One thing I forget to appreciate enough is how freaking COOL it is to have real-time data at my fingertips. We live in an era of both mediocrity and plenty!

At 10:55 I felt an earthquake. At 10:55 I looked up seismic activity in the region.
At 10:55 I received affirmation that I wasn't just imagining things.

I'm sure we did just fine in the BeforeTimes, but sometimes one just has to stop and remind oneself:

We live in an era of wizardry!
And it's still never quite enough. 🙃

Some examples for me:

I loved Ian McEwan's depiction of 13-year-old Briony Tallis in Atonement, and David Mitchell's 15-year-old Holly Sykes in The Bone Clocks.

William Faulkner's pregnant Lena Grove in Light in August.

Iris Murdoch's Charles Arrowby in The Sea, The Sea.

Elspeth Huxley's depiction of four generations of Kikuyu tribesmen in Red Strangers.

There's certainly no reason we can't write different subject-positions well! It just takes a genuine interest in other people's humanity.

Switching between Voyager & TOS rewatches, I find myself struck by how far gender discourse hadn't come in 30 years. *So* much reductive thinking: about women, about relationships, about masculinity.

But it's the writers, not the generation. (TNG & DS9 were between them, & much better!)

Every generation has had people who see us all as people... and people who can't imagine drama outside crude stereotypes.

Who was the first writer you remember really *getting* a different human point of view?

I had a good class. 😊 Got super emotional while listening to a cumbia-fusion of a more recent pop-vallenato classic, because I recognized all the layers of history in it. (And of course knew all the words.)

Writers sometimes think we're the only narrative game in town, but everything we do can help us to connect with stories of ourselves and each other. How do you stretch your creative practice beyond the written word? Where else does story live for you? #WritersOfCoSo
https://youtube.com/shorts/G_YECj3GOSc?feature=share

Up and out for rumba class. :)

Happy Monday, CoSo. 🕊️

The world's a mess. No one knows what's coming down the pipe - though we have some very bleak educated guesses.

But we're still here, which isn't nothing. 🤞

It's wonderful to see more class discourse come to the fore. Long may it continue.

"The most advantaged individuals born around 1980, for example, have accumulated housing wealth at an even faster rate than their wealthy predecessors. But for the most disadvantaged, the opposite trend is true. Privileged members of younger generations are doing better than ever; they are insulated from the woes of their peers. But the worst off are doing worse."

#Class #Economics

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/13/millennials-dont-all-suffer-alike-what-really-divides-them-is-privilege

Evening CoSo! 💱

Humanist Book Club today tackles carbon quantitative easing in KSR's The Ministry for the Future--and in the real world!

I'm finding these economic pieces a treat of a challenge. They take longer to write because I'm always thinking about how to explain concepts that bankers & economists have streamlined into elusive abstracts with more accessible language.

If the #Economics of #ClimateChange spooks you, do give this one a try. Feedback always welcome.

https://onlysky.media/mclark/quantitative-easing-is-real-carbon-sequestration-under-capitalism-possible/

I had to look up a persistent symptom this morning, but amid a few useful home treatment options, the site gave me a real chuckle when it emphatically listed that my symptom is NOT TYPICALLY A SIGN OF CANCER. Thank you, Internet, for the long-overdue corrective on fear-mongering med sites for years. 😂

Thought experiment:

With all the changing climactic norms in our overheating world, imagine that you get to rename (and if necessary renumber) all the seasons in your neck of the woods.

How many seasons does your region now have, and what rad/terrifying names do you have for any new ones?

(In Medellín it's kind of a cop-out: We have spring and "winter", a ridiculous lie of a word used to describe the autumnal months when there's more rain. Other rainy periods vary year by year.)

When I feel the need to vent, it's time for a walk. 👌

The other day, I explained to a local friend that back in Canada, I used to run at midnight sometimes--and look up at the stars, and enjoy the middle-of-the-night calm.

Before I moved to Colombia, I went out for a midnight run knowing that it would probably be the last time I could ever do such a thing safely.

I get close sometimes, with 4am runs some days in the park.

But mostly this is as late as I'll be out alone, on foot, in the dark.

A thing I love about CoSo:

We share in expertise.

Respectfully.

That's not always easy.

Many platforms (especially with quote-tweeting) make it easy to turn another's error into a personal boast.

It's also never easy to know if more intel is welcome, or if we'll come off as a 'splainer.

& since we're all human, we'll make mistakes.

But that's just part of having a chat about anything that really matters.

& because we actually know how to have those here?

We get to learn *so* much more.

😊 #News
#CoSoGoodNews

We survived NFTs.
We're surviving this nonsense now, too.
Hang in there, babies.
Capitalism hasn't killed us yet.

"ChatGPT In Trouble: OpenAI may go bankrupt by 2024, AI bot costs company $700,000 every day"

https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/openai-may-go-bankrupt-by-2024-chatgpt-costs-company-700000-dollars-every-day-12986012.html/amp

"Perhaps something fundamental about cultural labor changed the moment we agreed to call it the production of 'content.' The term doesn’t just de-professionalize the creation of art and culture by implying that it’s all just more chum to feed to customers too hungry to say no. It privileges the container over what it’s filled with ... And yet, the term cuts both ways: If the quality of the supply stops mattering, then demand is the only determinant of content’s value."

https://slate.com/culture/2023/08/writers-actors-strike-sag-aftra-wga-hollywood-fans-scabbing-solidarity.html

Oh, this feels like low-hanging fruit, but a part of me *sorely* wants to tear apart a David Brooks column for next week's newsletter.

If I do, it won't *solely* be about Brooks, because it's not my style to fixate on people who get it wrong, so much as to try to figure out how to be less wrong together, but still...

Oof.

David, why you always gotta make it so easy? 🙃