Is the suicide of a 65 year old less tragic than that of a 25 year old? If so, you’re implying time is the unit of measurement for life, and the loss of someone with 45 years left is worse than someone with 15. (Figures are for example). 

But what if the 25 year old is an alcoholic abuser, spending his 45 years hurting others, and the 65 year old is a recently retired union worker who now, finally, has the time to volunteer at eco cleanups and churches and hospitals? 

Sometimes I wake in the morning, remembering nothing since the moments before falling into sleep’s abyss, and I think “Oh! That’s what death is like.”

Took me a while to realize it, but #writing – especially #plotting – becomes a lot easier when you’re willing to leave plausibility by the roadside. 

Better to make some progress than none. You can’t edit what you haven’t written. Better to waste time attempting, rather than waste time worrying.

Always best to keep moving; worry about where you’re going later.

You can’t get there if you don’t get up.

How can anyone be oblivious to their own mortality?

In fifteen years I’ll be 70. While 70 isn’t THAT old, it’s pretty far from young. And while fifteen years isn’t short, it isn’t that long. 

Ironic, tho, that age and experience is a prerequisite for being able to see temporal distances. Like skiing in a dense fog – by the time you see the tree, it’s too late. 

That moment when Amazon emails to say they’ve deposited 35 cents into your bank account and you realize..yes..it’s all worth it..

This is not censoring.

“The Martian” by Andy Weir is an outstanding novel made into an outstanding movie. It brings back the scientist-as-hero and raises science in the public consciousness. Also, it is about as scientifically accurate is a sci fi novel can be.

So if teachers ask the author for a clean version to use as a teaching aid in classrooms, go for it. It doesn’t alter the story or the characters or the science, and it helps our teachers raise interest in classrooms.

Sometimes the collision of worlds brings about positive change. Such is the case with podcasts in general, and the Clarkesworld podcast in particular, and the coolest little bluetooth earpiece that also happens to cost only $19 on Amazon.

Kate Baker’s voice and cadence as she reads the stories is nothing short of transcendent, and the quality of chosen stories is always top-shelf. These factors, combined with the intimacy of her voice being delivered ever so clearly and unobtrusively right into my ear, makes for a wonderful listening experience.

I’ve been an on-again off-again podcast listener for years, but the little GoNovate 10 is so small that it fits comfortably in my pocket and my ear, and listening without wires makes doing everything easier. I’m getting about 4 or 5 hours from the battery, too.

Subscribe to the Clarkesworld podcast (it’s free) and order up a micro bluetooth earpiece from Amazon (it’s not free but pretty cheap). Start listening.

 ..and #dystopian #fiction, as genres, used to be a lot more fun when they were a lot less likely.

..created by an AI, assumes a level of creativity, or at least the ability to string together subjects into an improvised mad-lib kind of sentence and apply it to an existing beat, regardless of how much sense it makes.

So, pop music, basically.