Tobias S. Buckell's Blog, page 34

Tech and five year olds

Someone asked what the biggest surprise about living with five year olds is. For me it’s been their uptake of devices.

Technology is something that was invented when you were past adolescence, I saw that written somewhere. My kids, because I design eBooks, have had iPads lying around (or use our iPhones) since they were babies. It isn’t technology to them.

It’s natural, and I expected to see them use and fumble around with user interfaces with the apps we’ve curated for them.

What blew me away w...

My kids turn 5 today

Five years ago. Doesn’t seem all that long. But I’ve ended up with two five year old kids running around the house.

How did that happen?

Their current hobbies include re-enacting memorized lines from Frozen, bedazzling open surfaces of the house with stickers (where do all these stickers come from? I don’t remember buying them, they just seem to… happen), and heckling me in my office when they get home (“did you finish the book today, daddy?” “No, I’m a quarter of the way through.” “Well, you s...

A strange relationship with text

I read weird.

I’m not sure when I realized I had a different experience with text than others. You internalize your own way of interacting with the world so much that you’re often not aware of the water you’re swimming in as a fish. And due to some unique experiences in my childhood, I certainly wasn’t aware how different my relationship with text was.

I do remember hints.

In first, or second grade, I think I remember looking around as we were asked to read parts of a text book out loud for the...

Tesla sets a drag record for fastest production car

What people still fail to realize about electric cars, due to negative PR from anti-green types, is that 100% of the torque is available to the wheels.

Which means, if you want sporty, you’ll want electric:

“The Tesla Model S Performance ended up running a best time of 12.371 @ 110.84 MPH with 0-60 MPH coming up in just 3.9 seconds. The National Electric Drag Racing Association (NEDRA) was on site running their Winter EV Nationals and verified the Tesla runs to have set a new world record for t...

High speed rail’s future may yet be in Texas

I have this strong suspicion that the first high speed rail demonstrator in the US will probably be in Texas given the troubles California is running into. Still, if it’s demonstrated in Texas, struggles into California, and the North East Corridor continues making improvements, we may yet see an idea who’s time is well over due. And having it work in Texas will take it back out of the culture war it somehow slipped into and back into ‘does it work for this leg’ sort of discussion that’s real...

Metro areas reponsible for most of America’s population growth now

The US is an urban nation (as far as how people actually choose to live), even though its mythologies and politics often don’t reflect that as much as they need to.

Neat map:

“Nearly one in seven Americans lives in the metropolitan areas of the country’s three largest cities: New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.”

(Via Metropolitan areas are now fueling virtually all of America’s population growth.)

Progress Report: What day? I don’t know.

I’ve lost track of how many days in today’s year have passed. But, I do know this is the 64th day of working on the novel PS-1 (I started it February 1st). After getting 17,000 words of outlining done, the go-ahead to write on 3/11, I’ve been working my way forward. 13,500 words that I like are now written. Despite coming back from a week-long sprint of writing in Phoenix, I had to take care of some stuff that was waiting. Slowed me down.

My spreadsheet tells me I’m still on track to hit my de...

On Cars and generations

Between Millenials one side of the pincer not being interested in driving nearly to the extent previous generations were, and between baby boomers retiring and realizing it would be nice to be able to walk places, a very interesting demographic crunch is coming our way:

“It used to be that having your own car provided the ultimate sense of freedom for young adults, allowing them a means to get together with friends, establish independence and separate from their parents. It was a critical righ...

Carbon market collapse on its way?

Hold onto your britches?

“In a new book, former oil geologist and government adviser on renewable energy, Dr. Jeremy Leggett, identifies five ‘global systemic risks directly connected to energy’ which, he says, together ‘threaten capital markets and hence the global economy’ in a way that could trigger a global crash sometime between 2015 and 2020.

According to Leggett, a wide range of experts and insiders ‘from diverse sectors spanning academia, industry, the military and the oil industry itse...

More people will be able to sign up for healthcare throughout the year, which I’d wondered about

Millions of people losing jobs or changing jobs, moving to freelance, will be able to sign up for ACA all throughout the year. That’s in addition to the 6 or so million who signed up over the last months. I also have an article somewhere that pointed out we still have no idea how many people signed up for ACA outside the exchanges. In Oregon that doubled the signups.

“The ACA’s state Marketplaces, in contrast, provide a non-discriminatory home for those losing their insurance coverage. In many...