#WritersOfCoSo! #WritingCommunity!

Have you read the 2024 Winners of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest? This is a good reminder to have fun sometimes with our work.

This year's top line:

"She had a body that reached out and slapped my face like a five-pound ham-hock tossed from a speeding truck."

(And you know I'm gonna dare you to write the worst line you can, too. Wouldn't it be hilarious if, in trying to write badly, you stumbled onto your best work?)

https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2024

Also, @LaurelGreen (along with any other educators here), I think you might *really* enjoy James Van Pelt's "This Good Lesson Keep", which is a loving look at how new technologies and department standards are adding to the chaos of teaching life - and how a little Shakespeare can gently remind us that the fluidity of the practice over time is what it's all about.

If interested, let me know, and I'll make sure you have a copy. My other teacher friends quite enjoyed it, too!

#Reading #Education

Today's #BookTube looks at Asimov's July/August 2024 issue.

As always, I discuss the stories (with some side commentary about the use of history, how gender is encoded in a text, and the power of really *owning* a context), but I also use this wonderful issue to reflect on what it takes to build a community *and an institution* in #SFF. The past, present, and future should all be well represented on the page - and they certainly are here.

#ScienceFiction #Reading

https://youtu.be/mBGI2ejoOA0

I'm seeing silly clickbait surface around the latest Martian speculation, so here's Phil Plait on the possibility of a deep underground water store on Mars.

The coolest part is the explanation of how this educated guess was made. Also:

"This isn’t just abstract knowledge, either. We don’t really understand Earth’s magnetic field, which is absurdly complicated. The more data we have on planetary magnetism the better we can figure out our own."

#Science #Space #Astronomy
https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/mars-may-ocean-liquid-water-11-km-surface

And then, for those more #Essay-oriented, consider this firecracker of a direct defence of liberalism in many of its forms.

"The liberal promise is not that bad stuff doesn't happen. ... What it promises is that with liberal norms and institutions in place, free people tend to find solutions. But when we reject liberal principles, workable solutions are much less likely to be found."

#Politics #PoliticalTheory
https://open.substack.com/pub/theunpopulist/p/the-bogus-post-liberal-indictment

This panel write-up (accompanied by the video, if you prefer) is well worth the time for folks interested in political theory. Mark Lilla, William Galston, and David French talk about the rise of "post-liberalism" and the roots of a range of authoritarian thinking in conservative thought today.

Slight CW for some bad presumptions on trans issues near the end, but most of the piece reflects on the struggle to keep liberal constitutional #democracy afloat.
https://open.substack.com/pub/theunpopulist/p/is-there-anything-new-in-the-new

I got to be part of the return of a beautiful Rhodesian Ridgeback to her fur mama today. Martina was way too big to capture from my seat, but I got most of the cute bits. (That ridgeback was fascinating, too!)

#DogsOfCoSo

#History #US #Democracy

104 years ago today, the 19th Amendment was ratified in Tennessee - by one vote, when 24-year-old Harry T. Burn listened to his mother and broke a House impasse.

This amendment gave white women the right to vote. First-gen Asian Americans? 1952. Native women? In states, as late as 1962.

For Black women, a semblance of equality was attained only with the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Let us never forget that there was no Golden Era.

We have always been fighting hate.

Some tricked out rides line up as a few lads wait together early in the morning, before rolling as a unit into a car show
in the park today.

(SO much vehicular pride in #Colombia. And if your ride is your cab? No big deal in a land of fewer regulations! Trick it out, too, and chill with your lads for a few hours talking shop. 👌🏻)

Running "tune" today is the latest in the London Review of Books' Medieval LOLs series, which here looks at the representation of Sir Gawain over the era, and how his buff, yet "meek as a maiden" demeanour allows for some saucy scenes for middle-class horndogs of the era, as the knights of the round table barrel on, having grand adventures across the land.

(What, were you expecting reggaeton while I work out? #NerdForLife 😅)

#Podcasts #Literature

https://pca.st/episode/f7af9d2c-ee0e-4117-868b-e57d9020f77b

And... this morning we leave super early for a run, before recording for Patreon and BookTube, ahead of another day of book-reading for a paid review.

No uncouth older fellows en route are going to kill my vibe today. 👍🏻 Morning, 'Nauts!

And now it's time to...

(And begin anew. Back to work with me!)

Earlier this year I let all the street harassment shake me from my health routines, because it is often super hard to be a feminized person *existing* in a world with tons of lonely people who can't think of any other way to build community for themselves, except by interacting with feminized persons as sex objects. (And the fact that I am very white makes me exotic, too.)

This is why I often feel like a grumpy old man inside, and channel ol' porch-sitting, scowling Clint Eastwood for strength.

*talking

I got caught up in a *second* frustrating encounter, with an older neighbour who got hella handsy, first grabbing my hand, which he wouldn't let go of, then wrapping his arm around my waist and nuzzling my neck. It all happened fast and in plain view of others, so de-escalation was 100% on me, and that dude required me to navigate my escape route through "safe" people so that he wouldn't hound me all the way home.

Silly morning. But I'm not going to let this kill my return to routine.

I had a bit of a grumpy moment this morning, when a new guard at the park clocked me as a tourist because of a) my skin, and b) the fact that I was taking photos (tourist shit). He came over to offer "friendly" advice against making myself a target for thieves, which tweaked the immigrant "I'm always going to be seen as an outsider" crankiness in me for a hot second.

But, this is why I'm super careful about taking in English in public! Lesson learned, and life goes on.

https://youtube.com/shorts/-XJ8kxXFGBU?si=G-HN0V1jfe3u_vqH

End-of-day total:

1) Two new flash pieces: one for submission, one for free-to-read posting.
2) One piece I'm still fussing over before submitting. (The mag is more stylistically driven than many, and I feel like it's missing something. Three weeks left in the subs window, though!)
3) 2,500 words in another, though it needs earlier revisions before I can reach an ending.
4) One book read for paid review purposes.

All in all, a *very* good day.
Hope yours was, too! Night, CoSo.

#WritersOfCoSo

Okay, one more writing sprint starting at the half hour, aiming to finish something for a flash contest I came across today.

(Gotta fill up those queues!)

Next CAPTION CONTEST:

What's *actually* happening in this scene?

#StarTrek #Memes #Humour