"When we help others, we help ourselves."

Darned skippy, Margaret Killjoy. 💜

She had a two-parter last week on Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff that discusses mutual aid response work in North Carolina, from her personal experience visiting Asheville after Helene.

This is a beautiful meditation on how we come together, and how we can find healing for our own wounds in being present for others. Be where you can. Do what you can. Let it be enough.

#CSGN #Podcasts #Helene

https://pca.st/episode/371b7146-79c9-42b0-a47e-b89e5dbb198a

Woo! Sold an SF essay this morning. Not the same as an SF story, but it's a good warm-up to getting more fiction back out in queue - and I do love celebrating histories in this genre.

Still have to finish a book review today, though, and then deal with an unpleasant slice of US history for Rewind Wednesday.

Errands first--and one other person who sent me a series of frantic messages late last night proooobably needs a reply sometime soon. 🤦‍♂️

Hope you and your loved ones are keeping safe. 💛

Yesterday was tense, and I hope everyone was able to reach friends and family who might be struggling amid our current climate disasters (or other issues of note!).

So, a tardy Tough Times focuses on a slightly "lighter" problem: legacy media's buy-in to PR hype about restarting a nuclear plant for Microsoft.

Watch out for such reporting; it creates a sense of inevitability around unchecked consumption, when we cannot afford further investment in waste.

#MediaLiteracy
https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/lessons-from-a-weird-hype-cycle-around

@ecksmc, I hope you're having a better day than yesterday (especially with the bullpucky you were combatting).

Pursuant to our last chat, this book just dropped: WE HAVE NEVER BEEN WOKE, a look at how education, nonprofit, and media "thought leaders" leverage the language of equity to further their own careers.

"Indeed, their egalitarian credentials help them gain more power and status, often at the expense of the marginalized and disadvantaged."

Funny timing! #Books

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691232607/we-have-never-been-woke

This piece is going to take until midnight. I keep checking in with folks in crisis.

What even is writing? Why art?
We have so much distress in the world.
So many people who just need you to sit with them while they're in pain.

It often feels so agonizingly selfish to create, even nonfiction meant to inform.

Our world is falling apart (same as it ever was). Is it worth keeping the creative dream alive when there is *so* much quotidian need to address first?

#AmWriting, but also
#AmHumaning