There's a deep, if adorably stated truth here for us all.

I suspect that most of us have been through really tough times.

The problem with having survived tough times is that it can habituate us to thinking that our ability to endure is something we're supposed to be proving time and time again.

But what allows us to survive is not the same as what allows us to thrive.

Resilience is not a virtue.

It's simply what gives us the means to figure out what thriving might look like for us next.

🤣 It happened again.

There's *one* Airbnb in my building (we're way outside tourist zones), & today two US tourists arrived, looking wide-eyed because they speak *no* Spanish. I was chatting with neighbours at the elevator, but when I heard them wonder aloud about gyms I took pity & switched to English to help.

And... they told me with great surprise that my English was very good. 🤣🤣🤣

I am truly between worlds. Westerners don't recognize me as their own, but I'll never be fully paisa either.

I have a novel to finish but I now *also* have two chapters of this experimental nonfiction that has *clearly* been biding its time. 🙃 Why must writer brains be this way?

Working title is AGAINST MEMOIR, and it's doing something I've never seen done before in biography, so... we shall see how it turns out?

I might share it one chapter at a time on Patreon, since it'd be nice to give my subscribers more content - and my newsletter is already dedicated to other topics as it goes semi-paid soon.

😅 Totally normal #news day in #Colombia. You check to see if the markets are up and the kidnappings down, but sometimes it's the other way around. (ELN, mostly.)

Perennial reminder that we can do better.

( @BosmangBeratna knows! ✊🏻)

#MutualAid

This is a really rough era for satire writers.

"A New Zealand supermarket experimenting with using AI to generate meal plans has seen its app produce some unusual dishes – recommending customers recipes for deadly chlorine gas, “poison bread sandwiches” and mosquito-repellent roast potatoes."

#AI #News #NotSatire

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/10/pak-n-save-savey-meal-bot-ai-app-malfunction-recipes

For the record, this is the first episode of TOS I vividly remember seeing as a kid, and it blew my freaking mind. I was primarily a TNG sprog, and DS9 as it simultaneously aired, but reruns for TOS were a staple in the household too.

As an adult, it's still my favourite TOS (and yes, I know Shatner's story with it), but oof. What would have happened to the Horta if they hadn't been able to provide value to the miners? 😬

#ExtractionistPropaganda

😂 With but one exception, the earliest episodes of #StarTrek are *so* horny.

As much as the writers suffer from "I don't know how to write women"-itis, I'd forgotten how much these TOS episodes simultaneously treated the male characters like 10th-graders who'd been in gender-segregated classes all week, & now don't know how to handle themselves during full school assembly on a Friday.

It's impressive the ship stayed together long enough to get to the more interesting material, I tell you what!

Well, I don't know about you folks, but watching something written with love really makes me itchy to write myself. :) I'll get a few novel hours in after this class, methinks.

#AmWriting #Soon

No spoilers, but I'm grinning from ear to ear after the season finale of #SNW 🖖 Not because it's "light" by any measure, but because you can see so many pieces coming together from scripting choices all throughout.

It's a wonderful testament to the craft of this writing team, that the scripting of this episode is as tight as S1E01. A very mature Trek outing from the jump.

(& now I kinda want to watch an episode of TOS with one classic character in particular. Ah, so good!)

#StarTrek #Trekkies

There isn't an episode yet that I haven't enjoyed, but this latest on Past Present Future, about Simone Weil's "Human Personality", is an absolute gem of an exploration of a way of thinking about human value far removed from the commodification of identity that comes with seeing ourselves as assemblages.

What if the path to a more humane world required a more fundamental way of viewing our humanity, & seeing the humanity in those around us?

#Podcasts #Philosophy
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/history-of-ideas-simone-weil/id1682047968

🙃 I've clearly been gearing up to the tricky stuff this week: private equity & KKR's acquisition of S&S on Tuesday, the many political grifts in modern economics today, &... this weekend, for our first big book club post on KSR's Ministry for the Future, carbon quantitative easing: the idea, the challenges, the possibilities.

But for now my brain is going whir, whoosh, & sometimes brrrp! so first, switching gears: a review to polish for Strange Horizons, then the last of SNW🖖to take with lunch.

Afternoon, folks! 💫

Today I have a *really* deep dive for OnlySky. TAXES!

Secular folk are used to fighting religious exemptions, but when it comes to taxation there's a far bigger challenge afoot: a whole system built on exceptions, secular and religious alike, that gut the public sphere.

We can't afford to look at this issue selectively.

Either we operate under the same regulatory burdens, or...

We get the world we have right now. 🙃 So, you know... #NotGreat

https://onlysky.media/mclark/what-should-regulatory-burdens-look-like-in-the-secular-world/

Okay. What a wild couple of weeks! Power out for three days. Tons of street demonstrations. Parties galore in the area for Feria de las Flores. Life at its fullest, when some of us are trying to work. 😉

Time to crack down and finish an article this morning. Morning, CoSo! 🍵

What a world we could have if there were more global solidarity between workers.

People in Colombia, Canada, France, the US... most of us are just aspiring to a more stable middle class existence. & fighting the same privatization woes. Gig economies in the West aren't so different from what we call "informal" economies in developing nations. Pensions are imperiled everywhere. And corruption reigns, varying only in degrees of "legality".

We have the technology.
It never needed to be this way.

I'll spare you the honking, but apparently the taxi blockage hasn't stopped yet. Incoming traffic is packed, with trucks blasting waves of horn in solidarity.

It's been an interesting few weeks, I tell you what! But I get it. Things have been pretty tight in many sectors. The taxi drivers are fighting changes that would make living wages more challenging going forward... even if some are necessary for other social upgrades. So much needs to be improved all at once, so that no one's left behind.

:) Sweet, sweet relative quiet.

Okay, CoSo. Giving it another shot now. #AmWriting ¡Hasta mañana!