The Writers Strike - Ep. 103 of Intentionally Blank

[@tripfoward]

When Brandon's kids gett bad grades, they just slip their report cards into the autograph pile the night before.

[@brintonk7]

Haha. Nice.

[@samuelleask1132]

😂

[@Omegaroth666]

Awesome Lolz

[@animalia5554]

That would not surprise me

[@ForlornCreature]

Congrats to Dan for his honorary food heist doctorate, we’re all very proud

[@LiamEryt182]

Honestly I thought he had already received it

[@СергейЧернышев-б6щ]

It's as long awaited as DiCaprio's oscar

[@lobsterbisque333]

I can't believe we have two honorary doctors doing a podcast together

[@BillPeschel]

18:35 Writers strike commentary begins

[@onthecreatingofthings5017]

Thank you

[@Tsuneo625]

Thank you.

[@timdegriselles1216]

this is hilarious to me that this is necessary.

[@shaave]

Ty

[@mezlyndon662]

I think, having watched Brandon's spelling during his lecture series, the fact that he's an hon dr of letters is amazing. He knows all the letters, and has come up with new, exciting, creative ways of arranging them. :D

[@corinnedrollette6107]

He can arrange letters in symmetrical patterns, and he even makes up fancy new glyphs.

[@godminnette2]

Imagine you open up your WoR letterbound, and you see the faint imprint of an elephant seal with gnocchi tattooed on its face, as if someone had drawn that on a page just a couple pages above it...

[@ThirdChildFilms]

Congratulations to Dan on his Honorary Honorary Doctorate!

[@solprovider5385]

Pasta does not require cooking. Making pasta edible only requires removing starch. Heat speeds the process. You can soak pasta in room temperature water overnight, or use boiling water for 10 minutes. - Pasta in river would transform faster than in standing water (like bowl in kitchen) due to constant 'stirring" with more water for starch to dissolve. Pasta in a river would become "cooked"/limp in hours, continue becoming mushier, until disintegrates completely

[@tatianar9429]

Depends on how lively social life is in the river. Even with moderate population of birds and fish, can't imagine pasta not being eaten long before it would theoretically dissolve.

[@thatonepossum5766]

But doesn’t it still have germs from the raw eggs and flour used in it?

[@piasecznik]

@@thatonepossum5766 Leaving aside that most pasta types don't use eggs, there's plenty of recipes using raw eggs. Raw flour not so much, but the risk factor there isn't higher than for raw eggs. Yeah, you can get unlucky with salmonella or e-coli, but with modern safety standards you'd have to be pretty unlucky.

[@NicholasWFuller]

"I do that everytime I eat a bag of chips" lmao - what a wonderfully stupid and delightful joke! I love it

[@int3rs3kt]

I stopped paying attention for a minute around 15 minute mark and when I came back they were talking about dead bodies decomposing in the river. What a podcast!

[@gowzahr]

Nebula, for those who haven't heard of it, is a streaming service created by a group of disgruntled KZbin creators. In theory, authors could band together to build their own digital market in protest of Amazon and Audible.

[@warbrothers7745]

Reminds me of this homer quote: In theory communism works.

[@midwestindigo1397]

​@@warbrothers7745in practice capitalism murders the world in 5 years from global warming

[@thewritestuffofficial]

I appreciate you guys covering this topic. I recently did a video on Amazon’s 60% author royalty breakdown on physical copies where they take the printing cost out of that 60% rather than off the top, ensuring authors get more like 20% depending on how the author sets their prices and the cost of printing the book. Amazon needs to offer something more fair to indie authors.

[@B-MC]

Comedy gold, this episode. If Brandons is letters, shapes and colours, I vote to dub Dan's Honourary Doctorate of Recess and Detention (or the school version of eating time and prison time)

[@fakjbf3129]

The biggest problem with an author strike is as Dan said, the majority of the work in making a novel is the writer sitting down and writing it. Yeah you’ve got editors and book binders and such, but they can pivot to just working on a different contract fairly easily. With something like a TV show or movie, hundreds of people are working on the production from actors to camera operators to costume designers to set builders. When the writers go on strike all of that grinds to a halt, and that is what gives the writers the leverage to make their demands. Authors have a very limited ability to create that kind of leverage just because of how the medium works, it could certainly be more than how the current system is set up but it will probably never be enough to the point that an organized strike could cripple the publishing industry in the way a writer’s strike can cripple the production industry.

[@tennesseeponderer3146]

So the writers can hold the jobs of innocent people hostage.

[@fakjbf3129]

@@tennesseeponderer3146 They are simply exercising the power that executives normally hold and use on a daily basis to suppress wages.

[@mackdmara]

I study in my field as much as I can. The fresh air does me good I think.

[@marwasgaming]

wow two honorary doctorates in one pod cast, we are so lucky

[@B-RollBooks]

Thank you, Drs. Sanderson and Wells.

[@mndrew1]

I'm fairly comfortable with the idea that fair wages for all workers everywhere falls under the heading of 'Bind not the mouths of the kine that tread the grain."

[@tennesseeponderer3146]

Who gets to determine fair wages

[@Squiggly6942]

Definition of colorblind - The reduced ability to distinguish between certain colors. Dan - *I'm not colorblind but I can't see colors very well...*

[@danielcreviston9867]

See my other reply, but color blind is kind of an outdated term. True color blindness (literally cannot see color) is called achromatopsia and is connected to profound visual dysfunction. What most "color blind" people have is really color deficiency. These people can see in color (not grayscale) but have difficulty distinguishing between certain shades depending on which color receptors (cones) are present and/or damaged. Color deficient people generally have otherwise normal vision.

[@Squiggly6942]

@@danielcreviston9867 don't know why you said all that... Literally changes nothing, but okay I guess. Thanks for elaborating further?

[@danielcreviston9867]

@@Squiggly6942 You commented on my comment to just to tell me what I said changes nothing? Classy.

[@Squiggly6942]

@@danielcreviston9867 brother, you are delusional. You replied to my comment. This is the reply thread under MY original comment... Are you okay?

[@Pablo360able]

Big studios can't hope to outlast the writer's strike when content like this exists to fill in the gap. Who would watch a terrible filler season of an already middling sitcom written by a scab phoning it in when we can listen to Dan Wells describe an absurd fruit rollup heist?

[@tennesseeponderer3146]

Who’s to say the non guild member doesn’t do a better job writing

[@Pablo360able]

@@tennesseeponderer3146 a friend of mine named “what happened during the 2008 writer’s guild strike” told me so

[@oahtobar1355]

@@Pablo360able you assume that the 2008 writers and the writers of today are of equal quality. This assumpation is generally false, but I will give you that there is no reason to assume the scabs will be any better...

[@Pablo360able]

@@oahtobar1355 I assure you, there was as much bad writing leading up to the 2008 strike as there was leading up to this one. Didn't mean the scabs weren't a noticeable downgrade.

[@GrayghostAlpha]

I don't blame the writers, I always blame the people who hire them for one reason or another. It's been true in every industry I've seen: You can have it fast, cheap, or high quality; pick two, you don't get the third. "Hollywood" is getting it cheap and wanting it fast so even the good writers are working that way.

[@drafezard7315]

I recall their being at least one famous movie example where they managed to get all three, but for the life of me can't remember what it was.

[@finndelimatamay1983]

I believe it was Hot Fuzz? Cinema wins said it was in his video on the movie. Shot in three months, budget of 12 million, and well, we all get to decide if it was high quality :) But the important thing is that it’s the exception that proves the rule.

[@harleymoore2739]

theory on Stormlight Archive: Ok, he said it would be ten books. One letter beginning each book gets: The way of kings. Words of radiance. Oathbringer. Rhythm of War. T W O R Two R… Two Roshars? That’s ten letters

[@dylbarton]

Interesting about UVU having lots of industry turned professors. I was at BYU (more recently than Brandon and Dan) in Computer Engineering, and many of my engineering professors had quite significant industry experience.

[@Zenbrey]

Congratulations, Honorary Dr. Sanderson!

[@masonwheeler6536]

"We don't have ongoing shows," Dan said on Episode #103. 😆

[@Zimoria]

Today I Learned: they sit in person with each other at the same table. For some reason I thought the bar in the middle of the screen was an indication they were filmed in two completely different separate locations, like each in their respective offices or something.

[@tonkabeanicecream5698]

But you can see them looking at each other...

[@inkoftheworld]

@@tonkabeanicecream5698 It's possible the person thought they could be looking at a monitor showing the other's face

[@BRaan]

Brandon is taking about pasta crime-scene investigation and the woman picking up his papers has a completely straight face like she isn't hearing this comedy gold...

[@calderdavis5490]

“A mass grave of dead pasta people” is a sentence that will live in my head for the rest of my life. 😂

[@freeman_8107]

Not even Lift could best my dog at food heists

[@Erif917]

Congrats to Brandon!!! and Dan for their honorary doctorates xD, can we have an honorary title in cosmere knowledge please?

[@Cofiend]

BrandoSando Doctor of Letters, and his swashbuckling sidekick Dan the Doctor of Cuisine Criminality

[@zachclawson1186]

2 years! Golly I remember the first episode coming out

[@rio425ee]

"you cannot go on strike against a racket, you can only boycott one."

[@puckwithahalo14]

I'm probably more amused than I should be that an episode about the SGA strike ended with "tune in next time" 😁

[@warbrothers7745]

That bag of chips comment is worthy of Seinfeld, genius comment by sando !

[@olevam1]

So excited for the brackets!

[@miguelagullo8000]

Congratulations Dr. Sanderson 😂

[@godminnette2]

I thought for a moment Brandon was making a DS9 reference with "might just be a tailor," but then I realized he was just referring to the joke they had just made about using Fruit Roll-Ups as clothing.

[@zelgoth1]

Based

[@kaytlinmangelson6673]

Been rewatching DS9 - I thought the same thing. I'm pretty sure Garak would go in on a good heist in the right circumstances

[@jamestandy8594]

Brandon does love DS9, so I wouldn't put it past him to be making that joke here. I can't tell if he did it intentionally or not though

[@shona-sof]

Garek might make Bashir a suit made of fruit roll ups.

[@nataliewilliams7353]

While you do make a good point about the AI negotiations and why corporations might not want to out right ban the use of AI in case it becomes industry standard, I do want to point out that AI has currently been threatening to replace or cheapen the value of writers work. They already are striking for low pay and a technology that many execs who have no sense of artistry will gladly use the worse, cheeper AI option to produce work rather than human artists. The use of AI in art will only drive people to consider the work of human artists as "too expensive" and will undercharge people for what they are worth. I was hoping to enter the freelance visual artist field but I basically have no chance to now as any of the entry point gigs I could have taken have been gobbled up by AI generators. That is also not to mention the whole ethics problem of current AI generators, which used thousands of scraped data points and copyrighted images from people who did not give their concent and are not compensated. I will forgive you for saying AI art generators are like Photoshop filters- they are not- because you guys are not visual artists. For one, Photoshop filters are designed for an artist to use and require human decision and direction, AI art generators were made scraping other artwork and completely bypass any sort of human hand. 36:41

[@steenymobiny]

Madeline L'Engle would be an awesome commencement speaker. My commencement speaker was Ray Bradbury, who was excellent! Authors as commencement speakers FTW!

[@TonyRobetson]

i agree it'd be hard for authors to form a traditional union but they can form rather powerful organizations. might not be able to do health insurance but maybe an emergency fund so authors dont have to depend on gofundme. we're also in the age of social media, if an organization like SFWA could organize all it's members to support specific things, like the fight against Disney, and all those authors talked about it on social media, that's a lot of power. another example, might not be able to get publishers to pull from certain distributers but could organize all authors to do tours and indie bookstores and push or not push certain distributors. it's all about a lot people organized for a specific reason.

[@chrisrussell1106]

Indie author here as well as a MASSIVE fan of your books. Brandon, please think about the secondary consequences of your war on Amazon. You have a HUGE platform, with millions of readers who follow your every word, both on the page and off. As a result, when you say, "Amazon is bad," people will boycott ebooks and audiobooks on the site. This doesn't hurt your sales, but it hurts the sales of epic fantasy authors - especially indies - who overlap with your audience and rely on Amazon sales. So even if Amazon's practices are bad (they're not terrible from where I'm standing), your attempt to help us is costing us a sizeable chunk of our profits. In the long term, would an alternative to Amazon be awesome? Yes. In the short term, you're doing a lot of unintentional harm. Please be like Steris and chart out all the possible outcomes of a situation before taking aggressive action like this. 🙏 There's a lot more nuance to the subject than I can get into in a comment (lots of royalty math, etc.), but I would recommend reaching out to some indie authors to get their takes on the situation. Tackling Amazon's insane return policy (you can listen to a WHOLE audiobook in a week and still return it) would be FAR more helpful to us than any change in their royalty scheme. Thanks again for being an incredible guy and a superb author. No matter how this issue turns out, I'll always be a fan.

[@SunRayz3r]

“Honorary Dr. Sanderson and his little friend”. 😆

[@thecrimsonreigner1517]

aw you guys are such good friends 🙂

[@highcommander2007]

Doctor Brando I also got in "trouble" for selling candy around 6th grade. I sold "stress balls" too which were sand filled balloons. Was glorious :)

[@just_a_character]

Great conversation

[@calebmarmon1310]

I do question if AI is “really that good” versus “I don’t know how much is plagiarized from something else.” I think there’s an ethical obligation for any AI to site all influences.

[@scotwilcox1771]

Unfortunately that's not how an AI works. It doesn't go looking for specifics it can crib, it slurps up the dataset and takes the aggregate of what it finds. It can't point to any one source in its answers, because it's reading literally all of them.

[@tennesseeponderer3146]

By that logic any writer would have to list all influences for their writing, if it wouldn’t count as plagiarizing if a human did it it shouldn’t if an AI does the same thing.

[@calebmarmon1310]

@@tennesseeponderer3146 1)AI aren’t people. It is a tool. We’re not talking about sentient life. 2) People get in trouble if their creations are too close to their inspirations. If AI is making the creative process more efficient, then it should also be audited just as efficiently to make sure it doesn’t cross the line of plagiarism. 3) I’m more forgiving of people with passion for creativity than a literally soulless algorithm designed to put those creative people out of work.

[@oahtobar1355]

​@@calebmarmon1310 3 is incorrect, AI wasn’t made to do that, even if people use it to do that, it was not made for that purpose. ChatGPT was made as a "research preview" for instance. I know using true facts is difficult, I struggle with it too, but it is simply a must. As for 2, the auditing can occur on finalized products, we don’t need to know what influences an AI has, we only need to know if it is plagiarizing another work or not. This can simply be done by looking at what the AI output is and comparing it to any potential originals, no citation necessary. I agree with 1 in isolation, but it is used to refute the idea that the same process to vet human work should be different than the one used to vet AI work. This is the fundamental issue here and it really seems to me that people are afraid of a dead dragon. Plagiarism is already illegal; no specialized process needs to exist for AI work. In 2 it is stated that "AI should also be audited just as efficiently as normal works", but in the original comment it is stated there is an ethical obligation for EXTRA regulations on AI work that normal artist don’t have to deal with. There is no need to cite inspirations, only direct quotes. If anything, the internet facilitates more plagiarism, piracy, and IP theft, on its own than AI could ever dream of doing. The internet nigh single-handedly reshaped the music industry through piracy and that happened quite some time ago now. Nevermind how unfathomably easy it is, without any AI involvement, to right-click on an art piece hit "copy image" repost that image on Instagram or something and say, "here's a quick sketch I drew, now donate to my patreon." The only thing I can think of AI making worse is accidental plagiarism where the prompter doesn’t know that the output is too similar to an already existing piece.

[@BirdMorphingOne]

I really want to know if the strike has affected Sanderson's adaptions that are in the works. I'm hoping someone asks him at his next livestream

[@paulbrooks4395]

Wish we could strike in IT. We have people who can't afford to rent more than a bedroom working at a professional engineering firm. Lots of people. The money clearly goes to the two owners who live really nice lives. We have to beg and beg for raises and we barely make anything.

[@talongeorge3750]

Hey! I'm one of the many people who sent the Pasta story to Dan! haha

[@meganhirschi6248]

I did the fruit roll up on a creamie. Blue raspberry on an orange flavor. Mostly good from the texture change.

[@garrettsorensen631]

In all honesty, that "doctorate" would probably be worth money some day 😂

[@monkpato]

Amazon is so amazingly bad for all aspects of the book industry from independent and used bookstores that they actively target with their "Gazelle program" ("we go after independent bookstores like a lion goes after a wounded gazelle") to authors and publishers. It is sad that they are dear to so many readers because Amazon got its start with books even though they admitted that they did not from a love of books but because they wanted to gather info about their customers and what better way than to see what they are reading.

[@ThirdChildFilms]

Jumping in for a Lower Decks correction: I asked, and the show is working under a TAG (The Animation Guild) contract, not WGA. But I support and cheer for the WGA!!

[@richardsurridge5886]

it was the flying spaghetti monster of course

[@thegodofalldragons]

Kratos found the Spaghetti Monster. He flies no more.

[@DanMackison]

I'm surprised the Onion article featuring Brandon and the writer's strike was not mentioned.

[@iivin4233]

Why is it a guild and not a union? Anyway. Instead of striking what novelists would have to do, en masse, is approach Scribn, Google--maybe even Valve or Epic--and offer to publish with them alone. On top of that, we can spruce up the scripts for some of the games you want to publish and put our names on them. Then it's a game of chicken. Will your lost revenue hit you before the cost of owning buildings full of unused printing equipment hits traditional publishers. E-readers bundled with books, getting defunt newspaper printers onsides, opening licenses up for printing to any company who can--or fan on etsy who wants to--print their own books assuming they pay a small royalty.There are options.

[@alaregret1270]

Any chance Brandon and Dan are members of the fast food secrets club? That’s where I learned about the Fruit Roll Up usage for icecream

[@philippenachtergal6077]

00:13 "Nothing else going on" with an enigmatic smile. I don't have the exact date for this video anymore so what was really that "nothing" ? Was it like a secret book or 5 ?

[@almogdov]

I'm from Israel and yes, that rollups story is absurd lol

[@fralou_sind_kreativ]

About the Writers Strike: Is there anything we as TV-Show watching consumers can do? Like pick specific days and then don't watch anything on screening platforms or TV for a week world wide? Or raise money with an international crowd funding so all the writers can continue the strike as long as needed? Sending much love and creative vibes

[@senorbe]

The advantages corporations have during transitions is basic Shock Doctrine - AI is a big transition and corporations will benefit hugely unless the people speak out

[@atententen3326]

Now we need pasta necromancers to use the pasta corpses

[@BrandonThomasSimmons]

Perhaps Hollywood pushed this issue to strike because it needed the publicity to boost sales (especially with the drastic losses from failing box office sales).

[@Cooldito1111]

Based Sanderson supporting workers, love to see people at the top lifting up others

[@Deaiden]

At first I thought the PhD was the table top game they made

[@DJRedd52]

Geez, do you think Rothfuss and GRRM are just on strike?

[@tennesseeponderer3146]

No, just lazy or uninterested in continuing their books.

[@philthoreson7283]

Hahaha, was looking for this comment. Turns out they just went on strike and forgot to tell anyone!

[@eltic3]

7:22 Its like game of thrones. Any doctor can make a doctor.

[@oldsoul3539]

Why does it make sense that someone who sold candy yards cut by the foot would go on to sell a fantasy universe cut into books

[@SomeGuyFromUtah]

My sincere thanks for your take on the writers strike. I've been one of the haters saying maybe if you want more money you should make better shows, but this definitely sheds a new light from people who are at-least industry adjacent. Still, it seems like all the streaming services are not doing well lately, and I'm not sure how this can all be reconciled. My Dad worked for Union Pacific (Utah...SLC to Greenriver WY was his route). He made great money in the 80s, but by the time he retired in the 2000's he'd taken a massive pay cut - at least 30% even though he was also part of a union. It seems like as technology changes, the unions lose their power. I think that the streaming model means if there's no new shows, the good streaming services can just wait out the writers strike with their backlog of content and by releasing some international releases. I'm not really sure how well this will end for them.

[@lethentucker]

Brandon was the Froot by the Foot plug, lol.

[@TheSilverOrn]

Doctorates are like knighthood right? A doctor can doctor a person into being another doctorate right?

[@briancaster2876]

Well, you just inspired a pasta based experiment. Guess I'm headed to the kitchen now!

[@ahmedolmez7958]

I don't know if anyone else mentioned this, but the Rick and Morty episode "That's Amorte" (S7E4) is about harvesting pasta from an alternative universe where people turn into pasta if they commit suicide. It's weird that this episode was uploaded six months prior to the air date of the episode.

[@myrojyn]

I'm already calling him Dr. Sando Brando

[@KalleVilenius]

"Nyeh, what's up honorary doc?" just doesn't roll off the tongue the same way...

[@jessicatroyer3472]

I would geek out very much if Madeline L'Engle gave my commencement speech.

[@KevinHorecka]

Man how'd you get such a cool case with your PhD. I just got a little card stock embossed paper in a feux leather folder.

[@SEHipple]

Until Dan said "corporate cog" I was really hoping he was going to go with "overlord"

[@ipm123456789]

Dutch person here. I had no idea what fruit roll ups were and I had to Google it. They don't look particularly tasty...

[@ArtSnob101]

Pretty sure pasta can hydrate in water over time. I remember my mom doing that to not have to boil it as a kid lol.

[@BrotherB-kr7sm]

Surely the Honorary Doctorate in Food Heists can’t be gifted and must be stolen, ideally heisted

[@SomeGuyFromUtah]

If you can pull off a major food heist yourself, I think you deserve an upgrade!

[@QazwerDave]

Strike Back ? Return of the Writers ? Revenge of the writers ?

[@ephraimcullen7799]

The rise of Scriptwriter!

[@gpanthony]

The Producer Menace Attack of the Execs A New Guild

[@gowzahr]

Is there anything that direct to streaming hasn't ruined?

[@sherizaahd]

Dan's honorary doctorate, awarded by Honorary Doctor Sanderson, is going to be worth a fortune when B-Money is gone. Hold on to that Dan.

[@SmellySquid]

I enjoyed this

[@FrshChees91]

My friend and I got in trouble for selling giant pixie sticks in school.

[@clawedsimian]

i'm gonna start demanding people address me with the honorific imaginary doctor.

[@inkthinker]

A "paradigm shift" is the term for when the status quo is upset.

[@mbase6469]

Is this the first time they’ve handed an object across the table? Up until now it could be argued this was just an elaborate zoom call.

[@mikeporter2846]

top hats, tuxedos, monocles and curly mustaches please!

[@jaceb8593]

honorarily and intentionally blank

[@bendoessometimes]

I love this podcast, but I have a question that I would love to hear you two answer. If you were to write a canon story, in the main series of another author, and they would do the same to you, which author/series would it be and why? This is excluding each other, anyone from your writing group, or writing excuses podcast. If you choose to answer this question I would be delighted! Thank you!

[@thekevmeister77]

Hey man congrats on the award, whatever they call it - they're just trying to say that they've thought about how cool it would be to suck in stormlight

[@ZombieKnight13]

We had the pop tart dealer kid had two lockers stacked with poptarts lmao he was undercutting the vending machines and the vendors noticed and complained lmao

[@zeroblackheart453]

Have you ever thought about comics adaptations of your books? I wanna see live action and animation, but comics would be cool as well. It's way easier to produce and less risky. Well, that's just my opinion, of course. I don't know about the comics business, but it would be cool to see your books adapted to that medium.

[@cybersekkin]

I find it a little odd. A number of people who wanted to say AI art was great and the cares of artists were overrated. Now I her some of the same crowd arguing for the writers guild. I see the AI impact on both facing similar concerns and AI is just going to replace many of our jobs. Many of the demands this round I am not sold on like the 4 writers minimum and others I have heard brought out.

[@lacys340]

Something else needs to be addressed before Hollywood can use AI created scripts is whether or not they can be copyrighted in USA since an AI is not a human.

[@MisterR404]

awesome podcast! do you think you guys could add timestamps? it would be much appreciated