Small But Exciting Update

Whattup my little jam sandwiches. 

Hope you're all doing spectacularly, and by spectacularly I mean going out on jet skis regularly, doing backflips, resurrecting the dead for Halloween, etc. 

You may notice I've changed the Patreon charging setting to 'per creation'. This is mainly because I might only be able to put out a single video this coming month, given that I need the last push of time for the new book. All being well, the book will be out sometime during November. A new video will be out very shortly indeed - like very shortly - then I'll be diving into the trenches of proofreading. I really have no idea how long this'll take. For that reason there's no way in hell I'm going to accept your patronage for November - so you won't be charged tomorrow. I just don't reckon it'd be justified. I'll also constantly be worrying about trying not to let you down, and I'd prefer not to have that on my mind. There isn't a button that says "don't charge people this month" so I've stuck to just changing it to per creation instead. As usual, I wouldn't dream of charging anyone twice in a month, and I'll switch it back to normal in December. 

What an exciting month it's been, no? Did you notice Saudi Arabia granted citizenship to a robot? That seems entirely sensible. Did you notice the neutron star collision was confirmed by LIGO? That seems rather exciting. Veritasium made an ace video on it which I highly recommend. I thought the whole thing was ace. 

We might be entering a whole new age of astronomy, using gravity detectors alongside radio and optical telescopes, and that's pretty fucking amazing. We can listen to black holes, tune in to disturbances in spacetime. If I was an alien, I'd personally send gravity waves over radio messages - wouldn't you? Or maybe an intergalactic carrier pigeon, just a little one. Imagine it turning up on the White House lawn. *Twoot twoot* You're not alone apes. *Twoot twoot*

On a sidenote it's getting fucking cold in Bulgaria these days. It's a bit like living in the arctic but with less hot chocolate and more Bulgarians. I've been reading a fair bit recently too. If you haven't come across The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin, boy are you missing out. Read it ages ago, forgot almost everything. Read it again a few weeks ago, blew my head open. You'll like it. Give it a go. 

Anyone following the new series of Star Trek Discovery? Besides overlooking the fact that the acronym is STD, I've really enjoyed several of the episodes, particularly the one where they talk about the mushroom drive. More scifi should have mushroom drives. It really should. 

In any case, the book is almost ready - I promise. This is the last push, and I hope you'll be patient with me for the next few weeks. I'll be sending  out a list of all current Patreons shortly. If you're not on there, please, please, please reach out and give me a polite but firm bash round the head. I couldn't have written this thing without you, and the very least I can do is make sure you're in the book as an acknowledgement. As I think I mentioned, I'll be sending out the book for free with the next (or one of the next...) post/s on here. If you don't like it, I read angry emails with great attention and take several hours out of my day to cry a bit. Feel free to send one in. 

I keep seeing comments recently about why (my) videos take so long to put out. The main reason is editing. The process takes, at the very least, a fucking long time. Sometimes stuff has to be refined, redone, or just thrown away entirely. Sometimes the idea is shit and I'm not going to waste your time, so I go back to square one. There isn't ever going to be a schedule I'm afraid. I tried it once and everything I put out was shit at worst and mediocre at best. I'd rather just wait for a fun idea, work as hard as I can on it, then let it out into the world. I hope we're on the same page with this one. At the very least I'm trying for two videos a month. That's about my limit before a nervous breakdown. I hope that's all right with you. 

Which reminds me. As always, and as I trust is apparent by now, I'm more grateful to the lot of you than I can adequately say. Thank you for the kindness, for the support, and for taking any interest in the rubbish I put out. Cool stuff ahead. And I do hope you're working on your own projects. 

I lied. This post wasn't really very exciting was it. 

On behalf of myself and the cat: Live long and CRISPR, 

All the best, as ever,

Ex.