Tag: waiting

Pale green cover reading What Is a Queue, with the number 190 set large behind the subtitle, which says a line is not the place where rank is set aside but a strict total order in which no two people are level.
Cat Links Cosmic Dance, Reality Equation

What Is a Queue

Posted on jsrector

A queue is described as the place where rank is set aside. The foundation I work from puts it at the opposite pole: a line is a strict total order in which no two people are level, and it is defended hardest by the people it ranks last. What makes it bearable is not the absence of rank but the anchor — the ordering runs on a settled mark rather than a present reading, which is the one kind of rank almost nobody argues with, and the price is that the condition it runs on has nothing to do with anyone standing in it. … readWhat Is a Queue

Newsprint-coloured cover with a red line drawn across it under the title What Is a Deadline, and the letters FRI faint in the corner.
Cat Links Cosmic Dance, Reality Equation

What Is a Deadline

Posted on jsrector

A deadline is supposed to be a point ahead of you that approaches, arrives and passes, weighing more the nearer it gets. The foundation says there is nothing ahead of you: a deadline is a present mark that names a clock reading and a condition on the record, and the weight is not the nearness of the date but your own reading of your own unfinished act against the prediction the mark installed — which is why an extension relieves before any work is done, why a deadline you never heard of weighs nothing as it passes, and why the hopelessly late go calm. … readWhat Is a Deadline