He Could Not Be More Wrong

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

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

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

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

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

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

AI has no enthusiasm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DISCUSS ON SG

The Book is Always Better

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

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

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

Levon’s Trade is a much darker story

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

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

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

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

DISCUSS ON SG

Model or Reality

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

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

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

Let reason be silent when experience gainsays its conclusions.

DISCUSS ON SG

Why China Can’t Win the Trade War

The US cannot win a military war against China. By the same token, China cannot win a trade war with the USA under the present circumstances. In addition to the fact that the nation with the trade surplus is the one with the weaker hand in a trade war, there is the situation regarding China being the leading holder of US debt.

And as J. Paul Getty is believed to have said: “If you owe the bank $100 that’s your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem.”

In any event, here are the retaliatory measures reportedly being contemplated by China in response to the 104 percent tariffs imposed by the US government.

1) Retaliatory Tariff increases on U.S. Agricultural Products including Soybeans and Sorghum.

Whoop-de-damn doo. No one cares about the profitability of Big Agriculture. Feed it to the cattle.

2) Banning import of U.S. Poultry into China

Whoop-de-damn two. No one cares about the profitability of Big Agriculture. Lower prices on rotisserie chicken and at KFC are not things that fall into the problem category for Americans.

3) Suspending Sino-U.S. cooperation on Fentanyl-related issues

Whoop-de-damn three. There is nothing the Chinese can do, or should be expected to do, to stop Americans from taking illegal drugs.

4) Countermeasures in the Service related Sector

China already erected The Great Firewall. That card has been played.

5) Banning the import of US Films into China

Feature, not a bug. Burn Hollywood, burn.

6) Investigating the Intellectual Property Benefits of US Companies operating in China

It’s hard to threaten IP rights when there has never been any respect shown for them from the start.

China has already raised tariffs on US imports to 84 percent, which will effect pretty much zero Americans in any way, shape, or form.

That is a weak, weak hand that is arguably net beneficial to the USA. Frankly, I don’t see what China can do on the trade front that might even have the hope of accomplishing anything, although obviously it could choose to escalate to proxy military conflict in Ukraine, the Middle East, and the South China Sea.

It would be better to follow the lead of many smaller nations, refuse to retaliate, and accept President Trump’s invitation to negotiate for better terms. Because this really isn’t something that the USA can afford to back down on.

DISCUSS ON SG

Mailvox: Vox Dai Responds

Edward Feser wrote a critique of President Trump’s new tariffs and his trade policy. A reader asked ChatGPT to respond to his critique as if it was me. And apparently AI now does non-fiction nearly as well as it does fiction.

1. Feser’s Overemphasis on Prudential Moderation over Existential Necessity

Vox Day might begin by pointing out that Feser’s argument is essentially one of technocratic prudence—tariffs might be useful in moderation, if well-targeted, in the right economic climate, with good timing, and clear justification. Vox would call this academic dithering in the face of civilizational crisis. From his view, America is not merely suffering a mild imbalance of trade—it is being gutted by decades of globalist betrayal that have systematically offshored its manufacturing capacity, hollowed out its industrial base, and turned its working class into wage-serfs of the service economy.

“Feser speaks as if we are tweaking dials on a functioning machine. The machine is broken. Or more accurately, it’s been sabotaged.”

For Vox, Trump’s tariff policy is not merely an economic adjustment—it is a weapon of national defense. The timing, conception, and execution are secondary to the existential imperative of reclaiming national sovereignty.

2. Feser’s Appeal to Order Is Misplaced When the Existing Order Is Corrupt

Feser warns that Trump’s tariff regime contributes to “chaos rather than order,” but Vox Day would challenge the idea that the status quo deserves preservation. The “order” of the neoliberal global economy, in Vox’s framing, is a false order—an artificial equilibrium imposed by elite international actors who have no loyalty to the American nation or its people.

“There is no ‘order’ in a system that rewards financial speculation over production, that imports the labor force of the Third World to lower wages, and that treats citizens as mere consumers.”

Feser’s invocation of “order” is classically Aristotelian, but for Vox, Aristotle himself would recognize the legitimacy of revolutionary upheaval in response to an unjust oligarchy. In that light, disruption is not vice but virtue.

3. Misdiagnosing Trump’s Popular Support as Fanaticism

Feser characterizes Trump’s base as “glibly dismissing all concerns” and treating complex economic policy with “flippant boosterism.” Vox would see this as an elitist dismissal of populist wisdom. Trump’s supporters are not irrational—they are simply more in touch with reality than technocratic intellectuals who worry about trade reciprocity with Lesotho.

“It is not ‘flippant’ to support a policy that seeks to restore your community’s livelihood. It is not ‘unserious’ to recognize that the system has failed and to back the only leader willing to tear it down.”

Vox would likely argue that Feser underestimates the strategic depth of Trump’s messaging, and the extent to which it resonates with people who have nothing left to lose.

4. Feser’s Focus on Legality Ignores the Regime Question

Feser critiques Trump’s tariff actions as possibly illegal or extraconstitutional. Vox Day would scoff at this, pointing out that the law is downstream of sovereignty. If the regime in question is illegitimate—unaccountable, globalist, hostile to the nation—then adherence to its procedures is not a moral good.

“The Constitution is not a suicide pact. The post-WWII economic order is not sacred. If reclaiming control requires bending the rules written by those who sold us out, so be it.”

Vox has long argued that power precedes legality, not the other way around. Trump, in his view, is acting as a caesarist figure—wielding executive power to right the ship of state, not delicately balancing congressional niceties.

5. Feser’s Economic Assumptions Are Still Liberal, Even If Postliberal

Though Feser claims to reject classical liberalism and neoliberalism, Vox might charge him with retaining too much of their framework—especially their belief that markets are self-regulating entities to be disturbed only with care. In Vox’s view, the “invisible hand” is no longer a metaphor for organic market coordination—it’s a euphemism for invisible oligarchs manipulating outcomes for their own gain.

“Tariffs aren’t ‘inefficient’ if the market itself is rigged. Free trade isn’t moral if it’s enforced by military alliances, IMF dictates, and offshoring subsidies.”

Where Feser looks for a prudential balance, Vox sees the need for economic war—and in war, blunt instruments like tariffs are not inappropriate, but inevitable.

6. Missing the Meta-Political Stakes

Ultimately, Vox would say that Feser misses the forest for the trees. This isn’t about the comparative merits of tariff rates or whether poor island nations are treated fairly. It’s about whether America will continue to exist as a sovereign, industrial, self-reliant civilization. That is not a question that can be solved through abstract appeals to distributist theorists or cautious policy think-pieces.

“You don’t use a scalpel to excise a gangrene-stricken limb. You use an axe.”

I would say that hits six for six, even if some of the wording is a little different than I might have chosen. I do love that reinterpretation of Smith’s Invisible Hand, though. I’ll see if it missed anything and add it in a subsequent post; I suspect Mr. Feser still subscribes to now-disproven comparative advantage theory on the basis of the points he raises, but I don’t actually know that. But if he does, obviously that would be the very first point I would raise, given my conclusive disproof of it, to say nothing of Ian Fletcher’s.

DISCUSS ON SG

Trump and the Vaccine

An illuminating glimpse into how Trump’s tendency to surround himself with bad actors has rendered him less effective than he might otherwise be:

During an interview on the “Try That in a Small Town Podcast, Rich, a vocal conservative, described a dinner he attended with Trump and several Republican senators in 2022.  At the time, the former president was holding large rallies with up to 40,000 people, but one thing about the crowds was troubling him.

“He goes, why are people booing me at my rallies when I bring up the vaccine?” Rich said.  He noted that Trump was still very proud at that point that he had brought the COVID products to market at “warp speed.”

The country star argued that Trump’s advisors were not serving him well. “It dawned on me that nobody had told the man what I was telling him,” he posited. “They all work for him, they all got something to gain from him—they are not going to tell him this.”

Rich declared, “I don’t work for him and I think a lot of him and I wanted him to understand the truth about it. I said here’s why they’re booing you, Mr. President. Because every human being out in that rally, either themselves or they know someone directly, who has been harmed by the vaccine or has even died from it, including me,” he said, adding that he told Trump he has “members of my own family who were forced to take it against their will to keep their jobs, and now they’ve got all kinds of problems,” including major heart and lung problems.

According to Rich, Trump said, “this is unbelievable!” and asked if anyone else at the table had heard it.

Rich said Hershel Walker, who was the Republican nominee in the 2022 U.S. Senate election in Georgia, answered that he was hearing the same thing. “Mr. President, down in Georgia, my constituents come up at my rallies and what John just said I hear every single day,” Rich recounted Walker as saying.

He said that Trump then looked over at Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who nervously nodded in agreement.

The country star shared that he started telling Trump about the vaccine injured members of his own family, but Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) cut in (“swishing his chardonnay around”) to warn Trump about “conspiracy theorists like John Rich,” saying Democrats will try to take credit for what he did and they’re going to beat you in the next election.”

The country music star had told the hosts earlier that Graham is his “least favorite politician in the world,” and that he “would rather go hang out with Tim Walz.”

It certainly explains why Trump a) stopped bragging about the vaccine and b) still hasn’t held anyone accountable for it. I wouldn’t rule out the latter eventually, though. He’s understandably a little busy with that whole economic war thing at the moment.

It’s easy for us who are either skeptical Gen Xers or longtime conspiracy theologians to forget that most people still blindly trust doctors, trust experts, and trust scientists, or at least they did back in 2020. Especially if they are Boomers or an older generation. They didn’t grow up in the same world we did.

DISCUSS ON SG

104 and Counting

Tariffs on Chinese goods are going to 104 percent.

China now faces another 50% in tariffs after Beijing missed a noon deadline to withdraw the retaliatory import taxes it imposed on the United States.

The new tariffs will go into effect at 12:01 am, the White House said. That brings the total tariffs on all goods from China coming into the United States to 104%.

Trump placed a 34% increase on China when he announced his tariff plan on Liberation Day. That was on top of 20% import taxes rolled out earlier this year on Beijing.

The president, on Monday, pledged another 50% tariffs after Beijing responded to his tariff threat with a 34% increase on U.S. goods coming into China.

Well, the Chinese can’t say they weren’t warned. I warned them, on their state TV, nearly nine years ago, that President Trump would wage, and would win, a trade war against them. None of the Chinese or Hong Kong economists agreed, of course, but what was obvious then is even more obvious now.

When you’re running a trade surplus, you can’t win a tariff battle. Reciprocal tariffs are not a viable weapon for the country doing most of the exporting, because the importing country benefits from protecting its manufacturers.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Ultra-Rich Condemn Robin Hood

A host of American financiers and billionaire investors have criticized President Donald Trump over the sweeping tariffs he announced last week, calling the measures “poorly advised” and warning of serious consequences for the US economy.

In other news, the American Society for Surprise Sex condemned the President’s new executive action establishing stronger penalties for rapists, with automatic life-in-prison for anyone convicted of sexual assault on a minor. ASSS spokesman George “Rape Rape” Martin decried the measure, calling it: “poorly conceived” and warning that it would have a depressive effect on novelists who are struggling to complete their books.

This meme fairly well characterizes the state of popular and media discourse about the tariffs.

Free trade is an absolute evil and an obvious lie. Both Ian Fletcher and I have conclusively, and separately, proven that it cannot deliver the promised benefits while the costs will eventually be unsupportable for any nation. If, for some reason, you are still a believer in the concept of free trade, I suggest reading my three-part critique of Henry Hazlitt’s orthodox case for free trade, in which I point out the multiple errors in the argument that was presented as the best possible case for free trade.

If you want more detailed demolitions of the concept, read WHY FREE TRADE DOESN’T WORK by Ian Fletcher and ON THE QUESTION OF FREE TRADE by me and Dr. James D. Miller, PhD.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Last Librarian

We shall conclude the game with a style wherein there is no point in even trying to pretend you will not recognize.

The Librarian of Forgotten Sundays

The first thing you should know about the Bibliotheca Absurdia is that it doesn’t play by the rules of time, physics, or basic human dignity.

The second thing? It has a very aggressive late-fee policy.

I found this out the hard way when I walked in to return A Brief History of Time Travel (That You Weren’t Supposed to Read Yet)—three centuries overdue—and the Librarian hit me with a glare that could’ve curdled dark matter.

“You,” she said, adjusting her glasses in a way that suggested imminent violence, “are exactly why we can’t have nice spacetime.”

The Librarian of Forgotten Sundays was a tall, no-nonsense woman with a bun tighter than the plot of a Kafka novel and a name tag that just read “MRS. P.” (The “P” stood for something eldritch. I’d asked once. She’d sighed and stamped “DON’T” on my library card in response.)

I slid the book across the counter. “Look, I meant to bring it back, but there was this whole thing with a paradox, and—”

She held up a hand. “Save it for the Temporal Arbitration Board. Your penalty is Section 37-C: Community Service in a Doomed Timeline.”

I groaned. “Not the French Revolution again.”

“Worse,” she said, grinning. “Beta Reading.“

Behind her, a shelf of half-written universes groaned in existential dread.

Why This is Pure Scalzi

  1. Snarky, Conversational Voice
    • Scalzi’s protagonists talk like this—witty, self-deprecating, and deeply unserious about cosmic horrors.
  2. High Concept + Low Stakes (At First)
    • A library that loans out time-travel manuals and punishes lateness with doomed timelines? Classic Scalzi absurdity (see Redshirts’ meta-narrative or *Kaiju Preservation Society’*s glorified animal control).
  3. Bureaucratic Satire
    • The Temporal Arbitration Board and Section 37-C are peak Scalzi. He loves mocking institutional absurdity (Lock In’s healthcare dystopia, The Android’s Dream’s diplomatic nonsense).
  4. Pop-Culture-Literate Humor
    • The Kafka joke, the “DON’T” stamp—Scalzi embeds geekery like a DNA splicer (Agent to the Stars was literally about Hollywood aliens).
  5. Women Who Won’t Suffer Fools
    • Mrs. P. is a Scalzi archetype: the competent, exasperated authority figure (Colonel Rigney in Old Man’s War, Kiva Lagos in The Collapsing Empire).
  6. Sudden Scale Shift
    • Starts with a late book, ends with erasing universes—a trademark Scalzi pivot from silly to epic (The Last Emperox’s galaxy-spanning collapse… over paperwork).

How This Differs From Other “Librarian” Versions

  • Vs. Correia: Zero bullets. All bureaucracy.
  • Vs. Miéville: The weirdness is fun, not oppressive.
  • Vs. Day: No moralizing—just chaotic neutral mischief.

Speaking of other Librarian versions, the 7th Librarian was indeed me, although stylistically limited to my pair of Maupassant-inspired short stories, and my new best friend explains what the clues were:

Why This is Vox Day

  1. Polemical Bent
    • Maupassant’s naturalism and irony are preserved (the detached scholar, the creeping horror), but sharpened by Day’s polemical bent—the library as a metaphor for “forbidden knowledge” corrupting arrogant moderns.
  2. Reactionary Themes
    • Lefèvre embodies the enlightened rationalist humbled by forces he dismisses, a recurring Day trope. The librarian, an ancient, knowing woman, represents traditional wisdom scoffing at his hubris.
  3. Provocative Imagery
    • The human-skin ledger and God’s erased days are classic Day-isms—shocking, sacrilegious, and designed to unsettle progressive sensibilities.
  4. Ambiguous Supernaturalism
    • The horror is implied, not explained. Day often uses unseen, malevolent forces to symbolize ideological enemies.
  5. Anti-Enlightenment Subtext
    • The library punishes curiosity, a theme Day explores in works like Throne of Bones—a rejection of modernist “progress” in favor of primal, even punitive, truths.

How This Differs from Other “Librarian” Versions

  • Vs. Correia: No shootouts—just psychological dread.
  • Vs. Miéville: No whimsy; the weirdness is malign and moralistic.
  • Vs. Murakami: No jazz, only Gothic decay.

Want it more Day? Add:

  • A subplot where Lefèvre’s degenerate Diderot-quoting rival gets eaten by the books.
  • A footnote denouncing French secularism.
  • The librarian revealing herself as Lilith in a lace bonnet.

DISCUSS ON SG

Disinformation on US Tariffs

The mainstream media likes to talk about “disinformation” on the Internet. But that’s only because it wants to preserve its monopoly. Consider the following description of literal Never-Trumper Ben Shapiro:

Ben Shapiro, a long-time supporter of the president, also smashed the illusion that tariffs are a good business deal for Americans to smithereens, with a startling insight on Monday: ‘Musk is right. Musk happens to be 100 percent right about this.’

Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, similarly used his shareholder letter to warn that Trump’s levies would result in ‘inflationary outcome’ both on imports and prices in the United States.

‘The recent tariffs will likely increase inflation and are causing many to consider a greater probability of a recession,’ he told shareholders, according to the Washington Post.

Some Republican senators have also voiced their support for a measure that would require the president to inform Congress of upcoming tariffs within 48 hours of them being implemented.

It would also mandate that the tariffs need approval from Congress within 60 days of them being imposed and that Congress could end any tariff at any time.

Meanwhile, a libertarian group funded by Leonardo Leo and Charles Koch has launched a legal challenge against Trump’s tariffs, The Guardian reports.

The New Civil Liberties alliance filed the suit to prevent Trump from imposing tariffs on imports from China, arguing that doing so under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act is unlawful.

If you want to better understand the retardery of Clown World and its manufacture of its pet opinion leaders, just look at how it is casting Ben Shapiro as both a) “a long-time supporter” of President Trump and b) an expert on economics.

Now, as it happens, I am both. The Littlest Chickenhawk is neither. I was also much more widely read than Shapiro when we were competing on a level playing field, his readership at WND was always between one-quarter and one-third of mine. But the media needs its puppet mouthpieces, so they elevate these nonentities and then continuously push them in front of the public in order to prop up their Narrative.

The fact is that the tarrif rates announced are a) far too high and b) calculated via an absurd method, and c) irrelevant. The rates are just the God-Emperor 2.0’s usual way of getting his negotiating partner’s to accept his frame by metaphorically slapping him in the face. It’s the start of negotiations, nothing more. And the smarter countries understand this; they are either caving very publicly or refraining from retaliating, because they know US tariffs are a) necessary, b) justified, and c) long overdue.

Not that the media will tell you that, since they have their Narrative to prop up.

DISCUSS ON SG