Sunday Meditations by JB Minton

This Week’s Common Essay: “NO”

Nothing is more empowering than saying NO to something tempting.

This is especially true when we say no to the things that harm us.

Or the things that make us harm other people.

I am sick of hearing from men who are either stuck on rage or glued to depression. It’s time for voices of calm reflection to be heard, especially from artists expressing their thoughts and emotions through all kinds of art channels.

But I’ve got some bad news for the Luddites out there. There isn’t a future where Artificial Intelligence isn’t deeply involved in creating and distributing art. It’s madness and folly to struggle against this technology. It must be embraced and secured in the rights of the artist.

I want you all to understand how Blockchain works. I’m not to lecture here. You can do your research, but to provide a high-level summary, Blockchain is a digital ledger system that is publicly transparent regarding transactions in the chain. If anything changes, everyone sees it. Blockchain is the opposite of what we have now, where corruption and misinformation are rampant throughout our legal, political, and economic systems.

Suppose we can turn the creative assets from artistic expression into Blockchain ledgers. In that case, artists can be compensated automatically when their likeness, voice, intellectual property, music, and film are used, including as part of the grounding information for large language models.

And yes, blockchain is the foundation of crypto and NFT. I’m not pushing that shit on you. I don’t own any crypto, and so far I make money when you buy my books, your paid Substack subscriptions, and my corporate work. Instead of selling you something, I’m trying to convince you to understand the opportunity to use Blockchain technology to democratize voting and simplify and fortify art distribution while securing artists' rights in the AI era. Do you want to fix the algorithm nonsense with streaming compensation? Tie the inputs to the blockchain and put a transactional service on top.

It has never been easier for an artist to publish their work for the world, nor has it required less effort for their audience to respond to the work in real time. We have work to do, so roll up your damn sleeves. The fire is burning, so at least pull your own weight.

Hey, thanks for subscribing to read my work. I hope you enjoyed this week’s common essay.

In the VIP Room for my Cultural Investors, we’ll briefly discuss the following topics:

• What’s the most repeated phrase in all Quentin Tarantino’s movies?

• You know what’s underrated? Your health.

• Who are we going to be as the American People?

• About these tariffs, someone is making money, so why not you?

• Aren’t you fed up with oral histories of Art instead of real criticism?

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