Okay! Video time! 👾

Today for #BetterWorldsTheory, #BookTube edition, I've framed our chat about #SFF (the industry, genre tropes, writers expectations, and the importance of pubs that advance our dreams for generations) around a review of Asimov's wonderful May/June 2024 issue.

(The stories and essays, at least! But I also celebrate the poetry by highlighting a recent spec-verse collection.)

There's just something about these classic SF pubs, no?

#Reviews #Reading
https://youtu.be/Xhi1F2U5S1o

Spare a thought for Gadi Kedem today. He lost six family members on Oct 7, but he and other survivors have been struggling not only with gov't but right-wing extremists. As in any country, some only want victims to be "useful". It is a shameful abuse of their memory. From the TOI:

Kedem’s wife Reuma said activist supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline government told her she was “a degenerate, a stinking leftist, it’s a good thing your children died.”
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/man-whose-family-was-killed-on-oct-7-questioned-under-caution-after-allegedly-being-beaten-by-right-wing-activist/

Just waiting for my video to upload (Asimov's review, & a few reflections on SF expectations I hope you enjoy), and then I'll be offline today.

For the last few weeks I've had a burning sensation on my face that was only once connected to sunburn, and which seriously affects my ability to sleep. I strongly suspect it's stress hormones (& not the dozens of alarmist conditions that come up in lit searches), so I'm hoping a day away from tech, breathing in nature, will help.

#NoPhone #OnlyFlower

#CoSoMusic 🕊️

"Workin' on a World" - Iris DeMent

"I don't have all the answers
To the troubles of the day
But neither did all our ancestors
And they persevered anyway
When I see a little baby
Reaching out its arms to me
I remember why I'm workin' on a world
I may never see"

https://youtu.be/uy9Ou17R01k

Didn't have time yesterday, but now I can 'zine! (If you know what I mean~!)

The mall is now setting up a dance space, as one does. Vallenato booming, and elderly couples drifting from lunch to the music zone for a little early afternoon bailando.

I won't be joining them, but I'm glad that they/this exist(s), and that our silly old planet still has so many such corners in it, where people are gathering in community, and doing good things together just because.

Off for a nibble, then catching up on more messages on the walk home, and more writin'.

Happy day to you all.

Anyway, next pomodoro round now begins. Have a good one, thou ravishing brutes and beauties! 💫

The problem with returning to our old division in English is that we've completely swapped the meanings in colloquial usage.

"You" was once used to refer to someone of higher class standing, or for general respect.

"Thou" was then used for someone lesser, or in more familiar contexts.

But because "Thou" fell out of common use, average people now think it's fancy, and thus only to be used in formal contexts.

A few more everyday "thou knave!"s and "thou cur!"s should set us right, though! 😁

(All the Francophones are obviously on board. 😉 This might also be why I slip up so often in Spanish; with French family on visits it was always vous form!)

Bilingual thought.

I have a habit of slipping into the formal form with my dear friends, as a mark of love, because Usted vs. Tú has tonal range, and can often go full circle to intimate respect.

It's something I haven't quite fixed in 6 years (though I'll always catch myself and go back to Tú), but I think it happens because my native-English brain *loves* this range of respect/adoration we don't have in our own simple "you".

...But we DID once, with thou vs. you!

Should we bring it back? 🤔

My Saturday morning has already involved listening to commodities market news, reading a raunchy 13th-century poem, playing word games in two languages (and learning a new phrase in the process), a wee run, and sending replies to week-old messages from people sharing news from the UK, Las Vegas, and Hong Kong.

Now off to set up shop and write at the mall. Who knows what weird info turns the day might take yet? 👀

(My run today was great, but you could probably guess that from the above! 😅)

Some of you might remember that this is my "Sociopath Podcast", or "sociopod", which I like to put on when running because my frustration with the approach taken to financial matters with real-world impacts seems to help with runtimes.

But... this episode on copper and "long" commodities actually involves the guest admitting that he overestimated gov't investment in a turn from gas to electric. The means are there, but political will is *not*. You're darned skippy Jeff!

https://pca.st/episode/a90f20f1-119d-4d80-b8ed-066719b87205

Ha. Tonight I had a chat about the newsletter with an old friend, and explained that even though the readership and paid subscriber list is growing slowly, I'm definitely not going to move into cheap clickbait themes just to boost my numbers.

And then... RIGHT after that conversation... this piece by Shalom Auslander showed up in my inbox and left me HOWLING.

This is for all the writers out there wrestling with the biggest question in our careers. 😁

#WritingCommunity
https://open.substack.com/pub/shalomauslander/p/should-i-do-anal

Man, older folks are sometimes the best.

On my way back from my power walk, I ran into a great-grandmother (bisabuela) from my building who was grocery shopping while ill, so I helped her with her items and walked her home, and honestly, just the act of *slowing down* to do things at or around her pace was so good for my own heart health and overall wellbeing, too.

Lesson of the day:

Find yo'self a great-granny or -gramps to do things with from time to time; it'll keep your own head in line!

Quick power walk to get the blood flowing before evening class, but... :) I have an ending to my story for the Imagine 2200 contest. What a good feeling. It's been too long since I've had fresh fiction work in queue. Need to do this "finish a story" thing a few more times in the next few months, but this is a good start.

(Not sure if it'll be ready to share with Patreons who want a sneak peek* this week, but soon. 🤞🏻)

*Off Patreon, via private email, to keep from voiding 1st Publication rights.

All right, back to work.

Stay informed, but take care not to let the act of staying informed leave you feeling powerless or overwhelmed.

We have a lot of problems.

We won't solve any of them by allowing ourselves to feel that, just because they are Big & we are Small, we can't do a dang thing to help.

Take stock of where you can support more people around you: yourself, your families, your neighbours, your 'hoods.

And practise gratitude for the little things.

Take it all one day at a time.

A couple key graphs from that article, to spare folks the clickthrough if they don't have time for it:

#UK #News #Poverty #Economics #Humanism

Balancing out that little gripe with something more material:

My heart aches at news like this piece about surging UK homelessness. What have we wrought, with all our wealth and opportunity as a collective?

Or more to the point, what have all the abiding lies of cultural superiority and triumph kept us from being *able* to build, in the way of communities that actually serve to uplift their members and more of the world?

#Economics #Humanism #UK #News
https://www.ft.com/content/24117a03-37c2-424a-97ed-6a5292f9e92e