Our apartment went black.
Outside, the same "bomb cyclone" ravaging much of the country ravaged us. Snow. Sub-freezing temperatures. Winds gusting to 70 mph. Falling trees. Downed power lines.
We had two battery-powered hurricane lamps. Just enough light to save us from bumping into tables. Too dim, though, to read a book or magazine.
No television. No radio. No internet. No CD player.
Just sitting in the dark, thinking.
We thought about how much of our consciousness, here in the twenty-first century, is regulated by pixels. We almost forget we don't actually know those pixel-generated people on our tv and movie screens. What we see on our "devices" constantly modifies our perceptions. Ukraine? Washington? Such places may occupy more space in our heads than our own community, all around us.
Now an artificial intelligence program can write essays and stories and tell jokes and totally fool us into thinking it's a real person.
Just some thoughts, sitting in the dark.
--Joyce and Richard