Two long-form pieces this week, one that takes you on an emotional rollercoaster, and the other that dives deep into concepts that those of us who’ve been invested in technology and the Internet since at least the 1990s have no doubt pondered in recent years.

The Year I Was Supposed to Die. Christopher Ingraham with a stunningly honest piece about what it’s like to be diagnosed with a terminal illness, have all of your options for recovery yanked away, and then what happens next when things don’t go according to the plan that’s been set out for you.

The Slow Death of the Power User. I think a lot about how fewer and fewer people who use various technologies on a daily basis have an understanding of the infrastructure that makes it work, whether that be networks, code, or basic programming concepts. Once upon a time those skills were necessary, and now thankfully they usually aren’t, but are we entering a world where the ability to tap into that knowledge, if desired, is being willfully obsfucated by the corporations selling us our software and hardware?