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Posts Tagged ‘Thoughts’

Christmas Eve, when Santa is racing around the world distributing presents, seems like an excellent time to think back to the experience of the holiday as a young child. If Christmas was part of your family tradition, do you remember what it was like to believe in Santa Claus? 

I do, and despite the ever-present pressures of reality, that sense of wonder is part of why I write.

Making Sense of Santa, as a Science Reporter and a Parent ‹ Literary Hub

“When I was a kid, did you try to get me to believe in Santa?” I recently asked my parents. My father, a mathematician, scoffed. “Of course not,” he said. “We told you he was a mythological being that represented generosity and good cheer.”

Still, every December, my mother hung stockings above the chimney with care. And every Christmas Eve, she made sure cookies were left on a festively decorated plate, as though she truly believed St. Nick would soon be there.

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Photo by LuAnn Hunt on Unsplash

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“My response to anything that happens, good or bad, is to keep making things. Keep making art.”

— Taylor Swift

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Photo by Keith Hardy on Unsplash

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“You need to drop glass on the floor, get the burns, all those things. The real practice is in all the pieces that didn’t make it, the cliched blood, sweat and tears. You can’t know the limits of something unless you’ve failed.”

— Will Shakspeare, artisan glassblower

And you can still make something beautiful along the way.

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Photo by Joshua Sortino on Unsplash

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Not So Serious

Taking your responsibilities seriously should never stand in the way of taking your ego lightly.

— Adam Grant

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Photo by Keith Jonson on Unsplash

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Ken Liu is one of our modern masters of speculative fiction. The first story of his that I read was “The Paper Menagerie,” “the first piece of fiction to win three genre literary awards: the Hugo, the Nebula, and the World Fantasy Award.”

So he’s pretty good.

He’s also been thinking about art, AI and the evolving relationship between them. Here’s his new story:

Future Science Fiction Digest – Good Stories

Clara’s favorite part of the workday is the very beginning.

She likes flipping the switches on the wall right inside the office entrance, all sixteen of them, different colors and laid out in two neat columns, like the console from an old NASA space capsule that she got to sit inside once on a school trip to DC. As she takes a sip of her latte, her right hand running up the wall, click-click-click, flipping one switch after another, she imagines herself turning on rocket engines, initiating a docking maneuver, venting some dangerous alien spores out the airlock.

The story is one of the many interesting pieces in The Digital Aesthete: Human Musings on the Intersection of Art and AI, edited by Alex Shvartsman with an impressive roster of authors.

Today’s software can only imitate art, but what about tomorrow?

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Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash

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Apologies for the clickbaity title, but I actually do have a weird trick. It’s simple to do but a little hard to explain.

The trick is to close my eyes and relax my focus (literal, not figurative) from “out there” back to the approximate plane of my nose. I know it’s working when I break into an involuntary grin. 

It’s a small thing that only takes a second, but some days a little trick is all I need.

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Photo by Lidya Nada on Unsplash

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You as a person also have to understand that there are things in this life you cannot control, and one of those things is a cat.

— Ella Cerón

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Photo by Kanashi on Unsplash

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Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it, we go nowhere.

— Carl Sagan

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Photo by Michal Vrba on Unsplash

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Mr Man and I had a lot to do today but (straight talk) didn’t get to most of it. That’s fine, because we were short on sleep and needed to recharge before we tackled anything big. It’s good to be prepared. 

With that in mind, here’s a bit of helpful advice for writers and adventurers.

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Photo by Timothy Dykes on Unsplash

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Today’s goal: To be perfectly imperfect.

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Photo by Jackson Simmer on Unsplash

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