What a beginning to the year. I live in SoCal - NOT LA anymore - whew, for many, many reasons. There’s Science News down below, I swear. Quite a few friends living there told me of the poor air quality, the evacuees staying with them as prisoner-fire fighters and ‘free’ people alike were battling for millionaire’s homes to stay unblemished. Fuckin’ gnarly start to the new year. Welcome, you did it, you survived to deal with whatever this is going to become. Are we in a simulation? Because if so, it is one righteously cruel mother of a sim. And if it’s real AND ‘god’ created this whole whatever and is just hanging out watching us feel the pain, well fuck him too (If you’re offended by my blasphemy, you should read all my novels). I don’t see a difference really between the ideas of us living in a Simulation or us in Reality. This is OUR REALITY, no matter what. Because if this entire universe is simulated, so are we, so this is still our reality. We feel pain, we feel bliss, excitement, that creepy feeling in the middle of the night, when you eat a warm cookie or throw trash out your car window. The shit builds up, and it’s not going away, maybe unless there’s too much entropy in the system and a crash occurs. Sometimes I think maybe that’s revolution, the crash of the system, a reboot, and growth again. Like fire itself, it heals the Earth. Earth is trying to reboot and we’re just stuck here looking at memes and reading books while some old guy is yelling to burn the books and the world. I hope there’s no extraterrestrials moseying around looking for intelligent life. Maybe they’ll speak to the whales instead.
I know I joke around a lot, I believe it to be a coping mechanism. See, I’m a quarter-comedian that will probably never stand up and tell his jokes. I prefer sitting down at a computer and writing them, like right now. Dark comedy is my forte, probably from how I grew up in the ‘90s in America with almost-boomer parents and getting pulled out of school for 9/11 and then the DC area sniper and then the Anthrax threat oh yeah then a bunch of once-in-a-lifetime economic crashes. See, us 90s kids have dealt with hell ever since we were born. We’re used to it. Make it light or drown in it I say. Or both.
Here’s a book my writing group friend is promoting, it’s Book 3, and sounds pretty enticing. Inertia and Momentum by Andrew Sweet. Slaves, clones, the future, it sounds about sadly right. The entire description is right there when you click the link, go ahead, you know you want to. There’s also militant anti-cloning extremists on the West Coast - sounds like something I’d become.
Clones are, philosophically, an extremely interesting and complex issue. Creation and identity are two of the biggest facets, but the true sci-fi wonder in cloning, to me, with how we write about clones, and the idea that someday it could happen, is having an identical brain - this is the real idea of ‘clone’ to me. The same body is one thing, but it means absolutely nothing if the brain is not identical, like identical twins, they may think alike, but they don’t think exactly the same thing at all times in the same way. It always comes back to the brain. I would think every single neuron would have to have identical connections in order to behave the same way, but I don’t know, and I don’t think we’re there scientifically yet either.
SCIENCE NEWS
Scratch your corporate overlord cloning you and your dreams awaken you in the middle of the night with their slave nightmare life they’re forced to live (I think I just created a new fucking story!). I’ve found a few cool technologies to help us shift into this 21st century like we should have 25 years ago. And this is just January. Oh, yes, NIH funding is halted. Whew boy.
ISS had deployed the world’s first WOOD satellite, called LignoSat. The magnolia wood will measure a plethora of data to determine whether or not wood is next-gen satellite capable.
Why this is cool: Every other satellite ever made is fully metal, with the necessary silicon and plastic yes, but wood is new, and fully renewable. Wood is star powered. How much metal do we need burning up in our atmosphere? The sky will be fuming aluminum and iron like the dinosaurs vanished once Earth starts pulling them all in. I’m hoping they study bamboo next after this proof-of-concept.
GERMAN BIONIC may seem like some WWII horrid SF, but all joking aside, they make bionic exoskeletons for industry - nurses, manufacturing, dock workers, warehousing and fulfillment workers, construction. This is the best use of exoskeleton/robotics I have seen. Finally, there’s a company creating something to help people work. Thank a thankless worker today, you might be one of them. Thank you for your work my good person.
Naturally, UCLA materials scientists created a cooling device of polymer films which has cooling properties of up to 16 degrees (current initial prototype).
Why this is cool: Literally. You’ve noticed the planet getting hotter, burning, all that. Next-generation outer clothing, vehicles, roofing tiles, anything that gets hot and we little balls of tender meat humans that don’t want it to get too hot will be able to hopefully use this new tech for more sustainable cooling, using just electricity - maybe even solar powered (not oil and coal powered electricity like your Tesla). Accordion-like carbon nanotubes and polymers are sandwiched together to blow hot air away, if only we can get these to lobbyists and congress asap. #FreeLuigi
On a personal note, because you’re reading my words and my books and stuff, I’ll tell you a thing about me. I had previously completed my first ever triathlon, the small one, the sprint, to give me a tangible goal after my ER visit last year for difficulty breathing. Well, I really liked it, so now I am training for my first Half Ironman. 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike ride, 13.1 mile run. It’s a hell of a lot of training, but I am in one of the best shapes of my life right now, and it’s actually exciting to train for it. I’m a food nerd, so I like to create my own electrolyte mix and food strategies for the race and training days. But the goofy ass running hat and cycling glasses are just killing me, but they work. Function over fashion. People over corps, freedom over fascism.
Cheers and fuck work,
AJ Pagan IV
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