Keys

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This jar of keys is a family heirloom, handed down from grandfather to father to son. Most of the keys, as I understand the story, were to apartment doors and mailboxes. The family owned apartment buildings and when a tenant got locked out the landlord would come with this jar of keys and and try them, one at a time, until he found the right key. At some point family members tried to bring a little order to this chaos by numbering the keys but the system never caught on. Somewhere — in a door or a landfill — there are locks for each of these keys.

Hacking the genome

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“He Jiankui, a genome-editing researcher from the Southern University of Science and Technology of China in Shenzhen, says that he implanted into a woman an embryo that had been edited to disable the genetic pathway that allows a cell to be infected with HIV.” (Nature)

Claim hasn’t been verified but this is exactly what Yuval Noah Harari talks about in Homo Deus (and 21Lessons). The rest of the world might freak out over the ethics of this kind of research but when on country has this tech, they won’t be able to stop it. Do you think some billionaire will care about ethics if she can protect her offspring from some dreaded disease. And how long before someone hacks the genome to make a human smarter/stronger/faster/whatever?

 

Preparing a home for the pickup

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Once I decided against keeping the pickup in a storage unit across town, it was time to think about where to park her. I still need to cut some grooves and seat the logs. After that, spread some gravel and throw a tarp over her.

For some reason, the photos I take of this spot do not convey how steep the grade is. I’m guessing it’s 20 degrees which you can certainly feel carrying logs.