morning resolution

the pond again fits its own remembered shape

“And you’re a comic.” – very flattering words from Dwayne, a white guy with a black name, after I tried doing standup at an open mic for the first time. Thanks DWAYNE! YOU MADE MY DAY BY GIVING ME VALIDATION NOBODY GIVES ME REAL VALIDATION I AGREE WITH SOME OF THE GUYS AFTER MY “SET” TOLD ME I WAS FUNNY AND I SHOULD TRY THIS COMEDY SHIT OUT THANKS BROSKIS

I started the night off in Bushwick, NYC at a bar named Wonderville. They had 3 local bands playing, and I left after seeing the first band. I had earplugs on but they were still blowing out my fuckin’ ears, and they honestly sucked. Most of these indie rock bands just starting out all sound the same, and don’t have much character. You can only listen to so many loser-vibe songs with basic ass chords and bad singing where it’s not bad singing for the vibe, but because they actually suck at singing. See ya guys when you guys get better at music. Everyone has to start out somewhere. Also, the arcade games at the bar sucked ass in my opinion. They were all indie retro arcade games (made by random people in Bushwick I guess?) that were boring as fuck. Also the people there were kinda like the white nerdy hipster kinda vibe, people that would be big fans of indie games and shit, but maybe not the ones making them per se? So like not fun/cool imo. idk I just profile people super hard without knowing them. Bad habit? YES. Will I stop? PROBABLY NOT

I sauntered down the street because I had nothing better to do. A guy was observing a wall with a shitton of circuit boards melded in. Cyberpunk vibes and I loooooove cyberpunk!

A random white guy with curly ginger hair was smoking a cig next to it. And he was like, “there’s a comedy open mic next door, wanna check it out?” I’m super susceptible to peer pressure because I am a fucking tool, and also I had nothing going on with my life, so I went in. No friends, no girlfriend on a Friday night, anything interesting would make my night better.

I walked into the standup place, and immediately I noticed a cute Asian girl sitting there with a retarded looking Wallmart onesie that was in full winter print – snowflakes, snowmen, light blue. We’ll call her M for the purpose of this story. I wondered whether I should join the open mic night, because at that point, I didn’t give a fuck about what anyone thought of me. I was a nobody, and I knew it. I was never going to see these people again. After watching 3 guys bomb in a row, I decided to enter, seeing that the bar was not THAT high.

Almost immediately after, I got chosen randomly out of the jar of names. I knew generally what I was going to say. I had never done standup, but I wasn’t a stranger to comedy itself. I had written humor stuff before, and honestly that’s a lot harder to do than standup, because with standup, you can be expressive with your voice and body, but if you only have words, they really have to speak for themselves and matter. I basically remixed this post w/ a couple life experiences – having an insanely high Rice purity score, entering a super smash bros melee tournament on Valentines day, then getting knocked out by a guy with a girlfriend. I definitely fucked up on the storytelling because I had never put all these different stories together in a cohesive joking way before. But I don’t think I did too bad, because some people laughed. Some of the guys were listening to my virginity chronicles and putting their hands over their eyes and shit, laughing while shaking their heads. Good enough for me.

After I finished my 5 minute set, the organizer said “I know who you’d be perfect for” and pointed at M and everyone laughed their asses off. People kinda tried to set us up in different ways throughout the night. A bit of it was definitely racial profiling, since we were the only two Asians there, and we were both Korean. But she also offered to deflower me multiple times, which I rejected. Horny me is definitely going to regret that later, but thankfully horny me was not present for those couple hours. LOCKED IN MY BASEMENT, like the prolific Eminem once said.

A lot of standups did their shit over the course of the night, and one guy rapped, and another guy sang. I think all of us could agree that we all had a lot of honing to do on our respective crafts, and we were all nothing compared to the greats, but definitely some funny moments here and there. But I want to bring special attention to this M character. She is an interesting specimen to me, because I hadn’t really seen anyone like her quite yet, but through conversation and social deduction, I was able to observe/deduce some things about her. AKA me vibe-profiling yet another poor victim, completely misconstruing their character within my imagination.

So first of all, she completely bombed her set. Which is honestly not a bad thing — plenty of people bomb, and how else do you get good but by first bombing? But some things she did other than that was also cringe. Let me explain.

Basic profile:

in her thirties (looks young even to me an asian guy i thought she was like 25), she’s pretty, really unfunny. I’ll give her a pass because English is her second language. Her life path was Korea –> lived in CA for 1 yr when she was 12 –> went back to Korea –> went to America for grad school, finished, worked in US –> went back to Korea to work, started doing standup there –> and she is back in the US, almost out of here because she’s just on a tourist visa, exploring the local standup scene.

Things that irked me:

The general direction of her comedy is shock comedy because she’s one of those female comedians that think that talking about their vaginas in incredible detail is the funniest thing ever – it’s not funny if it’s just shocking. Is it a rite of passage for female comedians, or a phase some of them never get through? It’s always tricky saying that those jokes are not funny is because then people will pull the misogyny card on you and tell you to check your privilege. But reverse the gender roles and consider a male comedian describing their penis in intense detail. “There’s a weird wrinkle on it an inch down, and it curves to the right.” Actually, that kinda sounds like a bit that Mark Normand or Shane Gillis could pull off, but they set it up nicely, okay? They’re not saying, LOOK AT MY DICK, MY PENIS, putting it in your face. I’m not a fan of shock comedy, especially things sexual in nature because it tends to be a race to the bottom (who has the weirdest sex experiences) and honestly it’s such an overused and cheap bit that comedians that don’t know what else to say use as a crutch (judged on what I saw today). “HAR HAR I HAD SEX WITH AN AUSTRALIAN GIRL AND SHE MOANED IN AN AUSTRALIAN ACCENT HAR HAR” SHUT THE FUCK UP AND COME UP WITH SOMETHING ORIGINAL YOU BITCH YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE A CREATIVE

She also was trying to tell some jokes about Jews using some play on words like Juice, etc. but then was like “I’m not racist”. She honestly should have just doubled down – nobody in comedy actually cares about racism if it’s funny. Probably because English is not her first language, her wordplay was pretty meh.

She also has this weird fake laugh which is a nasal “ha haaa” which to me sounds like a laugh that is more like a laugh that signals “I understood your joke, look at me, I got that joke I’m so cool” more than “that was fucking funny”. I personally only laugh when something’s funny. That’s why I was the only one doubling down in giggles when a guy started talking about filming a prank on orphans by not showing up to adopt them after signing a contract to adopt them.

Then we had some live music moments and she started twerking and doin’ something that I can only describe as stripper dancing in her chair. Some promiscuous shit, I tell you. I don’t say that lightly. I’m not going to give her flack about doing that when she’s in her thirties, whatever, who give a fuck. She’s already much more willing to explore than most Korean people, and genuine about pursuing a passion, which is more than you can give credit to most people, especially Koreans.

I’m giving her flack because she’s very clearly Korean, and Koreans aren’t really born like that. I mean, I would find it weird if any other race did that in that situation, but it was weird to see someone I know the exact cultural context of pulling that shit I KNOW is not in her character. You can say like “oh you’re a misogynist, you have no right to judge her, give women freedom to be themselves etc.” If you’re thinking that or saying that shut the fuck up because I can tell when someone is not being true to who they are, because it comes off as unnatural and weird. And you can never count horny guys out on laughing at a girl’s jokes and keeping them around because they find her attractive (she’s kinda hot).

I can only guess she’s picked up some shit from what she thinks is American (even though most Americans don’t even do that shit) and she does that, and sometimes you can tell that something is kinda unnatural, like a costume to someone instead of their real skin. I think people are funniest actually when they’re real about themselves, and she’s wasting her potential if she isn’t leaning into that. Maybe I can’t speak for most people because most people aren’t as weird as me, meaning that there’s like less to have other people laugh about being genuine if you’re just a normal ass human being. But comedy has always been about presentation, and twisting expectation, and it’s possible to do that with any story, any experience, no matter how boring it seems. As long as you have a good eye at seeing the human experience for what it is. Funny shit is all around us. That’s what I say. Don’t use sex stories as a crutch, because it’s overdone and we can’t wait for you to shut the fuck up.

This might be reading too much into her character, but she might be one of those Korean girls (there’s men like that too don’t worry) that have experienced some life abroad, but are like, I’m cooler and more educated and more liberal than all you conservative ass koreans with a closed mind on how the world works. Eh. Maybe too harsh of a judgement. But I have some thoughts on this – nobody can truly be free from their cultural context, and each cultural context is equally both broken before God, and also gets some things right. Nobody can really judge from the other, and it’s not such a bad thing to keep your cultural context. I would argue that Korea often makes the mistake of choking on America’s dick too much and accepting every cultural trend in the West blindly without any sort of filter at all. We are really good at copying shit and fast following. We do not have backbone like the Japanese or Chinese. This is a double-edged sword — just look at Korean history.

Some interesting deflowering moments throughout the night

• M talking during her set about deflowering me and thrusting into the air, simulating her riding something
• M talking to me about deflowering me, thrusting into the air, telling me that the best sex comes from someone who’s about to leave the country (her since her tourist visa expires next week). It was weird because I never had a woman offer her body to me so freely before, like she didn’t even care about having sex, it was almost the mentality of “sure I’ll do it, no biggie.”
• M definitely slept around with some of the guys in that comedy club hahahaha
• A buncha black guys (most the guys there were black) trying to set me up with M, making some light fun of me for not drinking alcohol, and not taking up their offers to set me up with M or one of the girls at a bar we went to after to lose my vcard HAHA

Bro I’m a virgin, but you think I couldn’t really get pussy all this time if I really really really wanted to? I know I have no fucking game, and am a fucking loser, and really fucking neurotic, and secretly a huge asshole, but as much as who I am has kept me from being a sex-haver, I also have kept myself free from those kinds of situations. And God probably has done it as well. But at the same time, I’m no saint. I’m not going to lie, if I was attractive as fuck and women were falling head over heels for me, I would not be a virgin. Going to be real about that. I have horny thoughts all the time, and so really, I’m not pretending I’m better than anyone else here. I really don’t think of myself (at least try not to) as better than these people, because I am a hedonist at heart, and I completely, COMPLETELY understand them. If I did not believe in Christ, I would be doing worse shit than them on the daily, so I definitely do not have the moral high ground here. Isn’t it all just God’s grace in the end?

New character idea / arc unlocked:

mid thirties, loser vibe (sorry M <3 but being in your thirties trying to make it as female standup comic in Korea while your friends are all getting married is kind of a sick loser vibe, and I love loser characters since I am also a loser), trying to explore the world, become more open-minded, less like other Koreans, but at the same time running into a cultural wall, where it’s like, you’re not really that. Like there’s nothing actually separating you from acting like an American, and not like a Korean who’s been brought up a certain way her whole life, but the heritage bears down on her heavily and she kind of has this tension with “I should be fine doing this, hell yeah, giving power to myself as a woman” but at the same time feeling “unnatural” about it and “guilty”. If you do that part in a very stereotypical fashion, it comes off as a basic character so you gotta handle that one in a very sensitive manner and give it a shitton of depth and thought.

Pursuing a career in standup in Korea, America, getting into a shitton of one night stands with guys because she’s asserting “power” over her sexuality, hella liberal, all that. But she has to come to terms with what being herself means, and take a stand. She goes from this, to really coming into her own and writing genuine comedy where it comes from the heart, not a fake persona.

Am I reading too much into someone I know nothing about? Yes, of course! But probably at least 60% of what I said had some truth, and I’ve seen/heard about shit like this before, which is where all this assumption comes from. I’m never the type to be unconvinced when presented with evidence, so if our paths cross again, and I notice something different, I could judge her differently.

A zine chronicling the Conquering the Barbarian Altanis D&D campaign.

This issue details sessions 91, 92, and 93.

Adventurers deal with spiders, crypts, and kings.

You can download the issue here.

Overlord's Annals zine is available as part of the Ever & Anon APA, issue 7:

#Zine

In Summary: * And another fine day in the Roscoe-verse winds down. There was much good food eaten today, a great visit had with the daughter-in-law and her fiance, and some excellent college football games followed. As bedtime approaches I greet it with a satisfied smile.

Prayers, etc.: My daily prayers

Health Metrics: * bw= 220.02 lbs. * bp= 141/85 (70)

Exercise: * kegel pelvic floor exercise, half squats, calf raises, wall push-ups

Diet: * 06:30 – 1 peanut butter sandwich * 06:50 – suman * 10:30 – red velvet cake * 12:00 – rambutan * 12:30 – bbq short ribs * 14:45 – cheese enchilada plate at Las Palapas Mexican restaurant

Activities, Chores, etc.: * 05:00 – listen to local news talk radio * 06:00 – bank accounts activity monitored * 06:30 – read, pray, follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials, nap * 12:00 – tuned into the Lokheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl: Rice vs Texas State * 14:15 – DIL and her fiance stopped by for a visit on their way to the airport, we took them out for a meal as their flight was delayed * 16:40 – back home now, tuned into the Auto Zone Liberty Bowl, Navy vs Cincinnati, score is tied, 7 to 7, nearly halftime. * 18:58 – ... and the Navy Midshipmen with the Liberty Bowl, final score 35 to 13. * 19:00 – now tuning into the Duke's Mayo Bowl, Wake Forest Demon Deacons vs. Mississippi St. Bulldogs.

Chess: * 17:40 – moved in all pending CC games.

So, we have come to that time again, the time when our Facebook feeds are full of the various accomplishments of friends and family as they look back on the past year and welcome the next. I scroll through my feed and celebrate with my friends who have run marathons. Who have been promoted. Who have gotten married. Gotten pregnant. Lost weight. Friends who have moved. Friends who have traveled. Bought houses. Sold houses. Built houses.

When I look back on the past year, it is hard not to see overwhelming failure. Sure, there were many good days, but on the billboard of my 2025, they are small font compared to the shouty capital letters jeering at me like middle school playground bullies:

YOU LOST YOUR JOB.

YOU GAINED WEIGHT.

YOU FOUGHT WITH YOUR HUSBAND.

YOU FOUGHT WITH YOURSELF.

YOU LET DEPRESSION WIN AGAIN.

YOU CRIED…A LOT. LIKE, AN EMBARRASSING AMOUNT.

DID WE MENTION YOU LOST YOUR JOB???

My predominant emotion stepping into 2026 is fear. When it comes right down to it, I am a coward. I know this year will bring terrifying things, even if most of them are good, and while I should be full of optimism, I confess I am finding myself ill-equipped to face the days and months ahead. My instinct the past few weeks has been to hide, not leaving my house for days at a time, barely able to summon the strength to get out of bed.

I don’t feel worthy of the world right now, but I know that can change. So, if there is one request I have for whomever or whatever is listening out there in the universe, it is this:

Help me be brave again. Help me find the courage I will need to face the year ahead. The courage to put myself forward in the job market. The courage to suck at something new. The courage to speak up, to lead, even if I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

At the very least, help me find the courage to stop hiding.

When you ask an AI image generator to show you a celebrity, something peculiar happens. Instead of retrieving an actual photograph, the system conjures a synthetic variant, a digital approximation that might look startlingly realistic yet never quite matches any real moment captured on camera. The technology doesn't remember faces the way humans do. It reconstructs them from statistical patterns learned across millions of images, creating what researchers describe as an “average” version that appears more trustworthy than the distinctive, imperfect reality of actual human features.

This isn't a bug. It's how the systems are designed to work. Yet the consequences ripple far beyond technical curiosity. In the first quarter of 2025 alone, celebrities were targeted by deepfakes 47 times, an 81% increase compared to the whole of 2024. Elon Musk accounted for 24% of celebrity-related incidents with 20 separate targeting events, whilst Taylor Swift suffered 11 such attacks. In 38% of cases, these celebrity deepfakes were weaponised for fraud.

The question isn't whether AI can generate convincing synthetic celebrity faces. It demonstrably can, and does so with alarming frequency and sophistication. The more pressing question is why these systems produce synthetic variants rather than authentic images, and what technical, legal, and policy frameworks might reduce the confusion and harm that follows.

The Architecture of Synthetic Celebrity Faces

To understand why conversational image systems generate celebrity variants instead of retrieving authentic photographs, one must grasp how generative adversarial networks (GANs) and diffusion models actually function. These aren't search engines trawling databases for matching images. They're statistical reconstruction engines that learn probabilistic patterns from training data.

GANs employ two neural networks locked in competitive feedback. The generator creates plausible synthetic images whilst the discriminator attempts distinguishing real photographs from fabricated ones. Through iterative cycles, the generator improves until it produces images the discriminator cannot reliably identify as synthetic. On each iteration, the discriminator learns to distinguish the synthesised face from a corpus of real faces. If the synthesised face is distinguishable from the real faces, then the discriminator penalises the generator. Over multiple iterations, the generator learns to synthesise increasingly more realistic faces until the discriminator is unable to distinguish it from real faces.

Crucially, GANs and diffusion models don't memorise specific images. They learn compressed representations of visual patterns. When prompted to generate a celebrity face, the model reconstructs features based on these learned patterns rather than retrieving a stored photograph. The output might appear photorealistic, yet it represents a novel synthesis, not a reproduction of any actual moment.

This technical architecture explains a counterintuitive research finding. Studies using ChatGPT and DALL-E to create images of both fictional and famous faces discovered that participants were unable to reliably distinguish synthetic celebrity images from authentic photographs, even when familiar with the person's appearance. Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that AI-synthesised faces are not only indistinguishable from real faces but are actually perceived as more trustworthy. Synthetic faces, being algorithmically averaged, lack the asymmetries and peculiarities that characterise real human features. Paradoxically, this very lack of distinguishing characteristics makes them appear more credible to human observers.

The implications extend beyond mere deception. Synthetic faces were rated as more real than photographs of actual faces, researchers found. This might be because these fake faces often look a little more average or typical than real ones, which tend to be a bit more distinctive, as a result of the generator learning that such faces are better at fooling the discriminator. Synthetically generated faces are consequently deemed more trustworthy precisely because they lack the imperfections that characterise actual human beings.

Dataset Curation and the Celebrity Image Problem

The training datasets that inform AI image generation systems pose their own complex challenges. LAION-5B, one of the largest publicly documented datasets used to train models like Stable Diffusion, contains billions of image-text pairs scraped from the internet. This dataset inevitably includes celebrity photographs, raising immediate questions about consent, copyright, and appropriate use.

The landmark German case of Kneschke v. LAION illuminates the legal tensions. Photographer Robert Kneschke sued LAION after the organisation automatically downloaded his copyrighted image in 2021 and incorporated it into the LAION-5B dataset. The Higher Regional Court of Hamburg ruled in 2025 that LAION's actions, whilst involving copyright-related copying, were permissible under Section 60d of the German Copyright Act for non-commercial scientific research purposes, specifically text and data mining. Critically, the court held that LAION's non-commercial status remained intact even though commercial entities later used the open-source dataset.

LAION itself acknowledges significant limitations in its dataset curation practices. According to the organisation's own statements, LAION does not consider the content, copyright, or privacy of images when collecting, evaluating, and sorting image links. This hands-off approach means celebrity photographs, private medical images, and copyrighted works flow freely into datasets that power commercial AI systems.

The “Have I Been Trained” database emerged as a response to these concerns, allowing artists and creators to check whether their images appear in major publicly documented AI training datasets like LAION-5B and LAION-400M. Users can search by uploading images, entering artist names, or providing URLs to discover if their work has been included in training data. This tool offers transparency but limited remediation, as removal mechanisms remain constrained once images have been incorporated into widely distributed datasets.

Regulatory developments in 2025 began addressing these dataset curation challenges more directly. The EU AI Code of Practice's “good faith” protection period ended in August 2025, meaning AI companies now face immediate regulatory enforcement for non-compliance. Companies can no longer rely on collaborative improvement periods with the AI Office and may face direct penalties for using prohibited training data.

California's AB 412, enacted in 2025, requires developers of generative AI models to document copyrighted materials used in training and provide a public mechanism for rights holders to request this information, with mandatory 30-day response requirements. This represents a significant shift toward transparency and rights holder empowerment, though enforcement mechanisms and practical effectiveness remain to be tested at scale.

Commercial AI platforms have responded by implementing content policy restrictions. ChatGPT refuses to generate images of named celebrities when explicitly requested, citing “content policy restrictions around realistic depictions of celebrities.” Yet these restrictions prove inconsistent and easily circumvented through descriptive prompts that avoid naming specific individuals whilst requesting their distinctive characteristics. MidJourney blocks celebrity names but allows workarounds using descriptive prompts like “50-year-old male actor in a tuxedo.” DALL-E maintains stricter celebrity likeness policies, though users attempt “celebrity lookalike” prompts with varying success.

These policy-based restrictions acknowledge that generating synthetic celebrity images poses legal and ethical risks, but they don't fundamentally address the underlying technical capability or dataset composition. The competitive advantage of commercial deepfake detection models, research suggests, derives primarily from training dataset curation rather than algorithmic innovation. This means detection systems trained on one type of celebrity deepfake may fail when confronted with different manipulation approaches or unfamiliar faces.

Provenance Metadata and Content Credentials

If the technical architecture of generative AI and the composition of training datasets create conditions for synthetic celebrity proliferation, provenance metadata represents the most ambitious technical remedy. The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) emerged in 2021 as a collaborative effort bringing together major technology companies, media organisations, and camera manufacturers to develop what's been described as “a nutrition label for digital content.”

At the heart of the C2PA specification lies the Content Credential, a cryptographically bound structure that records an asset's provenance. Content Credentials contain assertions about the asset, such as its origin including when and where it was created, modifications detailing what happened using what tools, and use of AI documenting how it was authored. Each asset is cryptographically hashed and signed to capture a verifiable, tamper-evident record that enables exposure of any changes to the asset or its metadata.

Through the first half of 2025, Google collaborated on Content Credentials 2.1, offering enhanced security against a wider range of tampering attacks due to stricter technical requirements for validating the history of the content's provenance. The specification expects to achieve ISO international standard status by 2025 and is under examination by the W3C for browser-level adoption, developments that would significantly expand interoperability and adoption.

Major technology platforms have begun implementing C2PA support, though adoption remains far from universal. OpenAI began adding C2PA metadata to all images created and edited by DALL-E 3 in ChatGPT and the OpenAI API earlier in 2025. The company joined the Steering Committee of C2PA, signalling institutional commitment to provenance standards. Google announced plans bringing Content Credentials to several key products, including Search. If an image contains C2PA metadata, people using the “About this image” feature can see if content was created or edited with AI tools. This integration into discovery and distribution infrastructure represents crucial progress toward making provenance metadata actionable for ordinary users rather than merely technically available.

Adobe introduced Content Authenticity for Enterprise, bringing the power of Content Credentials to products and platforms that drive creative production and marketing at scale. The C2PA reached a new level of maturity with the launch of its Conformance Program in 2025, ensuring secure and interoperable implementations. For the first time, organisations can certify that their products meet the highest standards of authenticity and trust.

Hardware integration offers another promising frontier. Sony announced in June 2025 the release of its Camera Verify system for press photographers, embedding provenance data at the moment of capture. Google's Pixel 10 smartphone achieved the Conformance Program's top tier of security compliance, demonstrating that consumer devices can implement robust content credentials without compromising usability or performance.

Yet significant limitations temper this optimism. OpenAI itself acknowledged that metadata “is not a silver bullet” and can be easily removed either accidentally or intentionally. This candid admission undermines confidence in technical labelling solutions as comprehensive remedies. Security researchers have documented methods for bypassing C2PA safeguards by altering provenance metadata, removing or forging watermarks, and mimicking digital fingerprints.

Most fundamentally, adoption remains minimal as of 2025. Very little internet content currently employs C2PA markers, limiting practical utility. The methods proposed by C2PA do not allow for statements about whether content is “true.” Instead, C2PA-compliant metadata only offers reliable information about the origin of a piece of information, not its veracity. A synthetic celebrity image could carry perfect provenance metadata documenting its AI generation whilst still deceiving viewers who don't check or understand the credentials.

Privacy concerns add another layer of complexity. The World Privacy Forum's technical review of C2PA noted that the standard can compromise privacy through extensive metadata collection. Detailed provenance records might reveal information about creators, editing workflows, and tools used that individuals or organisations prefer to keep confidential. Balancing transparency about synthetic content against privacy rights for creators remains an unresolved tension within the C2PA framework.

User Controls and Transparency Features

Beyond provenance metadata embedded in content files, platforms have begun implementing user-facing controls and transparency features intended to help individuals identify and manage synthetic content. The European Union's AI Act, entering force on 1 August 2024 with full enforcement beginning 2 August 2026, mandates that providers of AI systems generating synthetic audio, image, video, or text ensure outputs are marked in machine-readable format and detectable as artificially generated.

Under the Act, where an AI system is used to create or manipulate images, audio, or video content that bears a perceptible resemblance to authentic content, it is mandatory to disclose that the content was created by automated means. Non-compliance can result in administrative fines up to €15 million or 3% of worldwide annual turnover, whichever is higher. The AI Act requires technical solutions be “effective, interoperable, robust and reliable as far as technically feasible,” whilst acknowledging “specificities and limitations of various content types, implementation costs and generally acknowledged state of the art.”

Meta announced in February 2024 plans to label AI-generated images on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads by detecting invisible markers using C2PA and IPTC standards. The company rolled out “Made with AI” labels in May 2024. During 1 to 29 October 2024, Facebook recorded over 380 billion user label views on AI-labelled organic content, whilst Instagram tallied over 1 trillion. The scale reveals both the prevalence of AI-generated content and the potential reach of transparency interventions.

Yet critics note significant gaps. Policies focus primarily on images and video, largely overlooking AI-generated text. Meta places substantial disclosure burden on users and AI tool creators rather than implementing comprehensive proactive detection. From July 2024, Meta shifted towards “more labels, less takedowns,” ceasing removal of AI-generated content solely based on manipulated video policy unless violating other standards.

YouTube implemented similar requirements on 18 March 2024, mandating creator disclosure when realistic content uses altered or synthetic media. The platform applies “Altered or synthetic content” labels to flagged material. Yet YouTube's system relies heavily on creator self-reporting, creating obvious enforcement gaps when creators have incentives to obscure synthetic origins.

Different platforms implement content moderation and user controls in varying ways. Some use classifier-based blocks that stop image generation at the model level, others filter outputs after generation, and some combine automated filters with human review for edge cases. Microsoft's Phi Silica moderation allows users to adjust sensitivity filters, ensuring that AI-generated content for applications adheres to ethical standards and avoids harmful or inappropriate outputs whilst keeping users in control.

User research reveals strong demand for these transparency features but significant scepticism about their reliability. Getty Images' 2024 research covering over 30,000 adults across 25 countries found almost 90% want to know whether images are AI-created. More troubling, whilst 98% agree authentic images and videos are pivotal for trust, 72% believe AI makes determining authenticity difficult. YouGov's UK survey of over 2,000 adults found nearly half, 48%, distrust AI-generated content labelling accuracy, compared to just one-fifth, 19%, trusting such labels.

A 2025 study by iProov found that only 0.1% of participants correctly identified all fake and real media shown, underscoring how poorly even motivated users perform at distinguishing synthetic from authentic content without reliable technical assistance. This research confirms that human perception alone cannot reliably identify AI-generated voices, with participants often perceiving synthetic voices as identical to real people.

Celebrity Rights and the Legal Patchwork

The proliferation of AI-generated celebrity images collides directly with publicity rights, a complex area of law that varies dramatically across jurisdictions. Personality rights, also known as the right of publicity, encompass the bundle of personal, reputational, and economic interests a person holds in their identity. The right of publicity can protect individuals from deepfakes and limit the posthumous use of their name, image, and likeness as digital versions.

In the United States, the answers to questions about the right of publicity vary significantly from one state to another, making it difficult to establish a uniform standard. Certain states limit the right of publicity to celebrities and the exploitation of the commercial value of their likeness, whilst others allow ordinary individuals to prove the commercial value of their image. In California, there is both a statutory and common law right of publicity where an individual must prove they have a commercially valuable identity. This fragmentation creates compliance challenges for platforms operating nationally or globally.

The year 2025 began with celebrities and digital creators increasingly knocking on courtroom doors to protect their identity. A Delhi High Court ruling in favour of entrepreneur and podcaster Raj Shamani became a watershed moment, underscoring how personality rights are no longer limited to film stars but extend firmly into the creator economy. The ruling represents a broader trend of courts recognising that publicity rights protect economic interests in one's identity regardless of traditional celebrity status.

Federal legislative efforts have attempted creating national standards. In July 2024, Senators Marsha Blackburn, Amy Klobuchar, and Thom Tillis introduced the “NO FAKES Act” to protect “voice and visual likeness of all individuals from unauthorised computer-generated recreations from generative artificial intelligence and other technologies.” The bill was reintroduced in April 2025, earning support from Google and the Recording Industry Association of America. The NO FAKES Act establishes a national digital replication right, with violations including public display, distribution, transmission, and communication of a person's digitally simulated identity.

State-level protections have proliferated in the absence of federal standards. SAG-AFTRA, the labour union representing actors and singers, advocated for stronger contractual protections to prevent AI-generated likenesses from being exploited. Two California laws, AB 2602 and AB 1836, codified SAG-AFTRA's demands by requiring explicit consent from artists before their digital likeness can be used and by mandating clear markings on work that includes AI-generated replicas.

Available legal remedies for celebrity deepfakes draw on multiple doctrinal sources. Publicity law, as applied to deepfakes, offers protections against unauthorised commercial exploitation, particularly when deepfakes are used in advertising or endorsements. Key precedents, such as Midler v. Ford and Carson v. Here's Johnny Portable Toilets, illustrate how courts have recognised the right to prevent the commercial use of an individual's identity. This framework appears well-suited to combat the rise of deepfake technology in commercial contexts.

Trademark claims for false endorsement may be utilised by celebrities if a deepfake could lead viewers to think that an individual endorses a certain product or service. Section 43(a)(1)(A) of the Lanham Act has been interpreted by courts to limit the nonconsensual use of one's “persona” and “voice” that leads consumers to mistakenly believe that an individual supports a certain service or good. These trademark-based remedies offer additional tools beyond publicity rights alone.

Courts must now adapt to these novel challenges. Judges are publicly acknowledging the risks posed by generative AI and pushing for changes to how courts evaluate evidence. The risk extends beyond civil disputes to criminal proceedings, where synthetic evidence might be introduced to mislead fact-finders or where authentic evidence might be dismissed as deepfakes. The global nature of AI-generated content complicates jurisdictional questions. A synthetic celebrity image might be generated in one country, shared via servers in another, and viewed globally, implicating multiple legal frameworks simultaneously.

Misinformation Vectors and Deepfake Harms

The capacity to generate convincing synthetic celebrity images creates multiple vectors for misinformation and harm. In the first quarter of 2025 alone, there were 179 deepfake incidents, surpassing the total for all of 2024 by 19%. Deepfake files surged from 500,000 in 2023 to a projected 8 million in 2025, representing a 680% rise in deepfake activity year-over-year. This exponential growth pattern suggests the challenge will intensify as tools become more accessible and sophisticated.

Celebrity targeting serves multiple malicious purposes. In 38% of documented cases, celebrity deepfakes were weaponised for fraud. Fraudsters create synthetic videos showing celebrities endorsing cryptocurrency schemes, investment opportunities, or fraudulent products. An 82-year-old retiree lost 690,000 euros to a deepfake video of Elon Musk promoting a cryptocurrency scheme, illustrating how even motivated individuals struggle to identify sophisticated deepfakes, particularly when targeting vulnerable populations.

Non-consensual synthetic intimate imagery represents another serious harm vector. In 2024, AI-generated explicit images of Taylor Swift appeared on X, Reddit, and other platforms, completely fabricated without consent. Some posts received millions of views before removal, sparking renewed debate about platform moderation responsibilities and stronger protections. The psychological harm to victims is substantial, whilst perpetrators often face minimal consequences given jurisdictional complexities and enforcement challenges.

Political manipulation through celebrity deepfakes poses democratic risks. Analysis of 187,778 posts from X, Bluesky, and Reddit during the 2025 Canadian federal election found that 5.86% of election-related images were deepfakes. Right-leaning accounts shared them more frequently, with 8.66% of their posted images flagged compared to 4.42% for left-leaning users. However, harmful deepfakes drew little attention, accounting for only 0.12% of all views on X, suggesting that whilst deepfakes proliferate, their actual influence varies significantly.

Research confirms that deepfakes present a new form of content creation for spreading misinformation that can potentially cause extensive issues, such as political intrusion, spreading propaganda, committing fraud, and reputational harm. Deepfake technology is reshaping the media and entertainment industry, posing serious risks to content authenticity, brand reputation, and audience trust. With deepfake-related losses projected to reach $40 billion globally by 2027, media companies face urgent pressure to develop and deploy countermeasures.

The “liar's dividend” compounds these direct harms. As deepfake prevalence increases, bad actors can dismiss authentic evidence as fabricated. This threatens not just media credibility but evidentiary foundations of democratic accountability. When genuine recordings of misconduct can be plausibly denied as deepfakes, accountability mechanisms erode.

Detection challenges intensify these risks. Advancements in AI image generation and real-time face-swapping tools have made manipulated videos almost indistinguishable from real footage. In 2025, AI-created images and deepfake videos blended so seamlessly into political debates and celebrity scandals that spotting what was fake often required forensic analysis, not intuition. Research confirms humans cannot consistently identify AI-generated voices, often perceiving them as identical to real people.

According to recent studies, existing detection methods may not accurately identify deepfakes in real-world scenarios. Accuracy may be reduced if lighting conditions, facial expressions, or video and audio quality differ from the data used to train the detection model. No commercial models evaluated had accuracy of 90% or above, suggesting that commercial detection systems still need substantial improvement to reach the accuracy of human deepfake forensic analysts.

The Arup deepfake fraud represents perhaps the most sophisticated financial crime leveraging this technology. A finance employee joined what appeared to be a routine video conference with the company's CFO and colleagues. Every participant except the victim was an AI-generated simulacrum, convincing enough to survive live video call scrutiny. The employee authorised 15 transfers totalling £25.6 million before discovering the fraud. This incident reveals traditional verification method inadequacy in the deepfake age.

Industry Responses and Technical Remedies

The technology industry's response to AI-generated celebrity image proliferation has been halting and uneven, characterised by reactive policy adjustments rather than proactive systemic design. Figures from the entertainment industry, including the late Fred Rogers, Tupac Shakur, and Robin Williams, have been digitally recreated using OpenAI's Sora technology, leaving many in the industry deeply concerned about the ease with which AI can resurrect deceased performers without estate consent.

OpenAI released new policies for its Sora 2 AI video tool in response to concerns from Hollywood studios, unions, and talent agencies. The company announced an “opt-in” policy allowing all artists, performers, and individuals the right to determine how and whether they can be simulated. OpenAI stated it will block the generation of well-known characters on its public feed and will take down any existing material not in compliance. The company agreed to take down fabricated videos of Martin Luther King Jr. after his estate complained about the “disrespectful depictions” of the late civil rights leader. These policy adjustments represent acknowledgement of potential harms, though enforcement mechanisms remain largely reactive.

Meta faced legal and regulatory backlash after reports revealed its AI chatbots impersonated celebrities like Taylor Swift and generated explicit deepfakes. In an attempt to capture market share from OpenAI, Meta reportedly rushed out chatbots with a poorly-thought-through set of celebrity personas. Internal reports suggested that Mark Zuckerberg personally scolded his team for being too cautious in chatbot rollout, with the team subsequently greenlighting content risk standards that critics characterised as dangerously permissive. This incident underscores the tension between competitive pressure to deploy AI capabilities quickly and responsible development requiring extensive safety testing and rights clearance.

Major media companies have responded with litigation. Disney accused Google of copyright infringement on a “massive scale” using AI models and services to “commercially exploit and distribute” infringing images and videos. Disney also sent cease-and-desist letters to Meta and Character.AI, and filed litigation together with NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery against AI companies MidJourney and Minimax alleging copyright infringement. These legal actions signal that major rights holders will not accept unauthorised use of protected content for AI training or generation.

SAG-AFTRA's national executive director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland stated that it wasn't feasible for rights holders to find every possible use of their material, calling the situation “a moment of real concern and danger for everyone in the entertainment industry, and it should be for all Americans, all of us, really.” The talent agencies and SAG-AFTRA announced they are supporting federal legislation called the “NO FAKES” Act, representing a united industry front seeking legal protections.

Technical remedies under development focus on multiple intervention points. Detection technologies aim to identify fake media without needing to compare it to the original, typically using forms of machine learning. Within the detection category, there are two basic approaches. Learning-based methods involve features that distinguish real from synthetic content being explicitly learned by machine-learning techniques. Artifact-based methods involve low-level to high-level features explicitly designed to distinguish between real and synthetic content.

Yet this creates an escalating technological arms race where detection and generation capabilities advance in tandem, with no guarantee detection will keep pace. Economic incentives largely favour generation over detection, as companies profit from selling generative AI tools and advertising on platforms hosting synthetic content, whilst detection tools generate limited revenue absent regulatory mandates or public sector support.

Industry collaboration through initiatives like C2PA represents a more promising approach than isolated platform policies. When major technology companies, media organisations, and hardware manufacturers align on common provenance standards, interoperability becomes possible. Content carrying C2PA credentials can be verified across multiple platforms and applications rather than requiring platform-specific solutions. Yet voluntary industry collaboration faces free-rider problems. Platforms that invest heavily in content authentication bear costs without excluding competitors who don't make similar investments, suggesting regulatory mandates may be necessary to ensure universal adoption of provenance standards and transparency measures.

Navigating the Synthetic Future

The challenge of AI-generated celebrity images illuminates broader tensions in the governance of generative AI. The same technical capabilities enabling creativity, education, and entertainment also facilitate fraud, harassment, and misinformation. Simple prohibition appears neither feasible nor desirable given legitimate uses, yet unrestricted deployment creates serious harms requiring intervention.

Dataset curation offers one intervention point. If training datasets excluded celebrity images entirely, models couldn't generate convincing celebrity likenesses. Yet comprehensive filtering would require reliable celebrity image identification at massive scale, potentially millions or billions of images. False positives might exclude legitimate content whilst false negatives allow prohibited material through. The Kneschke v. LAION ruling suggests that, at least in Germany, using copyrighted images including celebrity photographs for non-commercial research purposes in dataset creation may be permissible under text and data mining exceptions, though whether this precedent extends to commercial AI development or other jurisdictions remains contested.

Provenance metadata and content credentials represent complementary interventions. If synthetic celebrity images carry cryptographically signed metadata documenting their AI generation, informed users could verify authenticity before relying on questionable content. Yet adoption gaps, technical vulnerabilities, and user comprehension challenges limit effectiveness. Metadata can be stripped, forged, or simply ignored by viewers who lack technical literacy or awareness.

User controls and transparency features address information asymmetries, giving individuals tools to identify and manage synthetic content. Platform-level labelling, sensitivity filters, and disclosure requirements shift the default from opaque to transparent. But implementation varies widely, enforcement proves difficult, and sophisticated users can circumvent restrictions designed for general audiences.

Celebrity rights frameworks offer legal recourse after harms occur but struggle with prevention. Publicity rights, trademark claims, and copyright protections can produce civil damages and injunctive relief, yet enforcement requires identifying violations, establishing jurisdiction, and litigating against potentially judgement-proof defendants. Deterrent effects remain uncertain, particularly for international actors beyond domestic legal reach.

Misinformation harms call for societal resilience-building beyond technical and legal fixes. Media literacy education teaching critical evaluation of digital content, verification techniques, and healthy scepticism can reduce vulnerability to synthetic deception. Investments in quality journalism with robust fact-checking capabilities maintain authoritative information sources that counterbalance misinformation proliferation.

The path forward likely involves layered interventions across multiple domains. Dataset curation practices that respect publicity rights and implement opt-out mechanisms. Mandatory provenance metadata for AI-generated content with cryptographic verification. Platform transparency requirements with proactive detection and labelling. Legal frameworks balancing innovation against personality rights protection. Public investment in media literacy and quality journalism. Industry collaboration on interoperable standards and best practices.

No single intervention suffices because the challenge operates across technical, legal, economic, and social dimensions simultaneously. The urgency intensifies as capabilities advance. Multimodal AI systems generating coordinated synthetic video, audio, and text create more convincing fabrications than single-modality deepfakes. Real-time generation capabilities enable live deepfakes rather than pre-recorded content, complicating detection and response. Adversarial techniques designed to evade detection algorithms ensure that synthetic media creation and detection remain locked in perpetual competition.

Yet pessimism isn't warranted. The same AI capabilities creating synthetic celebrity images might, if properly governed and deployed, help verify authenticity. Provenance standards, detection algorithms, and verification tools offer partial technical solutions. Legal frameworks establishing transparency obligations and accountability mechanisms provide structural incentives. Professional standards and ethical commitments offer normative guidance. Educational initiatives build societal capacity for critical evaluation.

What's required is collective recognition that ungovernanced synthetic media proliferation threatens foundations of trust on which democratic discourse depends. When anyone can generate convincing synthetic media depicting anyone saying anything, evidence loses its power to persuade. Accountability mechanisms erode. Information environments become toxic with uncertainty.

The alternative is a world where transparency, verification, and accountability become embedded expectations rather than afterthoughts. Where synthetic content carries clear provenance markers and platforms proactively detect and label AI-generated material. Where publicity rights are respected and enforced. Where media literacy enables critical evaluation. Where journalism maintains verification standards. Where technology serves human flourishing rather than undermining epistemic foundations of collective self-governance.

The challenge of AI-generated celebrity images isn't primarily about technology. It's about whether society can develop institutions, norms, and practices preserving the possibility of shared reality in an age of synthetic abundance. The answer will emerge not from any single intervention but from sustained commitment across multiple domains to transparency, accountability, and truth.

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References and Sources

Research Studies and Academic Publications

“AI-generated images of familiar faces are indistinguishable from real photographs.” Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications (2025). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s41235-025-00683-w

“AI-synthesized faces are indistinguishable from real faces and more trustworthy.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2120481119

“Deepfakes in the 2025 Canadian Election: Prevalence, Partisanship, and Platform Dynamics.” arXiv (2025). https://arxiv.org/html/2512.13915

“Copyright in AI Pre-Training Data Filtering: Regulatory Landscape and Mitigation Strategies.” arXiv (2025). https://arxiv.org/html/2512.02047

“Fair human-centric image dataset for ethical AI benchmarking.” Nature (2025). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09716-2

“Detection of AI generated images using combined uncertainty measures.” Scientific Reports (2025). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-28572-8

Legal Cases and Regulatory Frameworks

“Higher Regional Court Hamburg Confirms AI Training was Permitted (Kneschke v. LAION).” Bird & Bird (2025). https://www.twobirds.com/en/insights/2025/germany/higher-regional-court-hamburg-confirms-ai-training-was-permitted-(kneschke-v,-d-,-laion)

“A landmark copyright case with implications for AI and text and data mining: Kneschke v. LAION.” Trademark Lawyer Magazine (2025). https://trademarklawyermagazine.com/a-landmark-copyright-case-with-implications-for-ai-and-text-and-data-mining-kneschke-v-laion/

“Breaking Down the Intersection of Right-of-Publicity Law, AI.” Blank Rome LLP. https://www.blankrome.com/publications/breaking-down-intersection-right-publicity-law-ai

“Rethinking the Right of Publicity in Deepfake Age.” Michigan Technology Law Review (2025). https://mttlr.org/2025/09/rethinking-the-right-of-publicity-in-deepfake-age/

“From Deepfakes to Deepfame: The Complexities of the Right of Publicity in an AI World.” American Bar Association. https://www.americanbar.org/groups/intellectual_property_law/resources/landslide/archive/deepfakes-deepfame-complexities-right-publicity-ai-world/

Technical Standards and Industry Initiatives

“C2PA and Content Credentials Explainer 2.2, 2025-04-22: Release.” Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity. https://spec.c2pa.org/specifications/specifications/2.2/explainer/_attachments/Explainer.pdf

“C2PA in ChatGPT Images.” OpenAI Help Centre. https://help.openai.com/en/articles/8912793-c2pa-in-chatgpt-images

“How Google and the C2PA are increasing transparency for gen AI content.” Google Official Blog (2025). https://blog.google/technology/ai/google-gen-ai-content-transparency-c2pa/

“Understanding the source of what we see and hear online.” OpenAI (2024). https://openai.com/index/understanding-the-source-of-what-we-see-and-hear-online/

“Privacy, Identity and Trust in C2PA: A Technical Review and Analysis.” World Privacy Forum (2025). https://worldprivacyforum.org/posts/privacy-identity-and-trust-in-c2pa/

Industry Reports and Statistics

“State of Deepfakes 2025: Key Insights.” Mirage. https://mirage.app/blog/state-of-deepfakes-2025

“Deepfake Statistics & Trends 2025: Key Data & Insights.” Keepnet (2025). https://keepnetlabs.com/blog/deepfake-statistics-and-trends

“How AI made deepfakes harder to detect in 2025.” FactCheckHub (2025). https://factcheckhub.com/how-ai-made-deepfakes-harder-to-detect-in-2025/

“Why Media and Entertainment Companies Need Deepfake Detection in 2025.” Deep Media (2025). https://deepmedia.ai/blog/media-2025

Platform Policies and Corporate Responses

“Hollywood pushes OpenAI for consent.” NPR (2025). https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/npr/2025/10/20/nx-s1-5567119/hollywood-pushes-openai-for-consent/

“Meta Under Fire for Unauthorised AI Celebrity Chatbots Generating Explicit Images.” WinBuzzer (2025). https://winbuzzer.com/2025/08/31/meta-under-fire-for-unauthorized-ai-celebrity-chatbots-generating-explicit-images-xcxwbn/

“Disney Accuses Google of Using AI to Engage in Copyright Infringement on 'Massive Scale'.” Variety (2025). https://variety.com/2025/digital/news/disney-google-ai-copyright-infringement-cease-and-desist-letter-1236606429/

“Experts React to Reuters Reports on Meta's AI Chatbot Policies.” TechPolicy.Press (2025). https://www.techpolicy.press/experts-react-to-reuters-reports-on-metas-ai-chatbot-policies/

Transparency and Content Moderation

“Content Moderation in a New Era for AI and Automation.” Oversight Board (2025). https://www.oversightboard.com/news/content-moderation-in-a-new-era-for-ai-and-automation/

“Transparency & content moderation.” OpenAI. https://openai.com/transparency-and-content-moderation/

“AI Moderation Needs Transparency & Context.” Medium (2025). https://medium.com/@rahulmitra3485/ai-moderation-needs-transparency-context-7c0a534ff27a

Detection and Verification

“Deepfakes and the crisis of knowing.” UNESCO. https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/deepfakes-and-crisis-knowing

“Science & Tech Spotlight: Combating Deepfakes.” U.S. Government Accountability Office (2024). https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-107292

“Mitigating the harms of manipulated media: Confronting deepfakes and digital deception.” PMC (2025). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12305536/

Dataset and Training Data Issues

“LAION-5B: A NEW ERA OF OPEN LARGE-SCALE MULTI-MODAL DATASETS.” LAION. https://laion.ai/blog/laion-5b/

“FAQ.” LAION. https://laion.ai/faq/

“Patient images in LAION datasets are only a sample of a larger issue.” The Decoder. https://the-decoder.com/patient-images-in-laion-datasets-are-only-a-sample-of-a-larger-issue/

Consumer Research and Public Opinion

“Nearly 90% of Consumers Want Transparency on AI Images finds Getty Images Report.” Getty Images (2024). https://newsroom.gettyimages.com/en/getty-images/nearly-90-of-consumers-want-transparency-on-ai-images-finds-getty-images-report

“Can you trust your social media feed? UK public concerned about AI content and misinformation.” YouGov (2024). https://business.yougov.com/content/49550-labelling-ai-generated-digitally-altered-content-misinformation-2024-research

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Tim Green UK-based Systems Theorist & Independent Technology Writer

Tim explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, decentralised cognition, and posthuman ethics. His work, published at smarterarticles.co.uk, challenges dominant narratives of technological progress while proposing interdisciplinary frameworks for collective intelligence and digital stewardship.

His writing has been featured on Ground News and shared by independent researchers across both academic and technological communities.

ORCID: 0009-0002-0156-9795 Email: tim@smarterarticles.co.uk

“We'll take a cup o' kindness yet, For Auld Lang Syne.”

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!”

— Ebenezer Scrooge

Another year has gone, and as I look back I wish I had a Ghost to show me the significant moments. As I learned from Neal Postman in Technopoly, every technology carries an agenda, and our phones, in offering the ability to document every moment, seem to assert that memory is irrelevant; that the human mind is too fallible to be trusted with something as important as what has happened and is happening and will happen. Well, I reject that with every force of my being. For who can tell the self what is happening to it, other than itself? Even (or especially) those of us who believe in an Authority who can supersede the self, must yet work to distinguish between those words the self wishes to hear from the Word and the words the self needs to hear from the Word. Technology ought to be a tool, and nothing more. Those spectres of Ignorance and Want, which have haunted mankind since before Dickens named them in A Christmas Carol, have not been driven away by the information age. So take a cup of kindness (and I mean actual kindness) this year, for old time's sake, and pass it on. God knows we need it.

Writing

Drafting continues on my new novel. I am going to try and up my daily word goal to 500 from 250. I suppose that might seem low, but it's about all I can manage as a full time parent. If I keep to it I should have a book's draft done within a year. I've also had an essay in my head for awhile, so I've got to try and get that out there.

Music

I guess I should set some sort of New Year's goal, so here it is: Record demos for all of my Lit Songs by the end of the year. I've decided to try and get into a studio at some point, but I could probably only get one or two down, especially ones that require a band. But if I accept that my demo recordings aren't going to be studio recordings I think I can get the album done, as a sort of trial run that I can show people. First on the list is the Tess song that I did for Tiny Desk last year. Ugh, 'last year.'

Reading

My wife and I read Pride and Prejudice and it was lovely. It was my first time reading it since seventh grade, so it was very refreshing. It was also refreshing because Jane Austen is, to me, the Shakespeare of novelists. Her style is so drained of frivolity and bitterness that it could almost be accused of vacuity were it not so very essential. There will, of course, be words and constructions that will puzzle a modern reader because of semantic drift, but once you get used to it is is very rewarding, and her books are not long. Like Shakespeare, they continue when you put them down and recur to you throughout your life. I am also jealous that she lived at a time when people communicated with letters. They are the perfect literary device because you can quote them wholesale, and the reader can imagine themselves in the mind of the protagonist who is reading the letter. Instant immersion, even when you close the book, because you, along with Elizabeth, will be thinking about Mr. Darcy's letter as you go about your life.

It really is a lovely story about the value of true connubial felicity, and I think I will be saying more about it in my next essay. So stay tuned. I'll have it by the end of the month? 🤞.

I'll let Elizabeth round this one out:

“The more I see of the world, the more I am dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on either merit or sense.” (130).

Later on, on learning from the past:

“How despicably have I acted! ... I, who have prided myself on my discernment! — I, who have valued myself on my abilities! who have often disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified my vanity, in useless or blameable distrust! — How humiliating is this discovery! — Yet, how just a humiliation! — Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly. — Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment, I never knew myself.” (193).

To knowing oneself in the Past, Present, and Future.

“What are men to rocks and mountains?” (147).

Works Cited

Burns, Robert. “Auld Lang Syne.” 1788.

Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. Chapman and Hall, 1843.

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Aucturus Publishing Limited, 2011 (1813).

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Thank you for reading! I greatly regret that I will most likely never be able to meet you in person and shake your hand, but perhaps we can virtually shake hands via my newsletter, social media, or a cup of coffee sent over the wire. They are poor substitutes, but they can be a real grace in this intractable world.

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Send me a kind word or a cup of coffee:

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The problem with the HBO series Heated Rivalry and the Game Changers book series it’s based on—and with M/M literature in general—is not a problem of representation. In many ways, arguments about representation among gay/bi men* boil down to us arguing with each other from our varied individual experiences of surviving heteronormative and homophobic environments and trying to form our own gay/bi identities. In my research on gay/bi men of the 1950s and 60s, I found out just how old these kinds of arguments are—at least as old as the end of World War II. But in those years, representation was a simpler problem, because representations of gay/bi men were nearly exclusively from the perspective of a disapproving and inevitably disgusted hetero world. When gay/bi men argue with each other over representations, we are often still working through our own internalization of the very heteronormativity and homophobia we have been trying to escape our whole lives. And in so doing, we are participating in an ongoing, interactive experience of making our gayness meaningful to ourselves and each other.

In many ways, the first season of Heated Rivalry represents well a few relatively expected experiences of how homophobia functions to constrain and contain queer men’s emotional, relational, expressive, and behavioral lives (with some differences among Scott, Ilya, and Shane). Colton Underwood, for example, has written eloquently about how the show’s representation of the closet mirrored his own experience as a closeted football player.

I do not mean to say that there aren’t problems with the representations we got in the books and the show. My own experience of reading the book Heated Rivalry was like being trapped in an abusive relationship between two people who hate themselves so much that they hate and torture each other for years. The closet is always controlled from the outside by the heteronormative world, and queers have long known that it has the power to distort and twist us in disturbing ways—and it was unbearable to read. Both the book and the show made this experience doubly distasteful for me, because the intention was clearly that I find this fucked up relationship hot. I wanted them to work through their own internalized hatred and move on from each other. But that would break the romance enemy-to-lovers trope.

Equally clearly, if social media is any indication, thousands upon thousands of gay/bi men disagree with me completely and vehemently, loving and rooting for Shane and Ilya. For me, gay men arguing about whether or not Ilya and Shane’s representations are authentic, real, identifiable, positive, helpful, or joyful, is the exact kind of arguments and conversations gay/bi men ought to be having with each other about representation. That kind of discussion and disagreement can be fruitful and meaning-building, and it’s one of the things that art, especially popular art, is for.

The problems with the book series (and M/M lit) and the show is a larger structural issue within the culture industry and with the minority groups it seeks to represent: Who gets to tell gay/bi men’s stories, who profits from them, and what impact does it have when gay/bi men themselves aren’t the ones telling, creating, and profiting from their own stories? At least as early as Showtime’s version of Queer as Folk, the North American culture industry realized that there was money to be made by (re)shaping gay/bi content to the cis-het women who made up the overwhelming majority of viewers (compare the UK and North American versions of QAF to get a taste of what I mean). As if to underscore this discovery, HBO’s series Looking failed to garner a similar viewership; it was produced, directed, and written by, for, and about gay men. Again, representation isn’t the problem: gay men have had and will continue to have heated disagreements about the quality and authenticity of the representation of gay/bi men in both of these series.** But one thing that is hard to deny is that the art created by, for, and about gay/bi men themselves can be quite different from art that is about gay/bi men created by, for, and about cis-het women.

To understand why I think the issue of who gets to tell gay/bi men’s stories is of vital importance, I need to go back in time a few decades. As I was researching the emergence of what we might today think of as “gay men’s culture” in the 1960s, something that became undeniable was how central the process of meaning-making among gay/bi men was, more so, I would argue, than political organizing and activism (although the two were very difficult to tease apart in this period). As I combed through gay publications and ephemera from the end of World War II to the early 1960s, I confirmed what scholars before me had found, that nascent gay organizations grew out of and combined with the existing underground communities of the bars and clubs and bathhouses. But for me, what was more significantly was how this created an emergent kind of gay public that existed both as actual social spaces that gay/bi men could move in and out of, as well as political spaces, communal spaces, and more abstract cultural spaces in the form of local gay periodicals, which serving as means to communicate and organize as well as for debate and struggle over values, meanings, feelings, behaviors, etc. In short, over gay/bi men’s culture. You’ll notice here that I do not think of culture as a fixed, unified thing; but rather, culture is an ongoing, emergent effect of a group’s interactions with each other and with and among other groups. In this case, in the 1950s and 60s, gay/bi men worked out what they wanted their gayness to mean and what they wanted their relationship to the larger (homophobic) culture to be with each other.

I would argue that it was the growth of gay/bi men’s ability to create meaning in direct interaction with each other in public spaces that created the necessary foundation for and, indeed, a sine qua non of the full range of gay liberation/freedom/pride movements from World War II through the first years of the 21st century. That’s when we get what Lisa Duggan called the rise of homonormativity, when same-sex love and relationships were brought under the heteronormative umbrella, with the strict requirement that LGBs look, act, feel, express, and live their lives in ways that are virtually indistinguishable from cis-het lives, except that one little thing (the genitals involved, which should always remain discretely hidden).

By the late twenty-aughts, homonormativity supplied the political direction for the entire LGBT political apparatus and its campaign slogans. “Same love” and “love is love” drove the struggle for the acceptance and legalization of same-sex marriage and, as I’ve argued elsewhere, in many ways “same love” short-circuited and transformed the ongoing intra-communal dialogues and arguments about the meaning of gayness. In other words, homonormativity functioned either by intention or effect as a means to contain and control the range of meanings that gay/bi men (and lesbian/bi women) could make of their gayness. [As a vitally important aside, the consequences of reducing LGBT politics to “same love” has had dire and deadly consequences for our trans siblings and served to separate them further from LGBs, both a moral and cultural failure.]

Homonormativity and its concomitant cultures has brought with it the dissolution of gay neighborhoods and LGBT social and cultural spaces and the marketing of LGB cultures to cis-het people in ways that wrest control of the meanings of gayness (and transness) from LGBTs, forestalling or distorting the kinds of intra-communal meaning-making. Because LGBTs by definition do not inherit our LGBT cultures, we do not and cannot inherit them, rather we have to create and recreate our own cultures and social spaces over time or accept the mass-produced meanings fed to us by the cultural industry (including most especially the high-tech industry and all the problems that received culture delivered through hyper-mediated means entails).

I actually think there is much to be said and analyzed about cis-het women’s use of gay/bi men’s lives, bodies, and cultures for their own erotic and cultural pleasure—and this could be its own really interesting line of inquiry. But that is not really my point here. (And in fact, if two guys fucking turns a straight woman on, gurl, I feel you!) Rather, the problem here is larger and structural, beyond the women who have RuPaul viewing parties or who read their M/M lit on the subway or write and share their slashy fanfiction on internet fora.

Given the fragmentation and hyper “customization” of mass culture in our times, I conceive of the culture industry in broad terms, comprising everything from “indie” M/M presses and Amazon’s “self” publishing racket, more mainstream romance publishers (particularly those of YA fiction (side-eye Heartstoppers), as well as film and tv producers and writers. This culture industry has placed cis-het women at the center of both sides of the gay/bi men’s cultural equation: they both produce and profit from it, as well as consume and take pleasure in it. That both cis-het women and gay/bi men are caught up in patriarchal systems of misogyny (homophobia is in fact a subspecies of misogyny) makes the relationships and dynamics particularly tricky to untangle. Is Heated Rivalry a fair, authentic, good representation of gay/men’s lives? I think the show (produced by a gay man and acted by at least one bi man) is an infinitely better representation of gay/bi men’s experience than the book, which was clearly following women’s romance conventions and which treated the trauma of the closet as an erotic fetish.***

If what I discovered in gay/bi men’s culture making in the 1960s remains true, then a world in which gay/bi men’s meaning-making happens primarily in cis-het women’s art, profit, desires, tastes, and consumerism is to deny gay/bi men’s vital power to make our own lives meaningful, to decide for ourselves what love, sex, relationships, friendships, masculinity, femininity, gender, aging, emotional well-being, etc., mean to us, and for us, as gay/bi men. Although sexuality and gender are not the same as race and ethnicity, bringing to mind an analogous situation in which representations of, say, indigenous people have been controlled by settlers can help really emphasize the point I’m making. The quality of this kind of gay/bi art made by/for/of cis-het women — be it M/M romance or of gay porn — and whether or not it is actually good for gay/bi men is not an easy or obvious question. Yet not to ask the question is to concede the battle for the meaning of gayness to people who can be and often are oppressors. What does gayness mean to, say, a young gay/bi boy who when, because of the fragmentation of community, the rise of social media and hook-up apps, and the omnipresence of popular culture, the only meanings of gay/bi men’s lives available to him are not even made by or for gay/bi men?

Of course, in reality, we still do have the remnants of neighborhoods and some LGBT social spaces survive and there are LGBT art and cultural spaces and producers. But they are demonstrably fewer, and less powerful. Also many thousands of gay/bi men continue to participate in those cultures, in opposition to the dominating culture industry. And as I’ve already described above, one of the complexities of mass-produced culture is that gay/men continue to argue about its meaning among ourselves. But in the world created by homonormativity, with the social fragmentation created by social media, and with our sex and relational lives reduced to hook-up app algorithms, the questions feel all the more urgent: Who gets to tell our stories? Who gets to create the representations of our lives and loves? And who gets to profit from them?

Notes and Bibliographic Do-Dads

* Naming and language are always tricky with us queers. For my purposes here, I chose to stick with gay/bi because I think they are more specifically what I’m talking about; that is, I’m not talking about a generalized queerness here. And I use the word men, here, to denote all male/masc-identified folks who love and fuck other male/masc-identified folks.

** Ru Paul’s drag race underwent a similar transformation when it made the jump to VH-1. And over the last 15-20 years, as women have become a larger and larger portion of the consumers of porn, something related is also happening within the gay porn industry.

*** There is some online chatter about Rachel Reid identifying as bisexual. If that is the case, we are into a new but related morass: How much ownership and right do queers have to each others’ lives and stories? This gets particularly dicey with cis-hets who identify as queer.

Duggan, Lisa. The twilight of equality? Neoliberalism, cultural politics, and the attack on democracy (Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 2014). See especially

Ormsbee, J. Todd. The Meaning of Gay: Interaction, Community and Publicity among Homosexual Men in 1960s San Francisco (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2010).

——— “The Tragedy and Hope of Love between Gay Men: Boys in the Band and the Emotionality of Gay Love in the 1960s and 1970s,” in Matthew Bell, editor, The Boys in the Band: Flashpoints of Cinema, History, and Queer Politics (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2016): 266-291.

Our Father Who art in heaven Hallowed be Thy name Thy Kingdom come Thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven Give us this day our daily Bread And forgive us our trespasses As we forgive those who trespass against us And lead us not into temptation But deliver us from evil

Amen

Jesus is Lord! Come Lord Jesus!

Come Lord Jesus! Christ is Lord!

🇨🇦

Of Great Exclaim

The way war was an abuse And hearing sirens’ call I must have been alone And felt true But buy this coal Claimed a piece of Andrew And surely felt well Upon this day But these fears The way of time, In just a mouse And had left me here, Inept, For just a minute

🌨️

North

I can’t understand Why Wisdom blue And Earth’s time Upon and edge The stellar plane Appears and whistles For conduct court But you a day In this great white ambulance Out of my way With flowers in hand For the USA Its day of forgiving From way up North In Heaven games C++ and lonely dreams To bless the ones Who dial as such And maybe two Accept this missile For the mausoleum Of freeborn men

In Sparrow’s view A gentle castle Protecting cats And difference made The early Brit Who headed West And one aseated Upon the desk

We come across an urgent land But five is plenty In fires of Rome And we sign peace Unto the moon But on this Earth We march within- And not against- As men in Rome Who hold the cares Of sovereign Man- And rain, and due course- And figures of eight And God blessed Trudeau In subsequent tales For peace within respect And not some reason- Unseen

We pray for peace Within toward The President on time To rectify this fear Who runs astray- Generally not far But placing days On heads of steel Fortune plaid In sixty seek

We’ll run this test And talk to Rome About within That Heaven’s departure For dolphins hear This express tune And know the weary Live at one

It's 2026 already, and not even the first day of the new year. For the rereading Project, that means a chance to share some of the exciting things we're looking forward to in 2026!

Committee Nominations

Governance continues to be the highest priority for the rereading Project. To kick that off, we'll shortly open a Community Forum post where you can nominate yourself or others to be inaugural members of the Steering, Partnerships, and Ethics Committees. We hope to shortly have all three Committees up and running, and to fully shift decision making into formal governance.

Expanding Arcalibre

We'll have more to say soon, but in parallel with starting up formal governance, we're also expanding our goals for Arcalibre, our AI-free fork of Calibre. Arcalibre was started with the idea of producing an “archival” version of Calibre with all AI antifeatures removed, serving as a basis for other forks in the future.

Since then, there's been a lot of excitement for continued development of an AI-free e-book manager, as well as new opportunities to streamline the Calibre build process. Meeting that excitement and taking advantage of those opportunities means treating Arcalibre as a living body of software, and expanding beyond an archival fork.

Pre-alpha Arcalibre Builds

Recently, two contributors were able to each build and run Arcalibre tests on their own machines (thank you @cthos@mastodon.cthos.dev and @SnoopJ@hachyderm.io!). That's a long way from having downloadable releases that can be easily tested, but we're excited to get Arcalibre into a pre-alpha state early in 2026, so that there's plenty of time to kick the tires and see where we still need to improve.

More Posting

Governance requires transparency, and that means a chance to write more about what's going on at the rereading Project. Writing is good and fun, anyway, so let's do more of that in 2026!

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There's a lot wrong in the world, but there's also books, people who love reading books, people who love writing books, and the whole community of people sharing that love. That's the love and excitement that we're looking to bring into 2026 with the rereading Project. Thanks for being with us on that journey!

Schermziekte

“Meneer Voorbijgaande Aard u lijdt aan schermziekte” dat zei de arts tegen mij, amechtig hangend in onzekerheid aan de dunne scheidslijn. Voor ze deze diagnose konden stellen hadden ze een data onderzoek nodig van maar liefst zes weken, vijf dagen, drie uur, twee minuten en dertig seconden zei een zeer net sprekende robotstem aan de ene, verre kant van de telefoon. Schermziekte kende ik niet maar ik was heel ontdaan toen ik het te horen kreeg. Ik moest meteen janken, hoelang heb ik nog vroeg ik als eerste, het moest namelijk wel terminal zijn. De arts zei dat ik nog niet in levensgevaar verkeerde tenminste niet meteen, daar was wel wat meer voor nodig dan dit, en omdat ik er zo vroeg bij was kon ik dat vroegtijdig uitloggen eenvoudig voorkomen door toepassing van zeer hardnekkige uitstel want ik verkeerde nog maar in de eerste fase van dit plots opgekomen kwalijke, zeer ongezonde nieuwe euvel.

Ik vroeg dan maar een andere wel bekende vraag voor artsen, welke pillen moest ik waar in pluggen zodat ik hiermee beperkt levend verder kon leven met van al wat is en kan zijn een stuk minder natuurlijk. De man sprak over vijfmaal daags een USB stick en drie keer per week een aangelijnde upgrade van dokter Mirco Google verder moest ik vaker dagen zonder scherm leven om de voortslepende afhankelijksproblematiek danig te verminderen. Die uitspraak deed pas echt pijn, er zijn zoveel dingen die ik moet volgen, de koersen, het veldrijden, de aandelen, de geweldige films op net flix, sky home video en prime video, echt ongelooflijk goed, daar een dag zonder zitten is als een dag niet ademen. Vreselijk moeilijk. De arts begreep dit allemaal heel goed, hij had er vaak mee te maken gehad, ook persoonlijk, nog altijd moest hij het volgen van zijn eigen aandelen en bijbehorende koersen overlaten aan bevriende bankiers. Het was echter een noodzakelijke ingreep om stukken langer gelukkiger te leven. Ik moest het maar zien als een oplossing voor een probleem en niet als een ziekte ook al noemde hij het dus zelf wel zo. Hij had net zo goed kunnen zeggen dat ik leed aan het zelf probleem oplossend vermogen door mijn geheel eigen persoonlijke werkomgeving, het persoonsgebonden lijf.

Ik kon dit niet rijmen met het missen van schermtijd, een intens verlangen daaraan vulde hele dagen, vooral de lange, bij het opstaan dacht ik aan alles wat ik later zou gaan beleven al zittende turend naar het leven van anderen op geruime afstand van mijn werkelijkheid, mensen laverend door een grote variatie aan bedenkelijke landschappen, teksten van anderen declamerend alsof ze het zelf zo wouden zeggen, rond banjeren met schietwapens, in het kader van een of 't andere boodschap mensen zogenaamd vermoorden voor een vrij vaag goed bedoeld doel, de boodschap van de predikant regisseur overhevelen van grote grauwe grijze hersenmassa in iets minder grijze massa, ik hier zij heel ergens anders, driftig bezig met overleggen en sponsor gelden optrommelen via een tam tam voor een nieuw vers komend film met serie potentieel project, iets over verraderlijke lege machten die een heel land meeslepen naar een hel van ongekende proportie en een stel helden met enorm geweldige krachten, ogenschijnlijk heel normale acteurs maar dan opeens zetten ze zichzelf om in meneer en mevrouw blockbuster, die met raket aangedreven anus, vuurspuwende oren en ongekend harde scheldwoorden de aarde redden van een andere serie van oorzaken en gevolgen, en dan later na de basis film volgt cultuurlijk een hele serie waarin Blok en Buster vrienden maken, verliezen in de bikkelharde strijd tegen de oerlelijke maar uiterst pientere vijand, gemaakt uit een combinatie van natuur en ai (marimba) door een zootje waanzinnige wetenschappers, biologen en micro computer biologen of zo en ik dat dan moeten missen omdat ik lijd aan schermziekte dat zou te erg zijn, erger dan dood gaan denk ik. Daar hoor ik namelijk nooit goede verhalen over van die arme mensen die daar eenmaal over lijden. Als er een god en hemel is of duivel met hel dan beschikken die vast en zeker over alles bedwingende zwijgcontracten.

De dokter zei dat ik misschien moest overwegen om ergens anders naar te turen. Hij noemde geen voorbeelden daarom vroeg ik, de vers bakken patiënt inmiddels in onzekerheid verkerend, door, over en weer door. Waar dan naar? Wie, wanneer, met welke ogen en hoe laat? Ik bedoel die schermen zijn er toch voor, ze zijn speciaal gemaakt voor langdurig turen, de programmatuur er op aangepast, leuk gemaakt voor dat ene doel, kijken en soms een beetje luisteren, mijn hersenen vinden dat enorm leuk, mijn ogen hebben geen enkele moeite met kijken naar ingebeelde verhalen, ook al zijn ze in principe niet van mij afkomstig toch maak ik ze mij meteen eigen. Geef me alsjeblieft werkzame, schermziekte genezende tips geneesheer! De dokter zei dat ik naar bladzijden kon kijken. Ja, nou, alsof die zo vreedzaam en goed zijn, daar zitten dezelfde predikanten aan het taal spinnewiel, makers en herhalers van dezelfde soort verhalen, waarin mensen die doen alsof met elkaar praten alsof ze echt zijn daar zijn en doen alsof ze ergens zijn waar ze nooit waren, zullen zijn, alsof ze zo willen wezen, ze zijn er misschien ooit geweest maar nooit niet op die ene dag en dat ene moment en al helemaal niet dachten ze wat ze volgens de auteur van het vehikel moesten denken en meestal ook niet deden zoals wel wordt beschreven, fake!!! riep ik, dit is van het zwart en de pot met de ketel gerukt, trouwens aan iedere episode op een scherm gaat zo'n boekwerk vooraf. Dit is meer van hetzelfde maar misschien nog wel ernstiger. Het lijkt op wel zeer gerichte marketing, direct contact met de hersencellen van mij, een onschuldig heerschap, oog in oog met een hoop donkere lettergrepen in conclaaf met klemtonen figurerend op een bleke achtergrond, ik in onmacht gezeteld op een zetel voor zitten lijden aan het einde maken der tijden gemaakt, mijn tijd aan het verdoen en dat nog wel op advies van u een heerschap die ik zeer hoog acht, enorm, een ongelooflijk geweldig en zeer kunstig en kundig mediageniek persoon. Kom bedenk iets beters ter verbetering, verheffing van mijn volkse en slaafse kijk aard, u zit toch ook niet dag in dag uit te turen naar schermen en blaadjes niet wiegend in de wind, waar kijkt u zo al naar als u ogen voorwaarts zijn gericht?

De arts zei dat ik misschien wegkijken moest overwegen dat als er iets was dat heel erg dringend aanwezig is, zo goed als zeurt om aandacht, gewoon door daar te zijn met een optie voor aanzetten dat ik dan kijk naar een plek op de muur, plafond of de vloer, en daar dan niks van noch over denk. Dat is onmogelijk dokter, dat kan ik niet, ik ben geen god, ik ben een eenvoudig heerschap maar dan met terminale schermziekte, ik moet ergens heen kijken waar anderen iets doen, bewegen van a naar b, springen, draaien, praten, geluid maken, iets laten waaien in de wind, met een pijl gooien op een klein rond rood oogje schijnbaar residerend in de ogen van een stier, al heeft niemand die stier ooit gezien, en dan een ander aan de zijkant van het spektakel, opgetogen in een zwart pak heel overdreven roepen one hunderd and eighty !!! of een man in een hele dure auto die dan zo snel mogelijk rondjes rijdt op een afgebakend parkoers met een aantal vijanden die hij moet verslaan door sneller over rechte stukken en door bochten te gaan, en dan daar tot hij over dat vooraf bepaalde finishpunt heen gaat met het jammerlijke volk achter hem of erger als die ene rijder mijn voorkeur heeft omdat hij of zij dezelfde taal spreekt en dingen zegt als “het is..” dat ik dan in mineur ben omdat die ene die in een andere auto rijdt en in een andere taal over dezelfde dingen praat voor mijn favoriet eindigt.. daar moet een echt deugdelijk mens naar kijken en het later over hebben tijdens een nabespreking, er iets aan vinden of juist niet, of niet dan. De dokter klonk bij het aandragen van andere opties steeds minder zeker, absoluut niet vol overtuiging van het eigen gelijk, je kon hem al sprekende horen piekeren over eigen gedrag en dat van zijn soortgenoten. Waar kun je zoal naar kijken op een dag, dus alles behalve naar een scherm maar wat is een scherm anders dan een façade, een spiegelbeeld van de geest waarin het leven zich lijkt af te spelen maar waarin eigenlijk niets gebeurt. Dat je als mens je hele leven waarschijnlijk alleen nog maar bij jezelf naar binnen kijkt, je eigen immobiliteit dan voorziet van een aangeleerde geluidsband, een script vol spanning, avontuur en ogenschijnlijke diepgang maar er gebeurt daadwerkelijk niks, helemaal niks, en toch en toch.

De arts wees me er op dat er mensen zaten te wachten op zijn woorden, dat ook zij moesten horen wat er niet aan het lijf en en of geest deugde, op welke wijze ze ongezond waren of juist verkeerden in blakende gezondheid, ze eigenlijk hadden moeten dartelen in de weide in plaats van zitten sippen in zijn preekkamer, mensen vol verlangen en energie in de zenuwen verkerend over een kluwen wrikkende cellen, een wel of niet spoedig naderend einde, een pijntje, een lichte irritatie of meer, helse pijnen! Dus...

En ik dan? U belt mij op na zes weken waarop ik in de zenuwen zat over mijn eigen naderend einde, ik heb me dingen voorgesteld, onvoorstelbare zaken, ik ben al meermaals begraven en weder opgestaan omdat ik er niet hard genoeg in geloofde, het verhaal niet voldeed, ik wil een fatsoenlijke kwaal met een degelijke oplossing, desnoods lange, zware kuren en diverse vormen van therapie, gymnastiek en zware oefeningen waarin ik weer leer denken en of praten misschien die beide wel een keer tegelijkertijd, iets met een doel waar ik naar toe kan werken zodat ik mijn over over over klein kinderen kan zien opgroeien en horen hoe goed ze tv kijken en computer taal leren beheren, het rij bewijs halen of beter het vaar bewijs, dat lijkt me in de toekomende tijd een stuk handiger. Iets waaraan gezonde mensen lijden in plaats van zo'n nieuwerwetse kwaal net gekomen uit de koker van de afdeling medicijnman fictie. Dit is helemaal niks, ik voel me volkomen verloren zeker in dit bedrijvig heden waarin geen mens meer zonder een verbeeldend scherm kan optreden. Heeft u niet iets in de aanbieding waarvoor ik pijnstillers kan slikken en dan tegen beter weten in van de beter wetenschap beter worden dan ik ooit was?

Piep tjielp tjielp piep tjielp piep

U luistert nu naar Bennie, de AI assistent van dokter Kolder, Uw geliefde huisarts heeft eigenhandig de verbinding met u verbroken, hij heeft het zo drug, drug, drug. U kunt echter wel via het economisch efficiënte telefoon menu iedere maand de aan u voorgeschreven zo goed als verplichte medicijnen bestellen om u schermziekte te bestrijden. Wij hebben alle informatie daarover alvast doorgespeeld naar alle daarin belanghebbende derden, vierden en vijfden, partijen die economisch belang hebben bij u in samenwerking met u vele kwalen, de vele bij werkenden van de geneesmiddelen u tijdens het leven voorbeschreven, met onze kennis van zaken hebben we onder andere de volgende partijen ingelicht, publieke en commerciële omroepen, de schrijvende pers, de orerende pers, alle mogelijke internet diensten, data leverancier(s), de leveranciers van de gebrandmerkte schermmiddelen zodat ook zij weten waar op ze moeten letten als u toch erg lang naar het u door eigen toedoen ziekmakende apparaat kijkt, de overheid om u als een simpel statistisch gegeven toe te voegen in hun data bestand over het aantal schermziekte lijders, tevens hebben wij contact opgenomen met een aantal therapeutisch directe belanghebbenden dit aangaande de te volgen therapie om u kwaal in goede beperkte banen en aan goede koper lijnen of glazen vezels te leiden speciaal voor bijzondere mensen zoals u die lijden aan deze ernstige ongeneeslijke terminal kwaal. Wij hopen dat u dit niet bezwaarlijk vindt indien wel, jammer dan. Wij zullen u voortgang blijven monitoren. Dank u voor u bereidwilligheid om door ons gediagnosticeerd te worden, wij wensen u een zo goed als gelukkig mogelijk nieuwjaar en veel progressie bij u [online] therapie.

If you’re ever on Facebook or any other social media platform and have your phone’s microphone on, you’ll always see ads tailored specifically to your wants and desires. For me, it’s always backpacks, notebooks, pencils, and saxophones. It’s a love/hate thing.

Every time I go on Facebook (love Marketplace by the way), I always see some company I’ve never heard of selling genuine leather notebooks, the best journal carrying system, or the newest electronic gadget that supposedly helps you write with few distractions. The Shiny Object Syndrome (SOS) always rears its ugly head and takes your precious time and hard earned money.

Influencers praise these products and services and offer their discount codes to make sure you enjoy them as much as they do (until they move onto the next best thing). What ever happened to grabbing a simple notebook and pen/pencil and just write? Why is writing getting more complicated?

Do we really need devices with e-ink screens to help us write? Or an expensive journaling system forcing us to buy more replacement notebooks and accessories to make us look cool while we write? And do we really need an app just to time us when to start and stop writing?

I know I sound like the old man yelling at the clouds. So let’s just focus on the simple act of writing itself: paper and pen/pencil. And let’s deal with the more complicated stuff, such as publishing your manuscript and the online posts, later when the time comes.

#writing #simple #shinyobjectsyndrome

Gratitude

Manifesting and gratitude are not as simple as they sound. Many of us are living in the storm season of our lives, and when you are in it, it can be hard to see the sunshine at all.

I want to briefly share my 2025 the year manifesting finally clicked for me and I learned how to flow with the universe instead of fighting it.

Due to my disability, I rely on a van service to get to and from destinations. For several years, I spent 2–6 hours a day just commuting because it is a ride-share system. All of that time and energy was simply to get to work and rebuild my life.

At the same time, I had real concerns about healthcare costs. I made good money in my career, but not enough to comfortably cover nursing expenses.

Moving back closer to my job in the city a place I had already claimed as home despite the cost...it felt necessary. Still, money was a real concern.

But I knew the move had to happen. The long rides were exhausting me, and I was not getting enough rest to function properly.

So I made a decision: I was moving, and my needs would be met.

I focused my energy on exactly how I wanted my life to feel. I did not just think about it—I felt it. I lived as if doors were already opening and I was simply walking through them. I did not obsessively check outcomes. I only took action where it was required of me.

Here is what happened.

I was connected with an advocate who helped me secure full healthcare coverage. There was no lying, exaggerating, or manipulating the system. I stayed honest and transparent, and accommodations were made. She still jokes about invoicing me and never sent one, which tells you everything about her heart.

Over ten years ago, I said I would live where I live now because it spoke to my spirit. I would have preferred not to be wheelchair-bound, yet I was still able to secure the apartment. Management ensures my needs are met, and I have never had a complaint.

My nurses and caregivers slowly but surely fell into place. Issues are rare. One even buys groceries and cooks for me, which saves me a significant amount of money.

I also needed new medical equipment and searched everywhere for suppliers willing to help. Nothing worked until I finally found one. My insurance covered everything in full, even though other suppliers could not make it happen. I do not know what occurred behind the scenes, and honestly, I do not care.

Everything worked out because I aligned myself with the abundance already present in my life. Doors open for me because I believe they will.

You may be someone, like I once was, who overthinks this process and fixates on variables such as timing, location, or practical limitations.

Here is another perspective.

A friend of mine, who was previously my nurse, wanted to leave nursing to pursue her passion for music and transition into music therapy. She was struggling financially and has a special-needs child. She aligned herself with purpose and trust.

When we last spoke, she had quit nursing and was working in music full-time. Her external circumstances had not magically changed, yet she had not experienced a single financial crisis. More importantly, she felt fulfilled and aligned with her reason for being here.

Here is what I want you to do.

Something tells me some of you reading this do not need to start small. You need something to shift.

Let us use getting a job as an example.

You know you do not want to remain unemployed. What you do want is a career that pays the bills, allows you to live comfortably, and maybe even take time off to rest.

Close your eyes. Do not focus on desperation. Do not replay how hard life feels right now. Instead, feel what it would be like to already have the job.

Close your eyes. Imagine this.

You enjoy getting up in the morning and going to work. You feel accomplished when you complete your tasks. You are surrounded by coworkers who respect you. You made a difference today. You feel at ease when your paycheck comes in. You are grateful for the person who opened the door for you. You feel valued by your supervisor and respected for your ideas.

Notice the difference. There is no focus on what you do not want. The universe responds to frequency, not resistance.

Allow the opportunity to come to you, but still do your part. Update your résumé. Apply for jobs. Attend conferences if you can. Take advantage of free events. Meet people.

Do not dwell on rejection. You do not know what you were being protected from.

Stay aligned. Trust the timing. The doors will open, and the signs will be clear.

Lastly, be grateful. Being where you are right now is a privilege not granted to everyone.

This is just the beginning..

Prov

👋 👀👂✌️

👄

Hello hello

I have got a big heart and it’s not made of steel, like in this expertly written track by Manowar, named ”Heart of Steel“,

I listen to that one a lot, when facing hardships, I too feel like a comet. I too burn the bridge behind me, because there are things worse than death.

I think.

Always one more try!

And the falling snow, indeed will always melt, even though sometimes it takes a long time,

This song lyrics are very accessible for youth and adults alike, indeed the old sometimes forget that they have strayed from their paths somewhere long ago,

And sometimes some of them don’t remember who they once were meant to be.

But that’s not passing judgement, life can grind HARD! Sometimes a battery of circumstances can propel anyone into space or down into a very deep well, so much that the exit seems smaller than a star. And that’s not something I can judge people for, laying as I do, on the yellow sofa.

However, it’s never to late to do the right thing. Even Jesus says so.

Like in this text, it’s not about succeeding, it’s about perseverance. To not give up! It’s all we got?!

But yes! Staying true to the ideal is no easy task.

It requires a heart of steel

I think I have such a heart after all

I must believe I do