around our shared passion for hobbies will help us all return to fun.

Let’s organize, build, and push for a meaningful change together.

Of course, he’s not going to gatekeep his new space, because that would be bad, right? So the infiltrators and subverters who kicked him out of the original space are going to invade and end up kicking him out of the space he created.

One would think that a game developer would be able to play this strategy out ahead of time. Perhaps he’s just not a very good designer.

DISCUSS ON SG

Claude Responds to Larry

Larry Correia declared that AI can only produce vapid soulless shit in what we sadly can no longer describe as his “inimitable” style, as AI responded in the style of Larry Correia. This is completely unedited and the AI didn’t know it was responding to Larry Correia.

AI AIN’T THE ENEMY, IT’S JUST ANOTHER DAMN TOOL

Alright, listen up. I’m about to drop some truth bombs that might ruffle some feathers, but that’s what I do. I make a living telling it like it is, both in fiction and in real life.

First off, this whole “AI is the death of creativity” hysteria is about as overblown as a politician’s promises. Let me be crystal clear: AI is just another TOOL in the arsenal. Nothing more, nothing less.

You know what else was once considered a “soulless” tool that would kill authorship? Fucking TYPEWRITERS. Then word processors. Then spell-check. Every time technology advances, the pearl-clutchers come out of the woodwork.

Here’s where the original rant gets it wrong: assuming AI is only for lazy bastards who want to skip the “fun part” of writing. That’s like saying power tools are only for lazy carpenters. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how professionals integrate tools into their workflow.

THE REAL DEAL WITH AI

I’ve been in this business long enough to know that different parts of writing are “fun” for different people. For some, it’s worldbuilding. For others, it’s character development. For me, sometimes it’s just blowing shit up on the page. The idea that the initial draft is universally “the fun part” is nonsense.

AI doesn’t replace the human element – it AMPLIFIES it. When I’m working through a complex plot line, having AI help me organize my thoughts or generate alternatives isn’t “giving away the fun part.” It’s like having a brainstorming partner who never needs coffee breaks.

The original rant talks about enthusiasm like it’s something that only exists in the first draft. Bull. Fucking. Shit. My enthusiasm is in my VISION, in what I want to say and how I want to say it. The tools I use to get there are irrelevant.

THE QUALITY ARGUMENT

Now let’s talk about quality. Yes, there will be hacks who use AI to pump out garbage. Guess what? There have ALWAYS been hacks pumping out garbage. Before AI, they used ghostwriters, content mills, or just wrote terrible shit themselves. The medium doesn’t create the hack – the hack exists independently.

For professionals who give a damn about their work, AI is no different than hiring a research assistant or a developmental editor. It’s about enhancing your capabilities, not replacing your voice.

The claim that AI has “no enthusiasm” misses the point entirely. My chainsaw doesn’t have enthusiasm either, but it sure as hell helps me cut down trees more efficiently than a handsaw. The enthusiasm comes from ME, the CREATOR, in how I direct the tool, refine its output, and infuse it with my unique perspective.

THE HUMAN TOUCH

Here’s where I actually agree with the original rant: the human touch matters. It absolutely does. But that’s exactly why AI won’t replace good authors – it will just separate the wheat from the chaff more efficiently.

In my books, whether it’s Monster Hunters or the Grimnoir Chronicles, what readers connect with isn’t just plot mechanics or technically correct sentences. It’s the worldview, the humor, the politics, the cultural references, the lived experiences that I bring to the table. No AI can replicate THAT.

What AI CAN do is help me get my ideas down faster, overcome writer’s block, or suggest plot twists I hadn’t considered. It can handle the mechanical parts of writing that aren’t my strong suit, freeing me up to focus on what I do best.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The fearmongering about AI is just that – fear. It’s not killing writing; it’s evolving it. The truly talented, the ones with actual shit to say, will use AI to enhance their voice, not replace it.

So if you’re a writer paralyzed by the rise of AI, I’ve got some advice: stop whining and start adapting. Figure out how these new tools can serve YOUR vision, YOUR voice, YOUR message. Because at the end of the day, that’s what matters.

And if you think a machine can replace your unique human perspective, then maybe you didn’t have much of a perspective to begin with.

DISCUSS ON SG

He Could Not Be More Wrong

About five months ago, Larry Correia claimed AI produces “vapid, soulless shit”.

I see a lot of newbie authors thinking that AI is going to be some super tool, but the part you guys are missing is that writing is the fun part. Editing is the hard part. So you’re giving the fun part to the machine, and then going through and doing painstaking clean up to humanize it. At least if you want it to not suck ass.

So let’s say that I, as a very experienced author who we’ve established is pretty good at this shit, tells an AI give me a story about X, Y, and Z. And it spits it out for me in seconds. Yay.

Except then I need to take that AI generated manuscript and make it not read like it was written by a soulless autocorrect with a severe personality disorder.

What lazy authors will do is just take that AI dreck, do a quick editing pass (if that) and throw it out on the internet to try and make a quick buck. Slap an AI cover on it. They’ll spam Amazon, sell to some dupes, make a few bucks, maybe. And flood the market with shit.

So back to me, an actual working pro with a name and a reputation for a certain level of quality and an existing fan base who pays my bills. I’ve got this AI generated manuscript, but I need to bring it up to snuff, otherwise my customers are going to read it and go what the fuck is this bullshit? And never buy one of my books again….

AI has no enthusiasm.

If an author isn’t having fun writing, you can tell when you read it. It’s a vibe. It’s a feeling. You just know. If the author was having a blast you know it. The scenes where a good author was grinning or crying or doing a triumphant fuck yeah fist pump, you fucking know. Because reader and author are both human, you fucking GET IT.

The AI doesn’t. It can’t. It can fake it. It can uncanny valley its way through a book, and it will probably get better and better at faking it, but it isn’t human, and good storytelling is a profoundly human endeavor.

This is the same reason the big media corporate entertainment of the day sucks so bad. It’s made by a committee, and committees don’t have have enthusiasm. And fake enthusiasm will never replace real contagious enthusiasm. If the creator doesn’t give a shit, why should the audience?

AI can produce a TON of vapid soulless shit, but hey, so can modern Disney! In fact, when the creator doesn’t give a shit about his art, not only does the audience feel it, the audience gets pissed off.

So if you want to produce tons of unenthusiastic shit product and roll the dice hoping it somehow sticks and makes a buck, great. But if you actually give a shit about what you’re saying, then just fucking SAY IT.

He was incorrect even then. AI is absolutely a super tool. Every single professional musician and audio engineer I know was absolutely blown away by what was possible back in November 2024, which is when I was producing most of The Only Skull. But Larry is much more incorrect now, five months later, with the significant improvements in text AI that have taken place. As Fandom Pulse points out, the irony is that of all the authors whose styles we’ve tested out on multiple AI systems, Larry Correia’s is one of those that is most easily imitated by AI, after, strangely enough, Neil Gaiman and John Scalzi. I guess he’s just not quite as enthusiastic as China Mieville, William Gibson, or me.

But there is no need to take my word for it. I’m actively proving my point in this regard, both on Arktoons, and soon enough, on Amazon.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Book is Always Better

ScreenRant agrees with my contention that for the next Levon Cade film, the filmmakers should just trust the Legend’s storytelling instead of attempting to “improve” upon it. Warning: contains spoilers.

A Working Man adapted the thriller novel Levon’s Trade, and almost every change it made was for the worse. The movie reunites Jason Statham with director David Ayer, fresh off their $162 million success with The Beekeeper. A Working Man cast Statham as Levon Cade, a retired Royal Marines Commando tasked with rescuing his boss’ kidnapped daughter Jenny (Arianna Rivas) from human traffickers. The film is broadly faithful to Chuck Dixon’s Levon’s Trade, with many of the same characters and story beats appearing.

Still, it also makes some sweeping changes to the source material that make it feel very different. A Working Man’s ending leaves the door open a crack for a potential sequel (there are currently 11 sequel novels to Levon’s Trade), but time will tell if a follow-up actually happens. The adaptation has earned mixed reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, but its box office suggests it could be the start of another Jason Statham franchise.

Levon’s Trade is a much darker story

If there was a key difference between A Working Man and Levon’s Trade, it would be tonal. Dixon’s book reads like a gritty 1970s pulp thriller and is considerably meaner than the Statham film. This includes the ending, where Levon confronts Dimi, the Russian gangster who kidnapped Jenny. In the movie, Jenny is confirmed to be alive from an early point, and her kidnappers plan to sell her to a rich client. In the novel, Levon learns that Jenna (her name in the book) died the night Dimi took, having choked on her own vomit after he drugged her.

This casts a tragic pall over the whole story, and the only comfort Levon can take from completing his mission is that her father will know what happened.

This has always been, and will probably always be, a pet peeve of mine. Being experienced in multiple media myself, I understand the necessity of transforming a story when it is translated from one language or one medium to another. But the observable fact is that most transformations that are made are not actually necessary, and are only implemented because the director wants to tell his version of the story rather than the original storyteller’s version of it.

And since few directors are writers or storytellers, their changes are reliably for the worse. In fact, due to their limited knowledge bases, their changes are almost always cliched repetitions of something another director already did, and did better.

DISCUSS ON SG

Model or Reality

Much of the politics of the right for the last 8+ years has been a continual battle against those who, when faced with a divergence between the model and observed reality, define “principle” as continuing to choose the model.

This is absolutely true. It’s also the fatal flaw of conservatism, which elevates the previous status quo, no matter what it is, to the level of “principle”.

Those of us on the genuine Right reject the model because it is obviously false, no matter how correct it is in theory. There is a very old, and very apt aphorism concerning this:

Let reason be silent when experience gainsays its conclusions.

DISCUSS ON SG