A Clock That Reminds You You’re Going To Die

‘Memento mori’ technologies are grim, but maybe we need them

Back in the ’90s, I was drinking in a pub in Galway, Ireland, and I met a guy who described an Irish order of nuns. They had a daily ritual: Every afternoon each nun would wander into the graveyard adjacent to the convent and dig a small scoop of what would become, in time, her own grave.