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“We all try to give gifts to the future,”

said Carol. “It doesn’t mean they’ll use them the way we envision, or even in ways we’d approve of. You have to give gifts lightly — that’s one of my values. I’m going to tell you something.” “You’ve been telling us things already,” said Phosphorus, I thought a bit sharply. “Something new. We haven’t talked… Continue reading “We all try to give gifts to the future,”

We’re talking low prices.

Curated by a friend, some of the highlights of the #NonaTheNinthSpoilers hashtag and adjacent territories. (Warning: spoilers for NONA THE NINTH (look, it never hurts to be clear)). I’m not as funny or artistic as any of these people, so I’m mulling over the idea that the Locked Tomb is what happens when you decide… Continue reading We’re talking low prices.

You told me, Sleep. I’ll wake you in the morning.

I know you’re supposed to put hiatus messages before the hiatus rather than after; this way makes you look unprofessional, not very put together at all. So, you know, fair play to me for transparency. Anyway, NONA THE NINTH has destroyed my sleep schedule for the last week. I finished it Friday while literally falling… Continue reading You told me, Sleep. I’ll wake you in the morning.

Heatstroke Heartbeat progress, 2022-09-18

I added the raw word count deficit (i.e., total minus target) because that feels like potentially a motivating data point; rate to finish is cool, but this early in the project, it won’t move much unless I get ahead or behind by an enormous amount. Whereas moving the deficit below zero (i.e., getting ahead) is… Continue reading Heatstroke Heartbeat progress, 2022-09-18

Why streaming doesn’t pay

I know Cory Doctorow has loomed large over this blog in its resurrected form, but anyone distributing art and music through platforms like Amazon and Spotify should at least think hard about the analyses of those platforms he and Rebecca Giblin present in CHOKEPOINT CAPITALISM. I’m not an Audible member and don’t want to sign… Continue reading Why streaming doesn’t pay

What are neurophysiologists doing?

I had something else lined up for today, but it’s humbling and fun to be cited (“cited”) 12 years later for a 2010 comment on a methodological issue in cognitive neuroscience that’s apparently still polarizing researchers today. (Marc is a former labmate, of course; no one ever said #networking wasn’t a thing in science, or… Continue reading What are neurophysiologists doing?

This strange, despondent land

The beggar had crept closer as I watched. He pointed at the old man, and said, “Still come from north and south to study here. Someday we are great again.” Then I thought of my own lovely country, whose eclipse–though without genetic damage–lasted twenty-three hundred years. And I gave him money, and told him that, yes, I was certain America would be great again someday, and left him, and returned here.

I have opened the shutters so that I can look across the city to the obelisk and catch the light of the dying sun. Its fields and valleys of fire do not seem more alien to me, or more threatening, than this strange, despondent land. Yet I know that we are all one–the beggar, the old man moving among the machines of a dead age, those machines themselves, the sun, and I.

“Seven American Nights,” Gene Wolfe (1978)