(The verdict on the Departure Mirror experiment was no, a pro-rate magazine can't run on advertising alone. They can be loss leaders. They can be expensive hobbies. But self-sustaining quality publications need either subscribers or donors. The alternative is clickbait and/or AI slop.)

This version of the story is very much a today version, but so were Homer's and Ovid's. They made Persephone alive and contemporary, and so does Gerri Leen.

I especially love "The Eleusinian What Now?" because it truly is in the grand tradition of tellings of the Greek myths.

People often think the surviving versions are the official dogma.

They weren't. They were stories, just like this one, spinning a story everyone knew for a new audience.

During the pandemic, my family and I decided to do an experiment to see if a pro-rate, free magazine could sustain itself on advertising alone. That was Departure Mirror Quarterly. Gerri sent us one of my favorite poems ever, which we published, and it was our second Dwarf Stars nominee. "Fetch."

While I can't force anyone to join me in this quest, I do implore you to assess whether the easy path now or the endgame-ready approach is in your best interests.

—ART

And that is why at @hellitself.bsky.social we have a strict no-AI policy across the board. No AI-written stories. No AI editors. No AI marketers. No AI art. Just humans doing the work themselves, preparing for the world where that is valuable again.

I'm going to argue is that you want to be one of the people who still possesses the intellect and the skills to do work yourself. To be the one who can do things the AI can't. To be the one who can understand where the AI fails and fix it.

Realistically, the technology is not going away. I have no doubt that AI slop will continue to be produced, and I expect its abilities will continue to improve.

But do you want to live in a world where the AI produces but only those with money get to enjoy it?

Because if so, you won't have money.

Those who own the AI technology are not trying to build you up. They are trying to build themselves up. Their goal is to render you obsolete in whatever you do.

By embracing this LLM-AI push — even before we get into the ethics and efficacy of the technology — you are speeding your own downfall.

And while that future may sound appealing, again, I ask the question: If the AI can do it for you, why wouldn't the AI do it instead of you?

The future that those behind this push for LLM-AI seems to be careening towards is one where we are a society made up of companies of one. Them. They are each a company that has no need for employees because the AI does all the work for them, and they simply collect the rewards.

I get that it's meant to make my life easier by having the AI do the work for me. In the short term, that sounds very nice.

However, I get paid for my work.

If an AI can do it for me, why would an employer pay me to do it instead of having the AI do it instead of me?

My question to all the companies that are trying to force LLM-based AI on me is this: What is the endgame?

If you haven't read the Murderbot books, you really should. Otherwise the previous — what is the word one uses for a "tweet" here? — will make very little sense, and you're missing out on some of the best science fiction being published today.

Apparently, one needs to let the system email one before it will let one reply.

Thank you.