NaNo no more, or: Why we can't have nice things.

 Earlier today, a friend sent me a screenshot of this headline: 

Here's a link to a free version of the story. It doesn't include the second headline, which is too bad, because it gets to the heart of why NaNo is going out of business.

As alert hearth/myth readers know, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. At first it was a simple challenge: Write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. Devote all of the month of November to churning out a first draft of the novel you've always dreamed of writing. Get the first draft out of your head and onto the (virtual) page.

I've been a big supporter of NaNoWriMo over the years, both by promoting my own participation in their events and, often, by sliding them some cash. I went back through the blog just now to figure out the last time I participated in a NaNo event. Looks like it might have been November 2020, or maybe summer 2021. I know I did NaNo something like eleven times, and I won every time I participated. But I can't check on the NaNo website anymore because I deleted my account last year, upon hearing about the change in their terms of service to allow people to use AI to write their novels.

Apparently there were other problems with the organization: accusations of nefarious people using the forums for grooming and abuse. I never saw any of that because I never frequented the forums. I wasn't interested in wasting time on a message board (if I wanted to do that, I'd go to Kevin's Watch); I was doing NaNo to write my damn novel. I used it as an accountability tool to keep my word count on track. The certificate I got for winning, if I'm being honest, was mostly for bragging rights on social media.

When I started seeing things change at NaNo was about the time the founders sold the place. After that, there were deals for participants at indie-author-adjacent businesses -- stuff like discounts for having your novel printed by some pay-to-publish outfit. I don't think I ever used any of them. But I didn't call them out, either. Maybe I should have. 

Probably I should have.

Anyway, last year, NaNo changed their terms of service to allow people to use AI to write their work -- and accused people who complained about the change of ableism, of all things. From the article: 

"We believe that to categorically condemn AI would be to ignore classist and ableist issues surrounding the use of the technology," the nonprofit's 2024 statement reads, "and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege."

Ooh, privilege and ableism! Insert haughty sniff here!

But the opponents of the change saw that for what it was: bullshit. Published authors believed -- as I do -- that the real aim behind the TOS change was to allow the new owners to scrape content written by participants to train AI so the organization could profit from it. That's just so far from the original purpose of NaNoWriMo as to be sickening.

"So many people worked so hard to make NaNoWriMo what it was," children and YA author Maggie Tokuda-Hall posted on Bluesky, "and it was all squandered to prop up a plagiarism machine, truly betraying everything NaNo represented: the limitless creativity of normal people."

It's the same scummy behavior that finally made me quit the dead bird app. It's people who think it's okay to make money off of stuff they stole from content creators. It's not exactly plagiarism, but it's not far off the mark.

About two years ago, I wrote here on this blog, "by and large, creativity should be left to human beings." I still think so. And I still think we ought to be paid, every time, for what we create.

What I told my friend in response to the headline above was: "The founders (of NaNo) had the best of intentions and did a lot of good for writers. As usual, the capitalists fucked it up." 

It's a tale as old as greed. 

Any ideas on how to change it would be much appreciated.

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In searching the blog to discover the last time I last did NaNo, I realized it's been more than three years since I wrote my last novel. I'm thinking maybe it's time I wrote a retrospective on how my decision is holding up. Maybe next week.

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These moments of human-generated blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

How many people attended the Hands Off rallies? Nobody knows.

When I was in college, I had a poster that featured artwork kind of like this, except that the bricks were gray: 

deberarr | Deposit Photos

The caption read: "For every complex problem, there is a simple solution -- and it's wrong." Apparently nobody knows who originally said it. But it came to mind this weekend when I was perusing stories about the turnout at yesterday's Hands Off protests around the country and around the world.

I didn't go yesterday. I had every intention of going, but it snowed overnight and most of the day, and I was a little worried about driving in it. But we had about 2,000 people turn out at our state capitol building, according to the Santa Fe New Mexican this morning. Our rally was one of several planned across the state, including Albuquerque, our largest city, where the media reported turnout only as "thousands".

Interestingly, that's the same vague number I saw out of most news organizations during the day for the all of the events combined: "thousands". The NBC-owned TV channel in New York City would only say that organizers expected thousands to come -- despite aerial photos showing the crowd stretching 20 city blocks.

Later in the day, some news organizations bumped the crowd-size numbers up to "hundreds of thousands".

But I was following the Alt National Park Service account on Facebook, which said their final attendance figure for all 1,200-plus rallies across the country was five million people.

That's a pretty big discrepancy.

A friend on Facebook blamed it on the corporate takeover of the American media by billionaires who support Trump (or at least want to keep doing business under the Trump regime). 

That sounds plausible until you look at foreign coverage of the protests. For example, The Guardian, which is British owned and proclaims proudly that it doesn't bow to Trump, used the same vague wording as every other news organization: "Organizers estimated that more than 500,000 people demonstrated in Washington DC, Florida and elsewhere." The BBC wouldn't commit to a final tally at all, sticking with "thousands". 

Here's the thing: It's hard to get an exact number of attendees at big outdoor events. You can get an estimate by counting the number of people in a specific area of known size -- let's call that a "unit" -- and multiplying that times the number of units that the crowd covers. That's the way the National Park Service used to do it in DC -- until the Million Man March in 1995, when the organizers claimed three million people attended and got big mad when the National Park Service said it was more like 400,000. It was far from the first time that event organizers had disputed the NPS's official counts. So Congress inserted language in the next appropriations bill that removed funding for the NPS for crowd size estimating. 

Now, 1995 was a while ago, but not so long ago that folks at the NPS have forgotten the methodology, which was never much of secret anyhow. (It's the same way you figure out how many jelly beans are in a jar, right?) The Alt NPS folks said they had a representative at every rally yesterday, and those reps were the ones who came up with the attendance figures for each rally.

But why aren't the media going with the Alt NPS attendance figure? My guess is that they have no way to confirm it, and they figured it was safer to go with something vague like "organizers said thousands had registered to attend" and maybe also say that "organizers later said way more people showed up than they expected" than to go out on a limb with the figure of five million.

Are the media deliberately downplaying yesterday's crowd sizes? Maybe. Is it because of some edict from their owners? I doubt it -- mainly because photos and video of the rallies are readily available. If the oligarchy were indeed trying to promote the undercount, all that photographic evidence would be gone.

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Here's your periodic reminder that media is a plural noun and requires a plural verb.

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Oh hey, I just found out that if you want a copy of the poster I used to have, it's available on eBay. It can be yours for just $40.48 (plus shipping, no doubt). I think I paid a buck and a quarter for mine in 1976, but hey, it's a collectible now, amirite?

The poster attributes the quote to someone named "Bradford", which is clearly wrong. And somehow, that seems appropriate.

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These moments of bloggy plausibility have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

Session is over. Now we return you to real life.

Did ya miss me?

The legislative session actually ended over a week ago -- on Saturday, March 22nd -- but the condo association immediately had two crises (neither directly involving my unit, but I'm on the board, so...), and dealing with them slopped over into the beginning of the week. So even though I took Monday through Wednesday off to recover from session, I didn't really get a chance to recover recover. 

Anyway, that's why I didn't write a post last weekend. And that's enough of my whining for now. Because spring has sprung here in Santa Fe, y'all!

Lynne Cantwell 2025

I actually started seeing signs of green in the flower beds several weeks ago, but we've had a spell of really nice weather, so things have begun springing up in earnest. I'm happy to say that the bulbs I planted last fall are mostly coming up, although some of the tulip bulbs seem to have migrated (bloody squirrels...).

Lynne Cantwell 2025

I also planted white grape hyacinth bulbs last fall. In my experience, grape hyacinths usually spring up before the daffodils, but these seem to be taking their time. Maybe I planted them too deep. Anyway, they appear to be on their way to blooming now. 

But the gardening adventure that is making me happiest right now is the planting last weekend of a redbud tree. And it's going to bloom! I took this photo this afternoon!

Lynne Cantwell 2025

Redbuds are my favorite spring blooming tree. I spent decades living in DC, where people come from far and near to ooh and ahh over the cherry trees, and they're beautiful -- don't get me wrong. But there's something about the tiny purple blooms that line the branches of a redbud tree that are just so pleasing to me.

I've wanted my own redbud tree for 40 years or more. We planted one in our front yard in Norfolk, but some asshole cut it down before it could bloom. I mail-ordered and planted a bare-root redbud here last year, but I got overly excited and didn't read all the way through the planting directions, so I didn't realize the roots came coated with wax and were supposed to be soaked in a bucket of water for 24 hours before the tree was planted. I didn't do that, so of course it died.

This year, I bought a tree at a local big-box store in a regular ol' pot. I put it in the bed about a week ago, and it seems to be thriving. Maybe three's the charm. Even if it only survives one year, I'll be happy. But I'll be really happy if it thrives for many, many years, because my porch could use the shade.

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Of course, while I was not-recovering from session, the mess in Washington has continued. So many of the cruel policies put into place by this so-called administration have disgusted me, but nothing has pissed me off so thoroughly as the executive order issued last week against WilmerHale, the law firm I retired from in 2020. The firm represents a whole lot of corporate clients (one of them, in fact, is Tesla), but it also has provided legal advice to the Democratic National Committee and the campaigns of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. And it has a robust pro bono practice, including the representation of several of the inspectors general that Trump has fired. But of course what really got Trump's knickers in a twist was Bob Mueller's work as special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. When Mueller left WilmerHale to take the job, he brought along two other attorneys from the firm, Jim Quarles and Aaron Zebley, and all three returned to work at the firm after the investigation was over. 

Because of all that, Trump wants to drive WilmerHale out of business. He as much as says so in his executive order. 

My old firm isn't the only big law firm Trump has targeted, and at least one of them has basically rolled over and made nice with the administration to keep from being forced out of business. However, I am proud to report that WilmerHale is not rolling over. In fact, the firm has filed suit against the administration, alleging that the executive order violates the First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments to the Constitution. (You can read the complaint here.)

Standing up to bullies is nothing new for my old firm. During the Army-McCarthy hearings in the 1950s, it was a partner at legacy firm Hale and Dorr, Joseph Welch, who kicked off the downfall of Senator Joe McCarthy. McCarthy headed the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and was conducting a witch hunt to root out supposed communists in Hollywood and the federal government, among other places. Eventually, McCarthy got mad at Welch, who was arguing with a lawyer for the subcommittee named Roy Cohn, and verbally attacked an associate at Hale and Dorr who had once been a member of a legal association associated with communist activity. Welch mounted a spirited defense of his colleague, saying the the firm knew of the associate's background and wasn't going to fire him over it. When McCarthy refused to drop his attack, Welch finally said, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" 

That was the beginning of the end for Joe McCarthy's Communist witch hunts.

When the firm I worked for -- Wilmer Cutler and Pickering -- merged with Hale and Dorr in 2004, I was impressed to learn this history. And I'm proud today to know that WilmerHale is continuing to stand up to bullies with vendettas against the firm and what it stands for: the rule of law.

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On Friday night, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon issued a temporary restraining order against the Trump administration's enforcement of parts of the executive order. In his order, Judge Leon wrote, "There is no doubt this retaliatory action chills speech and legal advocacy, or that it qualifies as a constitutional harm."

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One more thing: Roy Cohn eventually went into private practice and represented, among other clients, Donald Trump.

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These moments of historic blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Hang in there, guys.

The end of session is in sight, and pictures are all I have the energy for.

I am not quite to the point of counting the hours until the end of this year's New Mexico legislative session, but it's close. We only have 13 calendar days left -- but really it's 12 days because I work a half day on Sundays and the final day (Saturday, March 22nd -- mark your calendars) has a hard stop at noon. And when I say "hard stop", I mean "hard stop"; New Mexico doesn't do the thing that some legislatures do and extend the session by literally stopping the clock.

Anyway, my point is that it's nearly over, and I'm tired. So here are some photos.

Last week, it was warm enough for Tigs and me to get a little porch time in after work. I thought maybe spring had come early. Oh haha. Yesterday morning, we woke up to several inches of snow. I got this artsy shot of the sconce on my deck through the fabulous wall o' windows -- and I'm glad I took the picture when I did, because it was already melting (hence the tracks of water down the window), and now the snow is nearly gone. 

Lynne Cantwell 2025

From the artsy to the ridiculous: I spotted this, um, object mounted to the wall in a legislators' office on our floor. It looks to be made out of actual horseshoes. Is it art? Is it a hat rack? Let me know what you think. 

Lynne Cantwell 2025

Finally: I believe I mentioned a while back that one side of my new cube has windows that face a blank wall. I ordered a wall decal from an Etsy shop and affixed it to the window. Now I have a view! 

Lynne Cantwell 2025

It came with a bunch of star stickers, which I may put up someday when I'm bored -- after session is over.

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I'm still trying to figure out where I stashed my chile pepper lights. Those would finish off my cube decor nicely, I think. Might have to go spelunking in the closet here in a bit.

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These moments of photographic blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Yee ha!