Writing: Closing in on finishing my rough draft.

 

About 12 spots I’ve identified as places needing work (I highlight them yellow) and only 20 “TK’s”* left.

 

Then will be the epic slog at revision now that I’ll know what’s going where.

 

I have something like 2 years or more of archived drafts.  There’s stuff I thought would be there that isn’t.  Stuff I added along the way. A lot of changes.

 

I know I probably have a lot of excess “A did B then C” chains I can write differently.  There’s a lot of atmospherics, especially smells and tastes I need to add.

However, knowing what happens where and who does it is key for me.

I also have been rather austere with many of the descriptions of people and places.

So, that will be an effort to bring out in revision as well.

Writing: Sci-Fi Technology

 Almost at 200,000 words.  Currently—according to MS Word’s Wordcount—at 199,838 words.

 

Finally sat down and worked most of the way through a fight scene with (mostly) swords.

 

So, no lightsabers, so why swords?

 

Guns are common.  Different types of guns are common in this sci-fi world.

 

However, they are extensions of modern technology and modern tech already has a problem with overpenetration in civilian structures.

 

Just imagine how you’d need to build to stop future tech in a city or on a spacecraft….

 

So, I’ve gone three directions.

 

One is weapons following the inverse-square law of power.  So, powerful point blank, rapid decrease in power over a short distance.  Directional stunners, for example, or—to a lesser degree—what I call “boarding guns” which are high mass, low velocity weapons usually used to fire things like shot, flechettes, and low velocity payload items. 

 

A second is your low energy beam weapons with “triggered” effects.  Some overlap with the first group.

 

The last set are melee weapons because you know exactly how far your effective range is.

 

Now, shields do exist—a technology tied to gravity and inertially linked plating in this fictional universe because I’m entitled to speculate some “ubertechs”—but their primary effect is against light, fast projectiles including light and particle beams…

 

So, no Dune-shields and while a heavy slow blade can penetrate, it’s probably going to not be the same ever again and not have much of a precise edge on the other side.

 

So, people have and carry compact, extendable blades called “flickblades” and not everyone is Zorro or Inigo Montoya or Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood.

 

Now, hopefully I can write something believable although—to be honest—my only “fencing” training was bayonet training a couple decades ago so sword fights will be brutal, hurt on both sides, and people that get solidly hit will probably leave bleeding—at least—if they leave at all.

Necro-Blogging

Oh, wait, I have a blog?

Oh, yeah.  THAT blog.

I seem to be writing a science fiction novel.

I like writing dialogue.  I'm loving worldbuilding.  I keep developing odd aliens and--to be honest--most aliens are not exactly compatible with humans.

Why should they be?

I mean, imagine sharing a dorm room with a dolphin.

In spite of being from the same planet and being an air-breathing mammal, imagine the difficulties in day-to-day life sharing a living space.

One of you is going to be miserable.  

Not just that, dolphins can function 24-7 by letting one hemisphere of their brain sleep at a time. They also have, let's call it, "an alternative morality," different senses in some situations, a tendency to excrete wherever they happen to be at the time, and some challenges operating human technology.

And that's a species from the same planet.

So, aliens will exist, there will be a few interactions, but the ideas of "humans with odd body colors and bits glued to their foreheads" and "snake women with breasts" are not my thing.

I like stories that make sense to me.

So, the rough draft is probably way too much detail, too much backstory involved, intricate plotlines considered--as much as possible--from both sides.

The challenge will be paring it down in the edit to have it make sense, stay detailed enough, but not drag on.

In the meantime, I keep doing side notes on worldbuilding including histories of planets, systems, people, and tech that might show up in a sequel/prequel if the first one works out.

As far as AI goes...

I hate AI text.

I'm using the hell out of AI images that I won't publish for two reasons.

One, I like having a touchpoint for physical descriptions I can work off.

By generating an image, I can go back and redescribe that element without having to use the same words, and there's an honest narrative there.

Second, I like to take descriptions I make, plug it into several AI image generators and see what "garbage in-garbage out" AI generation comes up with.

When it comes up with something that looks like what I'm after, I know I'm in the ballpark.

If it isn't, I know there's a difference between the image I have in my head and what I'm communicating on the page.  It tells me to revise what I have on the page.

Now, I'll also use AI for stuff like "Give me a list of 20 Latin/French descriptor words for planets that don't appear in other major works," and "Explain how commas work in quotes again?" because I had always thought of quotation marks like I did parentheses and brackets in math...

What's inside is its own thing; what's outside is its own thing.

Which, of course, is not correct.

Overall, though, I don't use AI writing or text and--if it's AI art--I'll either not share it or tell you exactly what it is.

Wish me luck!

I've posted on the potential for US Civil War II before, but this meme and memes like it amuse and scare me:

Two reasons.

1) Active vs. Civilian

See all those active duty guys in the picture (and the ones inferred to be behind them)?

Guess what they become when they get out of the military?

Civilians.  Specifically, veterans. 

They don't have their brains wiped, they take their experience with them, and they don't necessarily stay clean-cut and in great shape...

...instead, they start looking like you and me after a while...

...they also tend to vote Republican, own guns, raise their kids with guns, and often end up being the fathers and mothers of the next generation of veterans.  The same sort of people you see in the top image.  

Though many civilian gun owners never served a day, many veterans are gun owners.  They have had the same training at some point in the past as the active duty troops.  Many of the most experienced, in terms of fighting guerrilla conflicts with the US military are now out of the service and within the population at large.  

These are the sorts of men that become cadre or trainers for a revolutionary force in the next conflict.  These will likely form your small group leaders, teaching and leading, except they don't need to waste time on things like wear and appearance of a Marine's dress blues or how to chip paint on a Navy ship.  

Many do not keep the same level of physical fitness as they had on active duty, but the battlefields we may have to fight on aren't often that far away.  It's going to be down the road, wherever the  local military logistics go through, etc.  Besides, give a civil war enough time and we'll all be a lot skinnier as the rural areas turn away from supplying the urban areas.

So, what you're looking at in the cells of that meme--in many ways--isn't necessarily a set of adversaries the meme-maker intended. 

Instead, you're looking at the same groups of people at different times in their lives and--if push came to shove--you're going to have to consider seriously where those active duty troops' allegiance will primarily fall:  Their families and people like them or the government they temporarily are being employed by?

2) The Reality of Civil War.

A civil war, by definition, happens within the society.  The US military--at home, in the states--is embedded within the society around it.

Let's take, for example, the US Air Force's Luke Air Force Base here in Arizona.


Here's a lovely overhead view.  The rectangular patches around to the north and west are farms, the green patchy area to the south is a golf course, and the dense-packed area to the southeast is regular old housing.  There is no wall, only a couple of chain link fences, a draining ditch, and a clear line of sight to the flight-line in most areas.

While unaccompanied airmen often live on post, families live off-post in privatized housing or anywhere else they want in the community.  They and their families attend local schools, including colleges.  They shop in the same stores.  I live half a dozen or more miles away and I've seen at least 4-5 airmen from Luke AFB who live in my apartment complex, probably with their wives/husbands or families.

Yes, that's right.  The same pilots that will be flying those F35's to come bomb your neighbors into submission live in those same neighborhoods.  The people they will have to kill will be their neighbors and odds are, they're going to not make many friends when they do it.

Even funnier, across the valley in Mesa, is the primary manufacturing plant for Apache helicopters.

Again, an airfield surrounded by a chain link fence with the people who work there often veterans themselves and living in the same community.  Those attack helicopters require spare parts and, yes, the Army have quite a lot on hand.  However, the would likely be the only parts they would get until it was all over and there's a good chance the people they would end up having to fight include some or all of the people making the helicopters.

See, what most people don't understand is--when the US military fights abroad and we support them--there is no need to isolate them here at home.  There's never been a need to do more than a general security effort at keeping thieves from pilfering military supplies.   They literally travel over the same roads and rails that all of our other supplies do.  There is little or no risk to having easy access to the military's bases, the manufacturers of military gear, the recruiting centers and training posts soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen pass through on their way to a more permanent posting, often back in the same sort of neighborhoods they grew up in.  

If the US military ever finds itself fighting the US people, it's going to be point blank and personal on the same streets everyone lives on and everyone's home and family will be at risk.  If the military is smart, it will either find a way to sit out the war or it will immediately side with the people.  

If it isn't smart, it will rapidly find it's posts and armories threatened and a source of heavy weapons for the people at large. 

So, every time I see memes like those up top there, it makes me wonder just how little the people making them understand the life of their neighbors and what risk that lack of understanding puts the rest of the country in every time they politically bet on it.

Don't Tread on Me in the modern era: Logistics, Economics, and armed insurrection.

When reading Raza Habib Raja's recent article in The Huffington Post, I was struck by the number of comments claiming that guns were needed "to keep a tyrannical government in check" and that guns were a "means to overthrow an unjust/tyrannical government." What Gun Advocates Should Remember: You'll Never Overthrow The Government and It Isn't Scared of You

Two things wrong with the author’s assessment:

1. The US national debt.
2. Logistics.

Let’s look at the second one first.

Logistics is the military and civilian science and related techniques of providing supplies and resources to an organization and its components.  Unlike military units from the origin of the nation to the US Civil War which could often procure most of its needed supplies locally during campaigns, the modern US military lacks that capability.  The complexity of the gear and the sheer amount of fuel, ammunition, and other supplies used during an operation prevents it.  Even units utilizing wheeled vehicles in lieu of tracked vehicles and aircraft require quantities of fuel, food, batteries, and other supplies as to be disruptive to local supplies, even if they aren't requiring large quantities of ammunition.

This is usually supplied by the military’s own supply service which is—often—some combination of military personnel and civilian contractors, even in combat zones like Iraq.  While military personnel often can provide some level of self-protection, they (and civilian contractors) often require combat arms or military police personnel and vehicles to supplement their own basic small arms and automatic weapons.

In a combat zone overseas, these supplies move from secured bases where cargo arrives via military or civilian contract aircraft, trains, or shipping then overland in protected convoys or through the air using helicopters or regional/tactical cargo aircraft to the end user.   These convoy routes would typically be secured and transit times varied to try and deny the enemy the opportunity to execute ambushes on these comparatively “squishy” targets.

Within the US, these resources are semi-centralized at various arsenals and military posts spread across the country.  Currently—in a “peacetime” environment—these supplies—short of actual, complete weapons systems and ammunition—travel the roads, rails, and airways with little fanfare and almost no added security except the occasional (civilian contract) armed guard.

(This is—of course—ignoring both the possibility of extended operations requiring more than basic, on-hand replacement parts and vehicles/aircraft and the possibility current armed forces members might align with “rebels” rather than the government.)

Why is this relevant to an armed insurrection?

Simple, any time a large military force would be deployed, it would have to do three things:  guard itself, guard its supply routes, and guard its own and local bases.  To do so in a modern environment with real time communications, almost free access to the same routes military convoys would need to cover, and the sort of rules of engagement the US government would have to enact to reduce both the risk of military members not complying with orders to attack civilians and reduce damage to current infrastructure would likely hogtie a very large chunk of any military force.  Add to this the fact we have a (proportionally) small quantity of military units and personnel and the personnel needed to simply secure the supply lines and bases (and direct sources of supplies, like refineries) would probably dig into civilian law enforcement resources (assuming, again, that the civilian law enforcement personnel choose to align with the Federal government) as well.

Alternatively (or additionally), security could be increased by simply restricting civilian traffic and access to military bases, supply routes, and the like.

Which brings us back to the first error…

The national debt.

Unlike the start of the Civil War and/or the period surrounding the Shay Rebellion, we have a national debt several orders of magnitude higher and highly dependent on both the day-to-day economy of the US simply to stay solvent and one that’s very susceptible to disruptions.  Where the government of Washington or of Lincoln could write IOU’s to creditors and have them—at least for a short period—be willing to take such bills on faith, trying to do the same today with the Federal government essentially financing its debt with debt already is a lot less likely to be acceptable.

Even at the high water mark of debt post-Revolutionary War, national debt was 35% of gross domestic product and the high water mark of the Civil War was lower at 33%.  Today, we're above the 100% mark.  An armed insurrection willing to risk the stability of the Federal government and/or intent on divorcing themselves from the current system need only challenge the economic system by threatening to (or actually) reducing the US GDP.

Or, in other words, all an armed insurrection need do to cause the Federal government enough pain to risk its survival in modern times is to stop working and present enough of a threat to make the US military shut down enough freeways, railways, and airports to be disruptive.

For its own protection, of course.

So, in the words of Dr. Henry Kissinger:

The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose.  –Henry A. Kissinger

In this case, the US Federal government is in dire straights--even if the people it hopes stay on its side, stays on its side--simply because of how dependent it is on relatively smooth sailing in the economic arena.  All a modern insurrection needs to do is make enough economic hardship and watch the Federal government collapse under its own weight.

For that, a couple rolls of quarters in a sock and some purloined military or police weapons might do.  With the ease of availability of small arms, the level of training available to and within the civilian populace, and the degree of technical knowledge within the modern US population, it would be a rough time for everyone.

My take on black-on-black crime and Ferguson.

The "Black-on-Black crime" moniker is racist rhetoric functioning under the guise of concern for the state of Black America. People of all races -- Blacks included -- seemingly love to discuss how not killing our own and being more respectable will alleviate the effects of racism. What Does 'Black-On-Black Crime' Have to Do With Ferguson?

What does black-on-black crime have to do with Ferguson?

From an idealistic point of view, not a whole lot of anything.

From a realistic view?

Potentially fewer dead black men.

Why?

Police officers are expensive, available in finite quantities (effectively), and require a relatively long period of training and experience to do their job well.  Very few governments have the “luxury” of too many well-trained police officers.   Additionally, police agencies are in competition for well qualified officers.  Being well-trained and certified (if the state requires it) is an entry ticket into agencies that may pay more.

This means three things:

1. Communities with lower tax bases will often have either fewer police officers than they may desire and those officers it does have will often be skewed toward less experienced officers (who are willing to work for less in exchange for training and experience).
2. Communities with lower tax bases should have issues retaining well-trained personnel in competition with other agencies.
3. Assignment of officers will often be less than uniform, with lower staffing in areas where need is perceived to be less.

The usual explanation for black crime is socioeconomic status (SES).  In turn, lower SES is a problem for community governments serving low SES areas.   This means the previous problems should often occur in black-majority communities.

That still doesn’t really talk about black-on-black crime.

It doesn't, however, in any area with a higher crime rate compared to others served by the same police agency, the priority will be to focus numbers of officers to those areas.  Increased numbers of officers—due to crime rates in lower SES areas where many blacks live—increases the number of potential police-civilian interactions.  Additionally, it likely increases the potential that the police officers involved in these interactions are less experienced or those who aren't qualified in some manner to be offered a higher paying position elsewhere.

Reducing black-on-black crime in majority black communities reduces some of crime’s effects on SES (and increases the likelihood police will be better trained and paid) while decreasing the pressure for police agencies to staff as many police officers in a particular area (reducing the number of police-civilian interactions).  This combination does nothing to directly address the idea of racism in the justice system as currently espoused in the media; it only serves to remove the vehicle for potentially lethal interaction between police and civilians.

And it's those interactions that seem to be what's going bad for black men with the police...

An illustration of why the boycott may not be the best idea...

In regards to what I was saying the other day about boycotting and self-inflicted wounds.  The last line of this linked news article sort of illustrates the point:

A Walmart store near Ferguson decided to cancel Black Friday sales, and merchandise was moved to other locations in the St. Louis area, employees said. "St. Louis-area mall closes on Black Friday as Ferguson protests spread"

Or, in other words, "We're getting the money for these goods, just from other people."  All of which means--in the big picture--"We're responding to your actions by focusing on other people we can make money off of."

"Voicing your opinion is not enough," said Sergio Uzurin, a protester in front of Macy's flagship store in New York. "You have to disrupt business as usual for this to happen and that's the only thing that's ever made change. It's the real way democracies function."  "St. Louis-area mall closes on Black Friday as Ferguson protests spread"

I don't think the protesters who think like this man really understand a couple of simple business facts.  First, the incentive to sell isn't always purely based on the quantity of items sold, it's based on the marginal value.  You can make more profit by either selling more at a profit and/or losing less.  Boycotting, especially sustained boycotts, drive down the total amount of sales which should increase the cost per item to the consumer unless the stock can be stored without loss until after the boycott is over.  

By forcing sales down--if the company can't identify a way to cut losses--the company will probably try to recoup their losses and/or make profit by increasing the price asked.  On these boycotts, especially if it's along racial lines, it's may be easier to simply identify which stores are being boycotted and shift product--like Walmart did--to stores not suffering from the boycott and/or to cut overall production if particular products are more likely to sell only in the boycotted areas/stores (pre-boycott, of course).

So, essentially, by boycotting, you're kneecapping how responsive corporations are to your demand for any product that's not either universally salable or is otherwise of limited durability.

Again, a better way to have tried to handle this would have been to identify corporations and/or institutions who support your cause and publicly support them.  Provide them incentive for ongoing support by making yourselves profitable to them.

Still, just a lay-person's assessment.

EDIT:

This story: Black residents protect white-owned store in Ferguson is another form of non-boycott support, albeit at the very small scale and as a small-group rather than "racial" group level of action.  In this case, several black men took an overt, risky action to support a business that had supported them in the past.  It's almost garuanteed that future actions by this particular business will give great consideration to the interests of the local African-American interests in business decisions.