Life teaches you how to live it -- if you can live long enough. 

I don't have anything to add to that sentiment. I just think Bennett's insight should be postered everywhere. Once more:

Life teaches you how to live it -- if you can live long enough. 

Amy couldn't live long enough. She seemed to try, though. 

Bennett believes her voice was in league with Ella Fitzgerald and Etta James. And he would have told her, had she lived, to slow down. He would have told her

Life teaches you how to live it -- if you can live long enough. 

Maybe a slow pace helps. 

I've been picking up recently on what seems like a more widespread use of the term "artificial," at least as regards children's television, and I'd like to muse on that briefly. 

One instance: the (quite real) possibility that the gem race in Steven Universe are an advanced form of artificial intelligence created by another species. Even if this is not so, the parallels are enough to raise the topic of what defines articiality. 

Another: in the Adventure Time finale, there is a visual flash when a character, a ruler, is swayed by the plea of an old friend. The ruler is about to go to war, and the friend asks her to give the enemy a final chance to lay down arms. The princess, the ruler, looks at the outstretched arm of her friend, a robotic one with many advancements, and for a moment sees the arm he had once, long ago, still already many years into their friendship. It had been a simple metal claw, one which he could not even clasp, and which he had only acquired after a stretch of trauma and loss. Time and the princess's blinking eye was all that lay between the two models: one grating, a piss-poor replacement to a lost cause; the other a true-to-form part of her friend, and a symbol, now, of their long friendship. 

There is a possibility that these are just examples of the baader meinhof phenomenon in action, but if not, the question becomes: 

why is this special leniency toward the artificial most evident in children's content? 

Is it aimed at an audience that writers already know will be familiar with "technology" in a way past generations are not? That would mean the stories are just tailored to please. Or perhaps the writers themselves are, intentionally or unconsciously, working the thread of 'artificial doesn't have to be the opposite of natural' into their narratives. 

What implications do these insertions carry? In the grown-up world, a now chatterbox, now burbling topic is that of artificial intelligence. We're working toward it steadily on many fronts. Unless we reach a turtle-less bottom, as with Feinberg's uncertainty, we're likely to have artificial intelligence creations moving amongst us, regularly and ubiquitously, in ways that blur lines. With care and cultural familiarity, perhaps it can be that we move amongst each other, even as each other, instead of against. 

credit jackfisherbooks

The narrative around artificial intelligence, like most hot-to-trot technology topics, is constantly changing. More volatile than Tesla stock. Now you hear one expert say we're heading toward a Matrix-like civilization crisis. Now another says that's ridiculous, it's a technology like any other, well within our control. Then there are those people waaaaaaaaaaaaayyy on the other side of the gate entirely. 

No matter which way events unfold, though, it's the future generations who will have to live with most of the fallout. Does it seem more likely that we're reaching the end of the "natural" age, or that the definition of "natural" as we know it is changing? 

Feel free to share thoughts on this one in the comments. 

Everyone needs rest. Sleep is the biggest part of that (for most of us) but a lot of us (also most of us) do our best to ignore that fact. 

I definitely have. For most of my life. 

Now as I get older, I find that I can't just motor through the days like I used to. In fact, this past weekend I needed a whole day of nothingness just to get my reboot. 

I could write a whole long post on the benefits of sleep, but you know what? Many people already have. Just google it. Not everyone's right, but everyone has an opinion. 

My opinion tonight? The eternal flame of creativeness will keep burning through a singular evening of skiving off. 

So tonight, I'm giving myself the gift of rest. Try it for yourself. You'll see -- it's dreamy. 

For today's thoughts, I was watching Star Trek Voyager's episode "Mortal Coil." It's a fascinating look into a character who, having been brought back from the dead, must grapple with whether to believe in the afterlife (or not). I won't touch on any of its themes of identity or morality or hope in this post. Instead, I'm here today to write concerning a small turn of phrase during the party scene. 

In the episode, a character struggling with social conduct is told, after approaching some people at the party and listening in, to join the group in conversation; 

"to chime in."

credit to makersmess.com

1. to pipe up
2. to chime in
3. to talk
4. to chat / chatter / chit chat
5. to converse
6. to bring up / to come up 
7. to squawk
8. to mention
9. to put forth
10. to insert
11. to speak up
12. to gush
13. to gab
14. to gossip
15. to give up
16. to reveal
17. to blab
18. to prate / prattle
19. to intone
20. to offer
21. to say
22. to tell
23. to iterate
24. to sing -- as like a canary, giving up potentially damning information
25. to spit -- at the edge of a sound and not a word (notice I didn't include warble, trill, chortle, hiccup, harrumph and others which are more tonal cues than true "talking"); however, to spit in the context of conversation is to say something in an aspirated fashion (with a hiss). To spit is more talk than noise because, by nature, words spat at someone have to be understood as words, not just as noise, for the full brunt of the term's meaning to hit.  
26. to address -- as when directed your full, formal attention at the other person in your choice of words (and presentation)
27. to explain
28. to jaw away
29. to elocute
30. to banter
31. to bicker
32. to comment
33. to communicate
34. to lecture
35. to orate
36. to negotiate
37. to profess
38. to exaggerate
39. to lie (I almost didn't include this, but lying is talking untruthfully -- language is a requirement)
40. to sound out
41. to articulate
42. to speak

I think I'll end here. Always good to be left searching for a new question. 

If another word for talking comes to mind that I didn't mention, please comment below! Happy to add credit for new additions up to 50. 

Maybe a year ago, I heard a parable (which I recounted in another post) that deals with the nature of endings. 

The primary wisdom gained is that a story's root lies in its ending, and that the only certainty is that all of our stories end the same way: in death. 

At first, the thought seems a morbid one, and is certainly intended this way within the framing of the story in which I heard it. But there are many sides to the two-sided coin, it turns out. Every inverted angle as the coin flips through the air is a different shade of the story. The story's ending -- the landing of the coin -- can be averted so long as the flipper keeps clasping the coin out of the air and, again, flipping. As long as we keep telling the story, no matter the ending, we keep making our meaning for now. The present narrative is, after all, moment by moment, what we are seeking.

And so long as the story ends, from our perspective, during the telling -- the outcome seems to matter less, now, than it once did. 

'Til next time.