Someone dear to me is in Toronto for the year, earning as much as they can at two manual jobs: 8-4 6-to-7 days, 5-12(:30) M-F.

Every time they check in, I feel this twinned sadness that they're working themselves ragged to pay off a debt, & this sense of frustration, that I can't magick more work out of my fields to bring them home sooner.

But our fields are so different that the pay for work, *when* it exists, is leagues apart. Which is wild. So many people breaking their bodies for peanuts.

I quite enjoyed the This Is Hell chat with Malcolm Harris around his latest book, Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World. It seems to be a deep dive not just into how broken Silicon Valley is, but also how resilient this bubble community of global power brokerage is to any attempt at "fixing" it.

https://thisishell.com/interviews/1584-malcolm-harris

It's a hefty tome, though. Has anyone here read it or added it to their to-read pile? (Thoughts if so?)

#CoSoBooks #Books #History #Capitalism #Podcasts

(Lots of folks raise chickens, and other animals, close by. I am routinely regaled with funny stories as well as ongoing fights involving rats in the chicken coops. In all seriousness, good on him for being so proud of his rooster; I know these animals are treated well.)

😂 I'm having an odd run of evening walks.

Tonight a friend of a friend came by on bike, slowed to greet me, & eagerly said I'd seen his cock today.

His... cock? (Gallo in Spanish, but it's hard for English speakers to forget our roots. 😉)

Turns out he was being 100% sincere. Excitedly he took out his phone to show me the photo of his pet rooster that our friend had shared with me this morning. Apparently it was big enough news that my friend had told *him* we'd been talking about his cock. 🙃

I do not have writer's blocks.

I have times when I need to step away from the computer for writer's walks. 🙃

*silly extra "s". That's what I get for posting from my phone. If you find it, you get to keep it! Please give it a good home. 😊

😂 Folks, I'm sorry, I don't mean to heap shame on the US in its struggle against hatred, but I have to share this perfect example of how differently things go in #Colombia.

Someone posted an anti-queer Super Marios Bros tweet & whoever's working the Ministry for the Interior account literally replied the equivalent of "Hopefully Luigi's a fag". 🤣

Then went on to explain that though the wording was spicy, the point is that homophobia kills, so of course the government supports LGBTQ visibility.

"No matter what you’re doing, no matter how much fun you’re having, and no matter how many loved ones surround you, the novel will come for you."

😅 Surely every writer who's ever written a novel will read this as the threat that it is.💀

#WritersOfCoSo #WritingCommunity https://lithub.com/kevin-chong-on-finding-inspiration-in-surprise/

I had one of those great mornings where I got *so* much done between 4 and 7:30am that I'm now practically skipping on my way out for a tinto and a walk. Podcast-listening time! Then more writing time!

Hump day? More like LET'S GET PUMPED DAY! 😂💪

Have a great one, CoSo!

Morning CoSo! 💫

Today for #OnlySky, a word of caution around the Dominion verdict yesterday: defamation lawsuits are always going to be an inferior site of reckoning for all the damage done to our democracies by fake news.

We have to keep pushing for more and better accountability across the board. ⬇️

#Politics #MediaLiteracy

https://onlysky.media/mclark/dominion-and-democracy-what-fox-news-avoided-for-now-and-what-comes-next/

Today I had *such* a range of typically CoSo interactions.

An initially contrarian chat about systemic culpability in Sudan opened rich veins of historical & political discourse.

I made new acquaintances while exchanging intel around a topic I knew far less about.

I deepened a connection!

I shared exciting news in my writing life, and an all-too-human moment.

And I got to interact with others in the throes of big and small moments of their own.

In short: a perfect day on CoSo. 👌 No notes.

The death wasn't recent, but the region in which it occurred has been undergoing severe strife for a while. It's north of me, on a route to the coast closed for a bit when Clan del Golfo leveraged mining strikes to overrun small towns and essentially hold the locals hostage. For locals in Medellín, this is nothing new - and one religious friend was actually relieved, because it kept his family from dragging him to the beach for Semana Santa. 🙃

"Dura la vuelta", as the expression goes.

"Like many local reporters in Latin America, Moreno was unable to make a living from his journalism, and had recently opened a grill and car wash in the town of Montelíbano."

To speak against injustice is a necessity that costs far too many their lives. #Colombia
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/18/rafael-moreno-colombia-journalist-murder

I just had an odd encounter on my walk. A Colombian who'd lived for years in Spain came up & asked all kinds of questions--where I was from, why I was here, why wasn't I scared of being here...

Long story short, she said she was afraid on the street even after being back 2 years, shocked by the poverty, & also that brain damage made everything harder. She thanked me with big hugs for my insight on how to feel less afraid.

Be kind, mi gente.
You really never know what people are living through.