Tomorrow I'm going into a minimalist mode for two weeks, so *today* I'm going to preemptively celebrate with a modest meal out and a cup of the ol' iced creams.

Then two weeks of lean, focused, catch-up-oriented living.

But today? The nicest of ices, after my main meal. 🎉(Then back to work.) TTFN! 😘

There we go! 🌎

Today for OnlySky: an essay on what we can take from our struggle for scientific literacy when it comes to the theory of evolution, to improve how we advocate better for the forms of democracy we value.

Just as "species" is a human word used to describe clusters of organisms on record, so too does "democracy" represent a diverse material reality.

We need to get more precise about the endangered facets of our societies that we're now fighting to renew.

https://onlysky.media/mclark/how-the-fight-for-evolution-prepared-us-to-fight-for-democracy-too/

😅 Okay, no - now I have a whole article in mind. More on this soon.

So I'm going to exercise more care this year with how I use the word "democracy", because it's also a human construct, and different "species" of democracy don't begin and end cleanly. They're labels we put on loose groupings of sociopolitical factors that exist along a spectrum.

Just as lifeforms can undergo selection pressures quickly, so too can a gradual spectrum of sociopolitical factors shift rapidly. We need to name the specific political "morphologies" we're trying to avoid instead. 2/2

I'm also thinking about care with our language today, in light of democracy's 2024 challenges:

A common point of confusion for creationists (intentional or otherwise) is to conflate a "species"--a human classification that can change with time and improving knowledge of genetic kinship--with the underlying reality of lifeform variation under selection pressure giving rise (sometimes gradually, sometimes quickly) to different morphologies.

We conflate words with realities in politics, too. 1/2

Back-to-back 5k walk-runs.

Next stop, a full 5k run again. Maybe tomorrow. 💪

Now, we write.

Last day of a rough year for me.

I am so, so thankful to still be here.

Every day is a gift.

Thank you for making even the heaviest so much easier to bear. 🤗

Thanks, folks. :)

I had to kill time while finishing a couple of errands, but now I'm rarin' to go for another writing round.

Have a great night, you Princes of Mayhem, you Kings of New Terror! 😘

Okay, be honest, CoSo--

If someone told you to choose the form of your destroyer, and you tried to avoid thinking of anything terrible, what would *you* accidentally summon to wreak havoc in your neighborhood?

I had to duck out for more tea, and I tripped into a conversation about Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Picasso with a neighbour.

Man, I do so love the stochastic beauty of chance encounters, even in our oh so terribly broken world. 💛

Every now and then, I'm reminded that Samuel R. Delany was emphatic that he not be pigeonholed as "just" a sci-fi writer... because dagnabbit, he wanted the world to know he wrote erotica, too. 🙃

We go through such strange, fickle commercial eras, when really... it's all about dreaming wildly together.

Write what you need to.
Write what feeds the weird in you.
Write what keeps you here.

And who knows?

If you find the right reader, it might keep them here, too.

#AmWriting #CoSoWriters

Still a goofy nighttime wonderland in my dear old park. ❤️ #Colombia

Time for a run. We shall see how this body fares after so many sick days. If we have to alternate between running and walking at times, so be it - but there will be at least 5k one way or another before I get back.

Have a lovely one, all. 🤗
Hydrate! Move! Be good to you!

I'm at a part in the novel process that should be familiar to fellow writers: *fear* of finishing.

There's that moment when you're on the cusp, and you dawdle, simply because you're worried that once it's over and you go back, you'll see that what it amounted to just wasn't good enough.

It's a weird brain quirk, which just needs to be named sometimes to put aside.

I should finish the draft tomorrow. Revisions by the weekend. And it will be what it is, when it's done. 👌

#AmWriting

I always have such an urge to pet these fuzzies. 🙃

#Colombia #Nature

And... today I'm going to be thankful for the life of Peter Magubane, who passed at 91 after a career that involved documenting and fighting South African apartheid at great personal cost--with his camera.

Images have power. They not only show part of the world as it is, but also compel us to confront how far that world is from the one we want to believe we live in.

Magubane's work made that abundantly clear.

What a gift of a life.

#Photography #Racism #Humanism
https://archive.ph/cyXtG