A Policy Initiative

Stuffilike.net has always been devoted to stuff I actually like, from Hello Kitty sex toys and other strange ironies to octopodes and  current technologies I first saw in the original Star Trek show which are now, if not commonplace, at least no longer utterly fictional (still no flying cars, though).

One of the consequences of this relentlessly cheerful editorial policy is the self-limiting nature of the work. Some days I don’t like things very much, and must fight the urge to say so loudly and clearly through the megaphone of the web. For instance, I take no joy in remarking upon electoral politics as the choices available fill me with ennui for more money machine politics at best (Hillary) and World War Three Holocaust at worst (The Donald). And what erudition is to be had there, anyway?  People who think and people who won’t instinctively recognize each other and can’t communicate across the gulf of sentience between them.

I hate shouting across the Grand Canyon–just makes me hoarse.

All this explains (perhaps) why there is little output here.  That and the black depression from the loss of my father, my wife’s father, my job, acquiring pneumonia, acquiring sciatica and a motorcycle racer’s recent suicidal crash into the back of my van have made me less cheerful and unlikely to take delight and inspiration from the beauty in the world around me.

OK, that’s a little bleak.  Here’s a cat picture.

That’s better.  Not sure she is filed correctly, though.

Look, wonderful things have been happening in our world.  Research in mixed graphene substrates have opened up some exciting avenues for development of smaller, faster, more powerful (and less power-consuming) electronics.  Computer controls are cheaper and more sophisticated than ever, and people are starting to do the theoretical heavy lifting about communications security to make the world’s devices more flexible in response, data more analyzable and who knows what kind of benefits neural network analysis thereof will derive? Augmented reality is in a nascent phase, the infrastructure of AR-ware barely beginning to coalesce from a dark void of ignorance to saleable products, when Real Money will push research to actual utility. Powered exoskeletons are already entering clinical trials for muscle-wasting conditions, and soon will be available for grandmothers, too.  The James Webb telescope will soon make Hubble look like a spyglass. And right here in front of me is a box that lets me communicate with anyone in the world, if I’m smart enough to get them to answer. Even if they don’t, so much of the world’s information is now available to me through this box I may not need their answer…if I’m smart enough to get one myself.  And my magic box is smaller than this:

Well, that seems better.  What? Our time is up?

Thank you, doctor.  See you next week, then?