Hey pmjv, thanks for dropping by! You’re an absolute legend and I couldn’t have made this (for better or worse) without your work.

That parody is a bit problematic, though

That’s a good point, yes.

Your empathy is really appreciated.

No problem! Fwiw I think a lot of us identify with a lot of that character these days.

There’s no criticism of the outside factors

The article literally starts with “In 2026, the job market is tough. AI plunged us all into economic despair” (itself exaggerated, and a play on the typical “AI doomer” clickbait articles saying what we all know more dramatically, which is another can of worms).

It shouldn’t be a sentence for poverty.

Agreed. And in the article it isn’t. He does get a job at the end.

But yeah, I can see how your reading of the article is valid. I’ll sleep on it and see if I can do something about it.

I don’t actually think I frame that as the only alternative. There’s nuance on the article. It’s a bit up to you how to interpret it. Some options are:

• He would have actually kept the job if he hadn’t slacked off the final week, and kept using AI.
• The job was not a good fit for him anyway because the vibecode-heavy workspace virtually required using AI. But that doesn’t meant that there wouldn’t be other jobs for him (he gets one at the end btw).
• He might have been able to get by without AI if he didn’t go through his gargantuan vimwiki project for 3 weeks.

I don’t imply that being able to use AI tools is a panacea to get a job. I don’t imply that the reason for many lay offs isn’t related to AI.

I don’t insinuate that being out of work is entirely the fault of the worker. I’m just making the nuanced point that some workers can sometimes do more beneficial things when looking for work, without realizing that that’s the case. This can happen despite the main barrier to getting a job being a completely external cause (as it’s indeed implied in the article).

I understand that the topic is uncomfortable. That’s why I tried to to put it in the context of humor and satire. Basically I’m asking what can we do better when trying to get a job, even if an external, uncontrollable situation would make any improvement almost pointless.

It’s implied that he actually gets fired because of refusing orders for 3 weeks, and then slacking off another week.

Well, the idea was to have a narrator who is a bit self-sabotaging in their job hunt, doesn’t notice, and blames the job market and AI. The nuance is that they are partially right on the external diagnosis, but not on the internal one, and that’s something that happens.

For the record, I think the entire spectrum of accepting/rejecting AI has valid points, and that there’s a lot of value on the rejection side. I also think it’s alright to make fun of some of them, particularly if doing it mostly to highlight some contradictions and conflicts, without making a moral judgement.

I assure you that’s way off from my intent. But for privacy reasons, I don’t want to discuss publicly my financial circumstances and how appropriate they might be in the context of writing this. In any case, I appreciate your feedback on how this could be read. I’ll keep it in mind, and I apologize.

Anything in particular that felt like punching down or strawmanning people in financial problems?

Thank you for reading it!

To me the logs are the real heart of the book, where the actual things I’m trying to say get more into focus.

I think you’re gonna like the ending if you liked everything so far, it really wraps everything up.

Yeah, I had to shout out analognowhere. I think he’s one of a handful of artists that are writing about a similar topic in a similar style. I really like their work, it inspired me.

Also, the open-source katana is a reference to OpenBlade.

Lol much appreciated. That’s one of my favorite bits in the book. Sort of how we think of everything between Gregorian chants and Stravinsky as classical music

Lol, you know the lore

I’m glad the book (and Eurobeat) found its audience

Salvador Dali - Corpus Hypercubus

Due to hug of death, backup is accessible here: https://sebastiancarlos.github.io/hacker-fables

I’m glad you liked it.

Yes! That’s exactly the inspiration.

Thanks!

I was actually wondering if this could be packaged. At least AUR should be doable.

Great question! Yes, Backbone appears twice.

First, it’s artistic license. I think the Backbone.js school is the “backbone” of our current front-end era, for better or worse. So, it fits that the backbone of the hyper-cubical cross is represented by Backbone.js (twice). Spoiler alert: The cover art’s meaning becomes clear around the halfway point on the book, if you’re curious.

Second: Yeah, that was a “happy accident” by genAI. To be fair the first $50 that gets donated for this book on my Kofi link go directly to commission a real artist for a cover remake.

That’s “Backbone” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backbone.js)

It was the hot front-end framework before Angular (and React).