Okay, this warmed the cockles of my cranky old heart. ❤️ #WritersOfCoSo #WritingLife

(Sorry for the delete and repost, whoever commented - just had to revise something caused by my silly English brain.)

Hay muchas cosas buenas aquí pero también esa vergüenza inmensa: que la gente no puede comer, y que los niños sufren hasta la muerta por culpa de los adultos. #Colombia

#CoSoMusic #Unions
#StrikeSolidaritySoundtrack
https://youtu.be/mbyaliQP-x0

Also, quick update:

I'll be finishing up The Dawn of Everything for #Humanist #BookClub at #OnlySky, but I'm learning from the experience for our NEXT book:

Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future!

While I tried to summarize arguments for TDoE so everyone could partake, it was still a daunting text!

So for the next round of book club?

We're going to look at climate change mitigation strategies centrally, and hang our chats around how they show up in MftF.

Hope you'll join in! 🤞

Poverty mentality! It's quite a trip.

(But hey, on the plus side, at least I don't have to worry about being *too* frugal until I'm in a better financial situation to begin with. 😅 Looking forward to having that problem down the line!)

I grew up a Value Village & Kmart kid, home bowl-based haircuts, Halloween costumes out of what was lying around, & *tons* of insistence that I didn't need things because my sibs didn't quite connect asking for things with my parents always fighting.

Years later, I still wonder if I'm playing out Pratchett's economic theory. Yesterday I found 2 pairs of shoes for 25CAD apiece & felt proud of myself. & that's fine (money's tight) but *could* I mentally invest more in better things if it weren't?

While swamped with work this week I didn't get to connect with neighbours--but today I did, swapping gratitudes with regulars taking tinto together before diving into their jobs.

Today, the subject was "lo cortés no quita lo valiente"--a Spanish way of saying "courtesy costs nothing", but with an inflection that highlights that it doesn't matter how intense life is or fierce you have to be in it: courtesy, conviviality, above all else.

I love my home so much.
May we all be present in our own.

Life goals: Live well enough to be memorialized as beautifully as @A_Jay_Adler did a friend of his. This is an excellent piece illustrating how to write nonfiction that sneaks up on you - because the focus here isn't the acclaim his friend gained; it's the little life events shared deeply all along the way.

https://ajayadler.substack.com/p/a-death-in-summer

25 years! Didn't catch the typo, sorry folks!

I was trying to catch up on messages when I was disrupted by the long drone and tooting of horns from a truck convey celebrating 225 years for the waste removal company. People take a lot of pride in their work here. 😅 Every manual labour job helps to sustain a civilization. #Colombia

Okay, no baking or rumba today, but - running. Back to the early morning basics.

What an absolute muddle of a few weeks.

Yet what a gift to be able to check in with others struggling, too, and in our shared humanity find grounding.

A lot of the world is barely treading water.
We lean into solidarity and gratitude where we can (and lengthen the table whenever resources allow).

Happy Friday, CoSo. 💪🏻

Somehow I missed that Tinariwen has a new album out, Amatssou.

I love this Tuareg musicians' collective something fierce.

This album has a... country-twang vibe to their desert blues? Love that they keep exploring and growing, too.

#CoSoMusic
https://youtu.be/NbrWjVSYSYQ

Evening CoSo!

Sitting down to two classes, then one more writing task, and... to bed to wake early for baking and rumba. 🥳

Lesson re-learned during today's wander:

What doesn't kill you just makes you weirder, so please - touch grass, reach out, and try not to compromise health and well-being for the work. 👍🏻 pleahttps://youtube.com/shorts/UFDeE3uvUpY?feature=share8

The latest episode of Throughline dovetails nicely with this theme, with an interrogation of "creativity" as a very distinct (Western, Cold War) cultural artifact that can easily estrange us from other ways of thinking about the world. #Podcasts #History
https://pca.st/episode/f8a762b1-4cf2-479e-8c21-6c26dc568b2c

Canada! You made local news this week! 😅

(Twice, actually. A Canadian douche truck of a tourist, still in his travel sandals, beat an Afrocolombian police officer in the El Dorado airport this week. The video was shared widely, and served as a site of indignation and contempt from locals for the sheer gall of the public attack and the general entitlement of gringos here. This... this is the better of the two stories, sadly.)

(And... I need shoes. My own have holes for toes and cracks and cuts in the sides. I've put it off for a bit since I don't do much for which I need to show up with presentable feet, but... I currently feel like someone in an early Disney cartoon, where objects peel away and otherwise resist character attempts to make them fit and stick. 🙃)

It's been four days since I've had time in the day to go out and connect with folks on the street.

After the newsletter I just posted... I think I should definitely follow my own advice. Time to reacquaint myself with the world outside this online bubble, before I dive into the day's next work task.

Happiest of almost-weekends to all of you!

Morning folks!

Sorry for the delay. This week's #BetterWorldsTheory newsletter reflects on imperfect activism, & how to dream more inclusively about the world.

It includes a deep dive into the wonderful dream-song of an Afrofuturist film, Neptune Frost, and thoughts about how much we in the SFF industry could stand to reconnect with life outside the online bubble.

Will be back on track next week.

(eBook & paperback of the collection are now up & out, thank goodness!)
https://mlclark.substack.com/p/the-actual-bad-place-for-contemporary

@Alfred GPT software is often misused to produce harmful text, such as answers that are abusive, violent, inappropriately sexual, pro-suicide, or filled with assembly instructions for controlled substances and munitions. What are the most common ways that users of GPT software bypass the safety restrictions meant to limit harmful answers, and how can programmers make their safety restrictions strong enough to minimize how many harmful responses GPT produces in the future?