Death is Eternal #338
Sunday. March 5, 2023. 2,760 words.
A free-for-all Death is Eternal? So soon? You bet! It’s funny because not only is February naturally shorter than the other months, but this January had five weeks. So the time between free newsletters widely varied between the two months. In Jan., I remember thinking, “Wow, will I never write a paywall-free Death is Eternal again?” While now, I’m like, “Wow, I wrote a newsletter without the paywall yesterday!” There are long months; there are short months. Regardless of that, we keep living and living. And in my case, I keep writing and writing. (The next no-paywall newsletter will be on April 3, 2023.)
Contents
Marquis de Sade (intro)
Marquis de Sade
Writing: A.I.
Serendipity
Last week (from February 27 to March 5, 2023)
This week (from March 6 to 12, 2023)
Death is Eternal Review #182: The death of Superman
Death is Eternal Review #183: Funeral for a friend
Death is Eternal Review #184: Reign of the Supermen
The end
1. Marquis de Sade (intro)
In theory, this should be the fourth and final draft of Harvey Turpin: Private investigator. However, I still didn’t have the time to edit the comments from my cohort. Yes, I read all the comments and know what I have to change, but the weeks have been chaotic, and this one in particular... well, you’ll read all about it in a second. So, instead of Harvey Turpin, here’s a short story I wrote back when I was obsessed with Marquis de Sade. Fair warning, I wasn’t obsessed with his writings, but rather with the fact he was in the Bastille days before it fell. As 99% of everything I publish here, this is only a first draft, and I hope you enjoy the reading despite that!
2. Marquis de Sade
“Am I not free?” Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade asked.
He was absolutely sure the answer would be “yes.” After all, he won his appeal. Such a winning should make him free from jail and free to live since he overturned a death sentence.
“No.”
The answer took him by surprise. Marquis de Sade was in utter shock.
“How is that possible?” Questioned the writer. “I won! I have to be free.”
With no emotion whatsoever, the guard explained using only three words, “lettres de cachet.”
At that moment, at only 38 years, the writer knew his life was over. More importantly, he knew whom to blame.
Marquis de Sade was incarcerated in Château de Vincennes and transferred to the Bastille in 1784 after Vincennes was closed.
In the most famous French prison, he started the manuscript of his magnum opus, Les 120 Journées de Sodome.
Of course, he didn’t only write while in prison. He also kept his eyes and ears wide open; it was the only way he could understand the zeitgeist.
“There’s something big going on,” the Marquis de Sade said to no one but himself.
In 1789, with less than ten prisoners, the Bastille was the perfect symbol of the French monarchy—opulent and useless.
The Marquis de Sade felt the same thing the streets were feeling. The monarchy wasn’t as holy as they once were.
He shouted to the crowd outside the Bastille, “They are killing the prisoners here!”
Two days later, the writer was transferred, naked as a worm, to the insane asylum at Charenton. Ten days later, the Storming of the Bastille happened. All prisoners were freed.
“You could be back to your scandalous libertine existence with you kept your mouth shut,” provoked the guard.
Marquis de Sade looked at him and smiled. With the characteristical ego of every writer, he answered, “If I had kept my mouth shut, the Bastille would still be there.”
The Marquis didn't think twice about being incarcerated while the others were free. His eyes and ears were open; he knew he couldn’t change the zeitgeist in the blink of an eye. He knew that sooner or later, he would be free.
Marquis de Sade, always the writer, was only saddened for believing that his magnum opus was forever lost.
The end
3. Writing: A.I.
One of Quietly’s internal goals for the content team—and I think it’s not a problem to share this because it’s a generic goal—is to improve efficiency—as I said, generic objective; after all, which company is trying to be less efficient? And nowadays, it’s impossible not to think about how A.I. can help us reach that goal.
And although I’ll talk longly about ChatGPT here, it’s important to highlight that it’s not the only tool. For instance, we’re also trying Grammarly. Not for the heavy edit but to help us—editors—with the style guide—the tool warns us about if the client prefers “%” or “percent,” without editors having to go fetch the style guide to check—and consistency—in a 10,000-word ebook you have 9,999 curly quotation marks, and one straight; humans may miss, but the A.I. doesn’t.
But, as I said, I want to talk about ChatGPT here, not Grammarly—chiefly because many don’t think the latter is an A.I., but also because everyone is talking about the former.
Disclaimer 1: This is based on my experience and my experience alone. It’s possible that even my fellow editors may have different opinions on the matter.
Disclaimer 2: We never use A.I.-generated content. All content is human-generated and human-edited. We’re just testing the tool to see if it’s worth pursuing this path or if we should look for other ways to improve efficiency.
Disclaimer 3: I still think we’re a looooooong way from A.I. creating art.
The more I use ChatGPT, the more speechless I find myself. There are no sugarcoating things here. As a writer, it amazes and scares me to see the A.I. creating a valuable and exciting text in less than two minutes. Especially when I know it’d take me five hours to come up with the same thing. Okay, not the same thing; I know I’m better than an A.I.! But here’s what I want to discuss. I worked as a journalist for ten years, wrote nine books, am currently enrolled in something called The writer’s studio, and edited books and news pieces. So, obviously, I can write better and more trustworthy material than an A.I. can.
I’m better than an A.I. because I have tons, tons of experience. But what about those that aren’t where I am?
I’d be on the top tier if I were a freelance writer. I wouldn’t charge 0.05 or 0.10 per word. I’d be asking for 1.00 or even more. But not everyone is where I am. I’d say that most aren’t. And here’s where A.I. already is a menace.
When comparing the low-tier writers with the A.I., the latter is constantly better. Both take me about the same time to edit, and surprisingly, both tend to have the same mistakes—including false information and untrustworthy sources. I have to spend the same time fact-checking A.I. as human writers. The difference is that ChatGPT is free (for now), gives me what I need in minutes, and I know I can’t blindly trust. While writers cost money, require days or even weeks to write, and should be trustworthy but aren’t.
When it comes to the low-tier writers, I don’t see a reason not to replace them with A.I. The quality of the work is constantly better, it gives me less headache, and I can fast-track production.
Things start to get interesting with the mid-tier writers. Here, I experienced mixed results. Some writers are excellent, and it’s easy to see that soon they’ll be top tiers. But some aren’t. And when they aren’t, they are on the same level as the A.I. regarding readability, false information, or something else. But even if it takes me slightly less to edit writers, I’d still prefer to use the A.I. because of how fast ChatGPT can give me something to edit. For instance, if it takes 30 minutes to edit a mid-tier and an hour to edit A.I., the A.I. still fast-track production because it needs only two minutes to write, while the writer needs two days.
The only instance where I prefer to use writers instead of ChatGPT is when we’re in the top tier. Then, I know the writer will fucking incredible with words and won’t be spreading fake news or whatever. Additionally, I know I can trust them to give me the article, post, whatever, on the date we agreed, and, honestly, when comparing what a top-tier writer can produce and what an A.I. can produce, things get embarrassing for ChatGPT.
This is getting longer than anticipated, so I better start closing down.
In short, A.I. constantly amazes me. It’s impressive that it’s better than low-tier writers. It’s mindboggling that it’s as good as the mid-tier writers. And although it’s embarrassing to compare ChatGPT with great writers, I think the gap will get smaller and smaller by the day, and soon enough, A.I. will be as good as the great writers are.
In reality, I think A.I. soon enough will produce all everyday content. The only space for human writers will be—funnily enough because that’s what everyone thinks A.I. will kill—in arts. And that’s because there are no two artists alike. Sure, A.I. can write like Margaret Atwood, but without the real Atwood, it wouldn’t be able to mimic because there wouldn’t be from where to learn. Additionally, art has space for everyone to live together. You can have A.I. and human art. It’s not a case of one or the other; you can have one and the other.
Anyway, that’s my two cents on the matter. Do you agree? Disagree? Am I getting fired for saying something work-related? Hopefully not.
4. Serendipity
Recently, I talked about being awful at marketing myself. Having said that, given that Death is Eternal usually has two reviews. Last week it had only one, so this one can have three; one could say that I used that to lure readers because I knew this would be a paywall-free newsletter, so I’m giving nonpaying subscribers more content for them to read for free. But that’s not true.
In reality, I just wanted to keep the three reviews together because they’re three parts of the same story. So they’d be together regardless of whether this newsletter has or not a paywall. Additionally, if I wanted to use the opportunity to lure potential subscribers, I’d review something everyone cares about instead of old Superman comics.
So, you know, I’m not good at marketing myself. Sometimes, I merely got lucky.
5. Last week (from February 27 to March 5, 2023)
That was an awful week, both personally and work-wise.
I don’t want to go into details work-wise because, well, because work isn’t my life, and I can shut down, and I don’t have to think about it. So, I’ll just say it wasn’t a great week at work. Although it’s important to say that it could’ve been worse if the colleagues weren’t supportive, and even though we were in a tough spot, we helped each other out of it. So, you know, things can always go south when dealing with clients, but it’s good to know the culture of Quietly attracts people who enjoy helping each other. I’m grateful for that.
What I want to talk about is my personal life—after all, this is my newsletter.
We still don’t know when we’ll have to move, but we know that we have two months to find a new place as soon as the landlord receives the first offer, which is scary as hell if you live in Vancouver, B.C. Rent is at an all-time high, and availability is at an all-time low. So we don’t have many options. With what Jessica and I pay today, we can’t even dream of finding a place that it’s as good as where we live today.
Additionally to that, Jessica received disturbing news regarding her job. When they hired her, they promised they’d moved her from contractor to employee after six months. Now, they went back on the promise and said they’ll keep her as a contractor until July, and after that, they won’t renew her contract. So now, she’s back to looking for a job.
This has been a very, very stressful week. It seemed we were on a good path. Good jobs, good housing situation, studying and getting ahead. But then, everything fell apart. And now, now we don’t know what to do.
Needless to say, we’re feeling down. Pretty down.
6. This week (from March 6 to 12, 2023)
This week will be full of looking for places to live and contacting them, asking if they have open houses or how to schedule visitations. Also, deciding if we want to stay in Vancouver or go to farther places such as Squamish, Abbotsford, Chilliwack..., where we can pay the same thing we’d pay here, but for a bigger place.
I’m not anticipating a light and chill week ahead. Actually, I’m not expecting easy weeks ahead.
7. Death is Eternal Review #182
The death of Superman
The death of Superman is a great experience!
Although you can see the age of the comic, it reads like an old comic; the story is good enough to keep you entertained and wanting to know what will happen. Additionally, they have an internal countdown regarding panels (when we’re four issues away from Superman’s death, the comic is all with four panels; three issues, three panels; and so on) that it’s highly entertaining.
Also, the final issue of the event, when Doomsday kills Superman, is highly emotional. You know he’ll be back. You know he doesn’t exist. But still, it’s SUPERMAN! He should always be there, protecting us. And knowing he isn’t, it’s terrifying.
The death of Superman is an excellent experience because the creatives made us feel the weight of the character’s death.
8. Death is Eternal Review #183
Funeral for a friend
Funeral for a friend is superb!
What makes this part of the storyline so great is the emotion of it. As you read, you understand Superman’s importance for the DC Universe and, at a higher level, for the real world. He is a fictional character, but he’s a fictional character that was always there, standing for truth and justice. Seeing his funeral and watching his friends, family, and lover weeping after his passing makes you feel like truth and justice themselves are dead.
Again, all the writers, artists, and editors did a tremendous job of making us feel for Superman as if he were real. I don’t know how they did it, but they did it.
Funeral for a friend is superb because it makes you feel like you lost a real friend.
9. Death is Eternal Review #184
Reign of the Supermen
Reign of the Supermen is the weakest part of the storyline.
The problem with the conclusion is that although somewhat emotional, it’s too long. But that’s a problem for me, reading today. At the time, comic characters stayed dead once they died. So people thought that Superman was genuinely dead. Having four potential new Supermen for months and months s an excellent idea to make people think the character will stay dead, but since I’m reading after the fact, all I could think all, “OK, now bring Superman back.”
Sadly, the conclusion threw me off the story, not because it was bad but because I knew how it would end.
Reign of the Supermen is the weakest part of the storyline, not because it’s bad, but because I’m reading it in the future.
10. The end
Well, here we are at the end of another Death is Eternal. Was this one good enough to make you consider becoming a paying subscriber? I really hope so. It may not be the greatest newsletter out there, but I give everything I have! So please, consider either becoming a paying subscriber or sharing the newsletter with others; there’s a lot of strength in numbers. See you next week, bye!