Oh, I rocked that meeting. 🥳

Victory dance, then teaching prep / printing errands, then newsletter.

Hope everyone's keeping their day spicy!

🧐 I kind of expected CoSo to have corrected the above by now, by pointing out that *all* sides of the bed can be horny if you're doing it right.

Is... is everyone feeling okay? Need a little more coffee, maybe, before diving into the day's silliness in earnest?

Funny moment today: I had to call my bank because my new credit card hasn't arrived yet (arbitrary renewal processes are so silly), even though it shipped July 10. Long story short, we're getting it couriered - but when the very nice young lady tried to give me the confirmation number for tracking she... made up her own phonetic code?

*unclear sound* like ??? (chore/pour)
*unclear sound* like ??? (mall/wall)

She *meant* CM, but that's what Charlie and Mike are for. 🤦🏻 We have a system, love!

Woo. Started the day with a story sub and an essay pitch. Will try to end it by posting a free-to-read story as well, but there are paid work and newsletter tasks between here and there.

Also: I have a key meeting in my volunteer leadership role at 1pm. I set the agenda yesterday, and materials are ready, but the important part now is just radiating good vibes to offset the anxiety I know might easily take up all the air.

Positive, proactive, solutions-oriented.

That'll be the vibe today! 👌🏻

(I debated putting the above behind a CW, but I couldn't decide if it was *actually* lewd or I just woke up on the horny side of bed today. 🙃)

🤨 Look, I'm not usually one to critique someone's graffiti... but do you *really* want to be known as the tagger whose letters all look like an assortment of 🍆 s with heavy 🍒, or ample butts and 🍑 s?

(I mean... maybe? No fruit shaming here!)

Ho ho! This is going to be a fun one for today's predawn run.

Centrist-liberals have always been so good at "accidentally" supporting authoritarian actors. Sometimes for profit! Sometimes because they've allowed themselves to believe that supporting a public discourse means actively platforming toxic voices "for balance". Sometimes because they think they aren't *actually* R-of-C themselves.

Let's see what angle's taken in this chat around Italian, German, and US media of the 1920s and '30s. 💪🏻

Today we’re talking about a major collapse this year in fintech, as described in a Planet Money episode and through the work of Jason Mikula (Fintech Business Weekly), who’s been following the saga of Synapse for months. Both media recs paint a vivid picture of the fragility of regulatory systems around modern banking, and the mess of alternatives it contains.

#Economics #Finance #BetterWorldsTheory
https://mlclark.substack.com/p/two-takes-on-the-rise-of-pseudo-banks

Okay, stewing over. Teaching in three, then editing and posting the rest of today's content. 👍🏻 Tomorrow will be better.

Have some happily swimming cows.
https://youtu.be/DIZNXdtjAnU

I'm in the mood for a good stew right now.

(No, not the tasty kind. I am already full of rice and beans.)

What's your favourite GIF for a healthily festering foul mood?

All right. One meeting agenda and two work emails to write, then back to that newsletter and *hopefully* there'll be time to post a free-to-read short story to Patreon after I teach tonight. (Good for a chuckle, I hope!)

Packed day? Not quite. Just lost some of my momentum from unpleasantness this weekend, and my energy/focus is off.

But we'll get it back. 👍🏻

#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