😂 I don't think I really gave a hoot about the main topic in this week's Behind the Bastards, but all their music side-talk now has me re-listening to the full album of Rumours before bed, so that's something.

Night, beautiful and/or rotten ones! 🎧

This is my favourite poetry magazine, & in past years I'd submit to its fantastic annual contest to at least get an annual subscription with my submissions fee ($15,000 for the top poem: a pipe dream, but no one goes away empty-handed, who has poetry in the mail!).

This year I don't think I can afford a submission, BUT if any poets here are interested, read the mag & past winners for a sense of style, & consider writing something for July 15!

#WritersOfCoSo #Poetry

https://www.rattle.com/prize/about/

An excellent read related to themes I discussed in my newsletter today:

“But these noncommercial experiences—art and god and so forth—are perhaps the only private forms of resistance to corporate ideology that don’t capitulate or participate in the totalizing and banal language of neoliberalism; and it’s of existential importance to get the corporation out of your head.”

#AI #Capitalism #Neoliberalism #Art

https://open.substack.com/pub/patricknathan/p/resistance-isnt-futile

#Newsletter Tuesday! 🎉

Today, I look at uncanny similarities in the panic around LLMs & other forms of labour theft that were normalized in other industries (journalism and teaching) many years ago.

The common denominator?

Why, it's our old friend, corporate exploitation of vulnerable workers! These systems have always been ready to use the promise of simplifying labour to rewrite industries in their favour.

Don't miss the forest for the trees. #BetterWorldsTheory
https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/thinking-about-ai-labour-theft-through

The sun does such beautiful things when it rises in the mist of a gentle, localized shower, no?

Day 9: Feelin' fine. Drizzle at my window like the friendliest of tap-tap-taps to remind me to get on with a brand new day.

Much love and big hugs to you in yours.

Walking time! 🥳

I love when my brain lets me enjoy the little pleasures. A good cup of tea. A nice stroll. Being able to greet my neighbours (human, pupper, moo cow, lazy steed, birbfriend, bugfriend, & treefriend alike!).

Bipolar II means I never have full control over how quickly I can lose perspective. I've vastly mitigated the worst lows in recent years, but constant mindfulness is crucial.

Yet gratitude runs *so* deep when I'm well enough to remember the little gifts in life.

Toodle-oo!

Afternoon, loves! 🍵

You know how much I love beating the drum for science and media literacy, right?

Today for #OnlySky, I have a deep dive framed around three sensational news stories about cancer research breakthroughs.

There are *wonderful* things happening in medical research.

We also need to be really careful about how we report on them, and what we signal-boost - because over-hyping medical advances can have a serious human cost.

#Humanism #Science #Cancer

https://onlysky.media/mclark/cancer-research-in-the-news-for-better-and-for-worse/

Oh my goodness, look at this queen.

Life isn't over until it's over.

My great inspirations are authors who struggled their whole lives: like Whitman (who didn't gain economic security 'til his 60s), & Melville (who died in obscurity).

But *this* is the everyday grace of living with strife:

"It was a slow process. 'It wasn’t until I was 93 that I really accepted it,' she says. And, clutching the air with her hand: 'You get to that part where you can kind of hang on.'”
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/jun/05/a-new-start-after-60-i-was-devastated-by-divorce-at-70-but-at-102-i-know-the-secrets-of-a-well-lived-life

Day 8: I keep waking before my alarm, which is something I haven't done all year.

Jan & Feb really knocked me off course. I don't regret helping a family in need, but I was already living with a loss in income, while trying to build an indie brand in a publishing industry in growing disarray, with my support network scattered to other countries...

It was just really hard to find any future to believe in, y'know?

Some seasons in life are just tough.
But hey: we all have them.
We keep swimming.

I'm gone! Offline until tomorrow! But have a handsome twilight toad from my walk. 🐸

Why, yes, it *is* walk-o-clock. :)

Then it's time for some Ted Lasso S3. Ridiculously easy viewing, except for the fact that Ted hits close to home (in his trauma-response of letting *too* much roll off him, & thinking this a healthy trait in all situations) & also...

Roy fucking Kent. Good grief, does that character embody my inner, cranky old man well, while still always showing up for what matters. 👌

(Yeah, I kinda love this sorry, saccharine excuse for a show about football. Night, CoSo!)

Also for our future chat, @BosmangBeratna: what makes for small-c conservative storytelling in your game/fic spheres, and what codes narratively for more expansive thinking even within an expressly hard-SF milieu?

(Have you read Derek Künsken's The House of Styx, by the by? Canadian hard SF imagining a Venus colonized by Québécois separatists - and a *solid* balancing act of hard SF concepts with creative thinking about how family, community, and art would develop on such an unforgiving world.)

New BookTube up! 🎉

This Story Crit goes further than its analysis of two Voyager episodes done right; it reflects on the tension in our writing on the past and the future between small-c conservative thinking, and the ability to deepen in empathy.

Hope you enjoy!

This one is my first outing with a filter that clears up background, but also adds a gravelly component to my voice. Still deciding if I like it enough to use for the audiobook.

#BookTube #SFF #WritersOfCoSo
https://youtu.be/v63RKvegTFg

Day 7: Good morning, CoSo. 😊 Hope you woke properly refreshed, too. Time to try recording with a little more calm in the tank.

Happy Sunday, whatever you're up to!

Good night, all you beautiful rotters! 😘