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el_reg_odds_feedThe UK government says it will deliver at least 120,000 drones to Ukraine this year to help it fight against Russia.…
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A very arboreal view today. It’s a little misleading, since if you look left from here you’ll find a not unbusy street. Still, it would be churlish to complain about a bit of green in one’s window.
I’m in the area for an event tomorrow in which I am in conversation with Brandon Sanderson, prior to him spending time at JordanCon, and me at the LA Times Festival of Books (which will not be in the Atlanta area, but in Los Angeles). Our event is already sold out, so if you missed getting tickets, I’m sorry. Perhaps there will be a audio or video recording of it at some point.
And what about today? Well, I have a hotel room to myself and no one expecting anything of me until tomorrow afternoon around this time. I think I’ll take a nap and then see where the day takes me.
— JS
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When there’s a million and one paths in front of you, how do you know which decision to make? What if you don’t even have control over which one you end up on? Author A. Z. Rozkillis explores the idea of every decision we make, or don’t make, sending us on different paths throughout multiple realities. Journey on through the Big Idea for her newest novel, Fractal Terminus.
A. Z. ROZKILLIS:
In an infinite universe there are infinite possibilities. It’s a concept that has enamored me for decades, has led me into a career focused on space exploration and has fueled my endless love of science fiction. And that is probably why it is the Big Idea behind Fractal Terminus.
When I intentionally ended my first book, Space Station X, on a cliffhanger, I never truly intended to write a sequel. I liked the idea of leaving the speculation up to the reader about could possibly happen after an event like that. More to the point, I didn’t think I deserved to be the person to establish, canonically, what the future would hold for my main characters. But nature abhors a vacuum, and the same could be said for the space between my ears. So, I figured if I don’t want to write one follow-on outcome, and if I preferred the idea that any possibility could be canon, then why don’t I write a book where I do just that? Where I explore numerous possible outcomes from one, singularly massive event.
Fractal Terminus really digs down into the idea that with every flip of a coin, with every path chosen, with very outcome realized, there exists a separate universe (or infinite separate universes) in which the an alternate outcome could occur. I know it’s not a new idea, its just one I have felt, personally, immensely drawn to. The universe is so unfathomably endless, with there being no way for us to truly understand how vast it is. I feel that it is entirely plausible that somewhere, at the far reaches, there exists a reality in which I chose to study animal husbandry and not aerospace engineering. Or maybe I decided to eat that questionable leftover sushi rather than pitching it when I found it at the back of the fridge. Who knows? If the universe has no limit, then maybe every single possible reality is just wrapped around us.
For my characters, their personal universe is expanding too. My first book had a very narrow focus by design, because I had a main character who had reduced her whole universe down to the same five concentric metal rings of her space station. Jax refused to consider possibilities outside of that limited existence until she was forced to. Then she swallowed her pride and took the leap of faith on her feelings for Saunders. It could have gone either way, but canonically it worked out for Jax. Then they took a different plunge. Now Jax and Saunders are suddenly flung into a situation where they have to expand their view, because new experiences have that habit of broadening your perspective. This Space Station is no longer a cramped, desolate and lonely existence, but a cramped, desolate and overcrowded experience, where Jax has to dust off her social skills and mingle in order to survive. And as she lets her universe expand around her to include the souls locked in fate along side her, infinitely more universe opportunities unfurl.
Some of these are fates she realizes she can control. She can see where her actions can lead her and Saunders and she can tell when it might not be the best path. But more often than not, Jax and Saunders are at the mercy of the universe itself. Nature is a cold and uncaring master, and sometimes the coin flip is not even remotely something anyone can control.
We face these moments every day. Will this person I am talking to be an ally? Will they be my demise? Will I regret this interaction or not? Is there, even remotely, anything I could have done to change this outcome? There isn’t really a way for anyone to know, so you might as well take the chance. As the universe is expanding rapidly on a macro scale, we are, all of us, every day, making small decisions that expand our microcosm just as rapidly. Jax and Saunders expand their view on life to include the lives around them, while the universe expands to encompass every possible, even far-fetched idea of an outcome that could ever be considered. And that’s the big idea. The universe can you send you on an infinite number of outcomes, and you’ll never know which one you are in. So you are just going to have to take it on faith that you are on the right track.
Fractal Terminus: Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Space Wizards
crooked_timber_feedDo you know Baba Yetu?
Take three minutes and listen to this performance of Baba Yetu. (Our ancient blogging platform doesn’t like embedded video, so you’ll have to click through to YouTube. Go ahead and click, nothing bad will happen.)
Some notes:
![Game: Sid Meier's Civilization IV [Windows, 2005, 2K Games] - OC ReMix](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Focremix.org%2Ffiles%2Fimages%2Fgames%2Fwin%2F6%2Fsid-meiers-civilization-iv-win-title-80043.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=dc0e7b1c4d76cbeb2f424f7ed6ba41dc0dad665714b84b785541e0bdce5c11da)
scalziwhatever_feedThe title of this post is partially inaccurate, as part of my third day in Denver was spent in Boulder. Before going into Boulder, Alex and I decided to kick the day off with a mani pedi, and get matching colors. Cat eye polish, of course:
I was obsessed with this color, and I think it looked especially good on Alex’s longer nails. I mean just look at these bad boys:
Sparkly!
With fresh nails, we finally headed towards Boulder. Our first stop was the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. This art museum is “pay from your heart,” which means you can pay as much as you feel like for admission. I love this idea because it makes art so accessible, especially for Boulder college kids. Art museum prices can be pretty intense, so being able to price the admission for what fits into your budget is really nice.
While I didn’t photograph any of the actual artwork, I did capture the summary of this specific exhibition they had going on called “Yes, &…“:
I liked the theme. It was interesting, and all of the pieces I saw were definitely very unique and full of different mediums and mixed media. Very cool stuff all around, and the gift shop was awesome. I got some cute cards and stickers!
Right next door to the museum was the spot I was most excited for, the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse. I have a hard time liking tea, but I love tea houses and tea time. It’s more of an aesthetic thing, really. And Dushanbe is, in fact, an extremely aesthetic tea house. With an ornate, colorful, interior filled with plants, statues, and high, hand-painted ceilings held up by hand-carved cedar columns, the artistry pours out of every nook and cranny. On their website, this page talks about the 40 different Tajikistani artists that created the art that makes this tea house so beautiful, as well as the capital of Tajikistan, the teahouses namesake.
Look how wild these details are!
The tea house is very popular, and their daily Afternoon Tea requires a reservation 24-hours in advance. Their even more coveted weekend Dim Sum Teatime is only offered on select weekends throughout the year, and reservations are required 60 days in advance.
As amazing as those sounded, Alex and I just went for their regular walk-in lunch, no waiting or reservation required. Though while we were there, they were actively setting up for their Afternoon Tea, and I got to see some of that unfold and peek at some snacks they were served. Plus each tea time table gets fresh flowers on their table:
Besides their extensive tea menu, they also have some different beverages and cocktails to choose from:
I love that all of their cocktails (and mocktails) have tea in them, so fitting!
I started off with their house chai, as my friend highly recommended it:
I actually ordered this iced but it came hot, and I wasn’t about to complain. It really wasn’t a big deal and it was delicious hot, so it’s totally whatever. Alex definitely didn’t steer me wrong, this chai was very nicely spiced and not too sweet like a lot of chai lattes end up being.
I also ended up ordering the Espresso Bliss cocktail, because you already know I adore espresso martinis:
Tea infused vodka, Marble Moonlight espresso liqueur, Colorado Cream Liqueur, and espresso. I liked that this espresso martini had both espresso liqueur and cream liqueur, as a lot of espresso martinis don’t have any kind of cream component. Which is fine, too, just sometimes I like them creamier and sweeter rather than cold brew style.
And a quick look at the food before ordering our tea:
We actually did not get any food because we were trying to make sure we were hungry for our reservations at Shells & Sauce later that day, so we just stuck with tea (and a lil bit of vodka for me, evidently).
Finally, time for our actual tea:
We decided to share two pots, one of their white peach tea and one mango tea. They brought out our sets and a timer, and when the timer was done our tea would be done steeping. Alex took their tea plain, while I added copious amounts of cream and sugar. I’m a menace, I know.
I also wanted to show y’all this table behind ours, though it wasn’t cleaned off yet, look how nice this seating area is:
I would love to sit here with a big group of friends and experience their Afternoon Tea service.
After our tea session concluded, we checked out the shop and ended up taking some tea home. I really liked this tea house and definitely want to come back for food sometime!
Once we drove back to Denver, we chilled at the apartment before heading to our dinner reservation at Shells & Sauce, which they say on their website is a neighborhood Italian bistro. They weren’t kidding. This place is located in such a random little neighborhood next to a dry cleaners and a Chinese restaurant, and is just a little place absolutely packed with excited diners. Line out the door, yet nothing flashy on the inside. Just a small neighborhood joint, as advertised.
While we had originally come for their Restaurant Week menu, we decided to not pursue that menu and just order whatever we wanted instead.
I started off with one of their signature cocktails, the Pearfect Martini:
Grey Goose La Poire (pear vodka), pear puree, lemon, and Prosecco. Does that not sound like a nice, refreshing, crisp martini? It was pretty good, definitely a little spirit-forward but it honestly might’ve just been a heavy pour. I mean, the glass is definitely very full.
We split two appetizers: the garlic cheese curds, and the crab cakes.
The texture of these cheese curds was really good, they were nice and squeaky curds, too. I will say there wasn’t a ton of garlic flavor, they seemed more just like plain cheese curds, but who doesn’t love a good curd?
While I’m always happy to have a crab cake, these ones weren’t particularly memorable. They weren’t bad at all but were just very standard.
Then, it was time for our entrees. I got the Stuffed Shells Duo:
The two shells on the left were six-cheese stuffed shells with marinara, and on the right we have the sweet potato, butternut squash, and goat cheese stuffed shells with pesto cream.
While the flavor of the stuffed shells fillings were really good, especially the sweet potato one, the pesto cream sauce was a broken emulsion, and made the dish feel rather heavy and oily. So while the filling was tasty, I think the presentation and mouthfeel of the dish suffered from the oily sauce. Which is sad because I love pesto cream!
My friend just got chicken fettuccini alfredo:
We opted not to get dessert. The food was okay, the vibe was okay, and the service was just okay. Honestly, I’d rather go here when there’s no dinner rush, sit on the patio, and just have some wine and bruschetta.
Once again we returned to the apartment, and this time we partook in the lovely amenities of the apartment, that being the rooftop pool and hot tub. It was definitely too chilly for the pool, especially because of the wind, but the hot tub was so nice.
After that brief relaxing period, we knew it was time to hit the bars (we only hit two, haha).
First up on our list was a rooftop bar super close to Alex’s apartment called Sorry Gorgeous. You’ll know you’re on the right path when you see this doormat in front of the elevator:
I really loved the interior design of Sorry Gorgeous. Green velvet couches, huge moon lamps, plants, a low-lit bar area and a great view of the nighttime skyline.
I didn’t take too many photos, but here’s some to get a general vibe for the place:
I love how the shelves are built into the wall like it’s some sort of cave full of liquor.
As you can see, it wasn’t very crowded, most everyone resided on that half of the bar while my friend I were practically all alone on our side.
We ended up moving to this corner booth to take some photos together!
I actually ended up taking a selfie I liked pretty well:
This was about number five hundred and sixty-four and I shortly gave up on photos after this because I figured one that I liked decently was good enough.
I ordered their All Saints cocktail:
Made with Botanist gin, pear, elderflower, rhubarb, lemon, and winter spices, this cocktail was refreshing and slightly sweet, and felt sophisticated. As you can see, I clearly like pear.
I really liked the service here. Since they weren’t busy we actually ended up talking to one of the staff members for a while and he was super nice and cool. I definitely thought this place would have more of a mean-girl bartender energy but that ended up not being the case at all!
Next time I go, I would love to try their pistachio guacamole and crispy mini tacos.
Onto our next bar of the evening, the Yacht Club.
A warm welcome, no doubt.
While a little small, it more so just has that cozy dive bar feel where yeah, sure you might bump elbows with someone once or twice, but it’s all peachy keen, we’re all comrades, y’know? The bar portion of the Yacht Club is built right into the corner:
What I initially thought was just a dive bar turned out to be something so much cooler and more unique. The Yacht Club is a wildly interesting cocktail bar that also has hotdogs. Lots of hotdogs.
Look at this adorable little teeny tiny hot dog menu! From the classic dog to a dog with caviar, to one served alongside a Jack and Coke, you’re sure to find your preferred type. Personally, I really wanted a sampler platter of all of them.
Aside from the hot dog menu, they had this drink menu:
I went ahead and ordered the Chew-Chu:
I had never heard of shochu before, but it turns out it’s a lot like sake and soju in the sense it’s a Japanese spirit made from the same sort of base ingredients like rice, barley, and sweet potato.
Though this drink was a little dry from the Sauvignon Blanc, it had really good, light flavors and was refreshing to sip on.
Oh, and here’s their menu of “dope shit we have rn”:
That amused me greatly.
Y’all. Look what Alex got:
CANNED GATORADE. Have you ever seen such a thing before?! This was so mind blowing, Yacht Club is officially the coolest place ever.
This is Alex’s drink but I genuinely can’t remember what the heck it is:
Once we had our initial drinks, we were still so stuffed from dinner that I couldn’t have a hot dog, but I knew they clearly had caviar, so I asked if a caviar bump was available for purchase. I love a caviar bump, it feels so luxe and is so spontaneous and fun. Thankfully the bartenders, who were so much fun and absolutely hilarious, said yes, and even did one with us:
Yummy. You’ll never guess how much they cost, either. A cool and breezy five smackaroos. Have you ever had a cheaper caviar bump?!
After taking a house shot, which I definitely don’t remember what they poured us (and also did with us), I got this drink:
I can’t remember the name of this one, but it was very good, with like, a ton of crazy flavors packed in. I know that’s not descriptive, I was decently drunk okay cut me some slack!
Okay, okay, one more, and this is in fact the final of the 36 photos. You’re all troopers. Here’s the final drink of the evening:
This one I do remember the name of. This is the Southside Swizzle. I actually really enjoy Southside cocktails, and this one was no exception. The mint with the strawberry and lime was an elite combo. I love the visual presentation here, too.
Just kidding, I have one more photo! Check out this flamingo wallpaper in their bathroom:
Finally, we walked back to Alex’s apartment, had some snacks, and went to bed. It was a long but extremely fun and memorable day. I absolutely loved the museum, the tea house, Sorry Gorgeous, and the Yacht Club. Highly recommend all of them!
Have you been to Boulder before? Do you like rooftop bars as much as I do? Have you seen canned Gatorade before? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
-AMS
crooked_timber_feedBefore I depart this world, I would like to visit St. Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh, Scotland, and see the Jenny Geddes memorial.
I’m told it’s open to the public.
Why? What’s interesting about a stool?
Well, it’s probably impossible to point to a single moment, or a single object, and say “The Enlightenment began here.”. But if you were absolutely forced to choose one moment and one object? One pebble that started the avalanche?
Then Jenny Geddes’ legendary stool, flying through the air on a hot summer Sunday in 1637, wouldn’t be a bad choice.
So the story: back in 1637, King Charles I decided to impose a new prayer book upon the Church of Scotland. 
[Charles I: cool outfits, bad King]
Charles was the King of three Kingdoms — England, Scotland, and Ireland — and all three had state-controlled Protestant churches. The Protestant Church of Ireland was a minority Church, of course. But almost everyone in England belonged to the Church of England, and almost everyone in Scotland belonged to the Church of Scotland.
And these were two different Churches. They were both Protestant, and mostly Calvinist in theology. But they had completely different origins. And they used different systems of Church government, different styles of architecture and art, and — this is key — different prayers. And the Church of Scotland, in particular, was deeply bound up with Scots nationalism.
But King Charles wanted to harmonize the two Churches and bring their practices closer together. (“Why?” is a perfectly reasonable question here, and “because Charles I was stubborn and not very bright” is a perfectly reasonable answer.) So he had some Scots courtiers down in London write a new prayer book that was closer to the English one, and ordered that it be used in Scotland.
[cue ominous music]
This was not well received by the Scots.
There were a lot of different reasons for them to dislike the new prayer book, starting with the obvious one that by forcing Scots to use English-style prayers rather than vice versa, it was a gross offense to Scots nationalism and Scots pride. But also, many Scots were fanatically, almost hysterically, anti-Catholic. And many of these Scots had come to suspect that King Charles, or at least some of the courtiers around him, were far too sympathetic to Catholicism, if not actually closet Catholics themselves. The fact that Charles had a Catholic French princess as his Queen didn’t help here.
Also, while Charles really was a devout Protestant, he thought the Catholic Church had some good ideas about music, art, and the dignity of the clergy. So he was fine with nudging the Church of England towards a more Catholic look-and-feel: more ceremony, more ritual, more stained glass and incense and chanting. Today we’d call it High Church (or, if you’re Low Church, “bells and smells”).
Even in England, many people viewed these changes with suspicion. In Scotland, they were viewed with utter horror. And changing the prayer book was seen as the tip of the crypto-Catholic wedge.
And so: on the first appointed Sunday, when ministers stood up and began delivering prayers, all hell broke loose. In particular, at St. Giles Cathedral — the biggest, most important church in Edinburgh — legend has it that a woman named Jenny Geddes stood up, grabbed a stool, and hurled it straight at the minister’s head, shouting these memorable words: “De’il gie you colic, the wame o’ ye, fause thief! Daur ye say Mass in my lug?“
The fause thief did not, in fact, daur. He fled in terror, wame and all. Services were cancelled, and no lugs were offended by Mass.
[don’t mess with Jenny’s lug]
The historiographically sophisticated CT readership probably won’t be surprised to hear that (1) while a riot definitely took place, it’s not clear that Jenny Geddes started it; and, (2) actually, we’re not completely sure that Jenny Geddes even existed; and, (3) if she did exist and she did throw a stool, the stool is long gone: the memorial is a 20th century reconstruction.
But okay. Putting these quibbles aside, why were Jenny and her stool so important?
Because the Edinburgh riots outraged, outraged King Charles: how dare trash like Jenny Geddes defy him! So instead of backing off, he doubled down. (You may recall what I said about Charles being stubborn, and not too bright.)
This turned what might have been an isolated incident into a sustained storm of national and religious feeling, culminating in the Scottish Covenant. Which was basically the Scots uniting, arming themselves, organizing for war, and rebelling against King Charles (while loudly proclaiming that they weren’t doing any such thing).
The official motto was “for religion, King, and kingdom” —
[see, it’s right here on our flag!]
— but the unofficial motto was “the Kirk (Church) up, the King down, and the English out”.
Now, King Charles wanted to be an absolute monarch. Not because he was evil, but because (1) he was raised that way, and (2) he was surrounded by flatterers who encouraged this, and being a very bad judge of character he believed them, and (3) as a young prince, Charles had spent time at the Hapsburg court in Madrid. And — being not too bright — he had been deeply impressed by the power and grandeur of the Spanish monarchy and its court, without realizing that they were actually a bunch of incompetent bigots who were steadily driving Spain into decline and ruin.
But while Stuart England didn’t have a constitutional monarchy as we’d recognize it, there was one big restriction on royal power: only Parliaments could pass taxes. And English Parliaments disliked this whole absolutism thing.
So Parliament after Parliament refused to give Charles money unless he agreed to some relatively modest restrictions on his royal power. Which Charles, being stubborn, absolutely did not want to do. So eventually, Charles just stopped calling Parliaments. Instead, he decided to “live on his own” — running a modest government while casting about for ways to raise revenue without Parliament.
By 1637 he’d been doing this for a decade and — from Charles’ POV — it was actually working pretty well. True, the English state was running very lean. But England was pretty decentralized anyway: a lot of the actual work of government, from Poor Laws to Justices of the Peace, was done at the local level. By 1637, it looked like Charles’ system of absolutism-on-the-cheap was settling down to be the long-term norm.
The main constraint Charles faced was that he couldn’t fight wars, because wars were very expensive, and would require him to call a Parliament for funds. But Charles had a simple solution for that: he pursued a mostly isolationist foreign policy and didn’t fight any wars.
But in Scotland, Charles stupidly provoked a rebellion. Jenny and her stool — and the hundred thousand Scots who promptly fell into line behind her — meant that Charles had maneuvered himself into the worst possible corner for a would-be absolute monarch. Because now he either had to let ordinary Scots citizens (the Covenanters) dictate terms to him, or — in order to get the funds to suppress the Covenanters with military force — he had to summon an English Parliament, which would immediately try to dictate terms to him.
This led to the following sequence of events:
Charles: Well, I can’t allow an armed rebellion in one kingdom. It might spread to the others! It must be suppressed. I’ll call a Parliament. [calls Parliament]
Short Parliament: We have some terms.
Charles: What? No! [dismisses Parliament]
Scots: Hey, looks like you can’t find any money to suppress us. We’re adding some additional terms.
Charles: Damn it. [calls another Parliament]
Long Parliament [cracking knuckles]: Now we /really/ have some terms.
I love this stuff. But you probably don’t want to read 10,000 words of 17th century English history. So let’s fast-forward a bit:
All of this led, through various twists and turns, to the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, aka the English Civil War. Which led to King Charles getting his head cut off.
[how it started]
[how it’s going]
This in turn led to Cromwell, the Commonwealth, the Restoration, the Glorious Revolution, the Act of Toleration, the Bill of Rights, and… yeah, just a whole lot of history.
Now: if there’s one big question about the last 500 years of world history, it’s probably “Why Europe”. Why did Europe (and not Qing China or the Ottomans or whoever) get the Scientific Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and the Enlightenment? And why did Europe end up conquering or colonizing — at least for a while — pretty much the entire world outside of China, Japan, Iran and Anatolia?
I’m not going to go into all that today. But consider this: if King Charles had been just a bit less stupid, or the Scots just a bit less ticked off, the rebellion might have been avoided.
And in that case the most likely outcome is that Charles continues to bumble along for another 20 or 30 years until he dies peacefully in bed. (Most monarchs did, after all, including many who were far more odious and incompetent than Charles.) And in that case, we probably don’t get a United Kingdom, and we definitely don’t get a constitutional monarchy or a British fiscal-military state system. Stuart Britain gets the worst of both worlds: a strong King with pretensions to absolutism, at the head of a very weak and perpetually cash-strapped state. England remains, as it was in 1637, a second-rate power, pursuing a policy of isolationism because they can’t afford anything else.
Do we still get a Scientific Revolution? Sure — all the pieces were in place by 1637. We already have Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, Harvey, and Bacon. Leibniz and Newton, Hooke and Boyle were already born. This was a pan-European project from day one. So while the details will be different, the general pattern should be much the same.
Do we still get an Industrial Revolution? Probably, but I suspect it’ll be delayed by a generation or so. And when it happens, its epicenter will be on the Continent, not Great Britain. Unlike the Scientific Revolution, the Industrial Revolution was disproportionately British in origin. And within Britain it was disproportionately — not entirely, but very disproportionately — driven by religious nonconformists. Absolutist Stuart England is going to have a lot fewer of those. Also, without the massive economic disruptions and land transfers of the Commonwealth period, England’s economy is going to be more agrarian, more conservative, more dominated by a handful of noble families. So the train still leaves the station — again, the pieces were in place — but it will move a bit slower.
Does Europe still end up conquering pretty much everything by 1900? Probably yes. But in this timeline the great colonizing power will be France, not the United Kingdom. The map still gets painted, but blue instead of red. The French get India (they almost did anyway), and they keep Canada and the North American interior, penning England’s American colonies east of the Appalachians. Eventually France gobbles up Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and most of Africa, because they can. We still get European colonialism everywhere, but now most of it is under the Bourbon fleur-de-lys.
[wider still, and wider, shall thy bounds be set]
There’s no French Revolution, or anything like it. Why would there be? No William of Orange, no Marlborough, no Blenheim or Ramillies. Louis XIV sweeps the pot. No British-led alliances of containment, no Royal Navy cheerfully devastating French trade again and again. Stuart England won’t have the money for those things (and will probably be pro-French anyway). So, no constant wars, ever more global in scope, loading the state with impossible debt. And, of course, no English or American Revolutions as inspiration.
Do we still get an Enlightenment? Okay, here’s where history really jumps the tracks. Without Jenny Geddes and her friends, I don’t think we get an Enlightenment.
There are no works by Hobbes or Locke in this timeline (Hobbes will still be around, but he won’t have much to say). There’s no Commonwealth to serve as a test bed for all sorts of wild religious and political ideas, from putting a King on trial to letting the Jews come back. There’s no Glorious Revolution, no Act of Toleration, no lifting of formal press censorship, no constitutional monarchy, no Bill of Rights. Intellectual and political freedoms will still exist in a few places, most notably the Netherlands. But there won’t be a large, powerful European country that is both little-l liberal and also an obvious economic and military success story.
When we think of the Enlightenment, we probably first think of ancien regime France. But most of the French philosophes were inspired by Britain as a proof of concept. In the universe where Jenny never throws her stool? That won’t happen. Montesquieu won’t spend years in England as a guest of Lord Chesterfield collecting material for _Spirit of the Laws_. Voltaire won’t publish a book of essays admiring the advanced and progressive systems of government and political thought in Britain, because Still Stuart England won’t have those things.
Europe’s dominant political model will be Bourbon / Hapsburg bureaucratic absolutism. There will be odd exceptions like the Dutch and Swiss. There will be internal critics and rebels. But without the British examples in play, it’s hard to see what could seriously challenge that model.
The Enlightenment became a European project, and eventually a world project. But at its beginning, it was deeply rooted in the particular historical experience of 17th century England and Scotland. And that particular historical experience was far from inevitable! In fact, it was very weird and contingent. Starting in 1637, the two British kingdoms quite suddenly took a right-angle turn into uncharted territory. The consequences were momentous, and we’re still living with them.
Anyway. If you go to St. Giles Cathedral? Besides the modest memorial pictured above, there’s also a small plaque erected a couple of centuries later. It reads:
“Constant oral tradition affirms that near this spot a brave Scotch woman Janet Geddes on the 23 July 1637 struck the first blow in the great struggle for freedom of conscience which after a conflict of half a century ended in the establishment of civil and religious liberty.”
And that’s all.
crooked_timber_feedAmong other things, the unlamented former autocrat Viktor Orban was one of the leading proponents of pro-natalist policies, and more open than most about the racist underpinnings of his view. However, like others who have tried to raise birth rates, he wasn’t particularly successful. To understand why not, it’s useful to consider the question: how many babies do we want. In particular, since their choices are the relevant ones, how many babies do young women want?
Three distinct concepts are relevant here: the ideal number (a normative answer to a survey question), the intended/expected number (what respondents plan to have or think they will actually have), and the actual number (completed fertility). These diverge in systematic and informative ways.
Start with the ideal. Across most high-income countries, around 50-60% of young women report an ideal family size of two children, with a smaller group preferring 3 and another, smaller group preferring 1, Only a small number see childlessness, or large families of four or more children, as ideal. This has been relatively stable for decades, despite large changes in education, labour markets and gender roles. In Australia, Europe and North America, the modal response is still two, with a minority favouring one or three, and very few choosing zero as an ideal. However, there has been a gradual decline in the mean ideal family size over time, with more women reporting an ideal size of one or zero.
Next, consider intentions When young women are asked how many children they intend (or expect) to have, the number is consistently lower than the ideal, typically by about 0.2–0.5 children on average, and the gap is larger for the youngest cohorts. That is, as ideal family size has declined, expected family size has declined slightly faster. Most importantly it has been below replacement, at least since the 1990s. Expectations are also more sensitive to circumstances. They fall when housing costs rise, when career paths become more uncertain, and when partnership formation is delayed. In other words, expectations embed a constraint set: they are a forecast conditional on anticipated economic and social conditions.
Two further patterns are worth noting. First, the gap between ideal and expected fertility is larger for more educated young women, reflecting steeper career–family trade-offs and later partnering. Second, the share of young women expecting to remain childless has risen, even though very few state childlessness as an ideal.
Finally, actual fertility. This is where the big drops have shown up. Completed fertility for recent cohorts in most OECD countries is now around 1.5–1.7 children per woman, and period TFRs are often lower still, especially after the post-GFC and pandemic shocks. Australia has moved from around replacement (near 2) in the late 2000s to roughly 1.6 or below in recent years. For women currently in their twenties, completed fertility will almost certainly end up below both their stated ideals and their early expectations, unless there is a substantial reversal of current trends. For a while it seemed as if births were merely being postponed, but this does not seem to be be the case any more.
In short, when young women are asked how many babies they want, they still mostly say two. When asked what they expect, they say something less. And what actually happens is less again. For policy, the distinction matters. If the objective were to raise fertility, measures that relax constraints—housing affordability, childcare, predictable career paths, and support for combining work and parenting—are the natural levers.
Changing society to make it more child-friendly is difficult but feasible. Given the massive monetary and labour cost of raising children, no subsidy is going to have a significant effect on ideal or planned numbers. But the removal of constraints like the absence of childcare can reduce the gap between palnned and actual births.
Other constraints are harder to fix. Most importantly, plans for having children commonly anticipate a stable life partnership, which cannot be guaranteed. The same is true of fertility problems. Finally, for some parents, the experience of having a first child is traumatic as a result of health problems, postpartum depression or the failure of the transformative experience of parenthood to offset the loss of freedom it entails. The result, often, is a decision to stop at oen
With better institutions and economic policy, it might be psssible to reverse the increase in the gap between intentions and outcomes that has occurred this century. That might raise births by between 0.2 to 0.3 children per woman. That’s not enough to push fertility above replacement. But it would rule out the collapse scenario we see in places like South Korea, where the combination of patriarchal norms and a modern economy makes childbearing an unappealing choice for most young women.
scalziwhatever_feedHey, everyone! I was going to continue to post about my adventures in Colorado, but I decided a detour was in order today to show y’all this spread I did last night for my friend’s engagement party. Feast your eyes on my (mainly Aldi and partially Kroger) spread of goods for about fifty people to snack on:
So, while this isn’t everything I put out, this is the main event. I was very nervous to do a spread for so many people, as normally I deal in much smaller groups. Usually my boards are usually made for about ten people. I know you’re probably thinking, there’s no way that spread survived fifty people. And you’d be right! After the first wave of snackers, I snuck in to refill everything, and continued to refill as was necessary to keep it looking full and making sure everyone got a bite of what they wanted.
I was informed ahead of time that there were no known allergies amongst the entire group (except, of course, my bestie having a gluten intolerance). With that knowledge in mind, let’s look at what we got!
We’ve got double cream brie, dill Havarti, smoked gouda, cranberry cheddar, espresso martini soaked cheddar, pimento cheese dip, honey goat cheese, and a garlic and herbs Boursin. For the meats I did a very simple prosciutto and salami. I also brought a garlic summer sausage but I couldn’t really make it work in my presentation so I gave up on it and just went with the two meats, which honestly who needs more meat than just prosciutto and salami? Those are my two favorites, anyway.
Accoutrements include fig jam, a berry jalapeno jam, Stonewall Kitchen’s Maine Maple Champagne Mustard, quince paste, a pear, cardamom, and pistachio jam, blackcurrant mustard, Truff hot sauce, and an orange whiskey jam. There’s also stuffed peppers and herby olives, dates, salted caramel black truffle peanuts, rosemary Marcona almonds, pistachios, hot honey cashews, and chocolate covered pomegranate seeds. Finally, front and center is Zeroe Caviar’s vegan caviar made from seaweed. I’ve never put it on a board before, but I figured caviar was needed at an engagement party.
As you can tell from the grapes all the way on the right, there’s more to see than this picture lets on. I just did some strawberries, blackberries, and grapes with fruit fluff, and then pinwheel striped and sliced some mini cucumbers and set those out with carrots and celery alongside tzatziki and feta dip, plus a creamy ranch dip. There was also a tray of various cookies like Walker’s shortbread, Pirouette cookies, and some strawberry and creme covered pretzels. Plus blue corn tortilla chips and salsa.
Here’s a different angle so hopefully you can somewhat see some other items:
At the end you can see the fruit fluff and fruit, and the veggies and dips further down. And look, someone brought hummus! How thoughtful. Luckily, I had pita chips to go with it. I also set out some cranberry crisps, rosemary flatbread crackers, and some other entertainment crackers but nothing really of note. I kept my friend’s gluten-free crackers behind the counter for her, as well as her gluten-free cookies.
So, there you have it, a spread from yours truly for my bestie’s engagement party. I am so excited for her, her fiancé, and to be in her wedding. She means the world to me and I was happy to feed those closest to her.
Which cheese sounds the best to you? Would you try the vegan caviar? Let me kn0w in the comments, and have a great day!
-AMS
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The book (shown here in its “bedazzled” version sitting on a bookshelf next to John Harris’ art book, and a painting of Smudge) is a finalist in the category of Best Science Fiction Novel, along with these other worthy finalists (list scrounged from the Locus Magazine web site):
What excellent company to be in.
The full list of Locus Award finalist for this year can be found here. Congratulations to everyone! It is an honor to be in this peer group with you.
— JS
skepchick_feedcrooked_timber_feedThe news from Hungary’s election is so good that I need to write about it, even if not all the implications are clear yet, and even in a disorganised and way, repeating lots of what others are saying.
Although the polls predicted Orban’s defeat, nothing I read foreshadowed the scale of the victory – a two-thirds majority which will allow the reversal of all of Orban’s constitutional changes. Some credit for this must go to JD Vance. The spectacle of a US vice-president appearing in Europe to complain about foreign influence must have been too absurd for voters to accept. Putin’s unsubtle interference allowed Peter Magyar to remind Hungarians of Russia’s previous crimes against Hungary.
Within Europe, the effect will be to isolate Putin’s last supporter in the EU, Slovakian PM Fico. It should now be possible to get rid of the veto power exercised so balefully by Orban, with Fico’s support, and to constrain financial aid to Fico’s government. That will enable an acceleration of Ukraine’s admission along with Moldova, while Serbia (still aligned with Russia) can return to the back of the queue.
More generally, it’s a huge blow to European Trumpism, already on the ropes after Trump’s repeated attacks on putative allies. Trump-Orban supporters like Farage in UK and AfD in Germany are trying to back away from their public statements of support, but we have rhetorical receipts. Conversely, those advocating a clean break with Trump, like Sanchez in Spain have ben strengthened.
Less directly, the result should accelerate Britain’s return to the EU. Brexit and Orbanism were parallel projects, and both have failed miserably in delivering the prosperity they promised. Moreover the result has confirmed the toxicity of Trumpism, even in one of Europe’s most conservative countries. Starmer has taken the first steps, finally admitting that Brexit was a disaster. Hopefully he will be gone soon, and his successor will be free to start the serious work of returning at least to the single market and something close to free movement.
Intellectually and financially, this is a disaster for the “post-liberal” far right, of which Vance has been the most prominent representative.
Under Orban, Hungary represented a beacon of Christian (more specifically Catholic) nationalism of the kind put forward by post-liberals like Patrick Deneen and Adrian Vermeule. The voters’ rejection of the Orban government will be followed by thoroughgoing exposure of the corruption of his regime.
Orban was also a source of lavish grants and speaking gigs, ultimately paid for by long-suffering EU taxpayers. That’s all over now. Those who have taken those gigs will come under a lot more scrutiny. In Australia they include Tony Abbott, Alexander Downer, Brian Loughnane (former Liberal national director), Greg Sheridan and many less prominent but highly influential figures.
Most important, but less clear, are the implications for Trumpism in the US. The result is a double-edged sword. By showing that even an entrenched regime like Orban’s can be defeated in a democratic election, it gives us hope. But the lesson for the Trumpists is that democracy must be suppressed as soon as possible. An Orban-scale defeat in the 2026 midterms would make it very difficult to steal the presidency in 2028. Looking at the polls that’s quite likely unless the 2026 elections are suppressed, as Trump has previously suggested.
Doubtless there will be disappointments in the future. But, for the moment hope is in the ascendant.
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I’ve been to Hungary twice, most recently a couple of years ago when I was the guest of honor at the Budapest International Book Festival. Both times I was there I (and when she visited with me, Krissy), were made to feel welcome by nearly everyone we met there. It’s fair to say I have an attachment to the country.
Today, with a turnout of over 77%, the voters of Hungary voted out the autocratic government of Viktor Orban, whose 16-year rule saw the country become less free, less tolerant and more corrupt. Getting back from all of that won’t be easy and won’t be fast — but it all has to start somewhere, and now Hungary can start.
To which I can say: Lord, I see what you have done for others and want it for myself, and hopefully, soon.
In the meantime: Congratulations to my friends in Hungary. I hope what you have is catching. And I hope to visit you again, in this new era of yours.
— JS
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Pets are more than just roommates we feed and scoop poop for, they’re often a source of emotional support and comfort in our complicated, lengthy lives. Author Eleanor Lerman explores the bond between furry friends and humans in her newest collection of short stories, King the Wonder Dog and Other Stories. Whether your cat is in your lap or on your keyboard, give them a pet as you read along in the Big Idea.
ELEANOR LERMAN:
Having just completed a book of poetry in which much of the work examined the concept of grief about a lost parent (and offered the idea that even Godzilla might be lonely for his mother), I was thinking about what I might write next when I saw a tv commercial that featured a group of older women. They were all beautifully dressed, had expensive haircuts that made gray hair seem like a lifestyle choice, and were laughing their way through a meal on the outdoor terrace of a restaurant. I won’t mention the product being advertised, but they discussed how happy their all were to be using it and to have the love and support of their charming older women friends, who used it too. This is one version of aging in our culture: cheerful, financially secure, medically safeguarded, and surrounded by supportive friends. In this version, the body cooperates, the future is manageable, and loneliness is nowhere in sight.
That’s one way older women—and men—are portrayed in our culture: happy as the proverbial clam and aging with painless bodies and lots of money to pay for the medical care they will likely never need. In literary fiction, however, aging men and women are often depicted in a very different setting: traveling alone through a grim country, with broken hearts and aching bodies until we leave them at the end of their stories hoping—though not entirely believing—that we will avoid such a fate ourselves.
So, what I decided to do in King the Wonder Dog and Other Stories, was to explore what is perhaps a middle ground by writing about both women and men living alone who are growing older and are confounded by what is happening to them. They still feel like their younger selves but are aware that their bodies are changing, that the possibility of once again finding love in their lives is unlikely and that loneliness has begun to haunt them like an aging ghost.
Having had pets in my life for many years—and being aware that animals, too, can feel loneliness and fear—I paired each man and woman in my stories with a lonely dog or cat and tried to work out how that relationship would ease the sadness in both their lives. One memory I drew on was how, when I was young and living alone, I had a little cat that someone had found in the street and gave to me. I had never had a pet before (other than a parakeet, which didn’t give me much to go on) and this little cat was very shy, so I didn’t quite know how to relate to her. But somehow, bit by bit, she cozied up to me, and when I was writing, she was always with me, sitting on my lap or on my feet.
I have no idea how animals conceptualize themselves and their lives, but I do know they have feelings and I hope that for the eighteen years she and I lived together, my cat felt safe and cared for. And still, today, I sometimes think about the unlikely sequence of events that brought us together: how a random person found a tiny kitten, all alone, crouched behind a garbage can, and how that random person was sort of friends with a sort of friend of mine who happened to tell me about the kitten and asked if I knew anyone who would take her and I said yes: me. I don’t know why I said yes, but I’m glad I did. Her name, by the way, was simply Gray Cat, which probably shows how unsure I was about whether I would be able to care for her well enough to at least keep her alive.
After that, I was never without a cat or dog, and now I usually have both. The little dog I have now is a sweet, happy friend who seems not to have a care in the world, but I often see her sitting on the back of my couch, staring out the window at the ocean not far beyond my window and I wonder what she thinks about what she sees. What is that vast, shifting landscape to her? And who am I? A friend who pets her and feeds her and gives her those wonderful treats she loves? Maybe she was frightened when she was separated from her mother but otherwise, I think she is having a happy life—at least I hope so. And sometimes when I walk her, I think about what will happen when she’s no longer with me and I’m even older than I am now. Could I get another dog? I have painful issues with my back that sometimes make it hard for me to walk and I certainly can’t walk any great distance—could I maybe get a dog that doesn’t need to walk too far or somehow shares my disability?
All these thoughts have gone into the stories in King the Wonder Dog, in which men and women are growing older, have illnesses, are frightened by how lonely they feel, and in one way or another—and often to their surprise—are able to bond with a dog or cat who is also in a tenuous situation. And through that bond, the people and the animals find at least a little bit of happiness in their lives, a little bit of the shared comfort that arises from one creature caring for another. I hope those who read the book will feel some of that comfort, too.
King the Wonder Dog and Other Stories: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Books-A-Million|Bookshop
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For a time there Smudge was our only boy cat and that meant that he wasn’t able to indulge in one of his favorite pastimes, which was tusslin’. He’d tussle with Zeus, our other male tuxedo (just as Zeus would tussle with Lopsided Cat, our previous male cat), but when Zeus passed on he no longer had a tusslin’ partner. Sugar and Spice were simply Not Having It, as far as tussles went. Smudge would tussle a bit with Charlie, but Charlie is a dog and roughly eight times the mass. It was an asymmetrical sort of tussle, and those are not as fun.
The good news for Smudge is now Saja is here, and Saja loves him a tussle or two. Or three! Or five! We will frequently find the two of them smacking each other about for fun and exercise. The two seem genuinely happy to wrestle on the carpet or otherwise pounce on the other for a couple of minutes. Sugar and Spice are still having none of it from either of them, so this is the best solution for both. And as an observer and appreciator of brief moments of domestic chaos, it’s nice to have the occasional tussle back in the house. Here’s hoping both of them have a long and happy time to tussle together.
— JS
anil_dash_feedIn just the last few weeks, we’ve seen a series of software security vulnerabilities that, until recently, would each have been the biggest exploit of the year in which they were discovered. Now, they’ve become nearly routine. There’s a new one almost every day.
The reason for this rising wave of massively-impactful software vulnerabilities is that LLMs are rapidly increasing in their ability to write code, which also rapidly improves their ability to analyze code for security weaknesses. These smarter coding agents can detect flaws in commonly-used code, and then create tools which exploit those bugs to get access to people’s systems or data almost effortlessly. These powerful new LLMs can find hundreds of times more vulnerabilities than previous generations of AI tools, and can chain together multiple different vulnerabilities in ways that humans could never think of when trying to find a system’s weaknesses. They’ve already found vulnerabilities that were lurking for decades in code for platforms that were widely considered to be extremely secure.
The rapidly-decreasing cost of code generation has effectively democratized access to attacks that used to be impossible to pull off at scale. And when exploits are less expensive to create, that means that attackers can do things like crafting precisely-targeted phishing scams, or elaborate social engineering attacks, against a larger number of people, each custom-tailored to play on a specific combination of software flaws and human weaknesses. In the past, everybody got the same security exploit attacking their computer or system, but now each company or individual can get a personalized attack designed to exploit their specific configuration and situation.
Now, we’ve had some of these kinds of exploits happening to a limited degree with the current generation of LLMs. So what’s changed? Well, we’ve been told that the new generation of AI tools, currently in limited release to industry insiders and security experts, are an order of magnitude more capable of discovering — and thus, exploiting — security vulnerabilities in every part of the world’s digital infrastructure.
This leaves us in a situation akin to the Y2K bug around the turn of the century, where every organization around the world has to scramble to update their systems all at once, to accommodate an unexpected new technical requirement. Only this time, we don’t know which of our systems are still using two digits to store the date.
And we don’t know what date the new millennium starts.
A core assumption of software development since the turn of the century, especially with the rise of open source software in the early 2000s, was that organizations could use more shared code from third parties to accelerate their coding efficiency. The adoption of code sharing through services like GitHub, knowledge sharing on communities like Stack Overflow, and the easy discovery and integration of shared code libraries through platforms like npm (which, like GitHub, is owned by Microsoft) all rapidly accelerated the trend of openly sharing code. Today, tens of millions of developers begin their coding process by gathering a large amount of code from the internet that they want to reuse as the basis for their work. The assumption is that someone else who uses that code has probably checked it to make sure it’s secure.
For the most part, this style of working from shared code has been the right choice. Shared, community-maintained code amortized the cost of development across a large number of people or organizations, and spread the responsibilities for things like security reviews across a larger community of developers. Often, part of the calculation about whether sharing code was worth it was that you might get new features or bug fixes “for free” when others made improvements to the code that they were sharing with you. But now, all of this shared code is also being examined by bad actors who have access to the same advanced LLMs that everyone else does. And those bad actors are finding vulnerabilities in every version of every single bit of shared code. Every single major platform, whether it’s the web browser on your desktop computer, or the operating systems that run powerful cloud computing infrastructure for companies like Amazon, has been found to have security vulnerabilities when these new LLMs try to pick them apart.
In years past, when major software security issues like Heartbleed or xz were discovered, the global security community would generally follow responsible disclosure practices, and the big tech vendors and open source developers would work together to provide updates and to patch critical infrastructure. Then, there would be deliberate communication to the broader public, with detailed information for technical audiences, usually followed by some more semi-sensationalistic coverage in the general press. But the recent spate of similarly-impactful security vulnerabilities have come at such a rapid clip that the leisurely pace and careful rituals of the past are already starting to break down. It’s a bit like the acceleration of the climate crisis; nobody knows how to build a system resilient enough to handle a “storm of the century” every year. Nobody knows how to properly communicate about, and respond to, the “exploit of the year” if it’s happening every six hours.
So, how is this going to play out? In society at large, we’re very likely to see a lot of disruption. Everything runs on software, even things we don’t think of as computers, and upgrading systems is really expensive. The harder a system is to upgrade, the more likely it is that organizations will either resist doing so or try to assign the responsibility to others.
In much of the West we’re in a particularly weak state because the United States has voluntarily gutted much of its regulatory and research capabilities in the relevant security disciplines. The agencies that might lead a response to this kind of urgent effort are largely led by incompetent cronies, or are captured by corrupt industry sycophants. We shouldn’t expect to see a competent coordinated execution at the federal level; this is the administration that had unvetted DOGE workers hand your personal data over to AI platforms that were not approved for federal use or verified to comply with federal privacy standards. The most basic security practices aren’t a consideration for leadership in this regime, and the policy makers like the “AI Czar” are brazenly conflicted by being direct investors in major AI players, making it impossible for them to be disinterested parties in regulating the market fairly.
So who will respond? In the United States, the response will have to happen from the people themselves, with more directly coordinated actions across the private sector, academia, individual technical subject matter experts, and governments and NGOs at the local level. In the rest of the world, strategically-aligned government responses will likely work with those in other sectors to anticipate, and react to, the threats that arise. We’ll probably see some weird and unlikely alliances pop up because many of the processes that used to rely on there being adults in the room can no longer make that assumption.
Within the tech industry, it’s been disclosed that companies like Anthropic are letting major platform vendors like Google and Microsoft and Apple test out the impacts of their new tools right now, in anticipation of finding widespread vulnerabilities in their platforms. This means that other AI companies are either doing the same already, or likely to be doing so shortly. It’s likely there will be a patchwork of disclosures and information sharing as each of the major AI platforms gets different levels of capability to assess (and exploit) security vulnerabilities, and makes different decisions about who, how and when they share their next-generation LLM technology with. Security decisions this serious should be made in the public interest by public servants with no profit motive, informed by subject matter experts. That will almost certainly not be the case.
At the same time, in the rest of the tech industry, the rumors around Apple’s next version of their Mac and iPhone operating systems are that the focus is less on shiny new features and more on “under the hood” improvements; we should expect that a lot of other phone or laptop vendors may be making similar announcements as nearly every big platform will likely have to deliver some fairly sizable security updates in the coming months. That means constantly being nagged to update our phones and apps and browsers and even our hardware — everything from our video game consoles to our wifi routers to our smart TVs.
But of course, millions and millions of apps and devices won’t get updated. The obvious result there will be people getting their data hijacked, their accounts taken over, maybe even their money or identities stolen. The more subtle and insidious effects will be in the systems that get taken over, but where the bad actors quietly lay in wait, not taking advantage of their access right away. Because of the breadth of new security vulnerabilities that are about to be discovered, it will increasingly be likely that hackers will be able to find more than one vulnerability on a person’s machine or on a company’s technical infrastructure once they get initial access. Someone who’s running an old version of one app has likely not upgraded their other apps, either.
Open source projects are really going to get devastated by this new world of attacks. Already, as I’ve noted open source projects are under attack as part of the broader trend of the open internet being under siege. Open source maintainers are being flooded by AI slop code submissions that waste their time and serve to infuriate and exhaust people who are largely volunteering their time and energy for free. Now, on top of that, the same LLMs that enabled them to be overrun by slop code are enabling bad actors to find security issues and exploit them, or in the best case, to find new security issues that have to be fixed. But even if the new security issues are reported — they still need to sift through all of the code submissions to find the legitimate security patches amongst the slop! When combined with the decline in participation in open source projects as people increasingly have their AI agents just generate code for them on demand, a lot of open source projects may simply choose to throw in the towel.
Finally, there are a few clear changes that will happen quickly within the professional security world. Security practitioners whose work consists of functions like code review for classic security shortcomings such as buffer overflows and backdoors are going to see their work transformed relatively quickly. I don’t think the work goes away, so much as it continues the trend of the last few years in moving up to a more strategic level, but at a much more accelerated pace. Similarly, this new rush of vulnerabilities will be disruptive for security vendors who sell signature-based scanning tools or platforms that use simple heuristics, though in many cases these companies have been coasting on the fact that they’re selling to companies that are too lazy to choose a new security vendor, so they may have some time to adapt or evolve before a new cohort of companies come along selling more modern tools.
Back in 2000, a lot of folks thought the Y2K bug wasn’t “real” because they didn’t see planes falling from the sky, or a global financial meltdown. In truth, the mobilization of capable technical experts around the world served to protect everyone from the worst effects of the Y2K bug, to the point where ordinary people didn’t face any real disruptions of their day at all.
I don’t know if it’s possible for history to repeat itself here with the series of security challenges that it seems like everyone is going to be facing in the weeks and months to come. There have been pledges of some resources and some money (relatively small amounts, compared to the immense sums invested in the giant AI companies) to trying to help open source and open source infrastructure organizations deal with the problems they’re going to have to tackle. A lot of the big players in the tech space are at least starting to collaborate, building on the long history of security practitioners being very thoughtful and disciplined about not letting corporate rivalries get in the way of best practices in protecting the greater good.
But it’s simply luck of the draw that Anthropic is the player that seems to be the furthest ahead in this space at the current time, and that’s the only reason we’re seeing a relatively thoughtful and careful approach to rolling out these technologies. Virtually every other frontier-level player in the LLM space, especially in the United States, will be far more reckless when their platforms gain similar capabilities. And they’ll be far more likely to play favorites about which other companies and organizations they permit to protect themselves from the coming risks.
Platforms whose funders, board members, and CEOs have openly talked about the need to destroy major journalistic institutions, or to gut civil society organizations, are certainly not going to suddenly protect those same organizations when their own platforms uncover vulnerabilities that pose an existential threat to their continued function. These aren’t just security issues — in the wrong hands, these are weapons. And that’s not to mention the global context, where the irresponsible actions of the United States’ government, which has generally had the backing of many of the big AI players’ leadership, will also incentivize the weaponization of these new security vulnerabilities.
It seems unlikely that merely keeping up with the latest software updates is going to be enough to protect everyone who needs to be protected. In the fullness of time, we’re going to have to change how we make software, how we share our code, how we evaluate trust in the entire supply chain of creating technology. Our assumptions about risk and vulnerability will have to radically shift. We should assume that every single substantial collection of code that’s in production today is exploitable.
That means some of the deeper assumptions will start to fall as well. Does that device need to be online? Do we need to be connected in this context? Does this process have to happen on this platform? Does this need to be done with software at all? The cost/benefit analysis for many actions and routines is likely to shift, maybe just for a while, or maybe for a long time to come.
The very best we can hope for is that we come out the other side of this reckoning with a new set of practices that leave us more secure than we were before. I think it’s going to be a long time until we get to that place where things start to feel more secure. Right now, it looks like it’s about ten minutes until the new millennium.
crooked_timber_feedThe New South Wales gold rush began more than 400 million years ago.
It was an age of fire, that ended with ice. Australia was part of the super-continent Gondwana, which was not yet south. By continent standards it was moving fast. By the end of this era, the Ordovician, it would be at the south pole.
In the water there were snails, trilobites, corals and some ‘primitive’ fish. On the land, some little bug type fellas with exoskeletons were starting to colonise Gondwana, which was otherwise empty of critters.
Volcanoes ruled a section of Gondwana that mining companies now refer lustfully (or covetously) as the LFB, the Lachlan Fold Belt. Deep in the earth, gold was already there. Hot magma rose upwards towards the surface, releasing fluids as it went. Amidst these fluids was liquid gold. Gold poured onto the surface of Gondwana, producing substantial reefs of golden metal due to volcanic ‘intrusions’ and also thin streaks through the granite. Then there was the Devonian , which was the Age of the Fishes, because fish came to be on top of the earth’s food chain (if one can have a favourite geological era this is mine). In this era, some of this gold was disrupted by more geological activity, so that gold was enfolded in quartz. This was the gold that diggers began to extract by the rivers in Ophir and Hill End in 1851.
What are we to make of this gold? Perhaps it was waiting patiently under the earth for its purpose to be fulfilled, when finally, the combinations of the end of the Napoleonic Wars, new British banking legislation, imperial expansion, steam ships and settler colonial confidence let thousands of people to take the three-week trip from Sydney to Bathurst and the eight hour journey to extract the gold.
Which is to say, was it always gold, not in terms of composition ot substance, but potential? Was the ‘gold’ sought by diggers and the bankers who bought it from them, embodied in what the magma deposited? Or did the diggers bring gold – the idea of gold – with them? And was it that idea which was infused with the historical moment, the confluence of a specie shortage, the disciplining of bank money and increased global mobility – so much for those diggers to carry! – that made gold, gold?
This is clearly important. Check out the price of gold over one hundred years (source: https://www.macrotrends.net/).
There was the gold standard and dollar-gold convertibility until 1969. Then, the moment that gold wasn’t important (in one way of thinking about it), the price goes nuts. And it goes nuts, as we have just seen, because of lots of ideas about gold: a safe haven when other currencies look dodgy, an opportunity for short-term gains in the process etc.
The relationship between the idea and the price is obvious.
But it is not just the idea of gold, is it? The point of it being gold is that it is actually, materially gold. Of course other metals are also important, but even in bimetallic systems of currency, while you can exchange their value like we do types of currency, you can’t actually substitute silver or cooper or anything else for gold. It actually has to be gold.
No wonder we have so many stories of people able to turn something that isn’t gold, into gold. This was the ancient science/philosophy (when those two were pretty much the same thing) of alchemy – or, at least, a sub-branch of alchemy called chrysopoeia, which distinguishes the gold-making branch from spiritual uplift/elixir of life type branches (though some scholars point out that these were in fact entangled).
It was also the gift/curse of Midas in Greek mythology, whose touch turned everything to gold. And then there is Rumpelstiltskin, who could spin straw into gold.
Of course, all such things are mythical. Gold cannot be magicked into being. There are a few cases of sciencing it into being, but in at least one case it was radioactive. That would probably impact its price, I reckon.
What about 400 million years ago? Did the Ordovician volcano perform primodial alchemy?
Turns out, no. The gold was already there.
Recently, astrophysicists have been able to prove that gold is created when stars collide.
I mean this seems like fucking nonsense, doesn’t it? But seriously. Here is how you make gold.
First you need not just one dead star, but two. Getting hold of two dead stars is quite difficult, but I reckon with some perseverance we can make it work.
Specifically they have to be ‘neutron stars’, which sounds like a star wearing a Superman cape, but is just the ultra-dense remnants left over when a star dies.
Then you need the two stars to collide. Not just line up in the sky when you’re looking at them – we’re making GOLD here, not the zodiac.
It is tricky to do, but the payoff is great. One 2017 collision produced 3 and 13 earth-masses of gold (that’s a pretty wide margin of error, but obv the low end is fine).
How do we get it to earth though? Well this is the really tricky bit. The gold that the Ordovician volcano reached down and extracted from the earth’s core and deposited on the LFB. Well, it was in the dust that coalesced to form the earth itself. When the earth was made of molten stuff, the gold sank deep into the core. Bits of gold dust have sometimes fallen from space, but most of it was produced by the cosmic alchemy and then helped form the earth itself.
Suddenly, today’s price ($4,650.80 USD an ounce) seems a bit of a bargain.
This post is part of my CH Currey Memorial Fellowship at the State Library of NSW on ‘What happened to the gold’?
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What are stories but information laid out before the reader? What if that information was conveyed through multi-media formats and told through emails, newsletters, and other digital means of communication? Author Justin Feinstein has brought us something truly unique in his new novel, Your Behavior Will Be Monitored. See how he twists traditional storytelling methods in his Big Idea.
JUSTIN FEINSTEIN:
I didn’t set out to write a novel told through “found” digital files; it happened organically.
My debut novel, Your Behavior Will Be Monitored is comprised of chat transcripts, emails, TED Talks, error messages, and other digital detritus from a near-future AI company. But it wasn’t the result of some grand epistolary vision – I just started writing a chat between an aging, jaded copywriter (i.e., me) and a hyper-intelligent bot he had been hired to teach the nuances of advertising. I didn’t even know what I was writing, maybe a script?
As the dialogue evolved beyond consumer motivation and taglines, and into larger issues like sentience and purpose, I realized I had a larger story on my hands. Other characters (both human and bot) emerged, as well as other file formats. Every time I added a new element, it would offer its own unique opportunities for character and plot development.
For many months I toggled between writing and tinkering with a posterboard covered with Post-it notes, color-coded for different file types. The modularity of the format lent itself well to this process, which is a normal step for screenwriters and one that, as I learned, can provide much structural value to a novelist. It also helped keep me engaged on days that the blank page felt too daunting. I’d move a note from here to there, or add a new one and notice how it would affect the story. Even in revision, long after I’d dismantled the posterboard, I was still shuffling sections around to play with the chronology and build tension or sustain momentum.
It’s worth noting that while Your Behavior Will Be Monitored is my debut novel, I’ve written both another novel and a memoir, neither of which I was able to sell. For those books, I just started writing and kept going until they were done. So, both the process of writing this book and the format itself were foreign to me, and a big departure from how I’d worked in the past (and seemingly an improvement).
As a result of this newfound process, I became hyper aware of the order of information, its consequences for characters, and how it could guide the reader. For example, a mundane error message might not hold much weight early in a story, but the same error message in a later spot could bring significant narrative impact, due to the built-up context.
It was also fun to explore the tonal potential of these different formats. As anyone who has ever worked for a large corporation knows, company-wide emails are often saturated with an everything-is-fine and nothing-bad-is-happening perkiness that borders on the maniacal. Writing them made the company in my novel, Uniview (“The most trusted name in AI”), feel like a character itself. Since the story is linear, I was able to use weekly all-company emails (aka, The Weekly View) as a summation of what was happening, or at least the way UniView wanted to “spin” it. This added a layer of depth to the narrative, since both company employees and readers of the book knew the reality behind the spin.
Once I had a draft that I felt good about, I shared it with my wife, Julia Fierro (founder and director of the Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop, and a damn good editor). I was hoping for some validation and slightly worried that I had created a Beautiful Mind-esque monster that only made sense to me. Fortunately, Julia was impressed and in awe that I had managed to write a book with no exposition or character interiority (i.e., thoughts) – a fact I was somehow only loosely aware of. It wasn’t that I had intentionally avoided it, just that it didn’t fit within the structure I had stumbled into.
That said, I did leverage little tricks to provide context where needed. If a character was entering a physical environment for the first time, they could comment on it or interact with it – like how the copywriter in my book, Noah, bumps his head when getting in a car and jokes about his lankiness, or how he later notes that the AI lab looks like a Swedish furniture showroom. He also has a call early on with his therapist, which is a helpful narrative vehicle for getting to the heart of a character’s fears and desires.
But Julia’s main note for me was that the video surveillance “scenes” in the book felt flat with only dialogue and made them nearly identical to the MP3s/audio recordings. It was a great note, and one I sat with for a while. She was right, but breaking the structure and format of the book for only one file type (i.e., by adding descriptions of what was happening) just felt wrong.
Eventually I landed on not just a solution, but what would become a key component of the book. The head of HR at UniView is a bot, Lex, who handles nearly all aspects of the employees’ lives, well beyond their work. The company champions a symbiotic relationship in which its bots monitor all aspects of employee behavior (hence the book’s title) and tailor their AI offerings accordingly. So, I was able to pepper the video scenes with “behavioral notes” from Lex, which served the double duty of describing gesture and movement in scenes, while simultaneously characterizing her through reactions and commentary. And even though she “doesn’t make mistakes,” the few moments where she struggles to interpret sarcasm or nuanced behavior are some of my favorite in the book.
I don’t know that I’ll ever write a solely digital file-based book like Your Behavior Will Be Monitored again, although I’ll probably keep working with mixed media/epistolary formats. But I can say that playing with Post-it notes is officially part of my process now.
Your Behavior Will Be Monitored: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s|Village Well
scalziwhatever_feedI am someone who wakes up multiple times throughout the night. I always just flip over and go right back to sleep, but I definitely wake up fairly often. On my first morning of being in Denver, I was sleeping on my friend’s couch when I happened to wake up at seven on the dot. I was pretty comfortable, so I almost didn’t flip over at all, but at the last minute I decided I’d be slightly more comfortable if I flipped. So I did, and in doing so I faced the windows instead of facing the apartment. When I tell you I was beholding the single most beautiful sunrise I had ever seen in my life, trust that I mean it.
Radiant pink and bursting gold, the snowy mountains in the distance, and the sun steadily rising, casting light onto the city before me. It was truly a sight, and I stayed up for fifteen minutes to watch the sunrise unfold and transform, until it was finally over and the magnificent colors subsided. I thought about taking a photo, but I decided I just wanted to experience it in the moment and really soak it in just for myself.
After a glorious start to the morning (and going back to sleep for a while), Alex and I started our day off right with a quick stop at The Sen Tea House to pick up some matcha (we are matcha fiends if you couldn’t tell). The Sen Tea House had so many different options for their matchas in terms of sweetness, flavors, and milks, and they have non-matcha drinks, too, so there’s really a drink for every type of preference.
I almost didn’t even get a matcha because I was so enticed by the coconut Vietnamese coffee, but my friend highly recommended their matcha, so I ended up getting the ube matcha, which is listed on their menu as their most popular item. If you look at their online menu, Alex’s drink isn’t on there because it was like a weekly special or seasonal special, but they got the banana cream matcha. And here they are!
I was very pleased with the generous portion of cream on top, as these were $7.75 each. We obviously mixed these up a little bit more before drinking them, but I wanted to take a picture before mixing because I knew that mixing purple and green together would make a very unappetizing brown/grey color. And it did! But trust, it was delicious. It had tons of sweet ube flavor while still having some earthy matcha flavor, and was super creamy. Alex’s banana one tasted wildly fresh, like not artificial-y banana at all. It tasted so healthy like as if you made a fruit smoothie with a banana in it. It was definitely less sweet than mine, but Alex really enjoyed it. I am definitely glad I picked the ube, I can’t get enough ube in my life.
Later in the day, we were off to a highly anticipated spot called Mecha Noodle Bar.
This ramen restaurant is fun, fresh, and casual, but also nice enough that you can come in and sit at the bar with a date and have awesome cocktails. I didn’t know at the time, but Mecha actually has a few other locations, though all the other ones are in the Northeast, predominately Connecticut and Massachusetts. How they got all the way out to Denver, I’m not entirely sure. But I’m glad they did, because Alex and I absolutely loved Mecha.
We were originally here for their Restaurant Week offerings, but it turned out that we were there during their happy hour, as well. We decided to double down and get the Restaurant Week menu and order off the happy hour menu, just to keep things exciting.
But of course, I had to start out with a bev:
This is their mango sticky rice cocktail, with cachaça, pandan liqueur, coconut, mango, tea syrup, and lemon. Mango sticky rice is one of my favorite desserts in the world, so this cocktail sounded right up my alley. Whoever made it definitely made it kind of strong, but so much of the delicious tropical flavors really came through and I loved the level of sweetness in this drink. It wasn’t too heavy or too dessert-y. Much like the actual dessert it’s named for. Light and refreshing, with intense mango flavor. This drink was $15, but there was a lot of liquid to work through there, so can’t be too mad.
Here was the pre-fixe menu for only $25:
Though I love some good edamame and those green beans sounded downright delish, I opted for the shiitake bao, and Alex got the chicken bao. Here’s mine:
If it looks like my bao is 200% cucumber, fear not, I got a better shot of the filling:
As you can see, there is actually mushroom, scallions, hoisin, and Kewpie mayo in there. I really enjoyed this bao. The bun was soft and pillowy, the cucumber was crisp and fresh, and the mushroom was a perfectly acceptable size. Alex really liked their chicken one, too.
Before we dove into our second course, we got our happy hour snacks. Alex got the firecracker wings:
These bad boys do not mess around, with their Sichuan peppercorn, Korean chili, tamarind, and togarashi seasoning alongside their lime leaf ranch. My friend offered a wing to me to try, but these suckers packed a kick. Even with the ranch, I couldn’t manage a second bite. These wings are an absolute powerhouse of flavor, and have definitely earned their name of “firecrackers.” While this platter is usually $16, the happy hour price was only $8.
I went for the spare ribs:
I don’t normally eat ribs in public, as they’re very messy and I dare not risk looking goofy, but when it came to these ribs, I no longer cared. They were so good. Too good. Quite possibly the best ribs I’ve ever had, even. Incredibly tender, luscious, fall-right-off-the-bone ribs with a bold, savory, but slightly sweet, sticky sauce that left me questioning why I haven’t had more ribs in my life. Though these were originally $18, the happy hour price was an unbeatable $9. Under ten dollars for these truly delectable ribs was wild, but I was totally here for it.
Finally, our main courses. With the price of the menu being only $25, I had assumed that the main courses would be mini versions of their actual entrees. Like a half portion of their ramen or something along those lines. However, I was pleasantly surprised to discover you get the full portion, which is absolutely wild because a bowl of their noodles costs almost as much as the pre-fixe menu.
Alex got the mala stir-fry:
Wide, flat rice noodles, topped with a cumin-Sichuan-peanut sauce, actual peanuts, and cilantro, with spicy brisket lurking just beneath the surface. This dish was also way too spicy for me, but Alex absolutely loved it. I did think the rice noodles were interesting, at least, plus the fresh cilantro is always a plus.
I was a little basic and got the shoyu paitan:
I really love black garlic, especially in ramen, so that’s what led me to pick this chicken ramen. It came with half a soft-boiled egg, some nori, scallions, bamboo, and I added the corn. I am always in the mood for ramen, and this ramen definitely delivered on curbing my ramen craving. I wouldn’t say it was a life-changing bowl of noodles, but it was pretty good and I have no real complaints about it. I liked the egg.
After acquiring many boxes, it was time for dessert:
Oh my god, more ube! I was thrilled to see this beautiful purple pudding concoction. This was “Bonnie’s Banana Pudding,” with ube, vanilla pudding, bananas, and vanilla wafers. I know the mason jars don’t look like very big vessels, but this was absolutely a generous portion size. Like it took some serious work to get through these jars of pudding, but every bite was amazing. The ube flavor worked wonderfully with the vanilla, and the banana wasn’t artificial tasting at all. It was like we were drinking our matchas from that morning all over again!
The pudding was so creamy and had a great mouthfeel, and I almost felt sad when my spoon finally scraped the glass bottom of the jar. I could eat this dessert pretty much every single day.
For one cocktail, two restaurant week menus, a platter of wings and a platter of ribs, we were looking at a cool and breezy $82 before tip. What a steal. I was thoroughly impressed with their happy hour options, plus how good everything was (even if two of the dishes were too spicy for me). Not to mention our waitress was extremely friendly and attentive!
Mecha Noodle Bar really exceeded my expectations and was a great time, I highly recommend checking them out.
After heading back to Alex’s apartment and hanging with some of their apartment friends and checking out a little event happening in the lobby, we went back out to get some drinks to end the night. We walked down the street to Barcelona Wine Bar, an upscale tapas restaurant with tons of wines, beers, and some unique cocktails.
We sat at the bar, which was a beautiful marble with nice, dim lighting that made the place feel elevated yet somewhat cozy. The first drink I chose was actually one of their mocktails, but I asked for a spirit of the bartender’s choice in it. This is the “Tea Time”:
Earl grey tea, blueberry shrub, salted honey syrup, aquafaba, and mint. Plus gin! This drink is so pretty, I absolutely love the color and the stark contrast of the mint leaf on top. The aquafaba made for an excellent foam on top of the drink, as well. I adore earl grey as a flavor, as well as blueberry, and unsurprisingly this drink did not disappoint. I think gin was the perfect addition to this fruity yet sophisticated beverage. Specifically a more botanical gin versus a dry gin. I know what kind of gin I’m about and it sure isn’t Tanqueray.
For my second cocktail, I got yet another mocktail… with a spirit added! This is the “Bees & Bays”:
That lovely salted honey syrup makes its return alongside lime, cardamom bitters, sparkling water, and is topped with a torched bay leaf. Oh, and gin. This cocktail was so light and refreshing, with simple flavors of honey, citrus, and the lovely feeling of bubbles. I loved how cold it was from all the ice.
Though Alex and I were definitely full from our time at Mecha Noodle, we knew we had to at least try some charcuterie:
We both knew we wanted drunken goat on the board for sure, but our other picks came to mind much slower. We ended up getting tetilla, a semi-soft cow’s milk cheese, and a third cheese I don’t remember. I know, I know, I had one job! But at least I remembered that the meat is speck! Or… was it serrano? No, no, definitely speck. Probably. And don’t ask me about the jam.
For my final beverage of the evening before walking the couple blocks back to Alex’s apartment, we have the Gin & Jus:
Gin, lime, pink peppercorn, ginger, and green grape. I like all of those things! They were good together. I think I didn’t taste this one as much as I did the previous two. I did like it, though.
Alex had a glass of Moscato, so I didn’t bother taking a picture. I’m very sorry to anyone who wanted to see a glass of white wine.
When we got back, we called it an early night (not too early) so we would feel rested and ready to go for my third day. Stick around to see what whacky beverages I consume next!
Have you been to any of Mecha Noodle Bar’s locations before? Do you like ube? How do you feel about gin? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
-AMS
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