Jeremy Gosnell
Stories (13/0)
Coming to terms with cancel culture ...
Several years ago I was working at a telecommunications retail store, a mobile phone shop basically. One day a mother came into the store followed by her young(ish) child. My friend Josh rushed over to see what she needed, and quickly learned she was shopping for a phone so she and her kiddo could stay connected. He immediately started his corporately ingrained sales process, running through the gauntlet of features on all the newest phones. He was winding down his presentation as the woman settled on the iphone X. Then, suddenly the interaction shifted. It was when Josh asked the question, “What color does he want?” that the proverbial shit hit the fan.
By Jeremy Gosnell2 years ago in Humans
Days Gone and a real pandemic
This article contains spoilers for the PC/PlayStation 4 video game Days Gone. Days Gone was released about a year before the pandemic struck. At that time, the game didn’t do well with critics, and players complained that its open world was boring and depressing. Yet, after the pandemic, it seems that like other post-apocalyptic video games, Days Gone found new footing. Days Gone tells the story of Deacon St. John, a rough and tumble member of the Mongols biker gang. When a pandemic suddenly strikes the majority of the population are turned into freakers. Freakers aren’t exactly zombies, and they're not exactly vampires either. The virus that ravages the world in Days Gone genetically alters people’s bodies, making them faster and stronger, with a desire to feast on anything, literally. Like Covid, the virus that causes the freakers affects everyone differently. Some people recover, and avoid becoming a freaker, while others (based on age) simply die.
By Jeremy Gosnell3 years ago in Humans
Death Stranding, Covid, and a people struggling to find meaning in a disaster.
Death by Covid is a slow painful affair. About 2-5% of Covid patients die 2 weeks to several months after positive diagnosis is confirmed. Usually, by the time they’re dead, hospitals have tried everything from amputations to ventilators to keep these patients alive. Covid lowers the amount of oxygen in the blood, forcing the body to cut off oxygen supply to limbs and non-vital functions. Sepsis, infection, and decaying tissue forced many Covid patients to endure traumatic and painful surgeries, surgeries that often proved fruitless. Talk to anyone, and chances are they know someone who succumbed to Covid-19. Never before in our nation’s modern history has one affliction claimed such a vast number of human lives in such a short span of time. By comparison the opioid epidemic claimed 500,000 lives over the span of 20 years. People of all ages, nationalities, races, and religious affiliations crumbled under the weight of severe Covid infection.
By Jeremy Gosnell3 years ago in Gamers
Elon Musk is dangerous.
My upcoming book takes readers to Mars, 867 years into humanities’ future. Why so far ahead you’re wondering? The book involves terraforming Mars, a process that would make the Martian atmosphere suitable for humans, and allow Earth like plants and animals to roam the red planet freely. Terraforming a planet is possible, and we have the technology to do it now, it just takes a really long time. Sadly for us, the time variable of terraforming is unavoidable, regardless of the technology involved. In the book, I look at what would happen to Mars if it was taken over by the intellectual and financial elite. College professors, entrepreneurs, wealthy artisans, scientists, and the exuberant brilliant class. What would happen to a planet if they simply went there, without any real way to stop them, and appointed themselves rulers? What if the very rich (but also very ambitious) became the gatekeepers to an entire world?
By Jeremy Gosnell3 years ago in Futurism
Cancel Culture and the intellectual right
In the Plot Against America (an HBO series) a fictional retelling of history sees Charles Lindberg elected as president, instead of Franklin D. Roosevelt. In truth, Lindberg was part of the infamous America First movement of the 1940s. America First felt American intervention in a European war (World War 2) was a bad idea, and the U.S. was best to invest in domestic policy. Charles Lindberg was a famous populist, a US Postal airmail pilot turned celebrity by completing the first trans-Atlantic flight. In reality, Lindberg never ran for president, but his America First ideals had seeped into mainstream society as the debate abounded whether or not America should enter World War 2. In the series, the Lindberg presidency isn’t overtly anti-Jew, but the sentiment that American men shouldn’t die liberating European Jews leads to a racist outpouring in America.
By Jeremy Gosnell3 years ago in The Swamp
Quantum computers and love
In the Netflix series The One, geneticists crack the biological code that bonds two human beings into the perfect pair. The series postulates that the same pheromone, genetic matching that functions in ants, also functions in humans. Send a DNA sample to the show’s fictional One matching service, and they scour their DNA database for your biological match, using an algorithm that detects predestined genetic connections. It’s a plausible theory, and the only thing holding it back is that it’s likely impossible that human beings use the same genetic connectors as ants. For humans, we must still rely on the traditional model of falling and staying in love, which usually requires effort on the part of both parties. Yet, the show explores this idea reasonably well. When someone meets their match, there’s an almost instant connection, the feeling as if you’ve known this person for years. Every person only has one living match (and it's possible a match is already deceased), so if something happens to yours, you’re to live a life with whatever mediocre replacement exists.
By Jeremy Gosnell3 years ago in Humans
I was hesitant about getting a Covid vaccine, until I got one
Several months ago my wife and I sat down after dinner to watch a movie. Suddenly, she couldn't breathe and her tongue was swollen. Within minutes her face was swollen and hives covered her body. We rushed to the emergency room where she was whisked away. She had an anaphylactic reaction, and had we pondered the idea of going to the ER much longer, she may have died. After copious amounts of testing by an allergy clinic, nothing conclusive was found. Doctors finally suggested that the flu vaccine she had a day earlier may have been the culprit. Despite having flu vaccines in prior years, they explained that every flu vaccine is different, full of various preservatives and ingredients to keep viral particles stable until they reach your muscle.
By Jeremy Gosnell3 years ago in Longevity
The time is coming to disclose the reality of ET life
Years ago while promoting my book The Terminal in Austin, Texas I met a man named Stan Romanek. Stan calmly introduced himself to me, and asked if I had a few moments to speak after the event. I decided that I did, and what he proceeded to tell me that afternoon was shocking. Stan claimed that since seeing a UFO years earlier, he was literally stalked by beings from another world. His entire life was dotted with strange experiences, ufo sightings, and evenings of being whisked away to, well somewhere other than Earth. Everywhere Stan went, it seemed strange objects followed. Several of Stan’s claims were extraordinary. One, that alien beings repaired a bad knee, and the other that alien beings downloaded advanced physics data into Stan’s brain.
By Jeremy Gosnell3 years ago in Futurism
Liberals have a duty to save Trump loyalists from the brink of destruction
In 1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt started the New Deal. It would run until 1939 and encompassed a series of public works and relief programs specifically targeted at rebuilding the ravages of the Great Depression. Among its infamous changes was the foundation of the Social Security Administration, minimum wage laws, and it eventually spiraled out into things like Medicare and others. The New Deal saved a dying class of Americans who were quickly being left behind by the modern world. Many had grade-school educations; they were carpenters, tradesmen, and laborers. Without Roosevelt’s New Deal, they would have been economically extinct, relegated to a short-life of extreme poverty. It was Roosevelt’s New Deal that cemented the Democratic Party as the party of the working class. He lifted working people up, and what followed were the worker’s unions, manufacturing jobs and decent salaries that built the American middle class into a force to be reckoned with. Despite Roosevelt’s liberal stance on social issues, many socially conservative workers voted for him each of the four terms he ran. Not because they were social justice warriors, but because Roosevelt had saved their asses, and they knew it.
By Jeremy Gosnell3 years ago in The Swamp
Life in 2,867
Mars was about to change, and inevitably Earth was about to change. Everything was about to change. Change was written throughout the old Earth archives. Billions of writings detailing the history of a species both poised for extinction and greatness, often all at once, often at odds with itself. Like a wild rabid beast our species ran uninhibited through history, a cataclysmic disaster rocketing toward the stars. Zoom in on any one part of human history and you’re greeted with self induced challenge and self wrought misery. Yet, you’re also greeted with those that would remake the fabric of the world to overcome those challenges and build a better future. For me, a human writer living in 2,867 humanity was a paradox. While I found the challenges of humanities’ past complex and difficult, I knew in that moment that the challenges of our future would be worse. Denying that was futile. As a student of the old archives I had seemingly watched the species great renaissances and their great declines. The pandemic of 2020 and 2021 or the moment in 2,036 when humanity merged with machine artificial intelligence. As a human writer, I understood why Mars was humanities’ inevitable future. What started as a private expedition to the red planet in 2,040 had been a disaster, and led to a fundamental redefining of society. The formation of a massive space exploration project and the construction of moon bases capable of automated ship and habitat construction.
By Jeremy Gosnell3 years ago in Futurism
Death from Covid is a slow, painful affair
Imagine falling asleep one day, only to awaken and learn that weeks have past and you’ve lost a leg. As you struggle to emerge from a medically induced coma, you’re confronted with one hundred and forty thousand dollars of new medical debt. Before you can even learn to navigate without your dominant leg, you’re shocked to hear that you’ve lost your job because with only one leg, you’re no longer suitable for the position. Perhaps it’s like awakening from a dream into a nightmare. While you’re still alive, Covid-19 has robbed you of everything, and since you’re only 35, the full weight of debt collection will be levied for the remainder of your life. Before you can even sit up and survey the surrounding hospital room, you’re notified that in order to be disconnected from the myriad of machines keeping you alive, you’ll need a new heart and a surgery that will add an additional thirty thousand dollars of debt to your tab.
By Jeremy Gosnell3 years ago in Humans
Covid creates a chasm among friends
I don’t want to be at war with my community or my friends. Here in Western Maryland tourism is the primary source of income. It fuels Wisp Resort, and a network of luxury vacation homes. It fuels the many shops and services that surround Deep Creek Lake. Many of those businesses owners I personally know, some are even my friends. They rely on tens of thousands of people
By Jeremy Gosnell3 years ago in Humans