The Walton Firm Memos

On the morning we emerged I remember a fan broke and our basement started to really bake. We were sweaty and crowded and getting anxious to crack the doors. Someone’s girlfreind was sullen in the corner, some fought, some gambled on what we’d find. Some gym-teacher-looking motherfucker was trying to quiet us but he couldn’t [...]

Fascinating article in the Guardian today on the Swiss assisted Suicide organization, Digniatas. Most astaoundingly:
Since Swiss law allows assisted suicide, but not euthanasia (the difference being that the person who wants to die must actively take the dose himself), the act of voluntarily drinking the drug, mixed with 60ml of water, and the subsequent death [...]

Five to ten years from now is a magical time. It is when seemingly all ambitious ideas will begin to show results. I think about this from the idea-haver’s perspective. The idea-haver waits nervously in the waiting room of a Venture Capitalists office, or alternately sits up late agonizing over a press-release or grant proposal [...]

This piece on time perception briefly touches on how in a high-adrenaline situation, people get a kind of heightened focus and clarity:
In a critical situation, a walnut-size area of the brain called the amygdala kicks into high gear, … forcing everything to attend to the situation at hand. When the amygdala gets involved, memories are [...]

My understanding is that sometime in the 1970’s, some white guys who were essentially science fiction authors had to face some long, hard truths about how incredibly bad they were at developing plots and characters. In a sort of brilliant “fuck it moment”, they just started writing all the science-y stuff down, without letting literary [...]