Naomi Alderman
I write novels (eg The Power, new novel is The Future), I make games (eg Zombies, Run!), unorthodox Jew. not-getting-into-pointless-arguments-on-the-internet is an act of revolution. However complex you think things are, they're more complex than that
- interesting how much AI writing slop is still being charged for on Substack when… if I see some fun listicle where the first couple of sentences are AI-generated I can easily go and ask ChatGPT or Claude to make that article for me. I think we're in a period of intense 'AI arbitrage'
- where ‘people who know what you can get an LLM to do’ are taking advantage of people who don’t. I have been taken in by it myself and ended up paying for a month or two of something which is all AI-generated. But that period won’t last for long.
- If you’re popping a random idea into ChatGPT and getting a listicle, it won’t be long before everyone realises they don’t need to pay you for that. and then what do you pay for? surely: the value of unique writing style, unique personal perspectives and genuine real thinking in a piece goes up.
- I find these questions so interesting. How much of behaviour/value is just a continuation of old habits, and how long that lasts. The value of infinite bland listicles is now very precisely $20 a month. $20/∞.
- trying something out on Substack. a series on getting into Classics via their cornucopia of absolute filth: naomialderman.substack.com/p/classics-v...
- in terms of '2025 British movies about women with a special relationship with birds of prey' I liked H is for Hawk more than I liked Hamnet.
- eurgh also: the meaning of American Beauty isn't "40 year old men, you should fancy a 16 year old girl!' *the text of the movie* is a man who comes to realise that his yearning to have sex with a teenage girl is about his own inadequacies and his failures as a man and a human being.
- at the time that film came out I remember quite a lot of "it's disgusting that he even wanted to" discourse. but I actually think we could do with having a great deal more art about how people have problematic desires, wrestle with them internally, and manage to avoid becoming abusers.
- the TEXT OF THE MOVIE is that he realises just in time that sex with her would be deeply abusive, that the appropriate role of a 40-year-old man in a 16-year-old girl's life is that of a kind father figure, and that what he has missed and should grab now is the opportunity to become a full adult
- yes also, my kingdom for ONE (1) portrayal ever of Moses where his wife is Black. which she definitely was, she was Sudanese/Ethiopian, it is literally in the Torah along with people doing racist gossip about her and then the Lord God Almighty giving them LEPROSY for being racist (Numbers 12, 1-10)
- this is the story of basically every Jewish person you know or have ever heard of. it's been fleeing genocide since the Romans sacked Jerusalem in 70CE.
- I went on the Today programme this morning to talk about Moltbook and AI. In some ways it is a bit of a general indicator of 'where we are on lots of things' that the BBC's flagship news programme would like to fill its key 'just before 8am' slot with the AI views of... an SF novelist.
- but I try to be responsible and pointed out the headline news that in fact it looks like humans can just log into Moltbook as themselves not as AI bots. So. I do not think this thing means what people seem to think it means. But also: I vibe-coded up a little html tool for myself this morning.
- I am stupidly proud of it. It runs locally, saves locally. I have had Claude code and ChatGPT check up on each others' work and used my common sense about how to make a thing like this as secure as possible. The exciting thing is that it is precisely what *I* want, to manage my tasks.
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View full threadonce you *can* have something or do something much more easily, you suddenly start thinking of a huge number of new applications for it. my coding this up today doesn't mean I'm about to set up my own Bluesky (eg). it means I suddenly have higher standards for the help I expect from software.
- some traditional media outlet should commission me to do a series of Adventures In Vibecoding about how to identify software-shaped problems in your life and how to create stuff for it in a secure/responsible way (for normies). but I don't think they will, so I'll just put it on Substack instead.
- Hollander definitely learned Russian. He was working on it from like, episode 2.
