I'm Moving!

 

I'm moving! I am either moving out of here (blogspot) or moving into here (SubStack). If you are reading this, please update your link to go to the SubStack. I will try and publish both places for a bit. If you are reading this on SubStack, welcome to the new abode! I was looking for a new neighborhood for this blog for a little while. I have been using blogger/blogspot since before I met Jen. So, it's been something like twenty years. (I am SO OLD!) In that time the platform has made very few updates. It's a blog platform, right? Just how many improvements can one expect? In that time WordPress came along, and it looked like a pretty good platform until it tried to be everything to everyone and got overly complex for the average Mommy blogger. Maybe that's why blogger held steady. They had a minimal product that seemed to work (I've been using it this long!), and didn't see the need to mess with it and mess it up.

From the other end, the web hosts like GoDaddy and Wix made their site creation, no-code interfaces better to accommodate your average Mommy blogger and many others. I, though, still wasn't finding the right mix of a true blogging platform with the additional functionality that blogger now seems to stubbornly refuse to do. Blogger is like one of those really old GitHub projects that you stumble upon that still has some utility, but when you email the developer of it, they hardly recall even what you are talking about. (I realize only a fraction of my audience will get that reference.)

Then last night, like around two or three a.m. I was scrolling through things, per usual, ... Actually, I am determined to write the truth here (and in a bit of irony, I am listening to Jesus Christ Superstar and Carl Anderson just sang the line, "And they'll hurt you if they think you've lied."), the truth was I had been on pornhub and in the few moments of lucid thought that I had after was wondering just how much these women and couples are getting for creating content for pornhub. Not much it turns out. Seven cents (What ever happened to the cents sign on a keyboard?) per thousand views. Hey! Let these thousand strange men watch you have sex for two minutes, and we'll give you a nickel and two pennies!

Well, I had my white rabbit in my sights and had to follow him into the hole of just how much content creators make. I read how content creators keep 90% of their subscriptions on this thing called Substack. I had heard of Substack but didn't know anything about it really. I hadn't really looked into it -- "Substack" sounds too much like a site we use in software development called "Stack Overflow", and like a cola drinker loyal to my brand I really didn't even want to taste the competition. But the article also said that these content creators were mostly newsletter writers. Do people read newsletters still? In fact, Substack is a platform for blogs, vlogs, podcasts, and newsletters.

So I'm moving.

I'm also changing addresses. This truly isn't a way to avoid my upcoming jury duty, though if I can get things done before June (Update: It’s all taken care of, and I am officially a Floridian now!), that will be an added bonus. I'm "moving" to Cape Canaveral. First of all, the state of Colorado stole a ridiculous amount of money from me last year. (Taxation is theft!) Florida doesn't have state income tax. And guess what. They still have roads and schools and libraries down here.

Please don't email your arguments about why taxation isn't theft (except that it is almost exactly like theft in every meaningful way).

Second, my mental health is much better here than in Colorado. There are several reasons why I think this is the case, but one of them is that I simply “feel better” down here. Perhaps that is because it brings me back to my childhood and visiting my grandparents in Ft. Lauderdale. That was a time before bills and appointments and work!

“What about Jen?” I’ve been asked. Her father and boys and work, particularly the seniority, are all in Colorado yet. I don’t intend on seeing any less of her, though it may involve a little more back and forth travel. That is, if I even spend less time in Colorado when it really comes down to it. Personally, when we got the place down here, I had hoped for about a 60-40 split between Colorado and Florida. In reality, it was more like 80-20. I am hoping that I can do about 60-40 between Florida and Colorado, but it definitely won’t be 80-20 – Certainly not during the summer months! We’ll see how much our blood thins out! Maybe it ends up 60-40 in favor of Colorado anyway, because being away from Jen over the past couple months has been difficult. That said, I have certainly gotten a lot written! Look for more.

Love is Awful

 

Saving Mary

The challenge this time was to write a thriller/suspense in 100 words or fewer. The story had to include the action of drinking beer and the word "beat" (or some form of that word). I love the challenge of trying to get a story created with such a minimal word count. It isn't beautiful writing. There just aren't enough words to put much window dressing on it. Anyway, here is "Saving Mary".

----

That last shot hit him like a sledgehammer. His head swimming and vision blurred, Tony missed left. He adjusted his stance, adjusted his aim. Just left again! One last shot to save Mary. Tony burped and tasted tequila.

"One dart to close out the 18!" Marco laughed, took a swig of beer, and gave Mary a wink.

What a stupid bet -- Marco's bike against a night with Mary. He had wanted that Supersport. He exhaled and threw.

“Damn! Clutch making that double to beat me.” Marco handed Tony keys, while Mary kissed him trying to hide her disappointment.

We ALL Die in the End

Another thought experiment. I've been doing a lot of thinking lately, and I'm an "advocate" (INFJ, apparently). I'm here to help you, so please indulge me.

Imagine you have cancer. The doctor tells you you have a 90% chance of dying in the next five years. How will you live your life. How does your life change?

Imagine a different prognosis: You will die within the next five years. No bout a doubt it. It doesn't even need to be about cancer. Maybe a gypsy fortuneteller you really respect had a premonition or a fiery bush just suddenly began speaking to you saying you were going to be called to God's side, whatever. How will you live your life? Is it different than if you have that 10% chance of living past the five-year prognosis?

Imagine you have a year tops. Now how does your life change? Would it be different if you knew you had exactly one year, like knew you had exactly 365 days to get done whatever you were hoping to do? What would you have planned for that 365th day?

How about 30 days?

What about a single day? No time to prepare. I'm not talking about the 365th day of your last year or that the governor just denied your stay of execution, and the prison canteen is about to put out the last spicy Hawaiian pizza you will ever taste because they aren't going to fly it in from Colorado like you wanted. Nope. I mean you wake up and you just know that whatever you do today you will not wake up tomorrow. How do you spend it?

Now imagine the dying person isn't you but is your parent. They're very likely to be gone in the next five years. How do you spend that time? What if you only had a year left with them? How would your life change? Or would it? Thirty days? Their last day?

What if it were your spouse? You have less than five years left together. How much time will you spend with them? Will you go somewhere together, a big trip? Would you go so far as quitting your job? What about if it were for one year? Thirty days? Do you imagine your life would change more if it were your spouse who were dying and had just a month or if it were you? What about that final day?

What about a friend, someone who means a lot to you, has been special in your life, and you don't see too often now? They have five years. Do you make plans to see them more than you had in the previous five? What if it's only a year? Do you make a special trip to see them, knowing it will probably be the last? A month? At what point do you begin telling them how much their friendship has meant to you?

About 8000 people die every day in the United States. That's a little over 330 people per hour. Five and a half every minute. None of us gets out alive.

Testes. Testes. One. Two. Three?

Just testing out a scheduled post! This was written in the early hours of the 19th and should be published in 3 days. 

Don't Trifle with all that Thrust

So SpaceX's Starship did not make it into orbit today, but nonetheless is being hailed as a success. It is definitely quite spectacular to watch it go up. I can only really imagine seeing, hearing, and feeling all those rocket engines firing. I've watched a lot of Falcon 9 launches. There are, fittingly, nine Merlin engines. I've seen a couple Falcon Heavy launches. Those are like three Falcon 9s strapped together with 27 Merlin engines. The first stage of Starship has 33 Raptor engines which deliver twice as much thrust as their Merlin counterparts. It's A LOT of thrust. Then the upper stage of Starship has another six Raptor engines. 

I have not yet seen what SpaceX is saying about the launch, but even before the launch it was being reported what a triumph this would be if the world's largest rocket even left the pad, "Other interested parties are less hyperbolic [than Elon Musk], but no less optimistic. 'As soon as that thing launches the first time, they’re going to learn so much and they’re going to be at warp speed,' says Isaacman. 'I have no doubt there will be a lot of hardware and engines just ready to go.'" I've become a big fan of the idea as stated by Mark Zuckerberg of "move fast and break things". It's fallen out of favor with some people generally, but I'm a strong believer that this is really t best way to innovate. So much will be learned -- Thousands of ways how not to build a lightbulb in a single launch.

I've been struggling with what I can only really hope is simply a mid-life crisis. Half a life spent in figuring out how not to make a lightbulb. I suppose that maybe if I knew that my life from the start was to be spent trying to create a better lightbulb, perhaps I would have made some more progress on it so far. I haven't even gotten that far in finding what it is I am really supposed to be doing with my life. Thinking about Starship, though, maybe my purpose isn't really meant to be a perfectly successful mission. Like I said to Jen tonight, I admire Elon Musk's willingness to move forward without everything being perfect. If they waited until they knew with 99.999% certainty that Starship was going to get into orbit, they would simply never end up launching anything. life isn't going to be perfect. Maybe we do the best we can and leave as much data behind for the next generation to comb through to find where things went wrong.

Jen was telling me tonight about a documentary she watched on the Cassini project. The Cassini mission to Saturn lasted twenty years, thirteen of which were spent exploring and photographing Saturn. Cassini returned almost a half-million images of Saturn and its moons. It discovered six new moons and traveled almost five billion miles. It ended it's life burning up in Saturn's atmosphere recording and sending data back all the way. It was sacrificed to the atmosphere of the planet rather than quietly landing on one of the moons so as not to accidentally pollute an environment that may hold life and may even be able to sustain human life. Cassini was a step toward life outside of our solar system. 

I have made a lot of mistakes in life. Maybe my purpose all along hasn't been how to create a better lightbulb. Maybe it is more of a data-discovery mission. I could probably write a book on how not to overcome mental illness. It isn't something to trifle with and not something to ignore. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away. I hope when I do leave this earth it can be in a rocket ship. Outside of that, I hope I can leave enough data for some forensics study to comb through and maybe shed light on what just didn't go right. And maybe have them scratching their heads muttering, "What's with all the drawings of lightbulbs?" 

A Cry for Help

You've heard that urban legend about Phil Collins and the drowning boy and the camp counselor that did nothing, right? You know, there's a camp counselor and Phil and the boys are out swimming late and one of the boys starts to drown and the camp counselor just watches him instead of helping? And then like years and years later Phil gets this guy front-row tickets to one of his shows and then puts the spotlight on the guy just as he begins to play "In the Air Tonight"? It makes for a great urban myth because we think to ourselves, What kind of monster would do that? It HAS to be fake, right? But it has just enough truth that we can ALMOST believe it. At least it has enough truth to it that when we tell our younger cousin, or he then goes and tells his little classmates, they're going to believe it. And in your mind, as a little kid you're thinking, there are some seriously messed up people out there that will watch a drowning kid just drown when it's so easy to just throw a life ring.

The book I am reading now, The Dawn of Everything, brings up this situation in relation to how we talk about egalitarian states. The authors of the book talk about throwing a life ring to someone we see struggling to stay above the surface of the water as communism in its purest form (communism as an economic system as opposed to a social system). You, the potential savior, have something I, the drowning person, need. You would certainly throw the ring even if I were someone you despised (given you had any shred of humanity in your heart), freely, of course. In that sense, we live in comparative equality, both of us come out of it with our lives. Compare this to the other extreme of negotiating a mutual price before I agree to throw the life ring in. In an absolute capitalist society, how much money would you want to extract before you threw the ring? And you could certainly extract more the closer I was to actually drowning. Probably nothing or close to, right? (Unless you were a total monster, of course.)

Now let's flip this on it's head. Suppose you are dying, but there is a treatment that could save your life. How much would you be willing to pay for that treatment? You can name any price but you have to go into debt for the part you cannot afford. What if it were your spouse dying? An elder parent? A younger sibling? A dear friend? What if it were your dog or cat? A total stranger?

How much would you be willing to pay to save your marriage? What is the maximum price a genie could extract from you to give you the gift of the job you always wanted? How much would you be willing to pay if you could instantly acquire a skill you've always wanted like to play a musical instrument or learn to surf? If you could make amends with someone who you feel wrongly despised you, is there an amount of money you would pay to be able to sit down at coffee and explain your side of the story?

Back to throwing that life ring? If you had the cure, how much would you ask of a loved one in order to save their life? A dear friend? A total stranger? If your spouse cheated on you, is there an amount of money they could pay to convince you to stay? If a friend wanted to learn a skill you knew and was willing to pay any amount of money for your time to teach it, how much would you ask? If an old friend who hurt you wanted to sit down at coffee so that they could explain their side, how much money would it cost them?

If a dear friend were hospitalized and you were asked to make a donation towards their foreseeable medical costs, how much would you donate? An acquaintance? An old high school classmate? If a friend said they were going to run a marathon to raise money for a charity you endorsed and asked you to make a donation based on mileage, what's the total you would be willing to make? Would it matter how far they planned on going, a 10k (6.2 miles) versus a marathon (26.2 miles)?

Revisiting our drowning person. How sure would you need to be that they were drowning before you helped? If you see a person choking in a restaurant at the table next to yours, how long would you wait before aiding them? Does it matter how many other people are around or at their table? What if that person WERE at your table? What if it were your spouse? Your dear friend who is there with their spouse? If a family member were having financial troubles, how much would you be willing to lend? What if it were the second or third time they came to you? What about a dear friend?

You are on a pier, a life ring nearby. You see a stranger being swept out in the current. They call out for help. How willing would you be to help? What if there were plenty of other people around? What if that person were your spouse? What if it were a dear friend? How far would you go?