I've blocked my newsletters this week, and they're going to be a bit healthier for *me*: two proactive pieces related to media literacy (for tools & perspectives we can use to empower ourselves no matter what), a "rewind" imagining everyday politics shaped by life under Mesopotamian gods (oh, the Ur-book posts we'd post, if social media were around back then!), and a lesson from baseball history on Thursday.

World-grief is a smothering sort of expression of love, eh? Useful only in small doses.

I'm really containing multitudes this week, eh?

Thanks for your patience with the full messy range of me. Patreon post next, then story revisions. Then--peopling. 😬

May your own Sundays be restorative!

Today's #BookTube is a review of last month's Clarkesworld, with thoughts about the industry in general, and what our next goals for stability need to be.

There's an especially wise piece in this issue by Thomas Ha, which I recommend even to folks who don't usually read SFF - it has some lovely Shirley Jackson vibes.

Next up will be a video featuring the work two CoSonauts, and the challenges for indie writers!

#SFF #ScienceFiction #Reading #BetterWorldsTheory
https://youtu.be/5ezFjCQZgzw

Excellent listen from today's run, on how conservatives have come to spin anti-Ukraine rhetoric after decades as the loudest anti-Soviet watchdogs.

It's told in the classic format for It Could Happen Here (Robert Evans solo essay) and includes some key data points around how important it's been for Russian propaganda to build common cause by scapegoating trans and other queer people, because they *don't* have much else in common with the US right.

#Podcast #Politics

https://pca.st/episode/ba7ae9fa-785f-4206-a124-4a6f96753a9d

New day, new opportunities.

Essay for you folks soon, and a BookTube.

But for now, the promise of our glorious giver and destroyer, the sun. 👌

Night, CoSo. May the right side of the bed find us all tomorrow. ❤️

For now--

I'LL BE IN MY CAN.

Here's a good, thorough article on the painstaking fight to win back natural citizenship after a 1906 proposal got rolling. #History #US #Feminism #HumanRights #Women #Politics

https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2014/spring/women-citizenship-repatration

It's just racism, xenophobia, and related ethnoreligious tension all the way down.

I preferred when it was turtles. 😡

(Please no one tell me the turtles were racist, too.)

#Crankypants

US friends, did you know about the 1907 Expatriation Act?

TIL that, in 1907, Congress enacted a statute that stripped women of citizenship if they married a non-citizen. SCOTUS upheld this law in 1915. It was fully reversed in 1940, but women who'd lost citizenship weren't eligible for redress if they'd ever resided abroad while married.

I know I have to stop reading things about our shaving cream sandwich of a world for a while, but for fudge's sake.

The cruelty we've *always* been fighting.

Just popping in because I was reminded that today is el Día de Amor y Amistad here.

To quote the great Bilbo,

"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."

(Nah, I kid. I know we're all on different journeys through the cosmos, and come to our views and values from different experience sets that sometimes/often clash, but I'm thankful to share a planet with you all. Be good to yourselves today.)

Back to work with me~!

Two quotes, and then I'm off for the day:

“If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." - Malcolm X.

+

"If you don't heal what hurt you, you'll bleed on people who didn't cut you." - Anonymous.

Anger at the world and our folly as a species, which gets hoodwinked time and again by tribalist nonsense, isn't going to fix a thing.

Gotta be present in it.

Gotta keep trying to do what we can. 🕊️

When did @cjshaneartbooks disappear?

I hope she's okay. I know she was having a rough one, and that certain topics on this site make it very difficult to build community across some pretty big ethical divides, much as we're still trying.

If anyone knows her elsewhere, please pass on my best wishes.

And if anyone would like to submit a photo of theirs for consideration for a CoSo-wide prompt for the #Zine, please do!

Because abZurd is focused on community-building and more hopeful and environmental living, there will be a strong preference given to simple, evocative photos on related themes.

Also, keep in mind that we might need to reproduce your photo in black-and-white, or at best black and one colour (for print), or black and two (for the digital version).

[email protected]

For our next #Zine issue, I'm proposing a section dedicated to #Ekphrasis.

Ideally, we'll get a #CoSonaut to submit a photo we can use to inspire CoSonaut writing, but for now, here's a weekend prompt to practise:

This is a public domain piece called "The Farm", by Joan Miró. It was made a little over a century ago, 1921-22, to depict homegrown water collection systems for a farm running dry.

#CoSoArt, #WritersOfCoso: If you need a creative prompt this weekend, why not a give this one a spin?