All Doomed Up

A touch of gout, we think, this morning. Just a touch. 

We switched off our twitter account yesterday. We found it mostly pointless and frustrating. We're gonna recommit to Gab and try making something of ourselves on Substack Notes. We shrug.

We've been accused of being a Doomer. You're goddamn right we are. Someone please explain to us how the GOPs are supposed to win when Dems can manufacture enough 'votes' to put them over the top in Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania etc. And given Mitch's 'not good for the country' warning against impeaching Joe, what difference does it make, anyway? We've seen four Republican landslide or surprise victories in 30 + years of following politics. And it ain't made a bit of difference. 

Barry never went away. In his interview of Obama historian David Garrow, David Samuels talks about Obama living in Washington, post presidency, which is unprecedented. Why, they speculate. Garrow knows why, 'Doesn’t that strike you as odd? I mean, I have heard from more than one source that there are regular meetings at Obama’s house in Kalorama involving top figures in the current White House, with Secret Service and cars outside. I don’t write about it because it’s not my lane. There are over a thousand reporters in Washington, and yet there are zero stakeouts of Obama’s mansion, if only to tell us who is coming and going. But he clearly has his oar in.' 

Why do you think all the intelligence services disobeyed Trump and tried to destroy his administration, and now are destroying the man? Harkening back to yesterday's note on Barry's Juden hass, why do you think Joe is trying to revive the dead Iran Deal? Obama is running the government, and in fact, never stopped. 

A long piece about the Hollywood writer's strike and the issues at stake. Nothing we do, or have ever done, is as complicated as how these people get paid. Write magazine article, get check for magazine article. Yes, that check is small, which is one of the reasons we don't write magazine articles anymore. Amazon is simple too. What is 70 percent of what you charge for a book? Take that home. The matter of KU reads gets more complicated, and in fact is starting to become a problem. We do much, much better when readers purchase the ebook. Part of that shortfall can be made up by sheer volume. having 10,000+ pages read a day does add up. 

The author writes about the AI menace. We agree with this, 'I don’t care how many prompts you feed into ChatGPT, you will never get the screenplay for BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, or THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, or ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN, or THE GODFATHER, or THE BIG LEBOWSKI, or WITNESS or a million other classic films… not ever.' Right?

You people don't check in on Stroock's Books for news updates. You can go to the Times of Israel, or the NY Post (paper of record) on your own time. No, you people come to Stroock's Books for updates on various projects and to see what whacky stuff Will's gonna say about the news or his life. And no AI can mimic this brain. You show me another alternate history writer and ex college professor who thinks Obama is a gay, Atheist-Muslim Jew hater. 

We've been writing World War 1990 for nearly a decade now. World War 1990: Norway is the first novel that takes place at the beginning of the war. We should probably have characters say things like, 'Wow, Clemenceau's airwing's first combat kill and it's a Soviet Bear bomber,' or some such. Yes, this novel will have French F-8s and Super Etenard's. 'We saw what the Argentines could do with Exocets. Now it's our turn!' The ideas are coming actually. Maybe summer doesn't end till 21 September (the temps will be cooler by then). That's a good thing.