Category: Essay

The Pokemon Gridiron Lineup

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A website called All22pokemon lets you make an American Football team out of the monsters. Here’s my Gen 1 lineup.

Big burly types for the offensive line. One fast electric and two fliers for the wideouts. I had a rule for “receivers need hands or some form to catch”, but broke it to include Tauros, the most powerful Gen I Pokemon without “Mew” in its name. The Quarterback is Alakazam, because of course you want a telekentic with an IQ of 5000 who can teleport.

Defensively, fast electrics for corners (scientists have noticed how dominant these types are at the position), a defensive line that can literally cover the field with their bodies save for one left edge rusher, two immovable blobs at inside linebackers, a generalist right outside linebacker and an LT style fast anti-pass edge rushbacker to the left. Speedy normals serve as the safeties.

Literary Survivorship Bias

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People are lamenting, and not unreasonably so, that people are losing the ability to process literature. However, I believe that A: Such a thing did not really exist, and B: If it did, it was something along the lines of “past generations knew how to ride horses better.”

I think the reason is survivorship bias, which my reading of decades worth of cheap thrillers has shown. Basically, people see the literary works that endured in popular conciousness, not the far cruder ones people actually read.

The Dumbest Air Disaster

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In 2024, Air Serbia Flight 324 (barely) made it off the ground and sailed into history as quite possibly the dumbest pilot error air disaster of all time.

The crash thankfully didn’t result in loss of life, although it could very well have been catastrophic.

At first glance, this was like Comair 5191 or Singapore Airlines 006 where a plane moved to a wrong, too-short runway and tried to take off from it. Except here the ATC caught them having moved to the middle of the runway instead of the end and warned them. They acknowledged-and then decided to try and take off from the half-runway anyway.

At least PIA 8303 was already in the air and trying to land. This was safe on the ground when the crew decided to do something as risky as it was dumb. Fortunately, the only casualties were the hull of the plane and the lessor airline’s contract with Air Serbia.

The Charles Curtis Effect

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The Charles Curtis effect is when a book, especially a children’s book on certain historical groups neglects to show one of the most prominent. Named after Herbert Hoover’s vice president, to this day the Native American who has ascended the highest, he was not in a children’s book I saw on prominent Native Americans but Jim Thorpe was. This is like including Bo Jackson but not Barack Obama in a book on prominent African-Americans.

One of the most recent Curtis Effects I saw was also one of the most baffling. It was a children’s book on the New York Giants that had reference to pre-Super Bowl era players, mentioned Phil Simms and Ottis Anderson as stars in the 80s…. but did not mention Lawrence Taylor once.

It’d be like a book on the New England Patriots saying “And here are two of the greatest Patriots ever: John Hannah and Richard Seymour!”

The Sullivan Scams

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I’ve noticed a rather common type of scam done by therapists and caregivers that, as someone with a (comparably minor) disability, is incredibly infuriating. This is NOT accusing such people overall of being scammers-in fact, most therapists are rightfully the loudest voices against such terrible people.

I call this the Anne Sullivan Scam, or Sullivan Scam after Helen Keller’s caregiver. There’s been a lot of “Helen Keller fraud” videos going around the internet, but Sullivan is the real target and the titles are misworded. The disabled person is not the fraudster here-it’s not like they’re faking or exaggerating their own massively serious condition. The person “speaking for them” is. In the namesake, there’s massive amounts of evidence that Sullivan was “ghostwriting” on Keller’s behalf.

Yet the largest Sullivan Scam comes in facilitated communication. Every single legitimate therapist I’ve known has continually denounced it. Even if sincerely well-intended, it’s ineffective and contaminated by the “Ouija Board Effect” where the facilitator is unconsciously steering things. If it isn’t and the facilitator is knowingly steering things, it’s even more disturbing.

Most Sullivan Scams have the disabled person’s “speech” suddenly becoming beautiful, articulate, and mysteriously like that of someone with an advanced degree. Which is kind of telling, isn’t it?

Animal Power

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Like WW3 1987, I might be doing re-reviews, only in this case of books that have nothing to do with a Fuldapocalypse. At least one worth revisiting is Naomi Alderman’s The Power, which got a TV adaptation after I got it and was one of the first diversified reviews on this blog.

The plot summary: Women gain comic book electricity powers. Because men have been JUST SO CRUEL a critical mass become “Magnetos” and not “Xaviers”, so society devolves into a power trip (pun intended) with the timeskip showing a cruel bizarro-Gor.

The gold standard for this kind of “see how power [pun also intended] corrupts and how oppressed become oppressors” is of course, Orwell’s classic Animal Farm. But whereas that was an allegory of revolution (and not just the Russian one, the name ‘Napoleon’ is very deliberate), this is kind of like if a radical vegan wrote Animal Farm and the message was how animal husbandry is inherently vile. Instead of the pigs becoming humanized, they’d turn into, I don’t know, Beastmen of Slaanesh depraved sadists, because HUMANS ARE THE REAL MONSTERS.

Using AI tools

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Someone asked me (and others) if they should use AI for a book cover. As you know, I’m an active AI artist, hardly the hand-art fire eater who scorches it the way Michelangelo scorned oil paints. I still immediately said “No”. Or rather, “in short, no. But rather if you want them to be good it’s going to take a lot more effort than you think.”

If you just do basic prompting, the “pull to the middle” effect of AI means the result is going to look like stereotypical AI Slop. Because it is. Or if you want a more generous interpretation, it’ll look like you used a pre-arranged template. Because a default AI generation is essentially that. In other words, rather than using its power to move past cheap stock covers, AI frequently continues the trend.

Now sometimes you need cheap quick disposable filler, and I’m not arguing against it there. Nor am I suggesting any one right way to do it. But AI or not, if you want to stand out, you still have to work for it.