Jamming the signal as the world burns

A week in the woods, Make It Stop in the news, One Book San Diego, & Ron Currie comes to town.

After driving more than 1,5000 miles I’m back in San Diego. I spent time in the woods, bonded with friends, got a new tattoo, and returned home with the beginning of a brand new novel. I arrived with 2,000 words of a short story that wasn’t working and left with 20,000 words of a novel about three Irish-American brothers who fall into a life of crime when their father’s San Diego boxing gym is overrun by local gangsters.

The beginnings of books are my favorite: all possibilities and no problems—except for the ones I invent to complicate things for my characters. Usually, I have some kind of an idea who my characters are before I start, but not this time. I had an unusual situation: an X who does Y for Z. I didn’t know anything about the world my protagonist inhabits. Now I do and that world comes shining through not only when I write, but when I’m driving or exercising or chewing my Cheerios. It’s the best feeling. It’s what I wanted from drugs and was never quite able to find.

Now that I’m back I’m going to slow down the pace, honor the idea, be present in my life. A week in the woods without electricity or internet is great for creativity, but it’s not real life. I’m not Thoreau. I’m not even a contestant on Survivor. I wouldn’t have lasted 24 hours without all the creature comforts and connectivity that was a short trek up the hill to the big house where I had my morning coffee and ate my meals. But being intentional about my internet use meant I wasn’t being blindsided by the news every 12 seconds and that’s something I’d like to bring back with me.

Over dinner at night, which the writers took turns preparing, we talked about the state of the world, and I expressed my view that writing, making art, playing music, taking photographs, etc. is not escaping from the world, it’s not putting our heads in the hands. The art we make today might save someone tomorrow, just as I have been saved many times by reading the right words at the right time in the weeks before, during, and after my decision to get sober. My friend

Eric Raymond

said it best in his newsletter yesterday: “Work on what you like. It’s the best way to jam their signal.”

Scenes from FU Tattoo in Santa Cruz, CA

Make It Stop in the news redux

Last week I learned that my novel, Make It Stop, along with several other books I’ve written, and hundreds of thousands of titles written by others, was used to help train Meta’s large language model Llama. My book was thrown into Meta’s gaping maw because someone (or more likely a bot) had added Make It Stop to LibGen, a massive site where books are illegally uploaded without the permission or consent of their authors and publishers, making it ridiculously easy for Meta pirate massive numbers of books.

You’ve probably heard how tech companies have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in AI, and that that investment has led to all kinds of breakthroughs in science and drug discovery, and helped fuel the stock market boomlet prior to the 2024 election, and so on. None of that money, however, is going to the authors of the books being used to train these LLMs, which cheeses me off for a number of reasons.

First of all, every single one of these feckless billionaires have demonstrated they don’t care about society or the common good. They only care about their bottom lines. They already steal our data and use it to sell things back to us, which is something that most of us shrug away as the price of being online. I never consented to collaborate with Meta on this LLM project, and if they’d offered a nominal fee, I probably would have declined.

Why? Because I hate the idea of a corporation—any corporation—using Make It Stop to train its robots. Make It Stop, ICYMI, is about a group of underground vigilantes who fight the forces of corporate healthcare to liberate people from what have essentially became prison hospitals. It’s a dystopian novel set in a near-future that’s dark AF. But every month people send me news stories about the many ways this sinister future is coming true. Last week, it was an article in the Guardian about the corporations doing ICE’s dirty work.

"The reality became clear: ICE detention isn’t just a bureaucratic nightmare. It’s a business. These facilities are privately owned and run for profit.

Companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group receive government funding based on the number of people they detain, which is why they lobby for stricter immigration policies. It’s a lucrative business: CoreCivic made over $560m from ICE contracts in a single year. In 2024, GEO Group made more than $763m from ICE contracts.

The more detainees, the more money they make. It stands to reason that these companies have no incentive to release people quickly. What I had experienced was finally starting to make sense.

How is that any different my fictional evil healthcare network detaining people in hospitals who can’t pay their bills? You could drop the name Health Net Secure into this article and no one would bat an eye.

But I didn’t write a book about how great these corporations are. I wrote a book about the vigilantes who dedicate their lives to fighting them . So it bothers me a lot that while corporations are running amok one of the richest people on the planet is pirating my novel so he can make more money for himself and his billionaire cronies as the world burns.

I wish more people knew about Make It Stop. It may seem counterintuitive to spend time and money spreading the news about a book that will be two years old next month, but I’m going to try a few things I’ve never done before that don’t involve asking people to buy the book, and I’m going to ask for your help doing it. Here’s the first one…

Nominate Make It Stop for One Book San Diego

You can nominate Make It Stop for One Book San Diego. The book fits the criteria: it was published after 2020, the author is alive (barely), and the book inspires “discussion, conversation, and action.” Boy does it ever.

The deadline is April 1, which means if you don’t nominate Make It Stop right now it’s probably not going to happen. It takes about 20 seconds fill out a short Google form and there are no log-ins or passwords to create. Oh, look here’s a button…

AWP in LA, Ron Currie in San Diego

I love mega readings so much I’m doing two AWP off-site events on Friday. If you’re trying to organize your evening I’ll be at the Combat Lit event from 6-8pm and at Attack of the Book People from 8-10pm. Plan accordingly.

I’ve been telling you about my AWP off-site events for weeks, but I haven’t told you about the event I’m doing at The Book Catapult on Sunday March 30 at 6pm with Ron Currie about his new book The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne. Ron and I go way back, all the way back to the pre-social media days of Zoetrope Studios, which means we’ll probably roast each other mercilessly for 45 minutes and then take questions from the audience.

Here’s some new Superchunk, as a treat…

Thanks for reading! Next week I’ll have reviews of books I listened to while driving around California and also Currie’s great sweeping crime sage The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne. If you liked this newsletter you might also like my latest novel about healthcare vigilantes Make It Stop, or the paperback edition of Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise & Fall of SST Records, or my book with Bad Religion, or my book with Keith Morris. I have more books and zines for sale here. And if you’ve read all of those, consider checking out my latest collaboration The Witch’s Door and the anthology Eight Very Bad Nights.

Message from the Underworld comes out every Wednesday and is always available for free, but paid subscribers also get my deepest gratitude and Orca Alert! on most Sundays (but not last Sunday, but definitely this Sunday). It’s a weekly round-up of links about art, culture, crime, and killer whales.