We can do tough things here, guys. 🙂

We do them every day - not by grandstanding, or picking fights for the heck of it, but by seeking out conversations with care and integrity, and by sharing intel that better empowers us all for worldly action.

I'm deeply grateful for all there is for us to learn from one another here every day.

(Yes, even from you stinkers with the horny image memes. 😉 You do good work, too.)

One more nice note, @BipolarArtist, from the other fellow I reviewed today. :) I posted the video in my SFF forums. Fingers crossed that others see it, too!

Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas will have some dangerous law staying on the books for a while, thanks to SCOTUS declining to revisit a 5th-Circuit decision that makes protest leaders more vulnerable to financial liability for the actions of anyone in their crowds.

The deterrence effect of this choice will be felt in some protest movements this year. Direct democracy matters, but stay sharp for how it could be used against organizers in your region.

#Democracy #SCOTUS
https://www.vox.com/scotus/24080080/supreme-court-mckesson-doe-first-amendment-protest-black-lives-matter

Aw. Cute note today.

I'm not big on celebrity, but I just found out that someone I'm working with wrote one of my favourite #SFF novels as a kid - and, in the process, played a role in growing my love for what the genre could do.

I just thanked him for being part of that spark for me as a wee sprog, and we'll continue as happy colleagues with no further ado, but... seriously, folks... pursue those passions!

You never know what random weirdo will be inspired by what you do. 💛

And now we're live with my belated BookTube!

Here, I talk about two works of horror: one published by a small press, and one published by our very own @BipolarArtist.

As always, I try to talk about work within a material publishing context, and in this case we have artists who might not be well-served by traditional publishing, but who nonetheless have passion projects worthy of your time and support. So check out the links below the video!

#WritingCommunity #Horror

https://youtu.be/gHFUqxnnWGU

Shout-out to anyone else who sometimes needs A Moment to process how profoundly immature the world is.

Sometimes, when writing explainers, I feel an overwhelming sense of futility.

Last week, realizing my agent didn't even grok the anti-propaganda themes in my war trilogy made me acutely aware that markets aren't primed to want work reevaluating our history and cultural givens.

We want stories that sing in-group safety and self-righteousness back to us.

O we small and fragile creatures, eh?

And now, to catch up on a *lot* that didn't get done yesterday, while waiting for internet to return.

(Morning, CoSo! ☕)

I usually write about lighter media on Mondays, but after the gamified news cycle we just went through, I figured it would be more useful to talk about major oversights in how the Iran conflict was presented in legacy media.

Breaking news feeds rarely empower us, so much as trade on our fears, excitement, and wartime trauma.

We deserved context that would have better prepared us for those tense moments. We can still lean into better, going forward.

#MediaLiteracy #War
https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/when-the-media-makes-context-harder

🤨 Home internet is out, mid-YouTube upload.

We shall see if/when it returns, though a Sunday outage might take longer to fix.

Some days the biggest challenge is remembering not to take everything too seriously. Best laid plans, etc.

Will go for a walk and see what today's workflow is going to look like on my return. If some items get delayed, so be it. Not the end of the world - just my ego, in wanting everything to go off without hitch. 👍🏻

#MediaLiteracy

One trend I noticed during yesterday's frenzy was folks turning to Twitter for intel and reporting on rumours from comments there.

We all know that Twitter is flooded with bots and bad actors, but the urge to chase down any whisper--there, on Facebook, on Telegram, on Reddit--is strong in the heat of the moment.

There *are* useful accounts, but remember to verify comment rumours before reposting. It's psychologically easy to adopt new facts, and much harder to retract them.

#War

Still no official word on the 10-year-old Bedouin girl hit in the head by shrapnel in the desert (last official notice, on national EMS pages & related news, was that she'd been taken to hospital).

Regional action is ongoing because there are still potential aerial devices in play (despite no further contributions from Iranian territory), but this notice in the Times of Israel is a good sign of things winding down.

War threats whip us into a frenzy. Take good care of your hearts tonight.

🤦 Tonight in "Sometimes I Am Not The Sharpest Knife in the Drawer":

I've been looking up possible causes for a painful skin symptom for the last hour.

I'd gone *deep* into Dr. Google, hashing out possible immune diseases and musing over next steps...

Before it occurred to me that I'd been out in the direct sun for 30 minutes today without sunscreen, and I looked in the mirror.

Is the burning on my cheeks a sign of disease?

Nah. Just my own stupidity leading to a sunburn. 🙃

#NotMyBestWork

#War

A strikingly intelligent maneuver today.

Iran needed to show *some* formal response for the hit on its consulate in Damascus. But this delayed, heavily telegraphed, and ultimately moderate military display establishes it as the cooler head *even if* its action today emboldens other actors to act with greater force.

This isn't a game of chicken; this is military powers trying not to be the one to make *the* tipping point move.

May we all rest a little easier in our armchairs, for now.

I have reading to finish for tomorrow's BookTube.

I just so sorely hope everyone remembers to take breaks from doomscrolling.

We are more than our worst moments, divisions, fears, and furies.

If you feel flattened by the news, touch grass, hug a loved one, step away from the 'net, engage in local action, and generally try to remember that we are bodies jacked up with hormonal responses to things outside our control.

How much is served by dread and despair?

What can we lean into instead?

🫂

At the end of a volunteer meeting I run monthly, one teammate wanted to learn more about *my* work, and tried to find a book by me.

His search, however, turned up my "name twin": another ML Clark, but one with a completely different moral outlook.

I find the situation terrifically amusing, though. I wish the Catholic writer in question had written more than his book about time-travelling to kill "depraved" SF writers like Heinlein!

I would have LOVED a career-long rivalry with that dude. 🙃

😅

Fellow on the street just asked: "Why don't more North Americans believe in God?"

What he didn't expect was that he'd be talking *to* an atheist, so he insisted right away that I'm not an atheist because if I had a gun to my head I would of course cry out to god.

Buuut... I've actually had a gun pulled on me three times in this country.

"And what did you say?"

"Well, with the two Venezuelans who wouldn't let me go, I asked about their families..."

😅 He did NOT expect an atheist like me.