Every December like clockwork, some genius on the internet gets on Reddit to argue that Die Hard is a Christmas movie, as if they’re the first person to ever think of that. It’s such a tedious argument. Die Hard takes place at Christmas for crying out loud—the film explicitly features Christmas parties, Christmas music, and family reunification as its emotional core. Arguing that Die Hard belongs in the Christmas canon requires exactly zero imagination. And no serious person is debating it doesn’t anyway. Aliens, on the other hand, is notably overlooked. There’s no snow, no carols, no presents, no mistletoe. The film is set on a xenomorph-infested colony moon called LV-426, where the concept of seasonal holidays is meaningless and everyone is trying very hard not to get facehugged. And yet James Cameron’s 1986 masterpiece belongs in the Christmas canon more legitimately than half the Hallmark movies clogging your streaming queue.
X Premium Support is a Gaslighting Kafkaesque Parody of Itself
I have a magical rented blue checkmark that’s advertised to grant “enhanced visibility.” In mid-October, my reach on Twitter dropped 75% overnight and never recovered. My engagement rate? Running an order of magnitude over platform average—exceptional by any measure. When I contacted Premium support with comprehensive data, charts, and systematic elimination of alternative explanations, they ignored everything I’d said and replied with a list of canned social media network tips. When pressed, they regretted to inform me users just don’t find my demonstrably engaging content all that “interesting.” Then deflected to completely unrelated revenue sharing calculations I’d never asked for. Then closed my ticket and handed me off to Grok, who helpfully suggested I use more hashtags. Someday I’ll look back on this and have a good laugh.
Could Amazon Use Your Books to Train AI?
Traditional publishers are negotiating AI training deals worth hundreds of millions and establishing consent-based licensing standards. Meanwhile, Amazon has made no public statement about whether it can—or will—use the millions of books on Kindle Direct Publishing for the same purpose. The silence matters because every indie author using KDP has granted Amazon irrevocable rights under terms that predate AI technology. Unlike traditionally published authors who can negotiate or decline licensing deals, indie authors have already agreed to terms they can’t modify, can’t escape, and which Amazon has never clarified regarding AI training.
Will AI Marketing Materials Kill Your Sales?
Stanford tracked 3.2 million images across a major marketplace and found sales increased 39% after AI art was introduced—consumers actively chose AI-generated images. Christie’s AI art auction exceeded estimates by $128,000 despite 6,500 petition signatures opposing it. Consumer detection accuracy has collapsed to 52%—essentially coin-flip territory. Every backlash case that makes headlines represents PR retreat in response to vocal criticism, not consumer boycotts. Not one shows measurable sales decline. Sentiment plummets in social listening reports while quarterly revenue remains unaffected. 91% of U.S. advertising agencies use or explore AI despite the discourse. Meta reported over 1 million advertisers creating 15 million AI-generated ads in August 2024. Major publishers license their catalogs for AI training while issuing statements opposing it. The gap between what consumers say in surveys and what they actually buy is massive. For indie authors making practical marketing decisions, here’s what the data shows.
SFWA’s AI Ban: Technical Illiteracy Meets Moral Panic
On Friday, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association announced new Nebula Awards rules allowing some AI-assisted works to compete. By evening—after member outrage and two emergency board votes—they’d reversed course entirely, banning any LLM use whatsoever. The result? Policy written by people who think large language models are “assemblers of stolen work,” creating bright-line rules where boundaries fundamentally don’t exist, protecting the genre’s most prestigious award from a threat that doesn’t actually exist. This is what happens when technical illiteracy meets moral panic.
Algorithmic Skullduggery on X: An Update
I published an article earlier today arguing that X tanked my reach because I removed over a hundred fake accounts. The timing was perfect, the correlation was clean, and I was confident in my analysis. Then I discovered that X rolled out a completely new AI-powered algorithm the very next day—a change significant enough that Elon Musk publicly apologized five days later. Now I have two correlations and no way to prove causation. Here’s what I got wrong, what I might have gotten right, and why at the end of the day the distinction doesn’t really matter.
I Optimized My Audience for Quality, and X Screwed Me for It
I did everything the social media marketing guides tell you to do. Cleaned my X follower base. Removed 137 bot and suspicious accounts degrading my audience quality. Optimized for authentic engagement. My impressions dropped 75% overnight and never recovered. Two months later, I’m still shadowbanned—not for violating any policy, but for following the platform’s own stated values. The algorithm can’t tell the difference between your audience abandoning you and you curating your audience. Or it won’t. Either way, you eat the penalty. Here’s what I learned about why you can’t trust platforms like X with your audience.
Why I’m No Longer with WarGate Books
On September 16, 2025, after I criticized specific extremist dehumanizing rhetoric publicly, some of which targeted my own immediate family members, WarGate Books informed me they would no longer promote my work, claiming I was unmarketable to their audience. They suggested I take my Dark Dominion sequence, which was pending publication with two full manuscripts already delivered, elsewhere. I’m establishing this on public record because the facts matter and third-party agitators with extensively documented credibility problems are attempting to twist the narrative. People can agree or disagree with my political analysis and personal views, but I believe the timeline and circumstances of the separation should be clear and documented. Accuracy matters, and I won’t accept mischaracterization of what happened or why. I have no interest in conflict with WarGate Books. Thus far they’ve conducted the separation professionally and I’m friends with many of their authors. I wish them all well. Meanwhile, I have books to write and an audience more aligned with my values to build. So this will be my last word on the topic. I’m moving on and as far as I’m concerned nothing more about this needs to be said.
The Permission to Hope
I left the Mormon church after serving a two-year mission—seven generations of family legacy abandoned because I couldn’t ignore the evidence. I became an atheist. For seven years, the universe was just matter and energy until entropy wins. Then one secular Christmas, I gave myself permission to hope the Nativity might be true. Not because I had new evidence—simply because I wanted to live in a universe where Love became incarnate to share human suffering. Fourteen years after leaving Mormonism, after studying philosophy, theology, and church history with the same rigor that made me leave, I was baptized Catholic. It wasn’t certainty. It was hope sustained by intellectual honesty. This is what I believe about faith, doubt, and the courage to follow truth wherever it leads.
When a President Weaponizes Murder
Trump blamed Rob Reiner and his wife’s murder on “Trump Derangement Syndrome” while the actual killer—Reiner’s son—sat in police custody. It wasn’t a gaffe. It wasn’t “trolling the libs.” It was strategic messaging: critics suffer consequences, those consequences are their fault, and their deaths mark America’s “Golden Age.” This isn’t a few people dancing in blood on TikTok. This is the sitting President of the United Sates engaging in stochastic terrorism—rhetoric that incites violence without explicit commands by pathologizing dissent, inverting causality, and celebrating outcomes. It’s the same mechanism that got me accused of “TDS” and cost me my publisher when I documented extremist patterns of dehumanizing rhetoric on the Right. The system is self-sealing: analyze it and you prove you’re diseased. Document it and you become its next target.
The Annex 