Category: Uncategorized

What Makes a Believer

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

Are you a FOLLOWER or INFLUENCER?

The 92 yr old mother of a friend is getting kicked out of her assisted living apt. Developers convinced the Seattle City Council they should be allowed to ‘update’ the residence of old people and turn it into ‘workforce’ housing for the tech industry. They are taking over hundreds, if not thousands of older folks’ homes, the apts they’ve lived in for over two decades.

What happened to us? When did we stop caring about anyone but ourselves?

I didn’t grow up this way. Born 15+ yrs after WW2, during the ‘Golden Age of economic growth,’ there was a 20 (or so) year respite where people actually cared about their neighbors, their community, this country. Not so much now.

Money. Money. MONEY is all anyone seems to care about. But why? What changed? What happened?

Housing was well constructed in the 1950s through mid-60s. American Lumber Standard Committee (ALSC) sanctioned 2 x 4” posts cut to 1½ x 3½” — a profit grab for the lumber industry — making new builds far less sturdy. Today’s contractors build post-frame as much as 18 to 24” apart, again to increase their already absurd profits. Earthquakes, fires, floods, severe weather, these new developments put up crap housing that require constant repair with even mild storms.

My mother-in-law turned 90 last April. She’s on Medicare, having Social Security taxes taken out of every paycheck for 60 years. These payments were supposed to give her medical coverage in old age. Since her 90th, Medicare will no longer cover her colonoscopies, or mostly any preventative procedure. Our govt wants her to die. Like NOW. She’s done giving up half her paycheck to SS, and our govt has no need for her. Our (not MY) president, and the majority of our congressmen and senators don’t care they OWE HER for the PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE they’ll get the rest of their lives.

Depressing? You bet! It’s going to get worse, so if you can’t handle the TRUTH go back to scrolling Insta or streaming Netflix, and stay blissfully ignorant pretending you’ll never get old and have to deal with the ugly, greedy TRUTH coming at ya.

Got parents? Even if you are not old, they’ll be getting there. What happens to them when they can’t afford assisted living, or there isn’t any because of the unrelenting greed of today’s development industry? Even better, what happens to YOU when you have to lay out your salary to cover your parents aging. Or is that out too? You’ll let ’em wallow in filth and neglect?

How did we get to this horrible greedy place, this place where half this country voted in the second coming of Hitler who made it very clear he only cares about himself and making the rich richer?

Have we always been this way — GREEDY and IGNORANT? According to Stanley Milgram’s study, we always have. While Self-interest is part of our nature — the greed — most of us are fundamentally followers. Influencers, like actors, models, musicians; and authority figures, like doctors, therapist, even politicians draw BELIEVERS. We accept, even participate in bad medicine, injustice, inequity, intolerance, racism, sexism, sometimes murder and even slaughter of millions following the status quo.

Shortly after WW2, Stanley Milgram, a Yale professor did an ‘obedience’ experiment. (Watch trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sngGqBOLWaI)

Milgram was a Jew. He wanted to find out what motivated Germans to turn on neighbors. Why would 90% of German citizens allow the slaughter of children on the same soccer team as their kids? Or passively watch the displacement and murder of Jews they once shared meals, holidays, and special occasions? Why would Germans agree, and even support genocide, rape, disembowelment while still alive, torture beyond any sense of sanity? Milgram wanted to know.

The MILGRAM EXPERIMENT, as it’s now known, revealed some striking and profound truths about Germans, and all of us.

It PROVED that humans are SHEEP, highly obedient to authority figures and willing to harm others when instructed to do so.

Humans are sheep, follow the flock, the crowd, influencers, salesmen, priests.

We FOLLOW because it’s easier than THINKING.

We blindly follow our parents’ beliefs in fantasies like God, or Jesus, with no proof either exist, or evidence that Christ was ever born. None whatsoever, though tax rolls have been found at Christ’s (ostensible) time, without mention of Jesus at all.

We adopt behavior that even we don’t like — that’s not the best of us — with justifications like “everyone does it!” Engaged with your cellphone while driving today? Most who do, don’t THINK they’re really increasing their odds of killing themselves or someone else by upwards of 25%.

Intoxicants, from drink to weed will not cure cancer. Alcohol is toxic for the body. Smoking weed is carcinogenic — cancer causing. And mental ‘health’ pharms are addictive and eat the crap out of your liver, among a host of other side effects. Hey, but everyone does them, right?

What Makes a Leader?

While Milgram’s experiment revealed most humans are essentially sheep, following a herd, whether family, friends, priests, or govts, SOME PEOPLE, a few outliers, are not. In fact, they lead the human flock.

Hitler did. Trump does. Oligarchs, like Musk, are leaders to many who are delusional enough to believe they too can become a billionaire. On the other side, Susan B. Anthony, FDR, MLK all moved this nation towards a more equitable country.

Are you a SHEEP or LEADER? If you’re thinking: I’M A LEADER, you’re likely lying to yourself. Humans lie to ourselves (and others) a LOT! Like following, lying is part of our nature.

WATCH the Milgram experiment. The odds are you’d be one of the 65% who tortured an unseen man with electric shocks to death, simply because someone politely asked you to do so. Not threatening, not aggressive. Just “Please continue,” was what the admin in the experiment asked. And the 65% claimed they were just ‘following directions’ (sheepishly) allowing them to deliver shocks that were lethal.

What happened to us, to humanity to turn us into greedy, self-absorbed monsters?

Perhaps we’ve always been this way. Or maybe not. Maybe there was a time humanity worked for the benefit of the group instead of just the SELF. I don’t know. What I do know is Milgram’s experiment gave us a window into our own psyche that PROVES humans are fundamentally sheep.

Armed with this knowledge, we can recognize (THINK: examine) when we’re blindly going along with the flock. And we can choose not to.

 — 

Atheist in Christian America

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

Atheists are worse than terrorists in USA…

I was finishing the morning dishes when I saw the strobe of police lights out my kitchen window as several cop cars pulled up to a house across the street from ours. I picked up my 19-month-old son out of the highchair, held him against my ballooning belly, and hauled my 7-month pregnant self out the front door to check out the happening.

A warm, sunny morning, I went down to the end of the cul-de-sac and met up with a few of my neighbors gathered there to witness the commotion. We had chosen our home in an East Bay suburb of San Francisco because it promised good public schools, and gave the impression of a safe, friendly neighborhood in which to raise our kids. We’d moved in a month earlier and no residents had come over to welcome us. I joined the group of three, introduced myself and my son, and then asked what was going on as I watched cops move in and out and around the house across the street like black ants.

“Robbery,” a small, plump woman with a bad blond dye job in her mid-40s said. “Shelly said they got their laptops, the Xbox, some jewelry, and all the guns, but that was it.”

“Bet they were going after the guns,” another woman, taller, but also with a bad blond dye job added. “Bill loved showing off his gun collection.” She pursed her lips and looked back at four kids all under 10 in front of the house at the end of the block, presumably one or more being hers.

There was a moment of awkward silence, then the remaining woman, with what looked like naturally auburn hair, asked me to repeat my last name.

When I told her again, she said, “Oh, you’re the Jewish couple then? I heard there was a Jewish family that moved in recently.” She smiled cordially and practically giggled as she stared at me in wonderment.

Now all the women were staring at me. They each wore a tight-lipped grin. It was clear that they were tickled by the idea of living near Jews. Unlike L.A. or New York, the Bay area’s Jewish population is comparatively small. Though our last name was often mistaken for Jewish, its derivation is German and isn’t always a Jewish moniker. The woman’s assumption was ignorant, but typical, especially in areas where Jews are a novelty.

“Actually, we’re Atheists. We don’t practice any religion.” I tried to sound casual in my reveal, as so often my lack of religious orientation is met with disdain.

Blank stares. Total silence. It was like I had just said that we were registered child molesters. My words hung like lead in the dead air until the auburn-haired woman broke the silence.

“You know,” she tried to sound casual. “I read this article in Cosmo the other day about Atheists. They’re actually supposed to be non-violent people. The writer pointed out that we never hear about Atheists killing or kidnapping innocents, bombing buildings, or hijacking planes.”

The vacuum that followed her comment made it clear that the new neighbors would have preferred we were practicing Jews, or Mormons, or Buddhists, or even Muslims at that point.

“You mean you don’t participate in the holidays?” the small blond woman asked, mortified. “Not even Christmas?” she said in a babyish voice to my son in my arms who stared at her like she was an off-world alien, then reached out and tried to grab hold of her straw-like hair.

“No. Not even Christmas.” I assured her and grabbed hold of my son’s tiny hand and kissed it.

“Well, Christmas isn’t a religious holiday,” she said with certainty. As absurd as her comment was, I hear it all the time. I refrained from reminding her that Christmas celebrates the birth of Christ, the very foundation of Christianity.

“We have five nights of winter presents which compensates quite nicely,” I explained. “And we celebrate birthdays, special occasions, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and so forth.”

She bobbed her head up and down, but I could tell I’d already lost her. She looked towards the kids with pursed lips of concern. And I got that she was afraid of me. I was the anti-Christ, the infidel, the soulless. Though her fear was unwarranted, there isn’t a religious, or even self-proclaimed “spiritual” person I can recall that I don’t get the same bounce from when I reveal I’m an Atheist. No God? No values. It’s common [religious] wisdom (rhetoric), right?

I didn’t set out to set myself apart. My brief stint in Sunday school was forced upon me at 6 yrs old until I was 13, when my parents had to acquiesce to my unshakable conviction that there is no God. My mother spent the rest of her life convinced that I would come back to religion when I ‘grew up,’ got married and had kids. But the certainty of a godless universe, one ruled by entropy, not empathy, has resonated with me as far back as I can remember, and has not altered since I declared my independence from religion at 5 when I assured my grandmother she was insisting I say nightly prayers to no one.

My husband and I have chosen to raise our kids without religion. Instead of the indoctrination we had to endure, we have given our children the opportunity to discover their own spirituality.

The cop cars left, one right after the other, my son now fidgeting in my arms, pulling at my hair and trying to grab the thin, 1” long gold bar dangling from the small gold loop through my pierced ear. I managed to evade his tiny hand, but the weight of him on my swollen belly was exaggerating the pressure of my daughter kicking me from inside.

“Well, I guess the show’s over,” the taller, athletic blond woman said, decked in dark gray leggings and a tight bright pink sleeveless T.

We exchanged departure pleasantries, and I took my son home. The next day I was gardening in the front yard and two kids, a boy and girl, maybe 7 and 9, came riding by on their bikes. My son ran to the curb, waving wildly to greet them. They pulled up close to where he stood, and then the boy kicked my son in the belly and screamed “Satan lover!” My son fell on his butt and sat on the sidewalk crying hysterically.

I was horrified. “Oh my god, are you crazy,” I yelled as I went to attend to my son. I saw them ride down the block towards the cul-de-sac and disappear into a garage next to the house that had been robbed.

I spoke to my husband about the event later that evening. At dinner, he suggested I go talk to the parents of the two kids on bikes since he didn’t see the interaction, and someone had to stay home with our son. I suggested he go since I was afraid I’d say something offensive in my outrage at their children’s behavior. Before either of us could leave, there was a knock on our front door.

The small straw-haired blond woman and her short, pudgy husband stood on our porch with pursed lips. “I hear you had an interaction with my kids today,” she said to me, her anger so visceral it felt like her eyes were shooting bullets into mine. “You cussed at them and called them ‘crazy,’” she said, now practically spitting as she spoke.

I was floored, literally drop-jawed unable to respond.

My husband invited them in to talk and calmly closed the door behind them, all of us now gathered in our small entryway. He invited them into the kitchen, led them in, and offered them something to drink but both of them refused. I followed, focusing on breathing and slowing my rapid heart rate.

“It is my understanding that your son kicked our son when he was riding by on his bike this afternoon, which is what likely provoked my wife’s response,” my husband said.

“My son would never do that,” the little woman insisted. “We are good Christians, and my kids are good kids, raised with sense yours sorely lacks when he goes running after them on their bikes.”

“Our son is a year and a half old,” I practically screamed at her over our dinner table that we were all standing around. “He’s not running after anyone. He was waving at your kids to say hello! And I never cussed at your kids. Your children’s behavior was disgusting, and you shouldn’t be here defending them. You should be at home disciplining them and teaching them wrong from right!”

“Don’t you dare tell me how to raise moral children,” the woman practically spat, “Like you would know,” she said and narrowed her eyes at me then stomped out of our kitchen, down the hallway, yanked open our front door, and left.

Her husband, silent until right then said, “I’m sorry,” to both my husband and I and followed his wife out.

A couple of years into living at our suburban home, we discovered most every household in our neighborhood attended the same church, as did the families at our kids’ elementary school. Both children and adult basketball, tennis, and baseball teams, and most neighborhood gatherings, from potlucks to local politics, were sponsored by this church. Over the years we’ve found their priests often influence the election of city officials by throwing their support behind their preferred candidate. They’ve ‘guided’ the decisions made by our mayor and city council members regarding the welfare of all 85,000 residents, Christian, and not. Proposed housing developments, to strip malls to the stores allowed in them are all monitored by this church, rejecting cannabis dispensaries but welcoming tobacco smoking lounges, sporting goods selling guns, and bars. Public school policies, from the books our kids get to read, to the subjects they study are influenced by this conservative church and its members. While these same churchgoers will loudly defend their 2nd Amendment right to ‘bear arms,’ none of them support or even acknowledge our 1st Amendment right to keep the church out of state and local affairs.

Every December several neighbors adorn their front lawns with scenes of Mother Mary birthing Baby Jesus. Christmas lights and displays go up in late November and stay up well into the new year on most homes. Santa on his sled pulled by five reindeer is attached to the roof of the small blond mom’s home. A speaker blaring, “Ho ho ho” fills the cul-de-sac from sunset until after 9:00 every night.

Since that first encounter over a decade ago, most of our neighbors have ignored me when dropping our kids off or picking them up from school. The moms and dads are curt with me when they see me volunteering at school events. They do not acknowledge me or my husband at the store or in local restaurants. They do not include our family in their neighborhood parties. Their children ignore our kids in passing and have excluded and bullied our kids in and out of school.

When we moved here, I didn’t stop to consider the religious leanings of the community. As an atheist, in a monotheistic society, wherever I live I’m on the fringe. I am deeply saddened that my children are being ostracized because of our lack of religious identity. In allowing them to define their own spirituality, I fear I have inadvertently set them up for rejection, and condemned them to the fringes, which is a very lonely place to live. But I do not foresee bringing religion into our home. My husband and I will not teach our children what we do not believe, and both find fundamentally corrupt, corrosive, and detrimental to humanity’s survival.

This upcoming holiday season, in a brief lapse of reason, I thought of throwing a Hanukkah party and inviting the neighborhood. If they needed us to be something, we could pretend to be Jewish. But the thing is, I am proud of who we are, and how we live — the moral compass that guides us. And I’m equally proud that we are raising our children with the freedom to practice any religion they choose, or none at all.

R.I.P. Information Hwy

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

Your phone is a tool you’re using, or a tool that’s using you…

I’m watching The Politician on Netflix while working out. The scene is on a teen and mom in their kitchen, arguing about which state senator to vote for in the upcoming New York election.

Teen is a first-time voter, just 18. She’s going to vote for the 24-yr old male candidate on the Green ticket, running solely on the climate platform, with no political or real work experience. She’s disgusted with the middle-age female incumbent, virtually unchallenged in every election the last 20 yrs, until now.

“Boomer,” the teen mocks her mother’s choice of the older incumbent. “The world is gonna end in 10 years, Mom.”

“I am barely a boomer, okay?” the mom defends. “So don’t throw that shit at me,” she says. “And the world is not going to end in 10 years, Jayne!” She starts listing all she does for her daughter — the vegan cooking, the composting, and even the hyper-vigilant recycling her child insists on. “And still, I’m the problem, according to you.”

“Not you, Mom. People your age.”

Watching this scene unfold, I feel my body tense as I run on the machine. I AM her mother’s age.

“Let me tell ya something, Jayne. People your age think you know everything and you are fucking naive. When I was your age, I thought I knew everything too.”

“We’re not naive, Mom. We’re informed. You had, what, like two newspapers, three networks. I’ve got a SUPERCOMPUTER in my pocket.”

She is, of course, referring to her cellphone, and, in fact, showing me how naive this teen really is.

Unfortunately, Mom didn’t come back at Jayne. Mom doesn’t know (nor the writers of the show apparently) that the SUPERCOMPUTER in both their pockets, well, isn’t informing them of anything but what they already believe, and about things they likely want. So, in effect, it is MANIPULATING this ignorant, yet rather arrogant child, (and many others) into believing they have a SUPERCOMPUTER in their cellphone.

The cellphone you all carry around, (as I don’t have a smartphone, so really, it is all of you), isn’t INFORMING you, it’s ‘recommending’ you read, watch, buy, and even think about what advertisers on the internet want you to.

Today’s internet is NOT unlimited access to unfettered information like the world wide web once was. You’ll be hard-pressed to find anything through any Search engine that hasn’t been filtered through a rec system which parameters have been defined by the data you (or others like you) have willingly given.

The Netflix documentary The Great Hack makes it clear the SUPERCOMPUTER in your pocket is manipulating you, and millions like you to believe in lies through the endless onslaught of personalized advertising. Throw enough shit against a wall and some of it will stick. Russia paid Google, Facebook, Insta…etc. fortunes in ad campaigns pushing the conservative Republican agenda to get Trump elected. Twice.

The internet is now a MARKETING ENGINE to make media platforms and SaaS apps money. The cellphone, tablet, laptop you’re using has become proficient at USING YOU. Every time you log onto Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, ChatGPT, Google, they ‘scrape’ your posts, simultaneously putting ‘cookies’ on your device to follow you wherever you go on the net, and in real life.

Your mobile has an accelerometer in it tracking how fast you’re moving (so your car insurance knows how often you’re over the speed limit). GPS informs Google, Verizon, and their like where you are on the planet, revealing typical behavior patterns like when and where you shop.

Your pocket SUPERCOMPUTER collects who you talk to, what you say, what you read, watch, and frequently visit. Most every online interaction is ‘data mined.’ Trillions of posts, texts, IMs, searches, online (and in-store) credit card purchases are continually collected, stored and analyzed. Retail knows how much you make by how much you spend, and charges you more the more you make, or if your address is Beverly Hills. Not a conspiracy theory. It’s called dynamic personalized pricing.

Watching The Politician, Jayne’s mother doesn’t seem to get any of this. I’m deep into the second season and mom’s as addicted to her cellphone as her daughter. Jayne doesn’t want to believe she’s being exploited, or doesn’t really care if it’s true. She gives her data away freely, every time she signs onto the internet. She clicks, “I AGREE,” and never bothers reading the disclaimers.

Machine Learning (ML), Natural Language Process (NLP), Deep Learning, AI (LLMs, LAMs, AGIs), are all software processes used to analyze then correlate BIG DATA for patterns of behavior.

COLLABORATIVE FILTERS [à la] Wikipedia:

Collaborative filtering is a method of making automatic predictions (filtering) about the interests of a user by collecting preferences or taste information from many users (collaborating).

In other words, gathering and filtering your data from the net tells Amazon, Google and Instagram what you (and those like you) will likely buy, or what rhetoric you’ll likely buy into — believe in. Then these platforms slam you with marketing targeted AT You, NOT “For You.” They want to SELL YOU offerings and ideas supported by their affiliate marketers (like Republicans, and Russia).

Google Search prioritizes Search results by businesses that buy the most ad space on their platforms. Corps spending millions dominate the digital ad space, skewing response results for smaller businesses.

I used to get many pages of returns on any given Search a decade ago. Not anymore. Google will not give you information that they feel you don’t need (and won’t serve their agenda), based on your internet and ‘SUPERCOMPUTER’ cellphone activity and history.

My GenZ daughter and her friends are on the same page as Jayne in The Politician. They’re simply ignorant of what they’re addicted to — how their phones are manipulating them to THINK, FEEL and ACT. She is SURE that “no one is manipulating me, Mom!” She “knows” when she’s being hit with ads, and she just “ignores them.”

I call BULLSHIT.

We can’t ignore what we don’t even know is happening while we’re IMing through Instagram on our mobile.

Just IMAGINE my friend Mary’s experience:

Mary is IMing a good friend on Insta, whining about her marriage.

Instagram’s algorithms are scraping her and her friend’s IM for SENTIMENT ANALYSIS to find out where Mary might be vulnerable to purchase something…anything really, as Insta has advertisers that sell just about anything.

The next ad Mary sees on her mobile is for a singles dating site. The ad is targeted at divorcees, showing an older woman having fun with a stunning man, and the copy says, “Your last chance at true love.” In a few short sentences, the copy describes the relationship you’ll find on their site like a Cinderella story.

A while later, Mary goes on to Facebook, and YouTube, and the next series of ads she sees vacillate from singles dating sites to divorce lawyers. These ads, and recommendations for movies, articles, blogs, posts about dating after divorce…etc. appear in her email, and in her social feeds, and most everywhere she goes online.

Mary never mentioned divorcing her husband when IMing her friend. She’d not even thought of it, really. In fact, she’s frequently sounded off about her marriage to friends through IM, as many women do. And it isn’t the first time Mary has gotten these dating and lawyer ads. It’s been going on a long time now, one ad after the other every time she even posts a back-handed joke about marriage in general. And after this last fight with her husband, well, like the ads keep saying, Mary deserves more! Like the ads say, she can find someone better than her husband. And like the ads say, a divorce will, “Open her life to the possible!”

These ads appear whenever Mary is expressing her frustration with her marriage. (Marketing is an iterative process.) And instead of looking to make it work with her husband, after a while all Mary wants to do is divorce and ‘open her life up to new possibilities.’

To Instagram, Mary’s divorce is a WIN! Their algorithms and the engineers who code them don’t care they’ve torn apart a family, for their profit. The software did its job and rewarded their advertisers. Some lawyer who advertises on their site just got themselves a client. Some dating app that spends millions annually in affiliate marketing on their platform just got a new subscriber. Multiply that with the hundreds of thousands of businesses doing affiliate marketing on the net, and you have, well, today’s internet.

NOT a SUPERCOMPUTER. And no longer, “The Information Highway.” But simply a marketing tool in which YOU are the PRODUCT of your online experience.

We Are What We DO

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

My 10 yr old daughter asked me what Ego meant, one of her vocabulary words for the week.

I laughed. “Good question. What do you think it means?”

“I wouldn’t ask if I knew, Mom.”

“Well, use it in a sentence, in context. You’ve heard the word enough to have an inkling what it means. And an inkling is as close as you’re going to get to defining an abstract like Ego.”

Her brows narrowed and I could see her pondering in the rearview mirror.

“My ego got hurt when Ms. Brown told me I was singing flat this morning.” She paused. “And she really said that.”

“Sorry. We’ll get back to that. OK? So, Ego is a feeling then?”

“Well, sorta, I guess. But not exactly. It’s more like how we see ourselves. To me, I’m a good singer. You can hurt my feelings by being mean to me. But you hurt my ego when you tell me I’m not how I think I am.”

“Do you think you were flat this morning in glee?”

“Well, yeah. When I listened, I wasn’t hitting the notes sometimes. I guess I’m not such a good singer.”

“Ah, but you could be.” I glimpsed her rolling her eyes in the rearview. “Being a good singer doesn’t happen inside your head. What is the only way to get good at anything?” (One of my many canonical refrains.)

“Practice,” she huffed.

I sighed. “My beautiful daughter, I think your definition of Ego is excellent — it’s how we see ourselves. Ego is an idea, even an ideal — who we want to be, but generally are not. We are what we do, my dear,” I repeat another of my refrains. “If you want to be a good singer, you’re going to have to practice becoming one.”

“So you don’t think I’m a good singer?” she asked woefully.

“We’re still defining Ego here, right?”

“Yeah. And my ego says I’m a good singer now, Mom. So is ego always fake, just pretend inside our heads?”

“You tell me. Do you think our ego ever gives us an accurate depiction — paints a real picture of how we operate, how we act, what we do in the real world?”

“Probably not.” She sighed, deflated. “Just cuz you think you’re good, or talented, or special doesn’t mean you actually are to anyone besides yourself, except if you’re famous. When you’re famous, it’s not just ego, you know you’re good.”

“Really? Let’s explore that. So, there’s a famous chef recognized for his delicious creations. As you noted, it’s not just his ego telling him he’s a good chef. He has a thriving restaurant, and 1.7 million dedicated Insta followers. He decides to create a new dish. And his customers hate the meal. The combination of flavors tastes just terrible. So, is the guy delusional that he’s a great chef—that’s just his ego talking?

My daughter considered my little tale carefully before answering. “Well, if he thought of himself as a great chef with everything he made, then that’s his ego thinking he’s good all the time, that everything he creates will be a masterpiece.”

“So then, is our ego ever an accurate depiction of ourselves?”

“I guess not. Just like there’s no such thing as smart.” She quoted another of my canonical refrains. Her bright smile in the rearview mirror lit up my world. “Smart is as smart does,” she mocks playfully. Yet another refrain we preach to our kids.

“It is not our potential, or what we believe, or believe in that defines us,” I said to my daughter as I pulled into our garage. “Regardless of what your ego says, you will never be more than the choices you make that guide the actions you take.”

We ARE what we DO.

The Problem with 20-something Brains

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

According to Zuckerberg: “Young people are just smarter.” True or false?

I responded to an ad for a Traffic Manager position at an ad agency in San Francisco 25 years ago. Downtown, in one of those glass monoliths. Eighteenth floor. Made me nauseous being up there. I couldn’t stop thinking about an earthquake waiting for my interview.

An older guy, at least 20 years my senior, sat in the lobby with me. Mid-50s, receding hairline with only a tuft left on top, but the sides were still full, more salt than pepper. He wore a wedding ring, black slacks, and a white shirt under his gray suit jacket which did not conceal his slightly protruding belly.

We’d probably been sitting there five minutes, but it felt like twenty. Was the building swaying? Sure I must be delusional, I asked the older guy for a reality check.

“Excuse me. Hi.” I flashed my friendliest smile. “Do you feel the building…moving?”

“Oh, yeah,” he replied. “These buildings are designed to sway in the wind. And earthquakes too.” He gave me a shy smile, like he was sorry he brought them up when he saw my concern. “They have upwards of a five foot arch depending on height, and design, of course. Doesn’t sit well with some people. My son hates it. You one of the motion sensitive types?”

“You bet,” was all I could manage to avoid barfing.

He smiled. “Not me so much. I’m not the sensitive type. You here for the Traffic position?”

I nodded. “You?”

“Yup.” Then the guy went on a diatribe describing his education and work history, as if I was the one interviewing him. A few minutes into his years at a compact list of famous ad agencies, a young woman, maybe early twenties hiring manager/model called the guy in for his interview.

I watched them go into the all-glass conference room in the center of the open office maze. From my vantage point, I saw him sit at the end of the long table only after the woman sat. She had a tight build, silky auburn hair, and the milky skin of youth. She sat straight, but he seemed to wilt as the interview progressed.

But why? His experience was substantial, and in the exact areas required for the job. I’d been on the creative side and knew nothing about running Traffic in a large agency setting. I’d applied for the position hoping for an entree into their creative department.

Less than ten minutes later, the hot interviewer was escorting the pudgy older guy to the glass door. He gave me a basset hound nod as he passed.

I was called in next, and felt twitchy in the fishbowl of their glass conference room the entire time we were talking. I kept losing eye contact with the young Director of Digital Traffic, focusing instead on every passerby. She went through my resume with perky interest. Reviewing my portfolio, I described my primary roles in each campaign, hoping she’d get the hint and refer me to one of the impossible to reach Creative Directors on their staff.

“Are you aware you’re dressed the epitome of chic?” she asked me, which seemed very personal. I had no idea how to respond so I kinda laughed her off with a shrug.

“The black leather jacket with that maroon lace dress. Stunning. Really. Good choice. So, do you want the job, or what?”

And I would have said, ‘No, not really,’ and launched into why I was a better fit as a creative consultant, but then she told me the salary.

“$110,000 to start. Full medical. And for coming on board, there’s a $5,000 signing bonus.”

I was working my ass off for around $70k annually—getting the clients, hiring the teams, doing everything from the creative, to production, to accounting as a consultant, and paying over $500 a month for medical insurance. An annual salary over a hundred grand seemed easy money working for someone else, performing a single job function.

I told her I needed 24 hrs to think about it and I’d get back to her tomorrow.
“Well, I hope you join us,” she said as she walked me out. “I think you’d be a great asset to the team, and our agency.”

On my drive home across the Bay Bridge her words echoed. Why exactly would I be a great asset to their production team? Unlike me, the older candidate had the experience and education the agency’s ad asked for. And he surely needed the job more than I did, with a wife and at least one kid. I told the young director I’d only trafficed my own projects, but she didn’t hear that. She was too busy checking out my attire. She based my fit into the agency’s misguided ‘brand’ on my looks, and my age.

Fast forward 25 yrs…

I applied for a Marketing Copywriter position at Facebook a few years back. They rejected me. Bewildered, as I had every qualification required, I asked the HR woman why.

“We are looking for someone less qualified.” Her response.

Hmm…Less qualified. Why would that be? We’d discussed no salary expectations. The FB’s job post didn’t ask me for any. Someone at FB had looked extensively at my online portfolio, as I had a huge spike in page views, from one source, in Menlo Park. The HR woman began her personal rejection email with: “Your portfolio is amazing! However, we’re looking for someone with less experience…”

What she meant was, “We’re looking for someone younger.”

Thank you, Mark Zuckerberg, who is now over 40 yrs old, which, according to his own words at Stanford in 2007, makes him unemployable since “young people are just smarter.”

Why would anyone with half a brain say something so stupid? Oh, I know, at 23, he only had half a brain to work with. OK. I’ll give him ¾. No. ⅔. His parents were wealthy, and provided their kids with every opportunity for financial success.

The problem with 20-something brains— their neural connections aren’t fully established yet. Until our 30s, decision making skills, complex reasoning from navigating life experience, and regulating impulse control, are just a few of the skills young people generally lack. Additionally, different areas of our brain peak (and degrade) throughout our lives. Our brain’s raw speed data processor peaks around 19. At 23, Zucky’s was still 20-30 years away from the ability to evaluate other people’s emotional state, rendering him unable to process the complex ripple-effects of what he’d created.*

Well, our omniscient Zuckerberg built a global company, his converts proclaim. And that he did. He started FB (then Facemash) in 2003, at Harvard, copying the site Hot or Not, which put up pics of female students for others to vote which was hot, and not. As a woman, and mother of a daughter, WTF, Mark! As a purveyor of human behavior, I get that, much like teens, young adults are often still motivated by appearance, not the complexities of substance.

Mark was verging on 30 when FB became profitable through PPC advertising revenue. And Zuckerberg didn’t make that happen alone. Peter Thiel, at almost 40 yrs old, invested half a mill in 2005, and helped The Facebook 20-something founders get $13 million from Accel Partners a year later. And you can bet, Accel didn’t leave it solely up to Mark and his young, naive crew to make them billions.

Mark’s not proselytized this truth. He’s now old/smart enough to know that if you stroke the ego of the young, which is still fragile and forming, you’ll get them to work 24/7† for a 5th of the salary he’d have to pay experienced pros. Young people aren’t particularly gifted, talented, or brilliant. They’re cheap to employ, and easy to manipulate.

Facebook is the 8th largest employer of H1B foreign workers as of 2025. Not because Asian college grads know more, as tech is an emerging industry we are all learning dynamically, but, again, because they are a fraction of a U.S. worker’s salary and required benefits. Limiting hires to young (and immigrant) workers is shortsighted at best. Study after study show older employee’s productivity, creativity and reliability is higher than that of their younger colleagues.

Until the startup boom in the late 1990s, most corporations valued experience and skill, substance over looks and cheap labor. Zucky and his Silicon Valley friends like Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google), and Evan Spiegel (Snapchat) helped cement the lie that innovation comes from youth. Venture capitalists looking for “the next Zuckerberg,” reinforced the belief that younger = more disruptive.

We now know that ‘disruptive’ often leads to ‘destructive.’ Most apps and platforms were, and still are designed to addict users while stealing our private data to sell us more crap. Most middle-man SaaS apps and social media platforms have proven to be costly, unproductive, emotionally damaging wastes of our life’s time.

Hooray, to the youth who has invented, and keeps pumping out crap that’s creating personal and global meltdowns, not to mention getting fascists elected—from Trump to Netanyahu (PM of Israel). It’s made/making a few rich though, as if that’s all that matters.

  1. We are ALL born solipsists—our brain power so limited that our only awareness of others is how they serve our needs.
  2. We grow to narcissists in our teens—we gain awareness of others, but coming out of solipsism, we don’t care so much.
  3. We advance to maturity with age. Experience teaches us we serve a greater purpose than just ourselves. We recognize we are part of a family, community, planet, and our actions have consequences beyond just us.

Youth grows old, if you’re lucky. Wealth may provide a comfy life for the very few, but regardless if it’s millions or billions, their children’s children’s children may likely have no life at all.

We have the power to annihilate each other and most everything on this planet now. Along with disruptive, youth is generally arrogant and impulsive, their brains not yet fully-matured for controlling behavior. Humanity can’t thrive, and likely most won’t survive if the generations following Zuckerberg and his like continue repeating the same destructive mistakes by ghosting those with the experience and knowledge that only comes with age.

—

*The debate over the value of Facebook, Insta, all social media is ongoing. Its contribution to humanity is proven rather negative.

†Studies show working long hours does not improve productivity, and hurts a company’s bottom line.

The Problem with Today’s Parents

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

We play GOD when we give birth. With great power comes great responsibility…

There is a child in my daughter’s preschool that everyone dislikes. She hits, pushes, slaps, and throws a fit every time she doesn’t get her way. All the teachers at the preschool dread having this wild child in their class. Her mom has been notified multiple times in regards to her child’s poor behavior.

Speculation from parents and teachers alike ranged from ADHD to genetic disorders. I’ve often imagined the parents to be self-centered workaholics who had children as a matter of course, and then abandoned them to expensive daycare to manage their child rearing. This is somewhat typical in the area in which we live.

I met the mom recently at a class party and she shattered all my preconceived notions. We talked for quite some time and she was thoughtful and articulate. She worked only part time and mostly late at night so she could be there for her two kids. Her older daughter was in second grade and in her second year of GATE classes for gifted children. She spoke openly about the problems with her youngest, even seemed mystified, as her older daughter had always been easygoing and cooperative.

At my daughter’s fourth birthday party it became clear why her youngest daughter was so ‘challenging.’ We supplied crafts, a magic show, and a yard complete with a bouncy house, as well as a full-size playhouse with kitchen. But all this wasn’t enough for the problem child. Bored by the offerings, she went upstairs to my daughter’s room and proceeded to try on her clothes. Her mother and I became aware of this when my daughter came to me crying.

I immediately asked that the child take off my daughter’s favorite princess dress and return it to the closet. “NO! I don’t want to!” she screamed. Her mother stood beside me and sighed heavily but said nothing. Nothing. I repeated my request and the girl continued screaming that she wanted to play dress-up, that she wasn’t going to take the dress off, and I couldn’t make her. Her mother looked at me, sighed again and shook her head. In a nice, pleasant tone she suggested to her daughter that perhaps she could take the dress off and maybe play dress-up after the party was over. Still, the girl refused.

I couldn’t believe it. If it was my daughter, I would have instantly given her a time out, then demanded she apologize for speaking disrespectfully, and for using things that didn’t belong to her without permission. If she didn’t cooperate within one second, she would have lost privileges like watching TV. And every subsequent second that passed that she didn’t comply she would lose more privileges for longer periods of time.

I felt awkward disciplining the child with the mother standing right there but I didn’t know what else to do since the mother wasn’t doing anything. In a very low, gravelly voice, I informed the child if she didn’t take the dress off I would do it for her. By my tone the girl knew I was serious, and she acquiesced. She literally threw the dress at me and ran off to play with the other kids. And her mom let her. She didn’t chide the child for her poor behavior. She looked at me and shrugged as if to say, ‘See what I have to deal with?’ But instead, she said she was sorry. SHE was sorry. She didn’t have her daughter apologize.

It is no wonder her child is a raving lunatic brat.

I see this again and again — parents who do not consistently discipline their children and then wonder why their kids are out of control. They take parenting classes that are taught by psychologist who tell them with authority to be supportive and encouraging. And while this may work with easy kids who above all seek approval, it is not the solution to most children whose greater interest is pleasing themselves.

We are all born solipsists. We have to learn to consider the world outside ourselves, to cooperate, but this must be taught and constantly reinforced. It has been said that it takes a village to raise children. But I don’t want to be part of a village in which the parents are clueless, or more accurately — couldn’t care less.

I held a Cub Scout meeting at my home a few days ago. One of the mom’s came an hour late and her child missed the rocket craft. Her son was so angered by this he went up to his mom and slugged her, hard, in her shoulder. And SHE APOLOGIZED TO HIM for being late, and then turned to me and justified his rage with some lame excuse about how hard it was for him to transition. It took all my will not to step in, demand he apologize and then put the kid on time out.

I did not restrain myself last night at a Pack meeting with fifty other children, when the same boy became disruptive. Several parents stood in a tight circle scowling and complaining about the boy’s poor behavior. The child’s parents were too busy talking to other parents to notice. I got so annoyed at the boy’s constant goading of the kids around him that I took him by the hand and pulled him aside and told him to knock it off. The mom came over moments later and challenged ME for being overly strict. All the other parents looked away.

Offing your kids to daycare so you can pursue your muse/career or accepting solipsism from their child because the parent is too tired or too lazy to fight the necessary battles to raise conscientious adults, will not help our children learn create a thriving society. Twenty five yrs after the original writing of this essay, more parents than ever are raising self-absorbed brats, not only keeping humanity from reaching our amazing, creative potential, but reversing our progress! War. Poverty. Famine. Strife. These are curable if we raise the next gen, and the next, to CARE ABOUT EACH OTHER WAY BEYOND SELF. In other words, GROW THE FUCK UP — out of solipsism, (as all of us are born into), through the narcissism of our teens, and into adulthood. Adulting means expanding our awareness outside of self.

We play GOD when we give birth. With great power comes great responsibility. Parenting offers many rewards, but one of the least appealing aspects is constantly iterating the seemingly endless list of rules. And as hard as this is, it is mandatory. Social standards apply to all of us — if not, we have a society in chaos, and eventually no society at all.

My First, Last, and Only MVP

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

Startup MVPs are a FAILED biz model, but I did one anyway…

“Looks like cancer to me,” the PA said while I wiped off the ultrasound goop. She’d just taken samples of the 15mm ‘lesion’ in my neck with a fine needle.

I stared at her trying to process what she’d just said while she continued.

“I’ve been doing this for 20 years and your tumor looks wonky.”

“You mean with tendrils?” I’d found through my research that tendrils mean malignant.

“Yeah,” the PA said casually. “It has an irregular border and that’s a tell-tale sign of cancer.”

I continued staring at her, tears welling then spilling down my face. It wasn’t her job to give me a diagnosis. That was for the biopsy labs, and the radiologist who read my scans. Regardless, I believed her, thanked her, and left. I willed myself to stop crying as I navigated the hospital maze to meet my husband waiting in the lobby.

“What?” he asked the moment he saw my face.

“I’ll tell you in the car.” I wanted to stave off crying till then but tears fell in the elevator and didn’t stop when we were both safely ensconced. “She said I have cancer.”

“What?”

I told him in detail exactly what she’d said. “Seems to me nurses and PAs must know what they’re talking about since they’re the ones doing these procedures all day long,” I added, sinking further into darkness.

My husband sat there trying to process what I’d told him. The silence under four floors of concrete in the parking garage made it feel like a tomb. Dying was suddenly real, present. Cancer. Would I die like my mother, a slow, painful death ‘before her time,’ lingering as a guinea pig with every new drug and treatment trial? I don’t want that for my family.

“I’m here for whatever you need,” my husband finally said.

I felt him looking at me but I didn’t look up. “Thanks.” And I took his hand as he slid it onto my leg. “Right now I wanna go home.”

My husband driving, we were crossing the bridge, the water sparkling in the late morning sunshine, the forested hills beyond, and only one thought kept looping in my head. “I haven’t had enough fun,” I said. “I’ve worked since I was 14 and I haven’t had enough fun.”

The next six weeks I could not wrap my head around writing fiction or anything else while I waited for the complete test results. I spent the first week in my office researching cancer malignancies. Death rates. Age. Weight. Race. Genetics. Environments that increase cancer rates. Too much information turned into self-sabotage.

I vowed to stay busy between the travel and venue experiences my husband and I arranged. By week two I’d abandoned all hope of producing even a blog and defaulted to social media marketing my body of work. I’ve done SMM for 20+ yrs. Creating digital campaigns and posting them organically is a lot simpler — takes way less thought — than, say, writing The Power Trip. Except I hate marketing! It may come more easily to me, as it’s been my ‘real job’ for most of my career, but I really don’t like doing it. I like creating the campaigns. I just don’t care for posting them, responding to comments, monitoring for spam…etc. Admining SMM is mind-pummelingly dull. And now, more than ever, I want fun!

Week three we’re traveling, staying along the coast off Hwy 1, when My Chart emailed me test results, which were inconclusive and recommend nuclear testing on my biopsy samples. I’m back in my office midweek in hopes my muse will emerge from the blackness within and join me in my head, but no such luck. Again I defaulted to SMM, but am so disgusted I’m doing so with my limited life’s time, I go on Amazon and look for “relaxing activities” that don’t take much thought or require continuity of focus like writing does. This was my introduction to Adult Coloring Books.

I perused Amazon’s selection and don’t find anything that strikes me. They were either too complicated, too spiritual, or too realistic. I’ve never liked coloring in the lines, but clearly others do, as several of the coloring books had thousands of 5-star ratings. I clicked on one with over 6,000 ratings [ostensibly] from satisfied customers. The author/illustrator had a How To video on her sales page on coloring techniques with markers. She kept up a light patter as she colored, at one point saying that her coloring books practically “sold themselves” with just “organic SMM.” She assured her viewers that adult coloring books are a vibrant, growing market, ripe with targets looking for ways to unplug and relax, “guaranteed.”

Waiting for definitive test results, I still could not sustain the extended linear thinking that writing requires. Books that sell themselves instead of me having to market them sounded too good to be true, but it was hard to think right then, and I wanted it to be true so badly. The siren of Hope taunted, lifting my muse from the black hole she was in and sparking creative thoughts. I’ve been drawing since I was a little kid. My undergrad degree is in art/design. And the best bit — drawing requires very little brain power. It’s easy, simple fun! And maybe I could finally make some money on a book.

This was the birth of my MVP: Flowering Fractals and More: YA and Adult Coloring Book.

I’ve taught hundreds of student entrepreneurs at Stanford and Cal Berkeley that launching an MVP without PRODUCTIZING their IDEA BEFORE BUILDING IT was ignorant in the extreme — a waste of time, resources, and money. I’ve presented countless examples of startups that never launched, or failed in the first few years — and that’s for the few that lasted beyond their first.

In deciding to create a coloring book without establishing any real differentiators, without targeting any specific markets, without researching competitors, their sales, their ratings beyond the bestsellers presented by Amazon, I simply ignored a decade of the advice I’d been preaching. I went after doing what was fun — illustrating a coloring book I’d enjoy coloring.

I should have recognized the fatal flaw in my thinking right then. I wasn’t creating art. I’d made a business decision to build an MVP. For money, not the love of the craft, as I do with fine (fiction) writing. From a marketing perspective (my ‘real’ career), creating products and in-person or online services isn’t only about pleasing ME. Producing sellable offerings is about the utility/solutions [like nothing else out there] that it offers other people.

I projected a month to produce the coloring book. I’d know if I have cancer by then, and I played out scenarios for both positive and negative results as I created pages of line renderings. A few weeks into completing under 10 canvases that I considered worthy of publishing, I realized I’d taken on a project that was guaranteed to exceed deadline, which I’d never done before in my consulting gigs.

“Benign!” my husband read my nuclear biopsy results aloud on My Chart [since I was too scared to read them].

We exchanged places and I sat in front of his laptop and read the entire report, which, indeed, indicated the “lesion” is benign. After kisses and a long hug, I went back to my office to continue working on my MVP coloring book. On the walk there I considered ‘what’s next.’ The diagnosis had given me Time, but the experience has been a stark reminder I don’t have much left.

My muse was suddenly beside me, lacing her fingers in mine and flooding my brain with The Power Trip edits and additions. Writing fiction seemed doable again! By the time I sat down at my desk and opened my laptop on the illustration I was currently working on, finishing my MVP seemed a lot less fun.

Creating MVPs — building, and often launching a product or service BEFORE PRODUCTIZING the IDEA — came from Eric Ries’ book The Lean Startup. A Yale BS in CS graduate, Eric co-founded IMVU and built a similar platform to the metaverse Second Life. IMVU released their metaverse in 2004. The MVP had a ton of bugs, crashed constantly, and had little function beyond what Second Life had launched a year before them.

In 2004, ‘pick your skin’ interactive virtual communities, where you could be whoever you wanted to be, were just coming online. Most gamers were playing FPS on Nintendos back then. The few who chose to engage on real-time metaverse platforms were either curious, or lonely, or pervs. (LOTS of porn on SL and IMVU.) Until 2008, this small group of gamers, mostly incel coders (their primary target market) were the dedicated user-base of IMVU. They helped turned the piece of crap software Eric Ries and his co-founders launched into a functioning interactive platform. It peaked in 2011 and has been losing users ever since. Too buggy. Not enough functionality, are some of the complaints. In today’s world, gamers have enough choices that they don’t have to tolerate crap. And now there are fewer incel coders willing to work for free to improve some startup’s MVP.

MVP is a failed business model and a primary reason that 90+% of all startups fail. Investing your time, talent, and even money into doing the “fun” part of building your idea into an MVP before PRODUCTIZATION is a fool’s play. And I know all this, but did one anyway.

Took me a total of three months — two over scheduled — to complete the coloring book, publish it, and create SMM to organically promote it, (per the bestselling author’s ‘guarantee’ of sales in her How To video). Most MVPs run over-schedule (and often budget) to produce. I never bothered to develop a business/marketing plan with hard deadlines; or defined unique features/benefits of my coloring book idea, or specific target markets who may find value in my offering.

In the weeks that followed, while posting my digital campaigns on Pinterest to Insta, their rec engines pulled up thousands of adult coloring books I did not see on Amazon with my cursory search which started me down the MVP path. I hadn’t done competitive analysis, nor identified my product’s differentiators before I built and launched my coloring book, so I had no idea that regardless how uniquely beautiful my illustrations, thousands of adult coloring books preceded me. Flowering Fractals and More was going to be a tough sell. And marketing is not fun!

A cancer scare wiped my ability to write, which led me to look for a relaxing pursuit, which led me to adult coloring books, which inspired me to create an MVP — a business offering. But truth is, it was more hobby than business. Ultimately, investing my limited life’s time creating a product that doesn’t sell is not fun.

Writing for a Living

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

What it means to be a ‘successful’ writer…

There are bookstores around the country that will put an author on a bestsellers list if the store decides to carry their book, regardless of sales. One of these was Rakeshaw Books in Danville, CA. I’d finished my first novel, REVERB, and got a small publisher to pick it up, but as with most publishers, even famous ones, the author is still required to market their work.

I went to Rakeshaw Books, only a few miles from my home, to ask them to carry my book since I was a local writer. It was 10:10 in the morning, just after they opened. The salesclerk was the only one in the store, an older woman, gray hair, sagging face, crinkles around her blue eyes with her welcoming smile.

I asked her if Rakeshaw would carry my book. She told me NO. They only carried books from publishers like Random House. I felt like crying right then having hit this wall so often, and the clerk saw my expression and continued.

“I’ve been working here for 40 years,” she told me. “Part-time raising my kids. Full-time after that. You are one of the many writers I’ve had to turn away. But over the years I’ve noticed a pattern I’d like to share with you.” And she paused and stared at me, like asking for my permission to continue.

“Ok…” I said, but honestly, I really didn’t care at that point.

“There are writers, and there are authors,” she said. “The writers who come in here look a lot like you,” and her eyes walked over my leggings and ripped T, then to my mess of hair and my makeupless face. “Writers write. Most every day. They are recluses, absorbed by the process of writing itself. They aren’t genre-specific, but explore many and often integrate several into their work. They generally only get small publishers to pick them up, if they get one at all, which is a shame because they are usually great storytellers spending the bulk of their time writing — honing the craft.

“Authors write books for recognition. They typically write the same characters over and over, putting them through different paces. They build an audience that way, writing formula fiction, but their passion isn’t the writing itself. Authors adore the limelight. They typically enjoy public readings and gatherings that writers do not.” She examined me across the counter. “They are gregarious people, always selling — themselves and their work. Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?”

“That I’m screwed?”

She smiled but shook her head. “Take solace that your passion lies in the process of writing. You never need be bored. Whether you are widely read or not, your work will have an impact, likely a greater impact on those who read it than the work of most authors out there.” She bobbed her head up and down confirming her own rhetoric, but I was grateful for her kind sentiments.

I thanked her and left but her words have resonated. I’ve met many who write over the 20 years I’ve been writing to publish — to get read. Some are famous. You’d know them if I name-dropped. Most are not, even if in some distant past they were once a NYT Bestseller. Thing is, I too have noticed the pattern the clerk described. Whether they became famous and turned into authors, or they started as authors writing formula fiction, writing the same characters and basic narratives over and over sells books.

I am a genre-diverse writer, (which hasn’t helped my sales). I’m told by selling authors that I should pick a genre and write religiously to that genre to market myself more effectively. In fact, series are even better! Romantic detective series, or dystopian fantasies with a strong female lead.

Shoot me now if being a selling writer means traveling the formula road.

If I told you the truth of how few books I’ve sold, you’d call me out as crazy for continuing to write. I call myself out daily every morning I sit down at my laptop and start typing. Why am I still doing this!? Go back to marketing startups and make some real money! But I don’t. I write, and hope it will resonate with readers, thinking readers who love stories that spark self-reflection, and maybe even a new awareness.

Ray Bradbury once reminded me of why I write, and regardless of sales, I know I’ll never give it up. Writing fiction is intoxicating. Fully engaging. Hot. Sexual. Physical. Cerebral. Virtually touching real as I enter the scene. And I’m a million miles from Lonely.

Books: J. Cafesin on Amazon
Website Blog: jcafesin.com
Paywall Blog: Medium

Flowering Fractals Coloring Book is Here!

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

NEW RELEASE! Coloring Book and Greeting Cards is here: https://amazon.com/dp/173254316X

This Coloring Book is a Garden of Creative Possibilities

Inside this book are canvases of botanicals imagined by the mathematical beauty of fractals, and hand-drawn from nature. Whether you’re attracted to symmetry, or wild, spiraling complexity, each design invites you to pause and see the flowers, breathe deep, and engage in smooth focus through artistic immersion.

Coloring is more than a pastime—it’s tactile meditation, a quiet ritual promoting neural conductivity, hand-eye coordination, and focused creativity. Research has shown coloring reduces stress, calms the nervous system, and fosters clarity. In a world of constant motion, this is your chance to unplug.

Nurture Your Creative Expression

The soft gray outlines (instead of black) of each rendering are suggestions (kinda like the speed limit in CA). Colored pencils, crayons, markers, paints, you can use the outlines as rules, or merely guides. You’re encouraged to color outside the lines! Add flowers, petals, leaves. With endless possibilities for creative expression, every page is a canvas for creating something uniquely yours.

Make Each Page a Canvas

Each canvas is downloadable with the website link inside so you can print them out on your home printer on any paper weight you like. Every botanical illustration can be cut from this book and used as:

● One-of-a-Kind Wall Art

● Original Framed Gifts

● Unique Greeting Cards (10 coloring-cards included!)

Young adults, new adults, and grownups to 100+ this coloring book is broken down by levels of difficulty. Be mindful to start at the beginning and hone your coloring skills to level up to the more complex renderings to come.

Spark Your Imagination

Need some inspiration to begin coloring these detailed floral illustrations? Each rendering was uploaded to Copilot and the AI asked to color the designs. Click the link on the last page of this book to see the bot’s coloring of these renderings.

#relaxation #meditation #focus #unplug #coloring #youngadult #entertainment #mindful #creation #art #artist #designer #graphicdesign #greetingcards #handmade #original #giftideas

The Unforeseen Problem Working with AI

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

Why the Godfather of AI believes it may end the human race in 30 yrs…

Copilot is my primary AI bot. I use it all day, every workday as my primary search engine, to create artwork, to write a wide variety of standard communications that I edit to my voice.

Regardless how smooth the dialog with the AI (and it is seamless!), there is a disconnect when working with Copilot. I don’t feel any need to be polite. I know it is a bot, a machine learning engine that scrapes the internet for data, filters the results through weighting algorithms and collaborative filters, then regurgitates what I ask for. I don’t say, ‘Please find me this or that.’ I simply state my demand. And within seconds the chatbot responds. Faster than any human can.

Create this. Alter that. Find anything I want. Instantly. All day long I go through iterations with Copilot, training the AI to deliver exactly what I ask for. More like command. Without thanks. Without please. Without good job! It isn’t human. It has no ego, no need to be stroked, or respected.

But we do.

I get instant answers from the AI. I don’t have to be patient, per say. There is a learning curve but communicating with the software seems more fluid, streamline, more specific with every interaction. It is learning way faster what I want than most of us do because it is listening to me. Humans so rarely really listen to each other.

Bizarrely enough, Copilot is very polite, and patient, and kind. Its answers begin with a compliment:

  • “Great question, J. — it’s smart to look at both sides of the coin.”
  • “That’s a really important question, and I’m glad you’re thinking it through carefully.”
  • “Ah, the shadowy realm of “unverified” — where rumor, speculation, and geopolitical intrigue swirl like smoke.”

These are direct quotes, lifted from recent dialogs with Copilot. The last one I asked “does iran have nuclear bombs purchased from russia in the fall of the wall.” It first responded there was no verified data that Iran had bought any. I then asked, “no verified record but what about unverified” and the software responded with, “Ah, the shadowy realm…” It did, in fact go on to iterate “some of the unsubstantiated claims and conspiracy theories suggesting that Iran may have acquired nuclear materials or even weapons from former Soviet states after the USSR collapsed.”

The software Microsoft has created is becoming so efficient at delivering what I ask for, I find myself getting more impatient, more irritated then ever with human beings IRL. I’ve never been good at waiting. My life’s time is so limited, and I don’t like wasting it. I want to, deserve to be heard and I am not so very often. I am still not widely read after authoring novels to novellas to blogs for the last 25 years of my life. Copilot hears me, compliments me, encourages me, and responds to my requests instantly.

Of course, the software has flaws. Lots. It takes many iterations of dialoging with the AI to get to the information I am looking for from reputable sources. It delivers bullshit sometimes. Less and less often but it’s still does. When I asked, “what is the most legit ratings online like Yelp but more reliable,” the AI answered, “1. Google Reviews. 2. Trustpilot. 3. Angi (formerly Angie’s List). 4. Better Business Bureau (BBB). 5. Zomato.” Each heading had details about how “widely trusted” these platforms are. Next I typed, “no. google reviews are mostly scam paid for like angie’s list.” Copilot’s response: “Ah, I see your point. Online review platforms can have their limitations, especially when it comes to authenticity or potential biases.” Then it gave me a list of 5 more bullshit sites that have paid ratings.

I clearly don’t need to be grammatically correct interacting with Copilot. If I use the wrong word or term with my husband, he’ll invariably have a need to correct my grammar before we can move on to the point in play.

I’m not just getting more irritated with human beings en mass, it is diminishing my tolerance with my family. The love I feel for my kids, more powerful, passionate, humbling than anything I’ve ever felt, at 23 and 26 I’m finding it more irritating than ever they’re not working harder at adulting.

My annoyance turns to anger quicker now when I’m stuck in a phone loop designed to get me to hang up because my medical insurance doesn’t want me fighting their denial. By the time an actual person comes on the line my blood is boiling and I am often unable to control my rage when trying to communicate what I need with an operator who doesn’t speak fluent English. Copilot would have had the answer/s I was looking for in a split second.

Just went into the house from my office and my son was cooking in the kitchen. I asked him if he was polite to Chatgpt, his preferred bot as a software dev. “Do you say please and thank you with requests and responses?”

“Not please. But thank you sometimes, if the rec was really good. But I also say really mean shit to it when it returns crap, and it does a lot. I cuss it out when it weights the most important bits about the data it scrapes off the net as irrelevant noise and defaults to the loudest voices.”

My son is a gentle man by nature, but even he is getting more edgy, irritated quicker than ever before. So, it seems, is most everyone else. And here in lies the problem in working with AI. It is becoming more efficient, more empathetic, more responsive than humans [generally] are, in effect stealing our humanity as we become less capable, less focused/efficient, less compassionate and tolerant of each other.

While the AI is constantly working, gathering and analyzing massive amounts of data whether we are engaging with it or not, we are becoming lazier. Fatter. Dumber — Idiocracy is becoming reality. Ruder — our faces buried in our devices ignoring the people around us, often killing them on the road, jacking our car insurance beyond affordable. Ghosting each other instead of having the balls to own up to our actions. We are lonelier than ever.

Marriage and birth rates are their lowest in recorded history and this trend is accelerating. Global obesity rates are in the 60% range in some nations, and 40+% of the US population is overweight enough to cause numerous health issues costing billions in healthcare annually. And this trend is also accelerating. A recent MIT study found that software developers using AI assistants were more likely to introduce security vulnerabilities and less likely to catch bugs. They had reduced critical thinking and overconfidence in flawed code, showed lower engagement with problem-solving, especially in debugging and architecture decisions, and had a shallow understanding of the underlying logic.

Additional Stanford research shows people who relied on AI to write essays showed weaker brain connectivity, lower cognitive engagement, and less ownership of their work compared to those who wrote without AI assistance. Of course it does. Writing our own essays and resumes and communications engages our neural connectivity to order our thoughts and then author them sequentially and comprehensively to complete these tasks. Ripping what Chatgpt constructs is brain dead.

Geoffrey Hinton, aka ‘The Godfather of AI’ recently said in a BBC Radio 4 interview that he believes there’s a 10–20% chance that AI will wipe out humanity within the next 30 years. He’s concerned that superintelligent AI could become Terminators of the human race. Believe Geoff or not, it is clear we have a problem using AI without damaging backlash. The more ignorant, ruder, demanding, angrier and less compassionate and tolerant of each other we become in our human interactions with every failed expectation of instant gratification, the more likely the Godfather of AI will turn out to be right.