#Ontario #Canada #Healthcare

Canadian friends:

The OHC recently released key info for local advocacy against the gutting of public healthcare.

"The contrast could not be more stark. While public hospitals are receiving real dollar cuts, the private clinics (euphemistically called Independent Health Facilities) have been given more than 212% increase since last year, from $38,693,100 in 2022-23 to $120,693,100 in 2023-24. Their funding more than tripled in one year."

https://www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca/wp-content/uploads/final-report-harm-to-public-hospitals-of-privatization.pdf

All right, enough restlessness.

I do not enjoy ebook format, which is why I've been dithering on the rest of tonight's reading - but nevertheless, the book awaits!

Have a lovely one, CoSo.

Really glad to share this strange lifeboat of a planet with every last rotten one of you. 💛 Long may it last.

Perennial gratitude post for all the elders here who've gone through so many different phases of life, picking up ideological wounds and losing friends, hopes, and dreams along the way.

You've seen things we younger people wouldn't believe... attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate... the Nixon and Reagan administrations firsthand...

It may feel like it's all being forgotten, but I appreciate the lessons in perseverance you uphold.

Sitting down to finish a book for review on the newsletter this week. Got a surprising uptick in followers this past week, and am hoping I can keep providing quality content.

Definitely tons of mixed feelings about Careers That Could Have Been while reading, but... life goes on! And lots of wonderful people are doing terrific work from better socioeconomic positions than I ever had, so I'm happy to see them flourishing where I couldn't.

What are you reading, watching, or listening to tonight?

Honestly doesn't need the music. Visual math is cool all on its own.

#Pi
https://youtu.be/S32sIhukA9E

We're already in a tight race between endgame scenarios, but hey! Always room for more competitors.

This novella really isn't working out. Still finding it tough to get back into the swing of shorter fiction, after losing so much heart around my industries last year.

I don't miss when I took it all much more seriously, though. I couldn't stand being surrounded by people who thought what happened in SFF was everything.

But I do need to submit stories again.
So, off to walk, then keep trying.

Life has many small joys.

One shows up on entomology & arachnology forums, where the vast majority of posts come from randoms asking "Please tell me this isn't a bedbug/louse/cockroach!"

Reader, it is almost always a bedbug, louse, or cockroach...

But, man, the GIDDINESS of bug nerds when it's not, and when they can just geek out on the radness and richness of nature instead.

If your own spheres have that kind of sincere joy in the little things, you've won.

#BugFriends

A new #Tech media literacy podcast, Better Offline, had a lovely opener that relates to my last OS article.

"The Rot Economy: Ever wonder why Google results are getting worse, or why you aren't seeing your friends on Instagram? It's all because of the growth-at-all-costs economy that's swallowed the tech industry, where the user experience takes a back seat to monetizing every interaction with the platforms you used to love."

A good primer for your lay-person friends.

https://pca.st/episode/bdafedcb-553e-408c-86f1-5226479cce5a

@LiseL, I'm tagging you just in case you miss this and want to answer when you're next on. I imagine you'd make a fun alien-of-the-week design!

Quick stretch-aroo, then back to writing. (I figured out what I needed from my main POVs, so hopefully the rewrite comes easily now.)

QUESTION:

Let's say you're on a Star Trek episode as the alien-of-the-week.

You're playing a member of a new species, which is based on your name (or username), personality, and interests:

What's your species called, what's its deal, and why's it running into a Starfleet crew?

#SFF #StarTrek 🖖

All right, dear fellow weirdos. Sitting down to take a stab at the novella again.

What is something small and special that you're doing / making / watching / eating / reading this weekend that has you feeling good to be alive?

Also: I always get a chuckle when people act like lefties can't write longhand.

Heck yes we can!

Extra newsletter today, reflecting on some parts of the early invasion that are easily forgotten as we mark the occasion.

There was *such* a rush to simple narratives of early action, and equally impulsive course-corrections when the situation became less novel.

But our nations are diverse, our international systems are complexly interlocked, and we're still ill-prepared for the ideological rethinks that a long war requires.

How long will our narrative gaps define us?

https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/two-years-ten-years-too-many-years

Off now for a coffee, to write by hand, and to think.

We make meaning in so many ways on this fragile pale blue dot - even when (and especially because) there's so little sense to what we do to one another. All the cruelty. All the grand justifications for ignorance and neglect.

However you find or create meaning in your own lives, may it always lighten the way. 🕊️

It occurred to me today, though, in part because folks here in Medellín are *very* unlikely to have hobbies the same way.

Hobbies are a kind of performance of wealth: I had free cash to spend on X collectible, I had the time & money to cultivate a particular interest in Y. It's deeply cultural in Canada in a way it isn't here.

Heck, here *I'm* the slightly weird person who has specialty baking equipment for a few dishes, but even then I just give out baked goods, not go on and on about moulds.

It's funny to think about how many ways we're pushed to take up interests simply because they're what people around us like. The time we're encouraged to spend on things that don't actually interest us, just to bond.

In KW, I was surrounded by folks trying to push certain interests on me, or trying to thrust me into chats with their friends because they wanted me to meet X and listen to us talk about Y.

It's such a baffling thing, in hindsight - but maybe that's why I cherish my solitude!

This is my anniversary of feeling like key illusions in the world had irreparably burst.

I'll sit somewhere today with a coffee and take some time to remember the way all our ignorance, arrogance, and arbitrary standards for who and what matters came to bear on our reactions to the panic of those first weeks of armchair commentary and mass flight.

We would forget it all again soon, and slip back to myths that give our cultures the benefit of the doubt.

But the ugly chaos, I won't ever forget.