Dave's Fiction Warehouse

I ’m a great fan of words, even though they often fail me. So I eventually notice when new words arise and old words pass from usage or evolve in meaning. I mention this because Merriam-Webster recently announced it has added 1,400 new words to its dictionary. That seems like a lot. If I sat down with a pen and paper I could list and define maybe a couple dozen of them unaided. “Looksmaxxing,” for example. I always think of the vain and vacuous Pete Hegseth when I hear this word. Everything about this dude – the metallic hair, the seamless suit, the cosmetics, the robotic gestures – tells you that his mirror transcends any military concern.  I’ve heard the term “Rickroll” quite a bit, but confess I didn’t really know what it meant. Turns out it’s an online joke, where you trick somebody into clicking a link to the song "Never Gonna Give You Up" by English singer Rick Astley. Why that song, I have no idea. If I was going to trick somebody into hearing a crappy song, it would ...

G oogle’s AI agent Gemini recently reminded me, via e-mail, that I am contractually obligated to produce a minimum of 4,000 words per annum for this blog.  See, Google runs Blogger, which hosts DavesFiction.com for free. Except I find it’s not quite free. Buried deeply in the terms and conditions that I thoughtlessly clicked past when setting up this blog, there is a clause or two stipulating that because Gemini’s appetite for original content is expanding exponentially, I and every other “content creator” using its platform must do my part to feed it. Otherwise, Gemini notes, it might end up dining on its own stuff – and what kind of person feeds horse poop to the pony?  My first thought was just to bang out some nonsense text strings – stuff like “ sadlk adso lfjken dakljoens ” – until I reached the desired word count. But the thing about artificial intelligence is that it’s intelligent enough to know when humans are phoning it in. The next paragraph of Gemini’s email points...