I think I shall never not be a little bit scared when I send out a story, no matter how many sales I have under my belt. There's always a deep fear that *this* is the one that'll make editors realize I've been a sham of a writer all this time.
Well! Keeps me sharp, at least. 🙃 Night CoSo!
Keep doing the things that scare you - so long as everything's consensual, and nobody gets unduly injured in the process!
If anyone needs a little literary home to hold their sadness for a while, this poem by Jason Schneiderman might be just the ticket for achy hearts and grieving minds. #Poetry
Hope everyone's afternoons are faring wonderfully. I'm just about to (finally) slip a story into queue and move on to tomorrow's newsletter and a news brief.
Much love to all of you.
Yesterday I was reminded that even if Tolkien didn't read The Ring of Gyges in Plato's Republic (wherein Glaucon tells the story of an invisible ring used to great harm to ask Socrates how to live), it would've come to him through the medieval poem Iwein, influenced by the same.
Literature is humanity speaking itself to itself over time.
Everyone who engages in this conversation is part of a continuum with consequences greater than we might ever live to realize.
Happy writing, #WritersOfCoSo.
Colombia has a wonderful middle-class restaurant franchise, Crepes & Waffles, that expressly employs women, with a huge emphasis on helping women supporting families. So you bet your bippy I dropped by to support the business and thank the mums there working so hard to serve other mothers out for a Mother's Day dinner. I just wish more of the folks in line wished their workers the same. Special days in our cultures always have their class divisions, don't they?
Paragliders are a common sight on weekends along my mountains, but oof. Buddy! Cutting it a little close, eh? 😬
The Economist
2023-05-13
https://share.counter.social/s/bcb793
Science
2023-05-12
https://share.counter.social/s/5f7c6e
Science Advances
2023-05-12
https://share.counter.social/s/fbd2da
New Scientist
2023-05-13
https://share.counter.social/s/be7b73
Scientific American
2023-May
https://share.counter.social/s/ec7cf2
The Atlantic
2023-May
https://share.counter.social/s/48bb5b
National Geographic
2023- April
https://share.counter.social/s/5b65d3
Paragliders are a common sight on weekends along my mountains, but oof. Buddy! Cutting it a little close, eh? 😬
Happy Mother's Day to folks for whom the day has deep meaning: in whatever form that takes.
To the mums missing their children.
To the children who've found family well outside their mothers.
To the people grieving departed loved ones.
To the people who get to celebrate with living loved ones today.
And to the people working through even messier feelings on this hyper-Hallmark'd day.
May you all be so gentle with yourselves.
May there be love for you to lean on somewhere, either way.
🌺 🕊️💌
@stueytheround! Your kingdom brought it! 😯👌
Lo! A public Patreon post arises! 🎉
This one mentions what Patrons can look forward to soon, on all available tiers, while also outlining the wide range of online platforms that this creative is leaning into, while adjusting (as are we all) to a markedly changed media landscape. (Broader industry talk emerges from the specifics therein.)
This is a "fun" era we're living through, right?
Is everyone having fun?
#BetterWorldsTheory
#WritingCommunity
#WritersOfCoso ⬇️
https://www.patreon.com/posts/creating-in-82924726
Still don't know if I'm going to be publishing a piece on Kissinger's century as an obit or for his 100th bday, but boy howdy, either way that's going to be a piece that requires MANY THINKING WALKS to rein in all that could & should be said. 🙃
History is such a ruinous outing, friends. One gains so much wisdom from knowing how much buffoonery, chaos, & abject cruelty underpins the modern world... but then the catch is, you have to go on *living* with that wisdom. 2/5 stars. Rarely recommended.
I hate this timeline.
Have i mentioned lately how much I hate this timeline?
https://fortune.com/2023/05/09/peter-thiel-palantir-unprecedented-demand-ai-artificial-intelligence/
You know, I talk to *everyone* in my neighbourhood, irrespective of background, which some folks find bizarre, but I gotta tell you: it's not altruism. If you treat everyone in your community *as* community, your home grows safer for all.
So today I learned that a fellow who's struggling with addiction on my streets has a nephew in Cincinnati and a mom he's visiting for Mother's Day. And now I know one more person as the human they are, rather than a vague potential risk on my commute. Win/win.
I can not believe that I wrote this in March 2021.
Yes all of us, if we admit it or not, are suffering from a low grade grief. A soft background noise of despair. Pandemic, war, politics, climate, all contribute to this.
(I wrote a thing about this, I hope you don't mind me sharing it)
https://world.hey.com/corlin/the-howling-existential-smoothie-5505e021
The “tyranny of tiny tasks” and “fidelity to daily tasks.”
And then it struck me that the contrast between the forms of life suggested by these two phrases tells us a great deal about the roots of so much of our exhaustion and dissatisfaction. I imagine that in some cases the very same task could be experienced and described as either fidelity. I do not want to succumb to the tyranny of tiny tasks. I do want to live so that I might speak of my fidelity to daily tasks.
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/waste-your-time-your-life-may-depend
I'm really enjoying Past Present Future. I'd say it's a good listen for fans of the LRB Podcast, deep diving into political history through rich conversations about resonant literature and key geographies.
This piece, on life in East Germany under the Iron Curtain, offers some terrific insights into the role of consumerism in identity formation and idealist thinking even amid the devastating pragmatics of revolution.
#Podcasts #History
https://pca.st/episode/510db907-b163-4a63-a160-f61b2aeeb373
Reminder: You have made it through 100% of the bad days. #selfcare
Writer (SFWA), translator, humanist, general odd duck • 🇨🇦n in 🇨🇴 • avoids pronouns, they/them if key