Jackson Allen's Blog, page 13

What Future Mars Explorers Can Look Forward To

Valuable new information on future Mars explorers and the people who love them. Yes, it’s important to look before we leap onto the red planet. Determining the safest Mars caves for future astronauts is part of the 55th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference and yes, they’re serious. Here’s why:

Mars has no ozone layer! Did you know that? ‘Cosmic and solar radiation rains down on to the Martian surface daily is due to the lack of protective ozone layer and magnetic field that exists on Earth and helps deflect this deadly radiation from reaching our surface, enabling life to exist here for billions of years.’ Earth 1, Mars 0. There’s no layer of protective atmosphere and thus, we’re down to living in caves and naturally-carved tunnels to protect themselves from the nasty effects of UV.

Now this solution creates its own problems – so don’t look at it to solve everything. “[A] certain drawback will be the need to organize the delivery of water ice to provide the settlers with water resources and raw materials for extracting the much-needed oxygen and hydrogen fuel for rocket engines.” You guessed it, the weight of the fuel to reach Mars will factor into the size of the rocket needed to get there. Bigger rocket, more fuel – less fuel by creating fuel on Mars? Uh … maybe.

I know Elon Musk loves to say things like ‘Mars it’s a fixer-upper of a planet,’ but give me a break. We require no lectures from a ketamine addict for the possibilities of life on other planets.

I’ve visited this topic before – Mars colonization raises questions and challenges far beyond the logistics of getting there. Life on Mars won’t be easy. I’m not saying ‘don’t go,’ I’m saying:

If you’re thinking about going to Mars, and yes it might happen in our lifetimes, you should know what you’re getting yourself into. By thinking of these problems now, you can be prepared to manage and even solve those problems once we get there! You might even invent a new food on Mars, a new medical procedure, or a new tool that makes life easier for everyone.

So, forewarned is forearmed – be aware of the challenges and think through the potential solutions. If you crack the code to life on Mars, you might be first in line for a ticket.

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Free Smashwords Short Stories – Hot Scifi Summer

Hot Scifi Summer is back – pick out a free short story from Smashwords through the end of the month (July 31)! Here are some of the short stories you can get for free on Smashwords:

Call of the Void

“I picked up his trail at the edge of a crater. Over my shoulder, three moons dangled in the reddish-purple sky. Faint starlight outlined the junky little craft I use for rescue trips. My spacecraft has no frills, no creature comforts: just two seats and basic life support. With luck, that’s all I’ll need to save this kid’s life.” Ryan is a kid with a past. In order to find his future, he has to help someone else find theirs. What will he find out there on an uncharted moon: ruin, remorse, or … redemption? He better find out fast, because time is running out.

The Battle of Victoria Crater

In the desolate Martian frontier of Victoriaville, a brave community of settlers faces relentless threats from mercenary bandits working for a powerful Earth corporation, WTO. Led by Captain Junior and an enigmatic gunfighter named Pete, the settlers must defend their hard-won home against repeated attacks. Victoriaville’s resilience and determination shine through as they thwart the mercenaries and maintain their claim on the Martian land. But as tensions escalate, the settlers wonder if peace is possible, knowing that their struggle to secure their future on Mars is far from over.

Necktie Party

Just as their small Southern town began to experience a re-birth on a new way of industry related to neurocybernetic technology, a terrorist attack destroys their city and someone is going to pay. Now, two old men must talk a mob of angry, frightened people out of murder at a broken down motel in post-collapse America.

I’m so glad that Hot Scifi Summer is back because it gives me new free short stories to give away. Grab one for yourself.

Click here to view the entire Inkican Smashwords catalogue! 

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Solarpunk – High Speed Rail Moves Forward in California

I ran across a supercool resource yesterday – a Solarpunk-style High Speed Rail is moving forward in California and you can see a bunch of HD concept art / videos right here! Of course, your first question might be ‘how is this solarpunk?’

The answer is simple. ‘Solarpunk works to address how the future might look if humanity succeeded in solving major contemporary challenges with an emphasis on sustainability, human impact on the environment, and addressing climate change and pollution.’ Human transportation is a necessary part of that future. High-speed rail (HSR) is a sustainable, low-carbon solution to a contemporary problem. Choo choo gonna woo woo!

Yeah, I’m a train nerd, too. Don’t act so shocked. I put the California HSR in the first part of Mesh, remember?

Long story short, I’m jazzed about Asian and European-style transit for America. Overhauling the US goods and service transportation infrastructure will kick us into the second half of the 21st century and I’m all for it.

I want to remind you: Don’t let the hype fool you. California high-speed rail ain’t perfect and there are a lot of problems to be resolved (). They’ve got some kinks to work out, yet. Yet, a simple public transit option to connect the state will do wonders for the local economy, not to mention a reduction in carbon emissions for state-wide travel.

I’m super-happy to see HSR moving forward in California. Another part of Mesh coming to life for all of us.

Write on!

 

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Life Imitates Mesh: Lambda School

Interesting ‘Life imitates Mesh’ moment – Lambda School went from ‘hottest start-up in Silicon Valley’ to ‘another failed con job’ in a little under seven years. Heartbreaking loss for all those who pinned their financial dreams on Lambda’s success, but there’s more to the story.Let’s take a deep-dive on this lovely Monday morning:

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, let me catch you up. Lambda School – eventually renamed Bloom Institute of Technology – is a coding bootcamp providing for-profit schooling. Launched in 2017, it gained attention for being a coding bootcamp that offered income share agreements as a method of financing. If you’re looking to get into tech, if you don’t have the resources for student loans, Lambda’s value proposition is simple – we don’t make a dime until you do!

How Things Went Wrong

Things sounded great, on the surface. Lambda offered students ‘a chance at a life they never had.‘ Also – ‘programs like Lambda are Silicon Valley’s answer to the problems of mobility and educational access. In the US, where student loan debt is at $1.5 trillion, schools that allow students to defer tuition can fill an important educational gap.’ Who was going to say ‘no’ to that??

The government was, and with good reason. According to Forbes – ‘the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) classifies ISAs as loans, noting that any group suggesting they are not loans is misrepresenting the truth. There have also been well-publicized cases of ISAs costing students more than if they had just taken out a student loan. Purdue University had one of the first ISA programs, one that it advertised heavily as an innovative way to help students pay for college. However, the program was abruptly shuttered last year after reports of students struggling to pay what they owed emerged.’

So yeah, Lambda’s another predatory capitalist scam – taking advantage of vulnerable people in exchange for millions of dollars. When I first read the story, I was struck how remarkably similar Lambda sounded to to Miramar Technical High School in Mesh. The story of Miramar and Doctor Gray is a cautionary tale to all the young kiddies out there: ‘Beware the Techno-Hucksters for they are ravening wolves.’ – Jackson 7:15.

Techno-Huckster: Stranger Danger

Who’s a techno-huckster and why are they dangerous? There’s an ocean of data to discuss, so let’s stay on the surface – techno-hucksters have driven some amazing innovation in the past fifty years, and often at the cost of their own relationships, reputation, and humanity. Your heroes of the techno-huckster archetype are: Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg. Your villains of the techno-huckster archetype are also: Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg. Now we can add people like Elizabeth Holmes, Stockton Rush, Austen Allred and Ben Nelson.

The dark side of being a techno-huckster is simple: hubris pays. You can spend your entire career ‘faking it ’til you make it’ and drawing a comfortable living while doing so. Kids getting their start in information technology need a roadmap for recognizing a techno-huckster – and their own power to defeat them – when they arrive.

Mesh As Rescue Plan

Roman – the hero of Mesh – reminds me of every vulnerable smart kid who needs support in order to achieve his complete potential. Like Lambda, Miramar High School sounds perfect on the surface. It’s set up as a ‘genius incubator’ for smart kids, funded by its mysterious billionaire founder Dr. Gray. Kids graduate directly from Miramar to seven-figure salaries. Roman’s a smart kid – languishing in the dystopian suburbia of future Sacramento – he can hardly believe his good luck.

Then, the murders began.

Not actual murders, of course – this is a kids book after all – but you never know. On one side, you’ve got a narcissistic sociopath with all the money in the world, zero scruples, and a robot army. On the other, you’ve got an army of super-smart, pissed-off kids. It’s a fight to the finish for a future we can all be proud of. That’s the roadmap I want to give to kids as we dip into the dystopian future of 2024.

Lambda School – Roadmap for Failure

Let’s say that Austen Allred and Lambda School had good intentions at first. If that were true, they saw where this was going back in 2019, when the California Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education (BPPE) ordered the school to cease operations and submit a closure plan. Did they stop? No, if anything, they kept going. That was a gut-check moment, a moment where they could have said “Iceberg, right starboard rudder!”

But they kept going. That’s what made them Techno-Hucksters, that’s what makes them a liability, that’s what makes them part of the problem. The future can’t be built by people who refuse to plant trees unless they get to own all the shade. Modern robber-barons keep trying to simultaneously build and outrun their legacy – it ain’t working.

The difference between me and a guy like Austen Allred is, I don’t want to be rich. Kids need something to believe in. If I can show them how to believe in THEMselves, if I can teach them to fish instead of giving them fish, that’s my reward. I don’t want to live in a mansion, I want to live with myself.

Wrapping up – Lambda School is/was a failure for boring, stupid reasons. I wish sometimes that life didn’t imitate Mesh, but as long as it does, I’d like to help write a happy ending.

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Sci-Friday #211 – Dark Side of Empire Strikes Back Set Visit

For this Sci-Friday, we take a trip to the dark side of a Star Wars fan’s visit to the Empire Strikes Back set back in 1980. I know, I know – TV shows love to do ‘lucky fan gets to do X’ segments – Jimmy Kimmel does them all the time. But in the case of this video, the sad part about this wasn’t known until many years later. Take this walk down memory lane, and then we’ll cover the dark side of this ‘lucky fan’ video.

All fun and games, right? If I was eight years old, I’d be freaking out just like our friend Daniel. Sorry, but no.

There’s more to the story, and it needs to be heard. Yes, Sir James Wilson Vincent Savile OBE  was an English media personality (“Top of the Pops” and “Jim’ll Fix It”). Well known in the United Kingdom for his eccentric image and charitable work. Everyone liked Jimmy Savile, it seemed.

The Dark Side of History

The truth came out after he died – Jimmy Savile was a predatory sex offender with hundreds of victims exploited, ignored, and ultimately discarded by society.  One YouTube comment put it best: “That kid looked absolutely terrified of Chewie. Little did he know the real monster was right in front of him.”

This isn’t revisionist history or ‘wokeness.’ Our society has systemized the exploitation of the vulnerable for the benefit of the powerful for centuries and Jimmy Savile was one of the clearest examples. Ursula K. Guin wrote about this phenomenon in ‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’ in 1974. We’re still waiting for the message to sink in fifty years later – that’s terrifying.

So when it comes to this visit to the set of Empire Strikes Back, we can look with appreciation for the movies, scifi, and the wonder of a small child. But recognize the dark side of these historical mementos. They came at a cost of hundreds of vulnerable children who, in many cases, are still waiting to tell their story.

 

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Adam Savage: Effective Creative Promotion

Adam Savage comes up with wise words on effective promotion for creative professionals in this video from three weeks ago. His advice begins around 3:06 but the entire 9-minute video is worth watching. Take a look:



What I like about Adam’s ‘not being a blowhard’ advice is that isn’t a mantra or Holy Grail but a series of lifehacks. That’s valuable for a person like me who needs bite-sized pieces of information on how to promote without provocative. You want any discussion about your work to be a conversation – have examples of your work out there for other people to see and give feedback on.

Now here’s the part I have trouble with – as a person with crippling anxiety – ‘how do you listen to the room?’ I’m not sure I know how to do that, and I don’t know how to learn how to ‘listen to the room.’ That’s something I’m going to explore more for me and I invite you to share any of your lifehacks on how to make that work.

All in all – I really appreciate Adam Savage’s advice on effective promotion. This advice seems like something I can use. I’m interested to see how other creative professionals with special needs have successfully navigated this difficult space. Your thoughts and feedback are not only welcome, but would be greatly appreciated.

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Understand AI Companies: Think Like a Psychopath

If you want to understand the decisions of AI companies, it’s pretty easy – just think like a psychopath. Safe Superintelligence, Inc. seeks to safely build AI far beyond human capability, according to Ars Technica but the decision smacks less of selfless humanity than it does ‘pivoting to avoid a market risk.’ No AI company has ‘human progress’ as a KPI, they have MARKET SHARE. AI is the new oil, and a lot of proto-robber barons are lining up to own the well.

If I’m being honest, I don’t care that ‘Ilya Sutskever is pursuing safe superintelligence in a straight shot, with one focus, one goal, and one product.’ Good for him, I still don’t trust him, nor do I trust any of these cats and with good reason. There’s a very narrow line between ‘visionary CEO’ and ‘criminal psychopath.’ Sutskever is on the ‘waiting and watching’ list until he proves himself one way or the other.

If humanity is going to get better, we need to act like we deserve it and stop taking ‘it’s gonna be okay’ for an answer. Prove it. Tell me how you know, tell me how we’ll know when we get there. If you can’t do that, then rushing your product to market isn’t going to make me feel better. Making me feel better about your product will make me feel better, but that would require you to have empathy for me, the customer. I don’t hear a lot of empathetic language out of ‘visionary CEOs’ and that’s a red flag.

When it comes to understanding the motivation of visionary CEOs, there’s a common narrative that ‘we can’t understand because we’re not geniuses.’ Then we get the bad news in a few years – the true motivation of these visionary CEOs is revealed and it’s a scattered form of greedy psychopathy (Looking at you, Elizabeth Holmes, Sam Bankman-Fried, Martin Shkreli, and now maybe Dave Calhoun). Their sad pursuit of growth at any cost is labeled as ‘part of the game of being a leader,’ but that’s an oversimplified excuse for lethally craven, cold-hearted behavior.

How Do You Recognize a Pyschopath?

I started thinking about this and it hit me, as a person familiar with abnormal psychology (thanks, adverse childhood experiences!) – the behavior of these individuals fall into a specific pattern. The naïve indifference to human life, the bland rejection of empathy for others’ distress? Performative regret for mistakes that led to death or destruction? That’s what a psychopath does. How does a psychopath think? Here’s a simple definition, according to Verywellmind.com:

Pretend to careDisplay cold-hearted behaviorFail to recognize other people’s distressHave relationships that are shallow and fakeMaintain a normal life as a cover for criminal activityFail to form genuine emotional attachmentsMay love people in their own way

I’m not alone in thinking this. According to this study, 20% of business CEOs can be labeled as psychopaths. It’s terrifying to think that such a disregulated type of person should be allowed to have that much control over our lives.

Yet, they do.

Earning our trust is pretty simple, but it requires those actors to reckon with their intentions. Do I want the money or do I really want to help people? Truth is, they want the money and if it helps people along the way – no harm, no foul. If a few people get hurt along the way, the ends justify the means. It’s a road to hell paved with good intentions and we’ve been here before (Looking at you, Borders Books and Bank of America).

Acting like they only have to care to a point, or love people in their own way – if that’s not psychopathy, it’s certainly a hole big enough for a psychopath to swim through. Is that what we want for our future?

How Do We Avoid This?

An AI company – with keys to the rest of the future – should be acting with good intentions. AI companies should be working to earn our trust. How will we know when to trust an AI company’s intentions? Pretty easy  – they aren’t doing it for the money. Imagine a world where Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Benioff or Larry Ellison goes:

“I have invested $15 billion in the next generation of AI to ensure that artificial intelligence will benefit human society and contribute to the progress of civilization. Since it’s important to make sure everything is handled in the best way – there is a board of supervisors, and a board of directors. The supervisors will interpret day-to-day operations based on the governing principles of the directors, and the directors have been appointed to maintain the following general laws of artificial intelligence:

An AI may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to physical, financial, emotional, or mental harm An AI can be used to build tools to benefit humans, except where such tools would conflict with the First Law An AI can protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law

“Let’s make this perfectly clear – I will not benefit in any way financially from this investment. A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.’ I will never sit under these trees, but their shade will cool the human problems that threaten to burn us all alive. In a hundred, or perhaps a thousand years, humans will be able to look back upon us and say ‘good job.'”

Sadly – we don’t seem to be at that part of the future yet. We’re witnessing many craven, shamelessly self-interested decisions marketed as ‘necessary.’ None of it’s necessary, not if you aren’t a psychopath.

If you’re a regular human being, you want this tool – whatever it becomes – to be used wisely and YOU’LL SAY SO. Then – shocking – YOU’LL ACTUALLY ACT WITH THAT INTENTION.

Now What?

I’m not naïve – I know that kind of message would probably get a CEO slaughtered by their shareholders. Maybe out there in all the people publishing those ‘dire warnings about AI’ are the people who actually care. They’re staking their reputation on warning us about the risks of such a powerful tool. I’d trust that person a hundred times more than the person going ‘hey, it’s all gonna be okay.’

That’s what a psychopath says.

My advice for assimilating the news about AI companies is pretty simple. If you want to understand what AI companies are doing, or what their intentions are based on their stated goals, just think like a psychopath. It’ll make that much more sense.

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More Creative Challenges In a Boring Dystopia

I want to drill in and talk more about Creative Challenges in a Boring Dystopia – something I started to discuss on Monday. Every individual creator fights an uphill battle when it comes to success.

I can’t walk around venting my spleen though. Success will come when people love my work, not because they pity me. So, connecting the dots, what will take for me to get to the next level as a writer? Here are some quick notes that you can use as a template for yourself, or for understanding my perspective when I talk about my creative professional journey.

More Readers, Always

I remember a conversation with a successful author (no names, but they wrote a book about a guy who survived going to a planet … fill in the blanks) and they said their ‘watershed’ moment was getting to 10,000 subscribers on their mailing list. It’s no secret that authors get book deals based on their ability to sell a book. I should always be looking to meet new readers and make new connections. Figuring out how to do that as a quiet little dharma bum has been my journey.

Avoid ‘Fake It ‘Til You Make It’

I read another horror story about a bunk startup that made millions off of predatory schemes to underprivileged desperate people. I’m not going to lie, I want to be successful, I just have to trust that when success arrives, it’s because people connected with ME and MY STORIES – not just the story about me and my stories. It’s better, it’s worth it, and I want to be able to sleep at night in twenty years.

Nuts & Bolts Hold It Together

Where Disney or HBO Max have hundreds of thousands on the payroll, there’s just me keeping the lights on, the i’s dotted, and the t’s crossed. I can’t afford to focus too much on deep tech like SEO or publishing mechanics. I need to understand things like intellectual property law, technology, customer relationship management. None of those things are about ‘writing stories,’ but I better know something about them because I can’t afford to pay someone to do it for me. Maybe someday, but not yet. I need resources to keep these areas managed but also prioritized so I can focus on creating stories.

Craft of the Crap

I added something new to the Creative People’s Survival Guide Part One but this part remains true: There’s a lot of crap you deal with as an artist – whether you write, paint, model in 3D – whatever. Learning how to navigate that is what defines your success. Don’t hate, create.

Hopefully this helps explain what I’m going for when I talk about more creative challenges in a boring dystopia. There’s no going back. I don’t do this because I want to – I do this because I must. I didn’t choose to be creative, I was called to it. Now it’s time to move forward.

Write on!

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Creative Challenges In a Boring Dystopia

This article illustrates the challenges of being creative in a boring dystopia, but it doesn’t justify despondent defeat. No, if anything, creativity is more important in a bad situation, not less. Our human need to express ourselves through art has been a survival skill all the way back to hunter-gatherer days. “Art is more than just a form of expression – it’s a way of understanding the world and our place in it,” according to this article, “[o]ne of the main ways that art benefits mental health is through its ability to help us process and make sense of our emotions.”

But what’s it all mean? Where is this going? To be honest, I’m not really sure. What I do know is that the creativity industry is an industry, like any other, and it has its own problems. If I wasn’t living and learning about *these* problems, I’d be living and learning about the working stiffs dat AWS laboring at 80-hour gigs to dodge that dreaded ‘PIP.’It’s all about finding the torture you can live with, or so I’m told.

Is it worth being creative in a boring dystopia? Some argue that it’s the only way you can be creative. I’m not so sure about that, but I do know that my torture is something I understand. Here’s what torture looks like for me:

I live in a small apartment with two cats in a sketchy neighborhood with occasional hints of hysterical violence. My landlady thinks I’m crazy for trying to be a writer, but we have achieved a way of existing. She ignores my ‘delusions of grandeur’ and I ignore the shotgun she keeps behind the door for when the homeless guy starts rummaging our recycling for cans and bottles.Keeping your world small sounds right to the right people. I scrape by every month on benefits and other sources of support. Some define this as ‘crofting‘ but others call me a bum so I’m careful about who I share my life story with. I’m not chasing the dream of ‘uber-wealthy author rockstar,’ I’m just chasing a small self-sufficient life that lets me take care of me and be kind to other people. This blog is about figuring out how it all works and the fun I have along the way.There’s no going back – once you start the path of being ‘someone else,’ you can’t return. I always thought Neil Gaiman’s ‘Neverwhere‘ was the perfect metaphor for life as a creative. Different rules, different culture, different ways to exist. It’s beautiful, if you can stand it – a nightmare if you can’t – an agony to live without it. One of the lowest, most self-destructive periods of my life happened when I tried to live without being creative. The world is a better place when I’m a lowly, constructive artisan versus an avaricious, predatory villain.

So yeah, being creative comes with challenges when you live in a dystopia. I’m not sure if that ever wasn’t the case – ask Michelangelo if he was happy as he painted the Sistine Chapel. Everybody’s got a mountain to climb, and this is mine.  I didn’t choose to be creative, I was called to it, and I suffered when I refused that calling. Now that I’m back to this point, eight years into my journey, I’m still convinced of one truth. I don’t do this because I want to – I do this because I must.

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Middle-Grade Scifi Adventures Until Mike.Sierra.Echo Arrives

Looking for new summer reading adventures? Gotchu covered, fam. I realize kids are filling out their summer vacation TBR pile and my novel hasn’t been released. So here are some scifi middle-grade adventures to tide you over until Mike and Dom get here:

“The Last Kids on Earth” series by Max Brallier : While this series is more post-apocalyptic than space-themed,  middle-grade readers enjoy adventurous stories with imaginative settings and high stakes. “The House of Robots” series by James Patterson : This series of futuristic technology and adventure intrigues middle-grade readers looking for stories with tech as a central role. “The Wild Robot” series by Peter Brown : Stories of robotics and survival, this series will pique young readers’ interest in technology-driven narratives. “Space Case” by Stuart Gibbs : Part of the “Moon Base Alpha” series, this mystery is set on a moon base with realistic problems of life on the moon and adventures that begin where no life can exist. “Hilo” series by Judd Winick : This graphic novel series features a robot boy from space and his adventures on Earth. “Cleo Porter and the Body Electric” by Jake Burt : n a futuristic world where people live in sealed apartments, a young girl who ventures out into the world, embarking on a techno-oddessy. “The City of Ember” by Jeanne DuPrau : More dystopian than sci-fi, young protagonists uncover the mysteries of their underground city and engage in adventurous problem-solving with unique settings.

Can’t wait to share my novel with you, but until then, I hope this helps you with your summer TBR pile or in your efforts to bring new stories to young readers. Happy summer reading with these middle-grade scifi adventures!

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