M. L. Clark 🕯
- Humanist
- Global / Big-Tent
- abZurd Magazine
- https://linktr.ee/abzurdmagazine
- Newsletter
- https://mlclark.substack.com
Writer (SFWA), translator, humanist, general odd duck • 🇨🇦n in 🇨🇴 • avoids pronouns, they/them if key
Joined Apr 2022
M. L. Clark 🕯
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Everybody here has sat in the dark with someone--sometimes known, sometimes new
so much caring <3
M. L. Clark 🕯
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For Everybody here:
Sometimes on weekends.
I try and upload some magazines. For your reading pleasure. At the moment I am only doing the 7, I read most often. I set them to expire after a month. So grab them now.
(weekly)
The Economist
Science Magazine
New Scientist
Science Advances
(monthly)
Scientific American
The Atlantic
Wired USA
~~~~~~~
M. L. Clark 🕯
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Climate change has killed 4 million people since 2000 — and that’s an underestimate
“Nobody is counting it, and nobody is moving in the direction of counting it.”
*First newsletter.
I'll have Coriolanus up tonight. It just needs editing, *after* I finish today's paid writing task.
My brain has been braining... very slowly this past week and a half.
But I'll add that it's always an extra big challenge to tell a science story simply and well - so I don't mind the time it took to get the first part just right. Making science histories accessible can be a tricky business, but they're rewarding when pulled off.
Cheers, folks. Have a day! 🕊️
M. L. Clark 🕯
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yes, we are the collators, the editors, the authors, in fact, of our lived experience.
although circumstances surrounding us provide endless possibilities for despair,
we can choose to concentrate on what has been called The Good, for want of a term for which there is none.
even in the midst of horror, people have found ways to embrace and carry it forward.
lotus from mud is possible, always. not easy always.
concentration and insight in balance. following guides, reliable.
Today's newsletter offers three anecdotes to contextualize an important reminder:
Sometimes the world just won't give us nice, neat, coherent stories.
Never has before!
So when despairing at the haphazard state of the news, maybe consider these three tales: of messy beginnings (mitochondria!), middles (mince pie mythology!), and endings (Patron Saint outcomes!).
We have so little control over the "story" as a whole.
Maybe there's a strength in embracing that, though.
https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/on-mitochondria-mince-pies-and-patron
M. L. Clark 🕯
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"Well, I am here to write that being present and simultaneously reflecting is exhausting. I have lived a decade in the year that was 2023. I now believe forgetting is as important as remembering if one is to move forward. I don’t mean forgetting in the sense of pretending that something never happened; I mean flushing out the experiences so one can move forward and not feel trapped inside Time."
This Way to Experience The Impact
https://annieqsyed.com/2024/02/03/this-way-to-experience-the-impact/
Back to work with me, but here's a good tune for days when you feel disoriented by the facts of your life - for whatever reason! 🤗
Hey chums.
Maybe it's just my time in SFF, where we often have DRAMA over fake personas (though usually because the person has done *vicious* things behind such cover), but as sad as it is to find out that someone isn't who they said they were...
We do something incredible here when we take people at face value in day-to-day interactions, & when we focus on how they act, without interrogating their past.
I hope we don't lose that.
Practising common courtesy can *never* make a fool out of us.
M. L. Clark 🕯
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@elmaxx, do you listen to Behind the Bastards?
This week they had a twofer about the AI god-cult beliefs of today's tech bros. 40K of course got a mention, but at this rate we might be speeding up our path to it. :) Worth a chuckle if you're at all inclined to listen to goofy conversation-based #Podcasts.
Last week's second newsletter will come after this weekend's two (it's a piece on the nature of authority, which I struggled to feel ready to send off while in a low). But first, this week's paired duo, which I'm pre-announcing to defy my silly brain.
Later today? "Of Mitochondria, Mince Pies, and Patron Saints" (Try to guess the throughline, I dare you.)
And tomorrow, a paid-subscriber deep-dive building on Coriolanus, to reflect on the relationship between politics and war. 👍🏻
Apropos of nothing/everything.
May you live long and well enough not to have your skull and spine yanked out for an alien trophy case.
Unless, like, that's your thing.
M. L. Clark 🕯
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“Overawed”: Worker Misclassification as a Potential Unfair Method of Competition
Remarks of Commissioner Alvaro M. Bedoya, Federal Trade Commission.
The Federal Trade Commission’s original mandate, under our founding statute, is to stop, quote “unfair methods of competition.” And yet, to my knowledge, legal claims that misclassification is an unfair method of competition are almost unheard of.
https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/Overawed-Speech-02-02-2024.pdf
To springboard off yesterday's #MentalHealth chat, I feel I have to confess:
Just as, being bisexual, I don't *really* understand how folks can only ever be attracted to one kind of "cash and prizes" (but I believe you! no solo-junk-attraction shaming!)...
...a part of me *really* wonders how some people aren't depressed or otherwise struggling mentally at times.
In *this* timeline?
Pretty sure madness is the only sane response to an insane world.🙃
But again--I believe you! No sane-shaming!
Three guesses who made a friend today?!
M. L. Clark 🕯
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Carl Weathers, who came to fame as Apollo Creed in the “Rocky” movies and went on to appear in dozens of movies and TV shows from “Predator” to “The Mandalorian,” has died, according to his manager. Weathers was 76. https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/02/entertainment/carl-weathers-prolificactor-famous-for-rocky-and-the-mandalorian-dead-at-76/index.html
All right, lovely people.
Mind your noggins. This piece reflects on medically assisted death, around Canada's recent decision to postpone the extension of MAID to people with mental health conditions.
There are a few ways in which a society can make itself "ready" to help with end-of-life care - and this issue highlights that we're not quite ready to support people in immediate pain, because we're not sure how to fix all the other messes in our social contract, too.
https://onlysky.media/mclark/our-secular-struggle-with-medically-assisted-dying/
🤗 And I'm okay - like I said, I've had much, much worse downcycles.
It's just that I've been dragging my feet on posting a piece on MAID this week, because it's brought up a lot with respect to times when I much more actively sought death.
I figured a little warm-up posting on #MentalHealth would help. Thank you all so much for your kindness and for your disclosures. They mean a lot.
Full piece tomorrow, but don't read it if you're not in the greatest space.
Night, loves. Watch yer brains. 🕊️
(Also, posting even when every fibre of your being is telling you to shut up and go away. 😅 This is going to annoy my brain for a bit, for sure. Sucker.)
M. L. Clark 🕯
- Humanist
- Global / Big-Tent
- abZurd Magazine
- https://linktr.ee/abzurdmagazine
- Newsletter
- https://mlclark.substack.com
Writer (SFWA), translator, humanist, general odd duck • 🇨🇦n in 🇨🇴 • avoids pronouns, they/them if key
Joined Apr 2022