The last Halloween where I went trick or treating was 1982. I was 13 and a friend and I went to a couple of houses with bo costumes. I recall using the "serial killer" joke (they look just like everyone else) but I remember making that up, even though it's a cliché now. What's interesting to me is that I don't really trust that memory. I don't know where I heard it. Maybe I did come up with it independently, but I am also aware of a person's capacity to invent memories, or forget them, and I especially notice people often repeating words, phrases and ideas which they think are their own, but which are very standard responses. And I think this is what makes us so uncomfortable and even hostile towards AI because this is how AI always works, and so many people are convinced that their own thoughts and words are different and creative and different. Even as they all use identical sentences to make the argument. All that to say, innovative satire or not, we did not get much candy, so we gave up. I remember one house in particular that was a duplex you could see out of my bedroom window at the back of the house. Another year, on Halloween, I watched two drunk guys get in a fight out in the yard in front of the same house. One of them kicked the other in the face, in slow motion, barely keeping his balance to land the hit. They both fell down and that was about the end of it.

Death and Technology.

Raph Whiteacre hates the rain. It terrifies him. This doesn't come from any specific trauma or experience, as far as he can remember. The sound of it tapping on the car roof is like fingernails on a chalkboard to him. The reasons are a mystery. But his mother remembers.

brevity