Amy and I have been watching The Handmade’s Tale. Simultaneously, I’ve been listening to the book on Audible while running. Last night I said, “The Hulu adaptation of the book is really good.” And then we both grimaced, as we’ve each commented many times over the past week about how incredibly bleak the show is.

A different dystopia is coming to our TVs soon.

https://youtu.be/64CYajemh6E

As we roll into the end of 2019, almost all of the new near term sci-fi I’m encountering (reading and watching) is dystopic. And many of the people around me have pessimistic views of the future.

Amy and I are fundamentally optimistic people. But I wonder whether it is easier to be optimistic if you’ve had a lot of good fortune.

My year begins again on December 1st (my birthday) rather than January 1st. I’ve been in my head a lot the past few weeks as I finish out my year. My v53 was complicated and had a lot of ups and downs. I have been re-evaluating some of my premises, based on the poem Old Maps No Longer Work by Joyce Rupp that Jerry Colonna pointed me to earlier this year.

I’m rebooting as v54 in a few days. With new, and hopefully improved, software.

Mona List Overdrive has come true. And Pattern Recognition is on the horizon.

I knew that Dominos was paving America’s roads, but I didn’t realize they were branding them.

Farhad Manjoo has a good article in the NYT titled How Tech Companies Conquered America’s Cities. A key trope in sci-fi is that corporations will take over, well, everything. And, now that corporations are considered people (at least partially), why shouldn’t they take over?

Would it be weird if I sold sponsorship rights to my first name? “Dominos Feld” anyone? Or maybe “Amazon Feld.”

As usual, Neal Stephenson and Wiliam Gibson were (and continue to be) prescient about our future. I’m considering taking all the labels off of everything I own. And, if you are interested in sponsoring my first name, I’m open to offers and suggestions.