Skip to content

Taylor Sloan Posts

Hillbilly Elegy Is A Terrible Book

Hillbilly Elegy Is A Terrible Book

Published by Taylor on July 17, 2024

I suspect the only thing J.D. Vance and I have in common are that we both grew up in working class families in steel mill towns in the midwest, and we both have grandparents who moved there from Eastern Kentucky after World War 2. That—along with the fact that I hadn’t brought another book to read on my flight home—was enough to convince me to buy his newly-published book Hillbilly Elegy at a magazine stand in the San Francisco Airport.

What I quickly realized after beginning the book was that he and I had a very different understanding of what led his family to leave Appalachia, why it is that so many people there are struggling to get by, and what the value of personal responsibility means in contrast to the issues Appalachians (and all working class people) face in this country.

Continue readingHillbilly Elegy Is A Terrible Book
Leave a Comment
Serenity Gardens (A Short Story)

Serenity Gardens (A Short Story)

Published by Taylor on July 3, 2024
I’m working on new chapters of The Signal that will be coming out over the next couple of weeks. In the mean time, I hope you enjoy this short story I recently finished.

The song I’ll Follow You Into The Dark by the band Death Cab for Cutie was playing. It had come out when they were teenagers. It was their song. This was the last time they’d hear it together, if she was even really hearing it. He believed that she was, or hoped it at least. Melanie Stephenson was asleep, or unconscious really. Wes Stephenson—her husband of 39 years—knew that it was unconsciousness. Sleep was something you woke up from, and he knew that she would not wake up again. 

Continue readingSerenity Gardens (A Short Story)
Leave a Comment
Untitled Weekly Newsletter – Vol. 3 A brown tabby cat sitting on the ledge of a screen window on a back porch with the text: Untitled Weekly Newsletter Volume 3

Untitled Weekly Newsletter – Vol. 3

Published by Taylor on June 7, 2024

Interesting Things on The Internet:

On Reddit: A guide for healthcare workers on providing compassionate care to trans folks:

A Comprehensive Guide to Transgender Patients in EMS
byu/TallGeminiGirl inems

Other things I’m reading:

Continue readingUntitled Weekly Newsletter – Vol. 3
Leave a Comment
Microsoft Recall Is A Very, Very Bad Idea Screenshot of Microsoft's "Recall" AI feature, showing a timeline of screenshot "snapshots" from a user's computer

Microsoft Recall Is A Very, Very Bad Idea

Published by Taylor on June 6, 2024

Microsoft’s new AI-powered ‘Recall’ feature saves frequent screenshots along with associated data for access by the Copilot+ AI assistant.

If you know anything about cybersecurity—and I mean literally anything—Recall seems like a really bad idea. The idea is to store hundreds of snapshots of your potentially sensitive computer activity, in order to allow Copilot to assist you in finding things you previously looked at. Essentially it’s browsing history, but for the entire scope of your computer use. Anything from your bank account password to sensitive health records will be saved, along with not-clearly-defined metadata about what you’re using.

Continue readingMicrosoft Recall Is A Very, Very Bad Idea
1 Comment
The Signal – Chapter 3: Addie a title card displaying the text: the signal chapter three, Addie

The Signal – Chapter 3: Addie

Published by Taylor on May 27, 2024

“I have a visual on the landing pad,” Rachelle reported. “Two o’clock low, just on the other side of the LLS tower.”

“Copy. Two o’clock low. Changing heading zero-four-zero mark three-three-zero,” Alexy responded from the seat to her right. 

Addie was seated in the seat directly behind him in the cockpit of her CS-109 Albatross multi-rule spacecraft. The ship itself was a wide, wing-bodied craft with a large, open ventral section where any number of form-fitting payload modules could seamlessly attach to the craft, each designed for a unique mission. As a payload officer, Addie had been trained to manage every aspect of these compartments—everything from how they connected to the Albatross’s power and environmental systems, to how they affected its weight and balance.

Her job was to manage installation of the payloads, inspect them routinely, and manage their operation during flight. There were twenty-five total standard mission payloads, everything from comfortable VIP transport modules to water bombers for wildfires on forested worlds. In this current mission they were carrying a RM-4A4 rescue and medevac module. It was designed for the rescue of potentially injured individuals from damaged spacecraft and space stations.

Continue readingThe Signal – Chapter 3: Addie
Leave a Comment
Untitled Weekly Newsletter – Vol. 2 a picture of a shorthair brown tabby laying on its side on a table and sleeping with overlaid text that says "Untitled Weekly Newsletter Volume 2"

Untitled Weekly Newsletter – Vol. 2

Published by Taylor on May 24, 2024

I saw a Tesla Cybertruck in Indianapolis for the first time this week.

They are just as gargantuan and ugly in real life as they are on the internet. True to form and expectation, this one had just cut someone off from getting into the turn lane.

My friend Lucas’s thought on them is this: “The perfect embodiment of the suburban pickup truck. Barely useful bed that’ll never get used for “tough work,” ugly as sin, mostly used to ferry rich guys and their children, high enough so you can’t see the pedestrians you’re killing. It’s like someone took an F-150 and turned all the dials to 11.”

Continue readingUntitled Weekly Newsletter – Vol. 2
Leave a Comment
The Signal – Chapter 2: Anjira a title card displaying the text: the signal chapter two, anjira

The Signal – Chapter 2: Anjira

Published by Taylor on May 20, 2024

Triage bays are intentionally uncomplicated. A big red line in the floor marks where med techs bring their patient-loaded liters—up to ten of them. If they have a green triage tag, the med techs leave them and go back for more. They’ll get a bed when and if they are free. If they have yellow tags, they get moved up immediately to stabilization beds or the medics stay with them if all five of the beds are full. If they have a red tag, they pass straight through triage to critical intake. 

Continue readingThe Signal – Chapter 2: Anjira
1 Comment
Untitled Weekly Newsletter – Volume 1 a picture of a shorthair brown tabby laying on its side on a bed and yawning with overlaid text that says "Untitled Weekly Newsletter Volume 1"
The Signal – Chapter 1: Addie a title card displaying the text: the signal, Addie

The Signal – Chapter 1: Addie

Published by Taylor on May 15, 2024

UEFS Aconcagua – Menkent Star System

17 November 2725 – 06:33

The distinct two-tone klaxon of the all-hands alarm was more than enough to wake Addie Forrester up from her normally light sleep. It was not, however the gentle chime and warm dim light of her normal wake-up alarm. It was also an hour early. 

Her berth in the junior officer’s quarters was one of three conjoined by a small common area and sharing a single washroom. While she was sleeping or just wanted privacy, a pressure door would slide down over the opening to the larger room, leaving her in a space the footprint of her one by two meter mattress with a little over a meter of headroom. In an emergency, her berth would be sealed off against vacuum and—conveniently—noise. At her height of 173cm, it was slightly claustrophobic for Addie, but not so small as to feel like a coffin. 

The lights in her berth and all the sleeping quarters were lit in a relatively dim red color in an emergency, just enough light to completely make out her surroundings, but the right color and brightness to preserve her night vision if she needed it. She could see the display panel to her left ringed with the slowly pulsing red emergency frame and displaying some basic ship information.

Continue readingThe Signal – Chapter 1: Addie
1 Comment
The Signal – Introduction and Prologue a title card displaying the text: the signal, introduction and prologue

The Signal – Introduction and Prologue

Published by Taylor on May 14, 2024

An Introduction to The Signal

This might seem weird but The Signal is actually the second book of a planned trilogy. At one point I had basically the entirety of the first book written, but after a bit of workshopping decided to give it at least a partial rewrite. Starting this second book is a part of that process. I wanted the first book to be cohesive with and flow into the second and third books.

That said, the first book—The Vault—takes place almost 700 years prior to this book, in an alternate history version of the much nearer future. Either way, my plan is to release both books chapter-by-chapter here on my blog and eventually as complete works both digitally and in print. You won’t need to have read any of the first book to understand the second and vice-versa, but each book will reveal more of the back story of the other as they go along.

If you enjoy science fiction like I do, I hope you’ll enjoy The Signal. And if you really do like it, would you consider helping me keep writing it by buying me a coffee?

Prologue – The Shipyards

Lagrange Station—officially “L1 Interorbital Manufacture and Space Operations Station”—sat in the area of perfect equilibrium between Earth and the Moon. Construction started with the core section in 2129 and has been more-or-less ongoing in the nearly 600 years since. 

Continue readingThe Signal – Introduction and Prologue
1 Comment