2021/11/30

2022 is slowly coming to a close. When I was a kid, I was amazed that my paternal grandfather was born in the 1800s. I wonder if little kids will look at those of us born in the 1900s with the same wonder.

For this is the future! No flying cars or jetpacks, but we all have miniature computers in our pockets, and can communicate with anyone in the world for pennies. We have all the information at our fingertips, which, due to human nature, has depressingly caused us to become more entrenched in our division than bringing us together as I had - in my Pollyanna-like fashion - foolishly assumed it would, but we can discuss things things which drive me to drink another time.

Because this is the future, and now, we have what may be the first true artificial lifeform.

Xenobots - named after the South African Xenopus laevis frog from which they get their stem cells - are computer-designed biological robots. Less than a millimeter wide, these little self-healing buggers could - conceptually - clean plaque from arteries, deliver medicine to specific areas of the body, clean up the oceans, form a parasitic skin over our bodies to turn us into Shai-Hulud, the God-Emperor of Dune... the possibilities are endless.

And now, they can also reproduce on their own! The holy AI that designed them has figured out a form that can gather stem cells, and build them into new Xenobots of their own. So yay, the little swarm sent to clean out your arteries may go rogue, and devour the stem cells in your bone marrow or fat cells, replicating more and more until they take over your body, and you pop like the meaty water balloon you are.

That sounds kind of cool, when you think about it.

It would be nice if they could eat our fat cells.

Would PETA rant and rave about their slavery? What if they achieve sentience? If a 3D printer builds more 3D printers, than can it be said to be alive?

The more I wonder about whether our universe is just a computer simulation or not, the more massive extinctions make sense. The God-computer can only handle so many life forms at once. Every processor on the planet is something else the simulation has to take into account. This would also explain the push towards cloud computing. It just helps make the Olympian game of Civ-Infinity run faster.

Here's hoping someone is going for the science victory.

TTFN

-Tony

(Written while riding the R train and listening to Goblin's awesome 70s Suspiria soundtrack.)

2021/11/29

5 AM. Once again, the line winds around the block at the Q64's first stop, ensuring that riders at the second will never have a seat, not to mention the stops after that. Why? Because the last two buses were nowhere to be seen. 

I think about this blog, and how it chronicled my vast ire at the MTA, and its never-ending blithering incompetence. I chose to delete my past posts because... well, various reasons. A lot of them were just bitching, or sometimes baiting. Its vast presence loomed over me, glaring down at me with its volume, damning me because I didn't write in it anymore. I came to the conclusion that if I deleted it, then I would feel the impetus to write again. 

Well, that didn't work.

The past seven years have been painful and depressing, from a political point of view. We all became so goddamn divided. Some wore their division like a badge of honor. There was a time when I raged against being silenced. I looked back amidst all the turmoil, and wondered if perhaps I was just adding to the division. But now... I'm not so sure. Voices deserve to be heard. Life deserves to be witnessed, if others choose to witness it.

I tried podcasts for a while when I was unemployed, and they were fun, but they take a hell of a lot of work to edit. Then I went back to work, had to deal with a few health issues... I have a great episode recorded that I still have to edit. The problem is I come home from work so tired, and all I want to do is relax.

And of course, there are unfinished novels to complete and edit. Poor Matthew Sigma, and the other Cylebs wait in limbo, while the mutant wasps siege their walls. There are other novels 3/4 completed that I want to try and publish traditionally. We'll get more to that later. Then there was the animation I storyboarded but never animated... Did I mention that I want to make an audio play out of Fishers of Men?

And in the back of my mind, Scotty chides me: "When something's important, you MAKE the time!"

Time management has never been my strong point.

Here's a neat trick: If you keep putting things off and feel that there's time for everything, try making a schedule and sticking to it. You'll be appalled at how little you actually get done.

I'm going to bring my old blog posts back. Well, most of them, anyway. As for the rest... there'll be room for more, here. 

Maybe it's time for life to be witnessed again.

Peace, love, and soul.

TTFN

-Tony

P.S. Google owns both Blogger and Android. Keeping those two facts in mind, it's vomitously disgusting how limited the Blogger Android app is.