!!! 🤩 And the latest SRSLY WRONG episode (which I'll be listening to during my run) just tears into evo-psychology? My #1 nemesis in the realm of "fields of study that so-called rationalists love to lean on as though they're robust science even though evo-psych gets evolutionary theory hella wrong"?

Woo! 🎉

Everything's coming up Milhouse today. 💪🏻

(With my serious condolences to everyone struggling with climate crisis and health today. Take good care of yourselves. 🫂)

https://pca.st/episode/4ddba3bb-f29d-48de-b130-8bf78ab0831e

It's a long weekend, and my students tonight cancelled - not surprising before holidays! - so I am thrilled that I get to squeeze in a run this evening, once this book review is finished, along with the weekend's newsletter. Maybe I'll even be able to make progress on the anti-memoir! Or write a poem!

😂 Or rest, but who does that?!

I think we are adequately proving that the limerick is indeed the most delightfully terrible poetic form. 😅 Back to work with me now! Will reply to any further prompts later! 😘

🤣 How have I only just learned there is such a thing as National Bad Poetry Day?!

Today I will write you a limerick if you give me a word of up to four syllables.

Because is there any form more delightfully, satisfyingly terrible than the limerick?

#CoSoPoetry

(Lukács, for folks who didn't waste their lives in certain kinds of academic reading, advanced important theories in Western Marxism. He explored the "reification" of the commodity: a hyperfixation on what we create that commodifies us & our value in turn. This is the part of his theory I suspect will be applied to histories of SF that explore human anxieties / fetishization around AI & other material outcomes of a production-centered culture.)

But that's enough nerding in public. Happy Friday!

Working on a paid review of an academic nonfiction text, Science Fiction and Narrative Form. These texts are often a kind of biography, a glimpse into the authors' way of seeing more than anything capital-T true about SF itself.

That doesn't mean these works aren't useful! It just means we need to go in understanding the work they do, and its limits.

But boy, I'm excited for the Lukács chapter. :) It should get right to why I'm so frustrated by SFF's abysmal take on AI these days.

#Philosophy

Many years after first reading this poem, I still recite a line from it to myself when I return to my living space after a day out that's left me moved in deep ways I can't quite put to words. There's just... oh, so much about our experience in this immense and fragile cosmos that happens in secret, or languages we can never hope to translate in full.

"I've come home wanting to touch / everyone, everything"

May you move with gentleness through all your deep-feeling moments, too.

#Poetry

The latest Serial miniseries is framed around the horrible case of IVF patients made to endure surgery without anaesthetic because the Yale hospital nurse was stealing their fentanyl.

It is an *excellent* reflection on the complexity of transgression & the question of what healing justice would even look like - not least because 2 victims are, respectively, a public defender & an addiction scientist. Nothing "true-crime"-y here: real, compassionate journalism.

#Podcasts
https://pca.st/episode/6e5ecb6d-6e45-4e77-8b7c-74b35aa4691b

There was a stronger earthquake midday, but I didn't stop at the time to check its stats. Just got notice from the Canadian embassy in Bogotá that they've closed for the day because of it. 6.1 (in most reports - don't know why this says 6.3), with an epicentre between Bogotá and some proximate smaller towns.

O weird, fragile world of ours.

Being in a more affluent part of the city, the kind frequented more by nomads and tourists, is always a touch disorienting, but I still knew where to go for a cheaper nibble for lunch, and I remembered to say hello to a few plants along the way. My editor was sadly not able to come in today, but that's okay. I got plenty else done.

(Did I mention I said hello to a few plants along the way?!)

Going to finish one more writing task, then start a slow, revelling wander back home.

#Nature

#WritersOfCoSo

I've been exploring a pseudo-memoir writing project, so I *might* be a bit biased here, but if you - fellow writers! - have ever thought about or pursued autobiography, creative nonfiction, memoir, autofiction et al...

Take a moment to sit with @A_Jay_Adler's latest at Substack. It's a beautiful invitation to think about paying better attention to absence when we read and write.

What lives in the gaps of the stories you tell?

#Writing #WritingCommunity
https://open.substack.com/pub/ajayadler/p/the-close-read-missing-in-memoir

Rolling into my Thursday schedule. Whooooo's ready for the day?! 💪🏻😊

Last week my a/v editor was sick, but tomorrow: I go to the office, I bring cookies, I make podcast art, I plan a future project, I write things, and I drink. 💪

I mean, probably just water.

But it sure sounds more exciting when we use the verb without the direct object!

Night, CoSo. 😘 #Hydrate

Newsletter up! 🎉

Apparently when I start new ventures--like this week's switch to a semi-paid model, in which paid subscribers will get a second piece later this week--my workflow slows *way* down because I want to make sure the work is as sharp as possible. But the jitters will pass! The spice--er, content--will flow!

Today, I use two David Brooks columns to talk about a writing structure that does great harm to the pursuit of thoughtful discourse.

#BetterWorldsTheory
https://mlclark.substack.com/p/how-to-choose-the-right-focus-for

For those keen on thoughtful, often experimental SF, there's no better jury prize short list than the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

At Strange Horizons this week, Gautam Bhatia has a lovely review of this year's vital reads, most of which are potent reflections of the myriad climate crises now at hand.

#CoSoBooks #Books #SFF #ClimateChange
http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/the-arthur-c-clarke-award-shortlist-2023/

For some reason this pupper wandered off his mat during dance class, and when he got back his person knelt beside him and "echa cantaleta" (gave him the song of complaint / lectured him) for a few minutes before returning to her dancing. 😅 I think he heard her. Hasn't moved since.

#DogsOfCoSo

#News
#GlobalHumanism

Our world is not okay.

Tread gently.

Try to hold in tension the fact of other struggle. It's not a game of who has it worse; it's about how we strive to do what we can where we can to ease pain.

“The remains of many of those killed have not been collected, identified or buried,” but the UN estimates that more than 4,000 have been killed, Elizabeth Throssell, spokesperson for the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a briefing in Geneva.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/16/sudan-more-than-a-million-people-have-fled-spiralling-conflict-says-un