Clearly. As pointed out/clarified in another comment I was mostly thinking of the grey area companies who buy 0-days and sell them to governments, law enforcement and god knows who.
231 karma · joined September 28, 2012
https://github.com/gnl
As for the black market price - I don't consider my security background sufficient for my guess to be anywhere near educated enough, so I'm bowing out.
I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here. If you're trying to point out that I haven't done my homework on this and that I don't have a sufficiently specific/workable plan how to approach it - that is accurate. I don't have exploits to sell.
In my previous comment I already stated the assumption that I made, if you feel it's incorrect, which clearly you do, feel free to correct/fill in whatever you think is missing. I'm not getting into a debate about something with which I don't have in-depth experience with someone who does.
[1] https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/uruguay/annual-househo...
In the scenario you described, without any other contacts and/or experience with transactions like this, I would approach an exploit broker. As for the payout - I assumed that any RCE vulnerability that qualifies for Google's highest bounty is likely to fetch a higher price elsewhere.
My experience with the field is limited and considering yours, if you are suggesting that this particular exploit would not fetch a significantly higher price, I shall stand corrected.
Sometimes just deleting a couple of lines in Vim (IdeaVIM in my case) and knowing that parinfer will take care of the parens feels faster and more comfortable to me than using paredit. YMMV.
And as far as beginners are concerned - for someone coming from an OOP/imperative programming/C-style syntax background, a LISP will seem very foreign and weird for many reasons, the parens being just one of them.
I think having the ability to get your feet wet and start dabbling without an upfront investment is a good thing and the "jumping into the deep end" approach isn't for everyone, especially not for many beginners who at this point have only a very vague idea that a LISP might be for them and are already facing a number of new concepts that they need to get their heads around.
Parinfer requires no investment, Paredit requires some. Not much, but still. And going from one to the other as one feels drawn to explore the language is, I think, a perfectly natural transition, which requires no unlearning or changing of habits whatsoever, and as such it's also a more accessible path to getting into LISP. In my book, that's a good thing.
But here we're beginning to move into a general attitude/philosophy territory that's hard to argue about, so I'd be perfectly comfortable with agreeing to disagree and leaving it at that.
- Parinfer [https://shaunlebron.github.io/parinfer/] - makes the parens follow indentation and vice versa and effectively makes them a non-issue at worst and a great advantage at best (you can combine it with paredit later on to perform all kinds of ninja magic when editing code)
- Cursive [https://cursive-ide.com/] - a Clojure plugin for IntelliJ IDEA for a more 'just works' experience. Integrates parinfer, among other things, and is generally pretty great (I'm a happy customer).
And last but not least - rainbow parens to keep nested expressions readable. Pretty much every Lisp editor has them more or less out of the box.
EDIT: That being said, a lot can be improved in most people's heel-first gait, among other things - taking smaller steps, pushing the pelvis slightly forward into a neutral tilt, staying a bit closer to the ground (slightly more bent knees), making contact with the ground before shifting the whole weight, not throwing the legs forward and letting the heels slam on the ground. Getting all of that right makes heel-walking a lot more controlled and less bouncy. It also feels great.
When walking on solid, even terrain in good visibility and without imminent danger, most people would naturally use a heel-first strike, as it's a lot more economical in terms of muscle/energy usage. In that sense - if you're looking to build your calves, I have little doubt that consciously walking with a forefoot strike all the time might just do the trick, especially considering that calf muscles have a larger percentage of slow-twitch muscle fibres responding to a larger volume of submaximal loads.
You just have to make sure to take smaller steps, bend your knees a bit more than people generally do and fix your anterior pelvic tilt if you have it so as not to look too awkward (that is, if you care about the social aspect of it.)
When running barefoot or in minimal shoes on a hard surface almost everyone trying to use a heel-strike will quickly and painfully realise what a terrible idea it is and would naturally revert to a fore-/midfoot strike in order to take advantage of the body's natural shock-absorption mechanisms. Only modern thick-soled shoes make heel-first running possible, as they absorb a lot of the shock at the heel so no pain is immediately felt there.
They also make it feel somewhat natural, as when the feet are isolated from the natural ground sensation by centimetres of padding, there's somewhat of an instinct towards a stronger impact to regain that sensation. There's a reason for the extremely high number of nerve endings in the feet. Unfortunately the result is a running mechanic to which we are simply not physically adapted and a huge amount of preventable injuries, which are largely unknown in parts of the world where shoes aren't a big thing.
Feet in the western world are so universally deformed by the continuous usage of modern shoes from a very young age, that I would speculate there aren't many present day podiatrists who've ever seen a healthy real-life foot with naturally spread-out toes and a strong, healthy arch.
Big, strong supportive shoes (especially ones with pointy/compressive toe boxes) are really bad for you, unless you're walking in very dangerous terrain with lots of sharp pointy things, in which case they're great for you. Not the pointy toe boxes, those are always bad for you, but they look better, so you know. Pick your poison.
While biomechanically we're certainly screwed up quite a bit, I would say the solution is retraining according to an intuitive understanding of natural basic movement principles and their application to each specific situation, rather than blindly following a single recipe no matter what.
I don't believe for a second that people walked forefoot-first all the time at any point in human history, although without modern perfectly even roads and thick-soled shoes, they probably did it quite a bit more often. Just check out any video of indigenous people online, they walk heel-first all the time.
Source - lots of personal research, observation, experimentation and some application of common sense. I am not a professional in any related area.
If Apple would build a modern laptop in an old school ThinkPad bento box rollcage-protected user repairable/upgradable chassis with a replaceable battery, ECC memory and the new ThinkPad keyboard, I'd be all over that...yeah, I know, but one can dream.
At least keyboard-wise there's the ThinkPad Compact USB Keyboard option [1]. Been using it with macOS for about 2 years now, just changed the keyboard modifier settings to make it work like a Mac keyboard (and one could use something like Karabiner/-Elements to map the weirdly placed PrtSc key to Alt/Option). And the Bluetooth version fits nicely over the integrated keyboard when on the go.
I find it compares to other keyboards as the MacBook trackpad compares to other trackpads, that is - it's in a league of its own in terms of feel.
[1] https://support.lenovo.com/en/solutions/pd026745
Edited to add the Bluetooth version.
I'd just to like to point out that grouping together dynamically typed languages and comparing them to statically typed ones as a whole is really not useful at all due to the huge variations within each group in terms of correctness and expressiveness.
When people compare dynamic vs static languages they generally compare the languages they're familiar with and often assume that they are representative of the group to a sufficiently high degree. They're not. Using Clojure for example is a very different experience from using Python and not just cosmetically. Clojure with spec is a very different experience from plain Clojure. Haskell is very different from C#.
I'd encourage anyone with an interest in using the best tool for the job and increasing their effectiveness as developers to at least dabble in what I would consider to be the state of the art in practically usable, more or less mainstream languages in both camps - Haskell and Clojure (with an extensive use of spec).
You are likely to realise that statically typed languages can be way more expressive and less bend-over-backwards-for-no-good-reason-to-make-the-compiler-happy than C# or Java and dynamic languages can be significantly more capable of ensuring correctness and 'moving bugs to the left' than Python and JavaScript.
As an alternative to the deadlift, I'd like to suggest the two-arm kettlebell swing. While there's no magic bullet in training, the kettlebell swing seems to come pretty close [1]. Plus, you can get one for home/work if you don't want to go to the gym.
I would however second the recommendation of learning exercise technique from a qualified trainer, particularly for hip hinge exercises - most adults, myself included, seem to suck surprisingly hard at what is one of the most fundamental human movements.
In case you do decide to go the YouTube route however, at least learn from a quality resource like StrongFirst [2], there's too many technique videos ranging from ineffective to plain dangerous.
[1] http://www.strongfirst.com/optimizing-back-health-with-the-k...
P.P.S. General note on working standing - occasionally, that is every few minutes or whenever I feel like it, I will move around from leg to leg, get up on my toes, move my knees around, etc. That feels much better than planting my heels on the floor and not moving for an hour.
It's hard to put my finger on what it depends on exactly, but it seems to me that often when I have no idea how to approach a problem, I like to sit or lie down, roll it around in my mind, maybe look at the code/the application and let possible solutions come to me. When I already have a basic idea of what direction to go in, I like to walk around in front of my desk while I work out the details (= talk them over with myself) and then type/write standing.
It almost seems as if the natural action for a physical destination (not standing around like an idiot until I know where I want to go, then starting to walk and finding my way there as soon as I do) helps with the corresponding thought processes involved in reaching a purely mental destination.
Regarding the physical aspect - over the last years of transitioning to and experimenting with a standing a desk I have had phases where I spent hours standing, phases where I went back to sitting most of the time and phases where I had a balance between the two. My personal experience seems to match the anecdotal evidence I've encountered as well as what seems to be the scientific consensus (oiling of joints and lymphatic circulation both rely on movement, among other things), which is that the human body simply isn't designed for spending long periods of time in a single static position.
Spending hours standing tends to hurt my feet and knees, spending hours sitting makes my back unhappy. Constantly switching between the two and walking around the room in between makes long sessions of working on a computer much less taxing on the body by far and it makes perfect sense to me that the accumulative effect of this over the course of years and decades will make a difference to my quality of life down the line (in addition to the immediate effects I'm experiencing often after only a single day of doing one or the other).
Another thing I've noticed - giving myself the option to easily switch positions, forcing myself to do it for a while with a timer and paying attention to how it feels, lead to me being aware of becoming restless in a single position after a while and noticing the beginning discomfort in parts of the body, which I only used to notice when they were already hurting after hours standing or sitting.
I don't use a timer anymore, by now I just listen to my body telling me when it's time to move my arse and it all syncs up nicely with the different mental states I move between during work.
On a side note/quick rant - how stuck are we in our heads and screens, how detached are we from our bodies and how ignorant of the fact that in evolutionary terms we were moving around all the time until like a second ago, that we need a study to figure out that hey, maybe sitting on our collective arses 90% of the time might not be great for us and are we really sure that's a problem, maybe we need more studies. End of rant.
TL;DR - get an adjustable desk and a comfortable bar stool, don't stand still, pay attention to how you're feeling - both your body and your mind will thank you.
[1] IKEA has this cheap manually adjustable option if one doesn't want to spend the money on an electrical desk, plus only having mechanical parts means it's less likely to break/easier to fix if it does: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/S29084966/
While there may be high quality studies proving a preferable distribution of certain relevant traits in men or women, that information gives you at best some minimally higher chance that if you were to pick someone at random from the group with the better distribution they might be slightly more capable in that one particular way, maybe, which may or may not result in a higher qualification for the position depending on countless other factors and their combination or interaction with the trait in question. In other words it's completely worthless compared to the much more precise and specific information that you can gather from directly evaluating the individual in front of you.
Here's a thought experiment on the topic of enforced diversity. Disclaimer - I'm pulling the numbers out of the air and they aren't relevant. The example is also a little contrived for the sake of argument, I'm just trying to illustrate a principle.
Let's say we have a medical university that admits 100 candidates. The admission tests are administered and evaluated blindly, the professionals responsible for the evaluation aren't aware of anyone's gender, ethnicity, age, looks, they don't have any information beyond the content of the tests. They have also undergone bias awareness training, just in case, because why not.
The 500 candidates who apply are ranked according to their test results. In addition to these anti-bias measures, the university has a diversity goal of admitting 50% women (medicine is probably not the best example for this, but bear with me here). Now whether the enforcement of those goals is written in stone or strongly recommended with whatever pressure/incentives behind it, the result is quotas.
As it happens, for whatever mix of reasons, genetical, prenatal, environmental or social, at this particular time in this particular place only 40% of the top 100 happen to be women. The diversity goals however dictate that 50% must be admitted, so 10 men will be refused admission in favor of ten less qualified women. Let's say for the sake of argument that they all graduate successfully.
And now let's say I have to undergo a medical procedure and pick a doctor. I know for a fact that all 10 doctors available to me have been to the very same university. Not being an MD myself and not having any recommendations, I am in no position to judge their qualifications, so all I have to rely on is gut feeling and metadata. And I know for a fact that there's a higher chance that a female doctor from that university has been admitted on quotas instead of skill and I'd know that chance is higher even without the information how many women were in the top 100 because of the very possibility which does not exist for men. And now I end up in a position where gender mainstreaming and diversity efforts, in particular quotas, somehow managed to make sexism a reasonable, rational basis for making a decision, which wouldn't have occurred to me in a thousand years.
Without quotas, I have no good reason to care about my doctor's genitals or the color of their skin. With them I just might.
If that's not shooting yourself in the foot, I don't know what is.
From the original manifesto:
> [...] I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes. [...]
> [...] Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. [...]
> [...] If we can’t have an honest discussion about this, then we can never truly solve the problem. [...]
> [...] Of course, men and women experience bias, tech, and the workplace differently and we should be cognizant of this, but it’s far from the whole story. [...]
> [...] Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions. [...]
> [...] I hope it’s clear that I’m not saying that diversity is bad, that Google or society is 100% fair, that we shouldn’t try to correct for existing biases, or that minorities have the same experience of those in the majority. [...]
> [...] I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism). [...]
Gizmodo's summary:
> In the memo, which is the personal opinion of a male Google employee and is titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” the author argues that women are underrepresented in tech not because they face bias and discrimination in the workplace, but because of inherent psychological differences between men and women.
From Zunger's post:
> You have probably heard about the manifesto a Googler (not someone senior) published internally about, essentially, how women and men are intrinsically different and we should stop trying to make it possible for women to be engineers, it’s just not worth it.
How any person of average intelligence possessing a modest grasp of the English language can draw these conclusions is beyond me.
Granted there is an argument to be made for the manifesto's author not doing the best possible job of expressing himself in such a way as to increase the likelihood of sparking a civil debate on what is clearly a very sensitive issue. I am also not the biggest fan of his preoccupation with the one-dimensional and in my opinion overly simplistic left/right political spectrum.
I will not argue for or against the specific conclusions he draws in regard to the role of genetics in the different distribution of traits among men and women, as I have neither the time nor the interest to look into the research (nor the opportunity, really, as a number of links have been apparently omitted from the publication, which, one might assume, lead to sources the author was basing his arguments on).
What I do find fascinating however, and the reason I'm writing this, is that I see someone basically going "guys, have we actually stopped to consider that maybe that could be one of the reasons why we're observing this and if not why not - here's what I think" while doing everything humanly possible to emphasize that they are in no way denying that there is a problem and in no way suggesting that that is the only reason. And instead of getting "yes we did and here's what we concluded and why" or "no we didn't, let's talk about it", they're viciously shamed and attacked for entertaining the very thought.
A comment here referred to this as thoughtcrime punishment and I couldn't agree more. This is plain and simply dogma at work, and the way I see it, it has no place among intelligent people engaged in science and/or engineering. And yet here we are.
We have no problem accepting that differing trait distribution between different genetic groups can be a significant factor in a disproportionate representation of some groups in certain fields - soldiers in combat roles, construction workers, athletes, etc. And yet when it comes to the brain, suggesting a similar difference is suddenly taboo.
Even before doing any research, the idea that the brain is somehow exempt from all of this seems highly questionable and would merit the most rigorous examination to confirm or reject.
Here's a thought though - it doesn't matter to this debate. We could talk about if/why men are on average better/worse than women in whatever and throw around studies until we are blue in the face, but in the end when someone wants to do a job, the only thing that should matter is - can that person deliver. We need to be focused on making sure that this is indeed the only thing that matters and let natural tendencies and capabilities produce whatever representation of genetic groups they produce and if it's similar to the general population that's fine and if it's not, that's fine too.
Let me emphasize again, that we're already doing this in many fields. Everyone is not born equal. We know that's true, we know enough about genetics to recognize that differing distribution of traits among genetic groups are a thing and yet we're so terrified of being seen as racist or sexist, that we'll keep a few precious blindspots no matter what and defend them to the death whenever someone dares suggest that we might want to shine a light on them.
Another thought - there are children growing up right now that don't understand race. I guess some might even be lucky enough that they don't understand gender. They see different people with different skin, hair, features, body shapes, genitals, skills, manners, likes and dislikes. They'd do perfectly fine going through life with the simple understanding that 'yes, people are different', but then we get to them and explain how, you see, this group of people is oppressing that group of people, these people are like this and those are like that, and instead of seeing individuals we teach them to see the emotionally charged baggage-ladden labels that we insist on slapping on everyone - black people and white people, men and women, gay and straight, African American, Hispanic American, Chinese American, Native American and so on.
Significant, lasting cultural change doesn't happen overnight, it takes decades and it takes children looking at the world with fresh eyes and adults capable of recognising their biases and making sure to die without passing them on in order to make place for someone better.
Of course, discrimination is a problem that needs some solution now rather than in decades. It's likely too late for the adults among us to erase our biases. We can recognize we have them, we can minimize them and we can put measures in place to make sure they can't do too much damage - blind paper reviews/auditions/tests as well as bias awareness training strike me as solutions that can only do good.
Among other things, we're most definitely missing out on brilliant female engineers in CS due to sexism and an often toxic environment, which is clearly a lose-lose situation for everyone. I think it's worth considering that we might just be missing out on brilliant male engineers as well, due to affirmative action, which is also sexism.
Forcefully engineering and moulding society into whatever shape someone decided it's supposed to have through positive discrimination isn't change. It's the appearance of change, while fueling social conflict, hurting economical, technological and scientific progress and drawing the lines that divide us, thus reinforcing the very foundation of racism, sexism, religious intolerance and any of the countless other stupid reasons we come up with to fight each other - seeing people as members of a group rather than individuals.
I'd like to suggest we take a step back and reevaluate whether we're more interested in pragmatic solutions that genuinely lead to a stronger, happier and more harmonious society or in playing make-believe and indulging in some justice fantasy with a very questionable basis in reality.
To build on the point made by the author - while it can be a useful label to describe what appeals to a majority of people within a certain group, there is ultimately no such thing as good art and consequently no such thing as a critic getting it right.
We could of course try to define "a critic getting it right" as predicting and matching the majority opinion within a certain culture/time period, which I suppose the article does and it's certainly a valid approach, but then we come dangerously close to implying that that is equivalent to recognizing the intrinsic value of some work.
As astutely observed in the quote by Terry Eagleton, "value" is by its very definition a subjective and transitive term, completely meaningless without context.
Critics (so I guess pretty much everyone, this being the internet) tend to shine all light on the subject of their criticism, while themselves trying to stay in the shadows, as if keeping their personal context out of it somehow makes their opinion more objective. I'd argue that the only people this doesn't do a disservice to, are people eager to find a solid, reliable opinion they can subscribe to in order to join in the pretense of knowing what is good art and what isn't.
A more honest reader turning to critiques to help answer the question "What is valuable to me?" in an infinite sea of content is much better served by a critic openly exposing their biases, their personal framework and context, clearly showing where they are coming from and how it flows into the image they paint of their subject. When it comes to talking art, any attempt at objectivity is doomed to fail, so I say do away with it altogether.
Not only does this make it easier for a reader to better place potentially interesting works within his context by comparing it with the critic's, it would also provide more value to the authors/artists themselves. It's okay being disliked by people you're not trying to reach.
The other thing that really gets me is the disrespect of suggesting something is so bad it shouldn't have been created in the first place.
It takes passion and courage to put a personal creation out there. It takes a great and exhausting amount of bad work to finally create something good, as anyone who's ever build anything worthwhile can confirm. All it takes to take a dump on it and feel powerful in the act is an internet connection.
Then again, maybe destructive criticism creates a necessary hostile environment, testing an author's/artist's resolve and allowing truly great art to emerge, similar to how children need to be exposed to germs in order to develop healthy immune systems.
I do not like critics.
Many identities, lifes, careers, organizations have been built around the assumption that objective and absolute knowledge is possible, truth can be defined, reality must have a solid core at its foundation. We're talking countless man-centuries of emotional, intellectual and social investment.
No one wants to shake the branch they're sitting on. And yet, the way I see it if someone claims to be engaged in science or philosophy, that is precisely what they must do, rather than summarily discard anything they have been conditioned to consider ridiculous.
Between "we don't know anything about anything, might as well drop the whole science thing" and "we know with absolute certainty that <something>" there is this huge grey area, where we seem to know enough about what seems to be reality that we can often predict it, shape it to our liking and build cool things.
To me, the most interesting question of this whole postmodernism vs scientific inquiry/analytic philosophy debate is why so many are so incredibly uncomfortable in that area (where, one might argue, life actually happens), that they must either, with an almost religious zeal, insist on having found absolute truth (despite no evidence having ever been produced to that effect and, allowing for the existence of objective reality, tons of evidence of having been wrong in the past) or altogether deny the obvious usefulness of the scientific method.
It seems that more often than not we can only engage with reality while pretending that we can know, understand and control it with absolute certainty and if/when disavowed of that illusion, are ready to immediately fall into some form of nihilism, denying any objective approach to anything.
What I'm saying is that there's nothing wrong with using an analytic/scientific approach to make good things happen and generally have a good time while at the same time not being quite as trigger happy with the "pseudoscience", "ridiculous" and "impossible" labels when something doesn't fit our ideas of how the world is supposed to be.
Let's not forget there was a time when one could get locked up for suggesting the earth was orbiting the sun.
Plumatic Schema [1] goes a long way towards narrowing that gap though and I cannot recommend it enough. Whether it goes far enough in terms of safety is certainly a matter of project type/size and personal preference, but to me, for my kind of work so far it does and they'll take away my ClojureScript when they pry it from my cold, dead hands. :)
Also (and slightly off-topic) the combination of clairvoyant + re-frame-tracer [2][3] (+[4] for some minor, so far mostly React Native-relevant additions) should be way more popular than it seems to be. It's definitely one of the most important tools in my toolbox and completely changed the way I approach debugging.
[1]: https://github.com/plumatic/schema [2]: https://clojars.org/day8/re-frame-tracer [3]: https://clojars.org/gnl/re-frame-tracer [4]: https://clojars.org/gnl/clairvoyant
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4EDhdAHrOg [1:41 "It's not about the nail"]
The video is about women, because as men we like to take pride in the idea that we're "fixers", but if we're honest about it we'll have to admit that when it comes to the important things in life we're just as full of crap.
No amount of talking, hand-holding, support groups and nods of understanding will amount to any kind of personal progress, until you are willing to answer the question "What do you really want?"
You want to be productive? Have a successful startup? Million dollars? Improve the lives of others?
Sure. But why? What's behind it? We like to look for an objective meaning in things, but what is meaning other than the belief in a cosmic points system that will bestow rewards upon us if we play our roles right?
Whether you are a startup founder, career person, scientist, devout christian, philanthropist, volunteer or whatever makes no essential difference here - pretty much everyone chases some ill-defined ideal in the hope that somehow some ill-defined someone or something will save us and make everything alright when we reach some ill-defined goal.
And when you do succeed, what do you really have to show for it? Years of sacrifice gone that you'll never get back, even more expectations than before, because now you're supposed to act like a successful person, even more anxiety that you'll disappoint the people who idolize you, eager to believe in the fairy-tale that you've made it and everything's happily-ever-after-picture-perfect. Everyone has at least some stories of disappointment with success. Everyone knows people who do. Show me one happily ever after.
It's a blind gamble with the only thing we do have - time, and we keep pissing that away because it's easier than seriously asking the question that could shake the very foundation of the persons we believe ourselves to be and the reality we believe ourselves to live in.
Everything needs to be ill-defined, because otherwise we would see that it doesn't make sense and couldn't keep pretending that we're doing something worthwhile while what we're actually doing is killing time waiting for death and imagining that there's no hurry and someone's coming to save us.
To seriously and honestly admit what you want is fucking hard. It's a question that takes no prisoners. The very act of asking sets you apart from family, friends and society, forces you to see that in the things that matter to you most, you are in fact alone. For most of us considering an honest answer to that question amounts to what is commonly considered one of the greatest sins - being selfish.
We're afraid of being selfish, we're afraid of sinning against the people around us by rejecting their rules and desires, we're afraid of being alone and we're afraid of dying, so we keep playing our roles and pretending to everyone around us.
At the same time deep inside we know that nothing matters, we know that we're all selfish by design, we know we have nothing to lose because we'll all be gone soon anyway and we have a pretty good idea of what we want to do before we end up cancer-ridden in a hospice, smiling bitterly at the memory of what used to matter to us and the times when we could have lived but didn't because we were too busy pretending we could hide from death.
My girlfriend just came in the room and glanced at my screen as I'm finishing typing this and for a second I was really terrified she'd see what I was writing. It seemed ridiculous to at first, but then I realized I just don't want to admit that realizing things amounts to nothing unless you act.
I may just have run out of excuses.