Where I was mildly inspired to write things last week, today I’m not quite awake yet and haven’t much to report. I can tell you the Symi Shrimp Festival night went off well last night, and if you want to enjoy the spectacle and atmosphere, I suggest you have a look at the Symi TV channel on YouTube. I will find you the link. Please hold, caller…
Meanwhile… Kalos the cat was keen to access his favourite taverna on Saturday. In fact, he’s keen to access it every day, and is usually there well before opening…
And for those who were playing along with ‘What’s my view?’ and suggested sunshades… No, wrong. When was the last time I lay beneath a sunshade? Roughly 2014, I think. This was taken inside the bus while waiting at the Yialos bus stop. The clue was in the sentence beneath the image on Friday: The bus has advertising on the window which allows you to see out but not in, but it’s a covering that the autofocus of a phone can’t cope with.
And that’s about set the standard for the week ahead if you ask me.
This week we’ve had a discussion about day-tripper charges, discovered that the potential fire hazard glass at Panormitis is probably the remains of an old dump, seen sunbeds in the wild, and I’ve had my weekly rant about how AI is already dumbing down human intelligence. (Did you know it is also giving out my email address as the one to write to when you have a concern about Symi’s stray cats? I wondered why I had an increase in emails asking me to help with strays. If you ask Crap GTP who to go to, it gives my email, so, from now on, I’m afraid I will be bouncing those back.)
After all of that, I thought we’d have a competition and call it ‘What’s My View?’ So, here’s one to get us started. Taken from the bus, what’s my view?
I’m just being silly. The bus has advertising on the window which allows you to see out but not in, but it’s a covering that the autofocus of a phone can’t cope with. That was taken last Friday when we took the 14.00 bus up from the harbour. There were no taxis when we wanted one, and instead of waiting for one, we stopped for a drink at Pavlos (just before the taxi rank) and caught the bus later. I have to say: very reasonable prices and a lovely chat with Pavlos too. This was the view:
Weekend plans? Trying to stay cool. Going to Niki’s Kitchen on Saturday evening. That’s it. Oh, and another chapter or two, I expect. Must sweep up the courtyard before it gets too hot. We’ve been averaging 37° all week, and I have to wonder if our Chinese Emporium thermometer is working properly as other people have reported higher. Ours is always in the shade on a north-facing wall, so the coolest part of the courtyard. Apart from that, nothing is planned. I might pop down the road and take advantage of this free black sunshade. Mind you, I’ll have to take my own sunbed.
Don’t ask me why I can’t sleep tonight. I went to bed just after eight and was awake again at 00.30. I lay there for an hour, then gave up. So here I am, just me and the night, the fan and the cicadas, a cup of tea and some stray thoughts. At 2.00, I find myself working on a post for my author blog, getting it ready for Saturday, but it’s got out of hand and ended up here as well. This is going to be a little odd. I know you like to see Symi photos, so I’ll bung a couple in even though they have nothing to do with this text. Here’s one:
The unrelated post has a working title of:
A Note on AI Generated Emails from Alleged Publicists
I want to quote from two emails I received yesterday. I have put what was sent in italics to make it easier to differentiate between my bleating and theirs. Here’s the first line:
Thank you for writing Holywell Street a story that doesn’t just confront hidden darkness but does so with an emotional undercurrent that lingers.
Apparently, I’ve confronted hidden darkness. If I’ve confronted it, it can’t be hidden, surely? It goes on with more AI generated jargon including phrases such as caught between justice and personal consequence, the path forward, and leaves a lasting weight.
Leaves a lasting weight…? What, like too many cream cakes?
I was then asked a couple of questions, including: how did you keep Jack’s emotional core grounded without losing momentum in the plot’s twists?
Answer: You tell me – you purport to have read the book.
Then we get to the meat of the thing with: I help authors build ripple-effect visibility…
Ripple-effect visibility?
Apparently, my story has emotional depth beneath genre. Sorry, love, don’t understand.
I’d be glad to send over a visibility outline…
A what outline? I looked it up and am none the wiser. I’ve heard of visible panty line; it comes about after eating too many cream cakes and creating a lasting weight that ripples beneath.
Anyway… I replied with a couple of questions and a lot of cynicism, had another reply, and then followed that up with ‘So, what’s the cost?’ To which I received a breakdown of levels of ‘support’ and how much I could expect to pay for each one, and it was all so well written, I had to reach for a glossary:
In-depth alignment assessment. Custom reader discovery map. Quiet outreach. Curated spaces with reflective readers. Organic outreach. Immersive visibility layer. Ongoing traction. Gentle book visibility audit. And my fave: 30-day soft ripple tracking. I am now thinking of ice cream. If pressed to respond to this softly rippling enquiry into whether I want to waste money, I shall reply, Do us a favour, love. I ain’t stupid.
On the same day, I received another email from someone with a strangely similar-but-different name. This one was about my godfather’s biography, ‘Bobby,’ and began:
I knew Bobby: A Life Worth Living was more than memoir. It’s a testimony. Raw, rich, and revelatory.
I can’t even say the word revelatory without breaking it down. Re-vel-a-tory. Revel a Tory? Rhymes with la-va-tory. (Well, it does and it doesn’t.)
There then followed a mashup of the blurb which I suspect was created by AI and was clearly based on the blurb I had written by using my own brain and creativity. This was followed by the almost punchline: I run a visibility service…
Oh, here we go. In this case, I was offered a personalized visibility snapshot.
No, not a clue, and I’m not going to ask or even bother to look it up as it’s clearly something to do with corporate publicity speak as spoken by machines and twiddled with by chancers “feeding off vulnerable self-published authors who don’t have the usual publishing house/agent/publicist infrastructure to protect them,” as a friend of mine put it when we discussed the emails. He also suggested “They’re not going to offer you anything you couldn’t organise for yourself with a little bit of work…” and I agree. So, I shall ignore them from now on. In fact, I will mark them as spam in Mailwasher, and if they persist, I shall bounce them back so they can confront their own hidden darkness, and I will do it with an emotional undercurrent that lingers. It does make me wonder, though, how many people will fall for these scams, and scammers who are being more and more helped by AI. It’s so obvious to me when someone has used Crap GTP to create a paragraph or even an entire email. The writing is just too… too… Well, it’s just not normal. Considering it’s been spewed from a machine, it’s too emotional at times, too florid to have been written by anyone with self-respect. Makes me shudder.
Ah well. There we are. It’s now 2.28 and I am still showing no signs of sleeping, so I shall get back to writing chapter 23 of the next instalment, ensuring, of course, that I include emotional depth beneath genre.
I thought: just some photos today. A trip to Pedi in the early morning. Before that, just to point out that yesterday’s post revealed a possible answer. A historic (or an historic) dump, to put it bluntly. Also, to point out, if you read the sentence again, you’ll see I wasn’t talking about the boat Poseidon but the mythical god of the sea. Not even the luxurious new Poseidon boat has the capability to scoop up broken glass from the seabed, although the crew and volunteers go out once a year to clear Seskli island of winter flotsam and jetsam. Anyway, Meanwhile, elsewhere…
Here’s a strange thing. A visitor brought this to me the other day, and I am still baffled by it. There’s a section of coastline on the seaward side of the windmill at Panormitis that looks to be covered it flotsam. However, that flotsam is mainly made up of broken glass and crockery, and it is in a very defined area. Here’s a shot the visitor took of it close up.
As you can see from the video clip (in a moment), the stuff isn’t on the shoreline, it’s not on a beach, but some way from the edge of the sea, and not even at sea level. Maybe this is where Poseidon dumps his wine bottles when he’s finished his revelries. Perhaps he goes around scooping up the broken glass from the seabed and dumps it in this one place. Perhaps sailors throw it here when passing? Or could it be all those message-in-a-bottle messages that people throw in the sea hoping they will reach Panormitis (they arrive, are read, and their bottles dare umped here). Maybe someone tidied up the coastline over the last ten years and left it all there for collection in another ten years. It’s not a place where may people go to hang out – unless youngsters go there at night, have parties and leave their bottles behind? You’d have thought the church over the water would have had something to say about that. Unless it’s the church itself, which is not impossible. Anyway. Have a look and listen, have a think, and put your solutions on a postcard to send to the town hall along with a request to have it cleaned up.
