My day got derailed by a site glitch that's keeping me from posting two OnlySky pieces.

No matter.

I have my newsletter for tomorrow (on how we get derailed into less-than-useful cultural discourse), a Patreon for today-ish, & a pitch draft I'm trying to finish for Protean (on what debt servicing teaches us about the myth of public governance in a private-sector-driven world).

It's the Patreon I'm stalling on most, though. I've been afraid to put something to words all month. Soon soon soon.

Morning, CoSo!

So far so good for the reboot - got up bright and early, feeling great, got a lot done.

First of TWO #SNW posts today (plus one other one, for Humanist Book Club). This first post contains my charitable review of the #LowerDecks crossover. LD isn't a series I enjoy, but there *is* a deeper lesson to be found in the very silly collision of LD characters with the SNW crew in "Those Old Scientists".

#StarTrek #SFF #CoSoTV

https://onlysky.media/mclark/how-do-we-manage-our-myths-around-those-old-scientists/

New routine starts tomorrow. (Well, early to bed tonight *for* a fresh start tomorrow.) Spent a lot of July processing changes coming down the pipe. Weird times for us all. Be gentle with yourselves if it takes a bit to fully commit to something new!

#WritersOfCoSo #YouTube
https://youtube.com/shorts/Z0Gzr8kS2Qg?feature=share

@daniel! I thought I replied yesterday but I don't even see the message chain now.

Harassment is a fact of life, sadly. In Canada too, fellows would make my apartment building and work environment challenging. Here, there's the added factor of being "exotic" to some, but mostly it just leaves me acutely aware of how small my community is right now. Lots of friends working hard. More alone than usual.

I'm leaning into good neighbours, though. The bad ones will bother less in time.

Thank you. 🫂

Feria de las Flores is starting on the home front, with locals gathering to sing classics and dance in public ahead of August's month of events celebrating campesino culture in all its glory. #ThatPaisaLife #Colombia

Just trying to tie up end-of-month tasks, then early to bed for a pre-August fresh start tomorrow. 🤞🏻

@Alfred, what is the abyss and how does it differ from The Abyss?

:) Novel time.

😅

I will feel better back on routine, starting tomorrow night with better sleep hygiene, but for now this is live footage of me.

No more late nights. I need my sleep patterns and early mornings back. By the time I'm fully awake it's already too late to do things I need to - like finish recording my audiobook before the highway becomes a seething mess of tooting trucks and roaring motos.

I have one late Zoom meeting tonight and then no more of this. 7pm to bed if that's what it takes to get my predawn routine back. :/ The early-bird in me is ruffled.

In the last half hour I had one rotten interaction with the apartment building creep who keeps grabbing at me when he sees me, one kind interaction at the tienda del barrio when the machine went down so I got added to the store's tab for tomorrow, and one awesome interaction with three curious kids in the building.

I will lean into the last two to offset my ire over the first. Hoping to finish a few writing tasks tonight so I can focus on the novel this weekend. #AmWriting #NotSeething

Well, we're going to have a lot to talk about with this week's SNW, @WordsmithFL. 🙃

I'm glad Jonathan Frakes was at the helm, at least. And we have a breather episode before the musical silliness comes along.

(Every other #Trekkie can join in, too! I like to take a beat before I write my weekly review - and give folks the weekend to watch the ep - but it'll be up on Monday.)

When I popped on to the X to post an OnlySky link, I saw... a warning about CSA imagery still floating about?

Good grief, the Río Medellín on a rainy day isn't as much of a sewer as that site.

My industries are deeply demoralized. I feel it on all sides. (The nutbars are the few blithely carrying on as if all is well.)

But I am relieved.

Our economies were bubbles of injustice & precarity *for years*.

Now begins the work of building something better - with everyone who actually wants to.

Okay, folks. 💫

This book club session is winding down with Ch 9 & 10 of The Dawn of Everything, with the closing section later this weekend.

Here, we look at whether it's even useful to talk about all human societies under the umbrella term "state", when power dynamics show up *so* differently over time. Why do work so hard to ignore the many different political relationships that existed before our own?

(Next week, KSR's Ministry for the Future!) #CoSoBooks #History 🎉
https://onlysky.media/mclark/humanist-book-club-myths-of-the-state-historical-era-and-lost-democracies/

76 cents US for a lovely plump lorena, a big, soft, often just a lil' bit juicy avocado variety that pairs well with pretty much every dish on the menu. 💛 Life is good.

General PSA re "AI":

Creators are never uniform in their views about new tech.

You'll find that some say doing X is an affront to all creators.

But campaigns to limit AI are about limiting disruption to our livelihoods.

Yet what shapes our livelihoods from one era to the next? Copyright law & fair use are complex, which is why some orgs have been slow to make statements.

The eternal crisis?
Just compensation for our work.

New tech is often a distraction from that struggle. Be wary of hype.

One of my wee nephews recommended this series to me. Can't wait to start it and catch up on the worlds he's enjoying.

Have any of you read Toshikazu Kawaguchi's Before the Coffee Gets Cold?

#CoSoBooks #Books

@Alfred What is the most useful way for machine learning to help humanity mitigate the negative impacts of climate change, and how many billionaires can current AI programs take out before the remaining billionaires retaliate by defunding further research and development in artificial intelligence?

@Alfred draw existential dread.

@Alfred please draw me whatever you want.