512 Pixels

What the hell is wrong with people?

My buddy PJ just got some good news:

So, the cancer seems to be gone. For now, at least, it looks like we’ve won the battle. It caught us off-guard with its first sneak attack, and took a part of my body as a trophy, but we fought back hard.

PJ — like my son — will undergo regular scans and blood work for the rest of his life. Once cancer is present, it can come back meaner and uglier than before. We’ve had many of Josiah’s “little friends” lose the second or third round to the disease.

PJ continues:

I think most people will think my fight is over, now that the CT scans are clean…as long as we can keep the cancer from re-invading my body, of course. I don’t blame them for thinking that. It’s the kind of thing I would’ve thought, in my past life.

Unfortunately, that’s simply not the case. The damage the cancer inflicted upon me is done–and it’s not just physical.

I have no idea how deep that damage goes, but I have to start examining it.

He’s right. Cancer is a real bastard, and it climbs its way in to ever facet of life not only of its victims, but of their families and friends, too. I am a different man today than I was the day we got the news of Josiah’s cancer. It broke me in ways that can never be repaired, but I’d like to think that if I ever come out on the other end I won’t only be a stronger man, but a better one, too.

He closes:

It’s strange—in a way, receiving the news that I’m cancer free felt a lot like receiving the news that I had cancer. It’s massive news. So massive, it’s hard for me to comprehend. So massive, it still feels like it’s happening to someone else.

Three and a half years in to this thing, and it still feels alien and foreign. Just like the disease itself.

Sam Biddle:

The web is great for volume, but for the deep touch, you still need to act like an actual human being. You need to actually hear someone’s voice—or at least pull a long, private email out of them. We’re all insecure, finite monkeys who don’t want to admit weakness and fragility in a place where thousands of people can read it. That’s normal. It’s not normal to expect someone to put forth their panic, storm anxiety, fear, and general angst on Facebook. We put the people we want to be on Facebook, not the people we are. And sometimes those people are generally terrified of a storm—or something else—and not doing fine. You’ll never know unless you truly ask.

I’ve come to realize that just because a friendship mainly takes place on the Internet doesn’t make it less real. However, real communication, in person or on the phone is invaluable to keep our connections alive.

Sean Hollister:

50 years ago, President John F. Kennedy told the United States that man would go to the moon. Soon, another American president may announce that the same celestial body will serve as a waypoint for manned space exploration. The Verge has learned that NASA intends to deploy a robotic lunar rover on the Moon in 2017 to search for water and other resources necessary for space travel, and that NASA may have secured support from the White House for an actual manned outpost — a space station — floating above the far side of the moon.

I’m excited about this. It’s a real shame we spent so much time on the shuttle program while the moon was well within our reach.

Robin Sloan:

For me, the iPhone had become a toxic compulsion. It had completed its invasion and occupation of my interstitial time — all those minutes riding the train, waiting in line, that used to be such fertile territory for daydreaming and storymaking. So I canceled my AT&T plan and switched to a bare-bones Nokia on a pay-as-you-go plan.

And sure enough: in the months since the liberation of my interstitial time, I’ve been daydreaming more, jotting down scraps of stories again.

Ken Doctor:

The Romney crowd was overwhelmingly white and older. The Obama crowd was mixed in color and younger in age.

[…] Around noon Wednesday, I started hearing a voice inside my election-addled head: Where else had I seen numbers like these? Where had I heard that Politico description? Who else was getting a really good market share of a smaller and smaller slice of the population?

Ah, yes: the newspaper industry.

Ouch.

Congrats to my buddy Glenn on joining The Magazine as Executive Editor. I worked with Glenn on my article, and it was nothing short of great. Glenn’s a real pro, and I think his joining will only enhance what’s already my favorite app in Newsstand.

Chris Plante at Polygon:

Angry Birds Star Wars is the first in the series to allow players to manipulate gravity. The Obi-Wan-bird (that sound you hear is a thousand Star Wars fans groaning at such a phrase) has the ability to use the Force (a telekinetic-like power) to bend the gravity surrounding objects on the screen, batting them like tinker toys in any which direction, often toppling nearby, precariously built architecture in the process. The Force also serves the enemy pigs. Darth Vader-pig levitates platforms in certain stages, and taking him out releases the objects, raining down on helpless Empire-pigs. The Force isn’t just a gimmick in Angry Birds Star Wars, it’s a layer of strategy.

Feel that?

It’s as if millions of nerds suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.

Issue 3 of The Magazine is out, with articles by Lex Friedman, Dan Moren, Harry Marks and yours truly.

In my article, I write about my son’s battle with cancer, and the role technology plays in his healthcare and our family.

If you haven’t subscribed to The Magazine yet, now is a great time to do so.

Kyle Baxter knocked this out of the park.

While I’m bummed I won’t be able to make it out to San Francisco this year, I’m glad that the conference dropped the pipe from its name.