What a wonderful story. I love how the community quickly banded together to help this grieving son.
Reading the article, my writer’s brain went crazy. First of all, the fact that the Dad had a text file with the name jokes.txt and it contained only the punchlines. Why? What did he have planned for this?
Then there is the last line of the article: “your dad inadvertently arranging for your friends to tell you jokes all day long on the day he dies”. What if the file contained something other than jokes? What would that story be?
Two weeks ago Daniel Drucker went to Metafilter with a request.
“My father passed away this morning,” he wrote. “I’m going through his file, and I came across JOKES.TXT … which contains only the punchlines.” Could the Metafilter hivemind work backward and supply the missing the jokes?
But let’s go back to the photograph. I could absolutely bang out a novel on a typewriter in a salty old boat house. Just wake up from a quiet night’s sleep, boil up a cup of tea, and set to work. No distractions. No INTERNET.
I could do this. Editing that novel using only a typewriter, now that is another adventure entirely.
I just discovered Adventure Time. I know, I’m a bad nerd. The important thing, though, is that I did discovered it.
I’ve watched two episodes now (or is it four, as there seems to be two episodes per half hour). The first episode I saw featured the Party Bears, which was awesome in its own right.
In "Belly of the Beast," they make a new "party cave" inside the stomach of a Giant under the leadership of their chief Party Pat, not realizing where they were or the danger they were in. Though they weren’t in immediate danger of being digested by the Giant, they were hurting it with the fireworks they fired off in its stomach. The pained Giant tried more and more extreme means of stopping the pain, going so far as to drink molten lava to drive the bears out. Finn and Jake were forced to go in and try to stop the partying. Finally, after being lead out of the Giant’s digestive tract, the bears and the Giant made amends under the condition of using red laser pointers for partying instead of fireworks. The bears are known to make their own beverage, honey energy drink.
After that episode, I’d have said my favorite character was Party Pat. The dude cracked me up.
After last night’s episode I have a favorite character: Marceline (the Vampire Queen (full name: Marceline Abadeer) is one of the main characters in Adventure Time and a vampire that is over a millennium old). I loved the story of her history with the Ice King and . But what I really dug was this song they sang together in an older episode. Check out some of the lyrics and video below. That first line is great.
Marceline, is it just you and me in the wreckage of the world?
That must be so confusing for a little girl.
And I know you’re going to need me here with you.
But I’m losing myself, and I’m afraid you’re going to lose me too.
This magic keeps me alive, but it’s making me crazy.
And I need to save you. But who’s going to save me?
Please forgive me for whatever I do, when I don’t remember you
This is worth some thought. Technology marches forward. That is what technology does.
What happens because of that technology, though, is not set in stone. And don’t trust anybody that tells you otherwise.
Everywhere. Everything, even disposable things like razors or pens, will be gathering data…about you.
We probably don’t really have a choice about whether a $0.03 wireless sensor platform will exist. Technology marches on.
But we do have a choice about how it will be employed. If we follow the path we’re on now, all those devices will be controlled by some company somewhere that is providing the service behind them. All that data that all those devices are gathering about you will be streamed back to a walled garden via an encrypted channel to end up as fodder for some big data analytics platform that will be used by someone to sell you more stuff. You will be spied on by everything around you with no rational way to understand where all that data is going and how it’s being used. We’ll create government regulations that will do little to rationalize your world or help you understand it because they will only succeed in further Balkanizing it.
There is another path: in this alternate world all the devices that are related to you will push their data into a place that you control. This will seem rational and natural because the model will follow the structure of the world you’re already used to with clear delineations between public and private spaces and easy-to-understand controls over how data is used and shared. I say “natural” in a literal way. This is the way the physical world works and we’re all used to it. In this alternate world you are in control.
There’s not much question which of these worlds most of us would want to live in, and yet most companies aren’t doing anything that will get us any closer to that better place. The short-term drivers push everyone toward closed, walled gardens fueled by adtech. But blaming companies and short-term pressures is too convenient. People run companies. People work at companies. And people pursue short-term goals all the while hoping this better world will somehow magically emerge. It won’t. Not unless we build it. We have to build it.
If you work in tech, you have an ethical responsibility to build the world you want to live in. Simple as that.
This is very interesting. Figment.com is having a Doctor Who fan fiction contest. Details below. I find fan fiction to be really restrictive to my creativity, but this seems like it would be really fun. I love me some Doctor Who.
MARCH 21, 2013
The Doctor Who Fan-Fiction Contest
20 8 Posted by Laura Chamberlain
There are three things we Whovians know to be absolutely true:
1. Bow ties are cool.
2. The TARDIS is bigger on the inside.
3. Doctor Who returns to our televisions and our hearts on Saturday, March 30!
In celebration of The Doctor’s return, we’re hosting a wiblbly-wobbly, timey-wimey contest!
Prompt
In 1,200 words or fewer, write a story inspired by Doctor Who. Tag your story DoctorWhoContest.
Prizes
One grand-prize winner will receive a Doctor Who poster and Fez and Bow Tie Set.
One second-prize winner will receive a Sonic Screwdiver LED Flashlight.
One third-prize winner will receive River Song’s TARDIS Journal.
How to Enter
1. Read the full rules.
2. Create an account on Figment.com.
3. Start a new writing of 1,200 words or fewer.
4. Tag your writing with DoctorWhoContest on the “Details” tab.
5. Press “Publish Now.”
6. You should receive a pop-up confirmation of your entry, and in about two hours or so, your piece should appear among the submissions.
You have until Wednesday, April 3 at 11:59 p.m. ET to enter a story. Voting will run until Wednesday, April 10 at 5:00 p.m. ET. The Figment editors will choose the winners from the top 10 most-hearted entries.
