*Before I get too glow-up-y, I should add that Substack still provides a platform for a lot of people doing our democracy no favours.

Naomi Wolf is still UNHINGED and doing very well for herself (see below).

For me, though, the problem is one of selective outrage. Major platforms are all filled with hateful humans, because *our cultures* are filled with the same. But we need to make a living while we're playing whack-a-mole with all our overly tolerant corporate platforms - and always will be.

Today there are stations of the cross presentations in public spaces.

It's a very brutal spectacle around which our culture has been built. You've got children watching as a choice is made between brutalizing one of two people, then soldiers whipping Jesus in public, then all the violence to come...

The sheer hypocrisy of so much Western outcry over children being allowed to learn about other violence in their national histories, or different forms of love, when *this* is annual pageantry.

This one is for all my writer friends here, but especially @Graci, @NiveusLepus, and @lenaoflune .

Be careful not to make this all-too-common mistake! 😉

Grist is now open for free contest submissions until June 24.

Pay attention to the judges, Omar El Akkad and Annalee Newitz. They have very literary-in-crowd sensibilities, and that will doubtless inform how they read the submissions.

I imagine there'll be a little more fondness for tech or SoCal-inspired solutions, and a *lot* of love for a well-crafted line.

Write what moves you!

But keep in mind that a good idea won't be enough.

#SFF #ClimateChange #WritersOfCoSo

https://grist.org/climate-fiction/imagine-2200-contest-submissions/

Averil Stedeford
"The Heavy Stone"

#Poetry #Grief

I am a VERY SERIOUS PERSON (on occasion).

And then there are times when I see something that just makes me belly-laugh far more than is probably appropriate.

If today's political circus of a news cycle has been wearing on you, I invite you to join me in a VERY SERIOUS GIGGLE instead.

(Filtered screenshot because there be sex words in the post below.)

I'm always so giddy after I get to nerd out on science. 😅 At least, the kind that doesn't have depressing consequences for the future of our ecosystems.

Time to cool off with a walk!

"What ceremony of words can patch the havoc?"

Great question, Sylvia Plath.

We're still working on an answer, methinks.

An interaction on Substack today gave me a real chuckle: just two different approaches to the platform / whole social media sphere colliding.

I might not have a major following, but I do find my way into quality chats with the readers who stop by, and that's a real gift. Every other desire for markers of "success" is mere economic anxiety given material form.

We are here to be present: to connect, to bear witness, and to grow.

That's the signal.

Everything else is just noise.

I poked out my bedroom window and noticed that my downstairs neighbour has a cute little row of windowsill succulents.

Sharing the smile now with you. Make joy where you can in this sodding world!

#Plants #SpikyFrens

😅 We'll see how today's fast goes, because I felt very good this morning and did an easy 3k run... only to realize after that I'd forgotten my predawn glass of water and pinch of salt. We shall see~!

[TO BE CLEAR: Health over this Ramadan experiment, but I am curious. After the first awful week, the body has totally acclimated to a daytime dry fast. I often forget to break it for hours after sundown. We are both *so* fragile and *so* resilient.]

Catching the full moon properly on my phone is never possible - but that just encourages me to enjoy the experience of watching it with the naked eye instead.

And who wants to capture the moon anyway?

(A few tech billionaires aside.)

A moon in the wild--
the gift in its rise
and its passing

This report on the state of #crypto in Ontario is from November of last year, but I just came across it today. Some interesting tidbits in here, for any #finance followers.

I especially "yikes"-d at the 7% of people who held crypto to pay ransom to a hacker. We are certainly living in strange financial times!

https://www.osc.ca/sites/default/files/2023-12/inv-research_20231129_crypto-asset-survey-2023.pdf

Ho ho! My "sociopath pod" has an episode this morning that seems perfect for improving my exercise today. 🙃 I look forward to being thoroughly annoyed by this one, which further claims that "human work, aided by AI, will remove the premium captured by extremely high-paid, experienced professionals (like doctors or top lawyers) as their capabilities become more diffuse".

That is *not* where the "premium" lies.

This episode is going to be very, very wrong.

:) But great fuel for the morning run!

Okay. I'm just about finished catching up on email correspondence and today's volunteer gig responsibilities.

That should give me a bit of time to shape tomorrow's newsletter and maybe even sneak in another hour of fiction-writing, before bed to wake in time for a pre-dawn walk, when I'll listen to all the voice messages still in queue.

Heinlein comes to mind right about now. 🙃

Have you seen this delightful form letter for fielding correspondence in the Great Beforetimes?

#WritingCommunity

Feeling supremely tired today, but sometimes that's just the body's weird way of saying it needs to be walked.

So I'm off to talk with the Day Star, if only through a mediating layer of sunscreen and shade.

Have a lovely one, all. 💛

How's your day going, on a scale of 1 to ED 209? 👀

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Listened to an episode of This American Life today that reflects on the shock of realizing that one is unprepared for what's already happened.

That's a good way of describing a lot of what we're moving through.

When pandemic started, we realized that we're going to need years to recover from the socio-psychological damage.

In these last two years of war, amid the rising threat of anti-democratic nationalisms & the blatant failures of climate crisis response...

We're gonna need a bigger boat.

October 1932.

Sometimes history is a great comfort because it reminds us that we've always been dealing with normalized awfulness.

Rare and precious are the times when we lean into something better.

Night, folks.

Be kind. Do good crimes. 🕊️

Whew.

I try not to read *too* many things each day that accord well with pre-existing beliefs (I prefer to engage with arguments that challenge my convictions), but sometimes opinion pieces like this one - in which Ed Zitron points to the vacuous nature of the AI hype cycle and how much its impending implosion will hurt the tech sector in a few quarters' time - are just so darned tasty.

Like mental popcorn for watching the world burn!

#AI #Tech #MediaLiteracy #Essays
https://www.wheresyoured.at/peakai/