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On The Road With Al & Ivy: Blog Entry For May 12, 2025 Topics: Commentary on L.A. Homeless embezzlement arrest / How AI can influence fiction writing There was a story in the news last week about the head of a homeless agency in Southern California who was arrested for embezzling millions of dollars. What made my jaw drop wasn't the fact that she embezzled millions of dollars. What blew my mind was that there were millions of dollars to embezzle in the first place! You see, back in 2016, billions weren't being spent on the problem like now. The only city in the SFbay area that had set up a large scale program for the homeless was San Francisco. Otherwise, you had to go to the regular County agencies and try to get food stamps, etc. I should note that I'm working on both "The Quitturz" and "On the Road With Al & Ivy” novels. I work on the one I'm in the mood for that day. The Al & Ivy book will probably come out first, as it is only approximately 2 weeks from being uploaded. The novel's introduction includes a survey of the scene regarding the existing agencies and what assistance was available for the homeless. I'm doing that because it's essential to clarify what the homeless scene was like in 2016. I don't want people to think that I haven't bothered to research or credit the current agencies. I'll make one observation, and I've said this before in an earlier blog entry: the amount of money being fed into the homeless programs is in the billions, and the subject now has a woke terminology to replace the word homelessness, etc. That tells me the problem hasn't improved with all the money thrown at it.  It means an extensive support system is developing, and there's a possibility that the homeless will become a permanent economic class with a bureaucracy and assistance programs to serve it. My first inkling that there was new terminology wasn't from the news but because Grammarly constantly tries to correct my use of the word "homeless" and other adjectives describing people and activities in the homeless scene.  The app has been invaluable in keeping the WIP correct in terms of grammar and spelling, although there have been instances where the autocorrect changed a word after I left that sentence or paragraph. I should note that Grammarly is an excellent tool for writing articles and blog entries that require simple, clear language. The more direct approach can drastically affect fiction. I ran the opening of Kerouac's "On The Road" through Grammarly and the suggestions would have changed the tone and energy of the passage (in my opinion, of course). I eventually stopped reading many of the suggestions. In earlier drafts of the book, I would take the advice because it straightened out the paragraphs, etc., but after a while, my writing was starting to look kind of strange to me. I eventually realized that if you spend years working with a particular program like Grammarly and it constantly corrects or offers corrections to your writing, then it can subconsciously make you write the way the AI suggests. I found that the AI didn't understand my fiction writing style, particularly the meter or rhythm. If all of us took the same suggestions, a lot of our works would start to look like all those AI-generated articles. Everything uniform and saying the same thing in the same way. It's also obvious that AI has a problem understanding a writer's intent and will often substitute words that can change the meaning of the sentence or paragraph, or, even worse, make it seem nonsensical. So, my attitude towards Grammarly and its AI algorithm is becoming more and more "thanks but no thanks." For all the talk about AI's creative possibilities, it's obvious that the main casualty with fiction will be human creativity and individual style. - Al Handa #homelessness #unhoused #kindleunlimited #ebook #poverty #blogX #commentary #article #writing