Just a light one to start off our week.

Today we look at Cat Park, a simple 15-minute game that offers an excellent introduction to media manipulation and its social consequences.

This game offers a lovely conversation-starter around mis- and disinformation for children, and inoculation-science resources like this one can also help the rest of us to sharpen our vocabulary around related themes.

Highly recommended for parents and educators!

#MediaLiteracy #Propaganda https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/the-inoculation-science-of-cat-park

All right, I have let go of the Patreon post.

This started as a reflection on Medellín's recent book festival, but it just kept getting deeper and deeper. Now it starts with Boccaccio? And explores a range of recent essays lamenting the decline of readers and book culture? And asks questions about the core role of literature in our deeply hurting world?

Well, it's free-to-read.

You be the judge of its value.

#CoSoBooks #WritersOfCoSo #WritingCommunity #Literature

https://www.patreon.com/posts/112499632

Here's a fun masterclass in #AI spin.

Can you read this Financial Times article and see *any* concrete use case, outside all the industry jargon interspersed with interview subjects saying that they're highly skeptical of this tech?

"Most software investors ... are betting the big winners will be the existing powers in the software industry—even if it is still unclear how or when the pay-off from #technology will come."

"Move Over Copilots: Meet the Next Generation..."
https://archive.ph/cp4Fx

@AskTheDevil, I've been meaning to ask for a while--

Did you ever read Rabih Alameddine's The Angel of History? It's a book I keep coming back to in moments of despair. In it, a gay poet is haunted by global conflicts that speak to life's capacity for endless suffering (e.g., the US AIDS crisis, and migratory traumas in Lebanon and Egypt). However, he's not alone: Satan and Death are on hand, offering ways through the pain of it all.

Powerful meditation.
#CoSoBooks
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28818930-the-angel-of-history

💛 Beautiful torrential storm to accompany me while I finally put this Patreon piece to bed. I've been dithering over it for too long.

#Soon #AmWriting

I jumped the gun with getting Apple for Slow Horses (waiting for the full season so I can binge), so I've been making my way through Bad Monkey during meals... and it's okay (some cute V/O lines and location work that are giving me ideas for an upcoming fiction project), but it also has Vince Vaughn, who isn't a favourite.

Then I realized that I'm actually watching this show for the Dragon Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith), who just steals every scene she's in.

I want her in EVERYTHING. 😍

#CoSoTV

How did YOU keep your vibes right this week/weekend? 👀

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.