Tech, singularity and the FYOOTURE

Over on io9 again. This time, talking about how everything is going to get worse before it gets better. It's an article about how environmental collapse forces change, and how in the long run, that's good. As usual, the comments went somewhere else. Here's my thoughts:

• If rejuvenation becomes a thing, the issue won't be that some can afford it and others can't; the issue will be that no one is dying off and leaving space for those who keep coming after. 
• If there's perfect and endless rejuvenation, it's not likely that it's going to be only for the rich OR only for everyone. Likely, it'll land somewhere in the middle, or it'll develop gradually so that people don't think about it-- or the whole issue will be drowned by some other tech spinoff / invention / discovery that no one saw coming and the whole path will be diverted somewhere else. In the 60s, we could have colonized the moon by now, but focusing on small tech devices was cheaper or whatever, and we have the internet instead.*
• One of the commenters thinks there'll be revolution, and soon. Just says it offhand like it's a foregone conclusion. I don't think there will be. I have no doubt that people will do crazy things and think it's a revolution at some point, but a full-on one? There's too many people here who can't be arsed to answer their phones, let alone live in a ditch somewhere, plotting a war. If it comes, I think it'll be more that people have chosen other ways of doing things, not by fighting, and the social pressure will force change.

* Incidentally, I'm old enough to have noticed as things changed. I was 24 when I got my first cellphone; my niece was seven. And then there's the ubiquity-- I know that for my senior project in high school, I used the library research books to get my info, but now, I don't know that I remember how. What the hell did I do before Wikipedia and Google??

Piercings are where it's at

I just looked at my stats, and the single most popular post in the last two years was one I did about piercing. Way back when I was looking at dermal anchors. Neat.

Nuclear blasts, propaganda and wondering

So over on io9, a discussion of Crystal Skulls* became a long comment thread about the pros and cons of the Indiana Jones movies**, and as of right now, this is the last post:

"Youtube old nuclear testing PSAs from the 50s. Yes, those weapons were destructive on a scale beyond conventional weapons but they were not unsurvivable. Those PSAs give some pretty detailed instructions on what to do to survive and what kinds of shelter would be adequate, and some of the suggestions are no less improvised than Indy's fridge dive. Hell, they even recommended, if nothing else was available, to lie flat in a ditch and let the blast wave pass over you. It wasn't guaranteed, and a hardened structure was much better, but it gave you a chance.

In the Japanese bombings, there were many survivors, some with no shelter at all. The radiation aftereffects were often worse than the initial blast, fallout's a bitch. Evacuation from the radiation zone and scrubbing like Indy got would have saved a lot of lives.

There was a reason they once preached "duck and cover" and sold basement bomb shelters. Against 50s era atomic weapons, they would work. Once modern megaton-range thermonuclear warheads were invented, that stopped. Because nothing would save you. Not even if your name was Indiana Jones. "

Because I live in a world where I might, it's possible, get nuked***, I'm sort of always collecting bits of info about what could happen in that event. I saw some of those videos once, and the drills they were offering were almost identical to the ones we were given in Okinawa for earthquakes and in Florida for tornadoes. I suppose that all big disasters have similar personnel issues--keeping everyone calm (and knowing what to do helps that), knowing where to look for survivors, etc--but I always have to wonder: how much of what they tell us to do is just so they can identify the bodies? How much is just giving us something to do so we're comforted, like on TV when they tell husbands to go boil water while their wives are delivering babies?


Maybe I'm just jaded or cynical****, but it seems like in even a small blast, or an earthquake, or whatever else, that if the thing is bad enough that you have to really worry about these things, it's probably bad enough to kill you anyway, even if you do duck and cover. This isn't to say I'm not going to duck and cover given the chance, but I have this skittery feeling that it's all just to keep me calm and put me somewhere where they can know who the red smear belongs to.


Cheerful, right?


---
* They say it's better than Temple of Doom; commentary is pretty much evenly divided. I think the skulls themselves are neat, mostly hoaxes, and not related to the Mayan calendar that isn't telling us the world is ending anyway, but make great story-starters because they're weird. Also, I agree that the fridge thing was WAY overblown. Literally.
** I like 1 and 3. I'm scared to see what they'll do to 5.
*** And because I'm a writer. And because I reached social consciousness just at the end of the Eastern Bloc and all that proliferation and all that losing of nukes. And because I've seen Terminator 2's opening dream sequence too many times and periodically I'll have dreams where everything is fine, and then there's a flash and the sky goes the wrong color, then a mushroom cloud, then I die, and I don't like that.
**** I probably am jaded and cynical to some extent. I'm also a writer, as I said, and it sort of makes you think through all the options and possibilities, even when they squick you out.
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Thankfulness

This year, I'm thankful for:

• This lovely new house, even if it's accompanied by my longest-running lack of ordinary work.
• That same lack of ordinary work that has let me put so much effort into getting my writing career off the ground, and getting the legs under my freelance writing career.
• For Hayden, Alex, Ally, Leo, Nick, Sam, Lauren, Christine, and everyone else who makes life fun.
• That my dad is still here, even being sick.
• That my mom is still here, even when they keep having to take parts out and turn her into a cyborg.
• That Alex's family just sucked me up like another cousin, without a second thought.
• That the cats are starting to get along, even if they still fight sometimes.
• That I'm finally free of a tourist town, for the most part.
• The Troublemakers, in their entirity.
• The intermittent Fall weather; it's better than no Fall weather at all!
• That I still have candied sweet potatoes and butter down there in the fridge, to eat for breakfast once I'm done here.
• For technology and all the neat things it lets me do (this next year is going to be full of side-projects, I can tell).
• For our yard, and the fact that there's enough of it for me to plant things in the spring and have a lovely garden.
• For Binka, who keeps me warm when it's cold.
• For all our wallspace, to finally hang up all our pictures.
• For unusual design and storage solutions that make this house ours, and not anyone elses.
• For the Muppet Movie I get to go see tonight.
• For the leftovers, even if I didn't get to boil down the carcass for broth this year (we'll just have to roast a chicken later).
• For the greeness and tree-ness of this place we live in.

Thank you!

Rules to Live By: 1 to 4

One of the ways I'm trying to improve my life is to have a defined set of rules to live by. I used to have note cards covered in rules when I was in highschool and I thought I could change the world, but they've all gone missing in the 20 or so moves since then, and I find I miss them. So I'm starting over from scratch. I'm a different person than I was then anyway, and I should  have new rules.

Maybe one day I'll publish all my rules together, when there's enough to form a book out of them, but I really think that while some will be universal, a lot of them are going to be personal, geared to correcting and improving my own individual quirks and weaknesses, and I think that's how it should be. The reason while societies lose their strict rules is because they don't apply to everyone, and people start bending and shifting them. People need their own sets of guidelines, and they should make their own. It's an extension of the first rule:

1. Be Accountable.
Whatever choices you make in life, you've made them, and you're the one responsible for how they turn out. That also means that you're the one responsible for how your life goes, and if you want it to be a certain way, you're the one to make it that way.

2. Don't be a dick.
This one's borrowed from Wil Wheton, and it very concisely says how to treat others--if what you're doing seems like something that you'd call someone a dick for doing to you, don't do it.

3. You aren't entitled.
Nobody is entitled. The world doesn't owe you anything you haven't earned, so if you want something, go out and earn it. Even if you're born to millions of dollars, go out and be worthy of getting them.

4. Do it now.
Whatever you're doing, don't put it off. I'm terrible about this, I put off all sorts of things even when I don't realize that I am, and it makes a backlog that I never quite catch up with. It's a constant struggle to keep up-to-date, and I'm getting better (I miss very few deadlines anymore), but it's necessary to keep it visible.

More will come, and they'll likely get more specific as I go, but here's the first four. What are your first four rules to live by?