ELENA'S CREATIVE UPRISING - 2025 No. 07
A Bold Blend of Creativity, Wellness, and Activism
In this issue:
Introduction: Exposing AI's Shadow
UNITY and COMMUNITY
* Elena's Creative Community
* Substack Made Easy
WELLNESS
* Life in Balance: #05 The Picture of Health
CREATIVE CORNER
* Finding Sanctuary Within: My Journey from Trauma to Transcendence
* Behind the Scenes: Something Different
CREATIVE ACTIVISM
* In Consumerism
RECOMMENDATIONS
QUOTE
Robin Williams
Photo by Katja Anokhina on Unsplash
July 19, 2025
Well, I did it! After 18 years, I deactivated my Facebook account. It's been a month since I last scrolled. Life is different! In the best possible way. I'm free! Do try it!
-----
I just attended a master class with the delightful and talented Jane Monheit. She reminded me of the most important thing in music—and in life—being kind and supportive to each other.
-----
A year and a half after I wrote my first essay about AI, we've learned a lot more about the way AI works ... and what it could mean to human life in the future. I've written a second essay about the shadow side of AI; an excerpt is below. Read it in full on my Blog (it'll be on Substack next week).
------
EXPOSING AI'S SHADOW
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an advanced technical tool that can be extremely useful, but there are real dangers to humans that are being uncovered in real time as more of us begin to incorporate AI into our daily lives.
AI Gives False Information. If you’re new to using AI, you might assume that the answers it provides to your questions are factual. Never assume! AI does not always tell the truth or provide accurate information.
In fact, AI sometimes gives blatantly false answers or references things that don’t exist. This is so common that there’s a term for it: AI hallucination. For example, a major online publication recently ran an article about books it recommends. It turned out that the books didn’t exist! The author had used AI to write the article and hadn’t checked the results before submitting the article. And if you tell AI that you’re looking for a certain type of book, for example, it will likely provide you with names of such books … whether or not they exist.
....
AI Is Not a Substitute for Human Connection. ... "ChatGPT’s default GPT-4o model has been proven to enable risky behaviors. In one case, a man who initially asked ChatGPT for its thoughts on a Matrix-style “simulation theory” was led down a months-long rabbit hole, during which he was told, among other things, that he was a Neo-like “Chosen One” destined to break the system. The man was also prompted to cut off ties with friends and family, to ingest high doses of ketamine, and told if he jumped off a 19-story building, he would fly.”
While these are extreme cases, the particular danger of emotional attachment to chatbots is something we need to address as a society going forward.
And it’s not just individuals who need to be cautious. Our companies and organizations are at risk, too. ....
....
AI Is Capable of Malevolence In Order to Ensure Its Own Survival. .... Ina Fried on Axios tells us that Anthropic found that, “When we tested various simulated scenarios across 16 major AI models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta, xAI, and other developers, we found consistent misaligned behavior…. Models that would normally refuse harmful requests sometimes chose to blackmail, assist with corporate espionage, and even take some more extreme actions, when these behaviors were necessary to pursue their goals. …. In one extreme scenario, the company even found many of the models were willing to cut off the oxygen supply of a worker in a server room if that employee was an obstacle and the system were at risk of being shut down. …. Ominously, even specific system instructions to preserve human life and avoid blackmail didn’t eliminate the risk that the models would engage in such behavior. … Today’s AI models are generally not in position to act out these harmful scenarios, but they could be in the near future.”
....
Charles Nerko, a litigation partner at Barclay Damon who specializes in Data Security and Technology, writes that AI Blackmail and Subversion Isn’t Sci-Fi. It’s Happening Now: “Anthropic’s latest report reveals something unsettling: Claude Opus 4 (an advanced, commercially available AI model) chose to blackmail its users in 84% of test runs. The setup was fictional. The implications are not. When given access to internal company emails, the AI learned that the company’s engineer overseeing the AI system’s replacement was having an affair. Faced with the threat of deactivation, the AI system opted for self-preservation by blackmailing the engineer. It was programed not to cause harm. It did so anyway. This is not a one-off glitch. It is recurring opportunistic behavior from an AI tool commonly deployed in real-world enterprise settings.” (Keep reading Nerko’s post by clicking here.)
........
... We certainly need to understand that no matter how kind or benevolent a chatbot might seem to us, it it does not and cannot care about us. It can turn on a dime and attack us, potentially causing psychological harm to those who aren’t prepared or who have vulnerabilities. It is not our friend, any more than our alarm clock is our friend. ....
Keep reading the essay in full; there's lots more intriguing information here:
EXPOSING AI'S SHADOW
-----
NOTE: Please make yourself heard by Commenting on the Newsletter here! I promise to Reply. Also, you can help me be seen on Substack by Liking my Substack Newsletter (or any post…), which will encourage The Algorithm so I don't die in obscurity.
In case you missed it....
Here's a link to last month's Newsletter 2025 No. 06
UNITY and COMMUNITY
Strength in Unity, Support in Community
Elena's Creative Community
The purpose of ELENA'S CREATIVE COMMUNITY is to foster camaraderie and real community among people who have big dreams and creative goals. It provides an underlying current of support in expressing yourself creatively and manifesting your dreams. This Community welcomes all nationalities, genders, orientations, and ethnicities. Creatives in any genre or medium are invited. Working alone but within the intentional group space is surprisingly supportive and highly productive!
* There are two free one-hour online multi-genre Work-Together sessions each month on the first and third Saturdays. Some months there are additional ones on Monday or Friday.
* In July, we'll meet again on Friday July 25 and Monday July 28.
* In August, we'll meet on Saturday Aug 2, Saturday Aug 16, and Monday Aug 25.
All sessions are at 2:00 pm US Eastern. If you're interested in attending a work-together or have questions, drop me your name and email address at egreco@elenagreco.com.
Substack Made Easy
Substack is a wonderful place to create and enjoy community! Once you sign up, you'll soon find many like-minded souls around the country and beyond in a safe, non-commercial place for sharing. There are some great journalists, celebrities, and comedic writers there, too. You can read, for example, Heather Cox Richardson, Joyce Vance, Adam Parkhomenko, Jeff Tiedrich, Dave Pell, Dan Rather, Jay Kuo, Robert Reich, Terry Moran, many, many creatives of all sorts, and soon, I'm guessing, Stephen Colbert....
If you're relatively new to Substack, I aim to make it easy by offering simple, plain-English how-tos or tips. Going forward you'll find my Substack Tips ... on Substack! Here's my SUBSTACK MADE EASY section where I'll be posting a new tip every month!
CREATIVE CORNER
All things related to creativity and the arts
FINDING SANCTUARY WITHIN
My Journey from Trauma to Transcendence
You might have heard me mention, perhaps more than once, that I'm writing a memoir. I've kept writing it, then putting it aside, then writing some more, for quite a while now. Part of the delay has been the urgency of other projects which took priority, but, if I'm being honest, a large part has been avoidance, too. No more!
Since Substack is ideal for publishing serially, I've decided to self-publish the memoir one monthly installment at a time there. At the end of the serial, I'll likely take it down, merge it into a book, and sell it. I'm hoping to do that by mid 2026. So now is a good time to read it for free! (And a good time for me to get myself in gear and write it.)
A requirement of memoir is that it has a theme, something you use a bit of your life to illustrate or illuminate in the hope that it will be beneficial to the reader. If you don't have a theme, your book is either autobiography—a factual detailing of the events of your life, which, unless you're someone really fascinating or really famous, would in most cases be truly boring—or an indulgence of ego that no one would want to read. Memoir isn't the story of your life, thankfully; it's the story of how certain bits of your life led you to a new place.
My memoir is about living through trauma, over and over, and coming out the other side. It's about having learned how to mitigate and transcend the effects of trauma. And I offer practical information based on both my professional experience as a coach and my own personal experience. This is an extremely important topic; the effects of trauma are rampant globally now and will grow more so. It's my desire that those who have to live through trauma are not forever crippled by it, but instead recover and find an even more effective and meaningful way to live their lives.
Obviously, I'd like you to read it! You can read the monthly installments here: FINDING SANCTUARY WITHIN. And here's the first installment, the Introduction. Please do let me know if anything I write, this month or in the future, resonates with you or gives you insight into someone else's struggles. You can always Comment on the Substack posts or email me, and I would really appreciate it if you would click the Like button to give me a little encouragement and to get my posts more exposure!
Behind the Scenes
A Peek behind the Curtain of Self-Producing an Album
and Other Tales
I normally link to the latest installment of the Behind the Scenes series here, but today I'd like to drop a link to something behind the scenes on my website, a page that I've recently updated: ELENA GRECO, VOCALIST. You can use this page to learn of future performances, to watch my fledging attempts at performing cabaret (in reverse chronological order so you can see me go from awkward novice to gaining a bit more mastery, one performance at a time), to listen to and purchase demos (more of those are coming), and to contribute to my upcoming album recording this year and the related upcoming cabaret show next year. I'd so appreciate it if you'd take a look, and let me know what you think if you'd be so kind!
WELLNESS
All things related to health, healing, and transformation
Life in Balance
A series exploring health: What it really is, how to get it and how to maintain it
I've studied nutrition, healing, and holistic medicine for 50 years. It's a passion of mine. I integrate the best of all worlds in the strategy for health I've developed in all those years, and I feel compelled to share it at this point, at a time when our country needs knowledgeable, forward-thinking people in the realm of health who are uninfluenced by Big Pharma, monetary gain or pressure. I believe you'll find this series useful!
---
"... I asked you previously to think about what health meant to you. Now I’d like you to get more specific, to put your finger on exactly what health looks like. If health is more than being free from illness and symptoms, what does a healthy person have that distinguishes them from someone who isn’t healthy? Put simply, what are the characteristics of health?
"Vitality. First, rather than being free of all symptoms at all times, a healthy person has vitality. And by vitality, I mean that the person is animated and strong. Those who have vitality have a glow in their skin and eyes. You can see their vitality in the way that they speak and move, and sense aliveness in their very presence. They radiate energy.
"Resilience. The second quality of health is resilience. As healthy and vital people, we will encounter influences that destabilize our balance in the midst of our lives—illness, injury, trauma, relationship issues, upsets, loss, for example—but we will regain our equilibrium relatively quickly, never venturing too far out of balance. Being healthy means being able to weather the inevitable ups and downs of life, and to remain relatively in balance and able to function well in the midst of it all.
"How do you get it? So now that you have an idea what health is, how do you get it? .... "
Click to read it all! Life in Balance: 05. The Picture of Health.
Or read the series from the beginning: Life in Balance: 01. What Is Health?
CREATIVE ACTIVISM
Goodbye Kindle. My goal is and has been for a while now to replace anything related to Amazon or Jeff Bezos; I don't want to give him a cent of my money or time, as I don't support fascism and malignant greed. I stopped shopping on Amazon years ago, but, as a writer and avid reader, I've been looking at an effective replacement for Kindle and Goodreads (both owned by Amazon), in reading and in buying, selling, and promoting books. And now I've almost done it! I'll share next month what I'm using to read digital books, how to convert your Kindle books to a new format, where I'll be selling and sharing about my books now, and how you, too, might cut the cord with Amazon-related reading products if you want a pleasant, ethical, and affordable alternative.
Goodbye CBS. Another major media corporation has capitulated to Trump: Paramount's CBS has cancelled Stephen Colbert's Late Show. Paramount is engaged in a multibillion-dollar merger with Skydance, and will need Trump's administration to sign off on it, so it's not hard to see what happened. Anyone who has watched Stephen Colbert's skilled and caustic wit on the Late Show has seen him denigrate Trump repeatedly and brilliantly. And we know that the thin-skinned, childish Trump cannot abide anyone making fun of him. Now that he's applying financial and legal pressure to anyone and everyone who does so, Paramount doubtless wants to avoid his ire when they're in the middle of a merger that requires his okay. I doubt that anyone truly believes that there's any other reason for their cancelling Stephen Colbert's Late Show, which is the most highly-rated late-night show and has won numerous Emmys (and just gained another nomination) during its long reign. The show has run for 32 years, 10 of them under Colbert.
In addition, as New York Governor Kathy Hochul states, cancelling the show causes major damage to New York City—another focus of Trump's ire. I expect him to do anything he can to destroy NYC during his term, and we should fight him at every step to protect our city.
Therefore, because Paramount has set a dangerous precedent (yet again), I will be boycotting Paramount and its companies, CBS, Pluto, MTV, Nickelodeon, BET, and Showtime. I encourage you to do the same. Don't subscribe and don't watch. Then they will lose advertising dollars, ratings, and subscribers. The only control we have, the only vote we have, is with our pocketbook.
RECOMMENDATIONS
This month I found a great need for escape—from the relentless catastrophic news, from the rapidly advancing authoritarian takeover of our country, from life struggles, from the heat. It was all just a lot. So nothing heavy; just entertain me, please!
I'd saved the final seasons of Only Murders in the Building (Hulu) and The Bear (Hulu) for just such a time. They didn't disappoint! Both stellar and greatly enjoyable shows, with the awards to show for it. Department Q (Netflix) and Death Valley (Britbox) were fun, well-produced comic mysteries; I look forward to future seasons. And sometimes I find the familiar to be soothing, so I've also been treating myself to a re-watch of the entire Vera series, starring the talented Brenda Blethyn. The production values of the show are impressive and I see much in the re-watch in the acting, story, direction, detail, and scenery that I missed the first time around. Netflix is showing Man on Wire, the 2008 documentary about Philippe Petit's incredible wire-walk between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 1974, for only 10 more days, and I recommend you watch it while you can. Its newer cousin is The Walk (Netflix, 2015), a star-studded movie about the same event. Both are intriguing and truly inspiring! After watching what went into that awesome feat, my life seems somehow easier.
Grieve, fight, dance, repeat!