Morning in the park with the girls. ¡Feliz día del amor y la amistad! #NatureBreak

Here's a chuckle for SF-history-lovers, from @wordsmithfl.bsky.social. Just as mesmerism was all the rage in 1920s SF, so too did our love affair with mind control influence 1960s Trek. When people talk about "hard SF", just remember that every era has its misguided notions of what is within reach.

#PoetryBreak before bed. A simple one, but the kind you tuck away and recite to yourself whenever you need a reminder that the world hasn't necessarily become more cruel - only, regained a level of honesty around the cruelty it always had. Let us ache and struggle for better all the same. 🕯️

Say hello to my little friend. This itty bitty member of the gecko committee got lost in my apartment today, and she's been happily chilling in a little sheltered set-up by my desk for a few hours now. We'll see if she wanders away tonight. Thanks for the emotional support today at least, buddy!

#ArtBreak before evening web-dev work, after one more day-work task. Well, #MusicBreak. This is Hildegard von Blingin's Bardcore cover of "We Didn't Start the Fire". You're welcome, and be beautiful to one another. I look forward to being post-web-dev and back to other creative practice soon. 🫂💛

#ArtBreak, anyone? Joanna Karpowicz's most famous work is perhaps her series of Anubis wandering the world. It would be a gimmick if not for the artist's primary commitment to capturing everyday scenes, *then* adding an element that highlights the deep history that walks with us through it all.

Like clockwork here in Medellín, right after Feria de las flores it's four months of Navidad. 😂 "Desde septiembre se siente que viene diciembre" ¡Bienvenidos a la temporada navideña! 🥳

It's been a rough week, but I also received an acceptance from @clarkesworldmagazine.com. It's not even close to my first from Neil, but every story acceptance is a gift and a privilege. I am excited to read the rest of the ToC for my story's issue. I'm sure it will be filled with terrific tales.

For whatever reason, last night I dreamed @rsagarcia.bsky.social was adopting a cat but needed someone to put it up for a week and nurse it through a bout of illness first. Probably just my brain wishing Rhonda the best, but I have our dream cat, Cookie, whenever you want to pick her up! 💛

#ArtBreak before a long working weekend. This is Quint Buchholz, whose pointillist surrealism is often used for illustrations because of his delicate focus on juxtaposing elements not usually seen together. Our world has such wonder in it, too. (quintbuchholz on Insta; www.quintbuchholz.de/en)

Morning, lovelies! It's been hard to carve out time for my own creative practice, so apologies for the roughness of this video... but this weekend I read wonderful SFF in the July/Aug @asimovssfmag.bsky.social, full of craft lessons for us all, and... finished a story to send out. :) A good weekend.

Today's #ArtBreak is Ethiopian photographer Aïda Muluneh--though you can be forgiven for thinking that her bright, highly stylized, steeped-in-symbolism works are paintings. She casts herself as the subject to depict histories of trauma and the complexity of hope around food aid and social uplift.

Sitting down at LONG LAST to a lil' bit of #SFF reading. The July/Aug Asimov's has some authors I greatly admire and adore reading, so... with any luck (i.e., no more work or kid crises) I'll be able to pop up a recording bright and early tomorrow, after savouring each tale. I love my genre so much.

I see elements of JMW Turner in the work of Dorset-artist Jason Anderson, the subject of today's #ArtBreak. His work ranges from less to more abstract shoreside landscapes, and he uses a heavy palette knife to produce a pixellated effect, but... it's there in the burst of colour in the haze, no?

Post a non-religious photo you think of as holy.

Had a rough day and still trying to get my head right after it. Then a painting by Seth Armstrong stopped me in my tracks (well, my doomscroll). So for today's #ArtBreak, please enjoy these stunningly detailed, immersively vibrant LA scenes. I'm a sucker for art that reminds us of our scale. 💛

Happy little #MusicBreak with an updated classic by Tim Minchin. "This is my body And I live in it It’s 48 And 6 months old ... And the weirdest thing about it is I spend so much time hating it But it never says a bad word about me" May we go gently through this great big mess of a life of ours. 💛

Today I chatted with one of my wonderful local friends who is also barely literate. When he read a Spanish post I shared with him from somone else, he read it slowly out loud, and then--beaming with pride--declared that he could read it all. Literacy is such a privilege. May we always use it well.

Sunday Star Trek Caption contest, anyone? 👀 #StarTrek #Funny

I'll also note that, although my first few months in my current gig have been staggeringly busy, I am *so* looking forward to finishing another story, then launching into a novel with a tone similar to this piece in Analog--gritty working-class challenges out in the depths of space. #Soon! #IHope!

I have had the great privilege of working with editors Trevor and Emily at @analogsf.bsky.social for years. My latest novelette, "Not in My Valley", is in the Sept/Oct Analog. I adore reading the full ToC of issues I'm in, and I look forward to spending time with brilliant authors on the page. #SFF

Sometimes my support work keeps me from engaging with SFF directly. But every now and then a treat arises, like the chat I was just privileged to hold for @jonathanmaberry.bsky.social, and my heart is lightened by the reminder of so many people keeping joy alive in our industry. Thank you, Jonathan!

This interview with Vajra is really really good open.spotify.com/episode/5JBn...

I was so thankful to chat with @octavia-cade.bsky.social and @danhartland.bsky.social recently for @strangehorizons.bsky.social. Here, we discuss our roles as reviewers of work addressing hard times. Narrative can seem insufficient, but sitting with that sense of futility is part of our story, too.

In my relief over a few near-losses this week, I am taking an #ArtBreak for some #Poetry by Mary Oliver before bed. Every moment has some wonder in it - and even more so, when we're too busy living fully in it to wonder quite so much at all.

Do you ever watch animal videos where an unusual suspect gets a cuddle it can't properly reciprocate because it doesn't have the appendages for it, no matter how much it wriggles about for more of that good touch, and come away wondering if the whole dang animal kingdom is just aching for a hug?

I'm so excited to get back to recording SFF review videos this week, but for now--Neil at @clarkesworldmagazine.com has a wonderful and necessary editorial in this month's issue, on important considerations for managing submissions in an LLM-inundated market. It takes a village to build resilience!

😂 At first I thought the title of this video was very silly. Then I realized, nah, it's just a great opportunity to boast all the amazing fruits in #Colombia. (And yes, I've tried all the ones named in this video--but that's still barely scratching the surface!) Drop by & I'll fix ya a smoothie!

Mostly small stations in rural areas that are news deserts; residents rely on them for local news, emergency warnings (radio works even when cell service doesn't). Mostly in Alaska or serving tribal communities. There are stations in CO, WV, NM, and AZ. One station lost 97% of its budget.

Stretching the ol’ writing muscle again requires a warm-up round, so today I’ve got a wee story for you about the Scoundrel Saints mythology in Caracas, Venezuela—and what street stories like this can teach us about how myths grow and what they serve. May the stories we tell inspire the best in us.

#ArtBreak? #HeckYes! These are by Choy Moo Kheong, an artist who uses a "laying on" technique, as opposed to brush strokes, which creates a stunning effect with colour when seen in exhibition halls with warm light. Online, I just love the deceptive simplicity and scale of these vivid tonal scenes.

The work of documentation has not been an easy one, but it is necessary. Reports like this one are painstakingly written amid a deluge of overt attempts to spin and deflect blame. This work is and will continue to be essential, to ensure that we don't lose all record of this shameful, heinous time.

#NatureBreak before bed. Say hello to my little #BugFriend: Cyclocephala lunulata! Apparently more useful than harmful to local agriculture in its larval phase, though we still have so much to learn about so many critters on this 'ere globe. It's nice to make new friends some days. :) #Nature

#ArtBreak to inspire on your Monday. This is by Nishino Yoichi (西野陽一) an artist who blends traditional Japanese techniques with animal themes. Its artist has a modest online footprint, but this piece "leaps" out with its depiction of struggle and escape. So go get 'em tigers--er, hares.

Got a little #poetry written yesterday. I'm definitely rusty, but I hope the ache depicted here offers fellowship, if nothing else, to anyone else struggling with how to move through everyday tasks amid now-quotidian atrocity on the global stage. That ache is how our humanity survives, if it can.

Good morning and good #ArtBreak to you all. This is from Cameron Awkward-Rich's 2019 collection, Dispatch. 💙 #Poetry (@cawkward_rich on Instagram)

#StarTrek #SFF I deeply enjoyed @wordsmithfl.bsky.social's piece on the production of "Balance of Terror": "To minimize costs, the team came up with the idea of the Romulan cloaking device." So many tropes have entirely mundane origins. What a lovely reminder to knock off our ego as creators. :)

It was a gift, as ever, to be able to sit with moving prose. @strangehorizons.bsky.social gives me a place where I can think deeply about the work I read, and it is always an honour to share that thinking more broadly. For anyone with world-grief, Ray Nayler's latest is a welcome fellow-traveller.

#PoetryBreak Remember, ladles and jellyspoons-- The rules are made up and the points don't matter. Buffoons and brutes shape the vast majority of possibilities for us all. What are you doing, doubting that you are enough, when you could be living the fullness of your "enough" right now? #Poetry

#ArtBreak, anyone? You might know Eyvind Earle (1916-2000) best from his work on the art for Disney's Sleeping Beauty. His stunning landscapes navigate light and shadow to craft a shifting sense of scale: How big the world is. How small we are. How big the world is *because* of small things in it.

Finally got to return to weight training today, plus a nice light run. I am months out of shape, but what a gift to be able to sit in the predawn dark and just remember one's place in things. A very good morning on this pale blue dot to you all. (Now don't forget to hydrate!)

Annnnd, like a good little SF writer, I'm now going to springboard from watching some sci-fi to writing some. I have a story I've been mostly drafting on the backburner of my mind for these last few intense work weeks. Let's see how it plays on the page! 🤞🏻 #AmWriting #SFF

I've softened my expectations for SNW considerably, so I can just enjoy it as a spot of background sci-fi fluff, but having finished S3E02 I did enjoy the reference to a classic story, "It's a Good Life" by Jerome Bixby (1953), available in The SF Hall of Fame V1--& below. Have you read it? 👀 #SFF

It has not been easy to carve out time to write anything these last few weeks—but also, whenever I do get a chance to step out to be present with immediate human need on the streets, I’m reminded of what matters most… even if what I consider to matter most might read as brain damage to others.

I've been consumed by work for so long that I've kinda forgotten to eat regularly and go for walks/runs, so after my last meeting tonight I finally got a nice evening stroll in, and... Whoooooo needs night horsies?! 👀 #NatureBreak

Not everyone can do everything, but everyone can do SOMETHING. Maybe all you do is email your electeds. Or switch grocery stores. Or check on your disabled/BIPOC/trans friends who are having a hard time. It all counts, just do something bc we're only getting out of this if we all pull together.

#ArtBreak, anyone? This is Mary Oliver's "Don't Hesitate" - first published in 1992, in New and Selected Poems.

This was supposed to be up on Canada Day, but now it’s up on the Fourth of July—introducing USians as well to Canada’s horrifically racist, xenophobic history, and offering a sharp reminder that we have always been struggling with vile notions of “the nation” that diminish us all. Happy... Day?

Whether you call it "The Village" (Canada/Kanata), or refer to this part of Turtle Island by any other name, today we mark the complex dream of community to which so many of us belong. Happy Day to you all. ❤️ (Flag by Curtis Wilson of the Wei Wai Kum First Nation in Campbell River, BC.) #CanadaDay

This first piece for the week is a re-do of one I started months ago, on Molly Conger’s excellent podcast on histories of US extremists. Here, I cover an episode of Weird Little Guys that does a spectacular job highlighting the selectivity of data sets, and why it’s so important to show your work.