Why Ashes
Memento mori isn't a new idea. The delivery is what's different.
Keeping death in view to live more deliberately goes back to Stoic philosophy. A few modern takes have tried to bring it into daily life — each gets one part right and misses another.
Push-notification apps
Send a handful of random alerts a day reminding you that you'll die.
Easy to mute, easy to dismiss without reading — it's an interruption competing with every other notification on your phone.
Printable "weeks of your life" posters
A grid of dots, one per week, printed once and hung on a wall.
Static. It stops updating the moment it's printed, and a wall you walk past every day is easy to stop seeing.
One-off death-clock sites
You visit, answer a few questions, get a number, close the tab.
A curiosity, not a habit. Nothing brings you back once the novelty wears off.
Ashes
Lives on the new tab page — the screen you already open dozens of times a day.
No interruption to dismiss. No wall to stop noticing. It's live, personalized to your real age, health, and lifestyle profile, and it's already where your attention goes.
The short version
Other approaches ask you to add a new habit — check an app, glance at a wall. Ashes uses a moment you already have, dozens of times a day, and turns it into the reminder instead.