BIG TW for Death, obviously, but this is a F A S C I N A T I N G video https://youtu.be/pWo2-LHwGMM

ABIGAIL IS A SYNTH NERD TOO!

Carl Sagan's Cosmos is one of the media experiences (Book and TV series are nearly verbatim duplicates) that I consider deeply formative. I watched it at a very early age: it was apparently being aired on television while I was a fetus, and a box set of the series had been "borrowed" from my uncle for well over a decade before I got my own DVD copy of the special edition. Cosmos gave me a glimpse of the brilliance and vastness of the Universe and the interconnectedness of all things. Although I'm an atheist, I'm a pagan in the sense that I feel a deep reverence and awe for the universe that touches a primal source within my consciousness that I don't believe that science can fully explain.

One of my dear partners recently suffered the loss of his best friend, and as an atheist, I'm very careful about what platitudes I share regarding coming to terms with death and loss. I cannot in good conscience promise that "He's waiting there on the other side for you," though I can't disprove that either, and indeed my personal experience keeps my mind very open to it.

However, one thing of which I AM sure is that the atoms that make up our bodies and existence were forged in the hearts of exploding stars billions of years ago. The most basic components of our being drifted through the cosmos for millions and billions of years before coming to rest right here and right now as you and I and the conductors and chips and phosphors that translate my words into data and then into the light from your screen.

For all of our differences in ideology, intellect, imagination... We're all made of the same basic star-stuff and when we're long gone, our constituent atoms will still be part of the beauty of life on this planet and probably beyond as well.

If you look up a little bit, you'll see a video or two from Caitlin Doughty, Ask A Mortician. She advocates for treating death as a natural part of life, with the same reverence and respect with which Carl Sagan treated the cosmos itself. The video you'll find above touches upon "green" funeral practices, which facilitate the return of the body's constituent substances to nature rather than preserving the body against change with chemicals that harm the environment. Yet even those chemicals come from explosions of distant, ancient stars...

RELEVANT

The Last Question https://imgur.com/gallery/9KWrH