I’m feeling very accomplished. I finished the Alpha of Fated for Firelizards, so you can read the whole book on itch now if you want.
I’ve also gotten back into the rhythm of walking my French Bulldog every day. Little dogs like this are so fussy, and don’t necessarily *need* to be walked all the time. A couple times playing each day will wear him out, especially since he’s old. But it’s nice getting out with him again — for both us.
Spring is my favorite season. I love checking in with all the blooming plants on these walks.
His stamina is growing too, which is good for an old man with crappy hips. I should probably make a point of lengthening his walks a bit in order to make him stronger. He’s turning nine this year, and I would love to keep him as long as possible.
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Salman Rushdie’s book says that he dreamed of being stabbed on stage only two nights before the attack. (NPR) Although it’s not an unrealistic dream for someone like Rushdie to have, I take this as apocryphal evidence of my theory: big events in time ripple backwards. We are only capable of experiencing the fourth dimension as a point (like how a dot on a paper can’t experience a three dimensional object), but the rest of time is theoretically always there, hanging around us where we can’t see. Why wouldn’t we feel a hard joggle in advance? Lots of people have premonitory experiences like this.
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One of my favorite things about history is how, looking as far back as we are capable, humans have basically always been humans. See: a fox buried with a family that likely kept it as a pet 1500 years ago. (The Guardian) I’m sure the fox was a great and terrible roommate, but that doesn’t stop humans from pack bonding with everything. It’s sweet.
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The Marginalian shares a couple definitions from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.
My favorite off their list:
ÉNOUEMENT
n. the bittersweetness of having arrived here in the future, finally learning the answers to how things turned out but being unable to tell your past self.
I have been thinking about this unnamed sorrow lately because I, like everyone, am perpetually working on growing up. It really is bittersweet to have answers that would have helped me years ago.
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A technician mounted his own art in a German art museum without permission. (The Guardian) He got in trouble, but can we just acknowledge how that’s the most arty artist move possible? Good for him. I hope he takes his punishment and keeps going.
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Lawyers, Guns, & Money: Faculty salaries in American higher ed have drastically declined since 1970. “[F]ull-time faculty salaries in 2021-22 were just 4% higher than they were in 1970-71. ”
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The Space Force is planning maneuvers…in space. (Ars Technica) 1) I still think “Space Force” as a name is terrible (I probably wouldn’t like any name), and 2) asking in the most idealistic way possible, could we just not? Of course humans have to drag military crap outside our exosphere (apparently this is simulating fake war, according to Gizmodo via Quartz). But could we not, somehow, possibly?
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Adobe is offering payment for videos contributed to data sets. (Quartz) My personal baseline ideal for usage of AI in creative industries demands consent, compensation, and credit, and this covers 2/3 of that. Of course, this doesn’t address the massive ecological impacts of AI usage, or the way industries are using it to destroy artist jobs.
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If sleeping more flushes more junk out of the brain, I must have the most junkless brain on the planet. (Ars Technica) I’m basically a cat.
Apparently Americans don’t sleep enough though. (Quartz)
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Brussels couldn’t handle the gay feminism of Love Lies Bleeding. (Variety) Homophobes were using violent heckles against the film, like during a rape scene, and then turned on queer audience members.
The first walkouts began at around the 20-minute mark, while others from the queer community stayed in to push back against the audience commentary. Both parties confirm that some altercations turned from verbal to physical as tempers flared — though the question of instigation leads to predictably contrasting responses. Still, both would agree that the rise in hostility gave way to a similar rise in invective, leading to barbs with a hateful bite.
“Once we stood up, we started hearing insults directed at us,” says an attendee who goes by Næ Palm. “It became something much nastier. Violent. We were overwhelmed, crying and we said to each other that this wasn’t normal.”
Such heated language fueled a growing exodus – eventually seeing somewhere between 60 and 80 attendees regrouping in the cinema lobby. There, the young viewers began to push back en masse.
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Cannabis delivery workers in California are threatening a strike. (The Guardian) I hope they get everything they need!
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If you’ve got a gun in your household, the likeliest death to occur is death by suicide. (NPR) Self-injurious behavior with guns are statistically the highest source of gun-related deaths.
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Kathleen Newman-Bremang, a Black American writer, shares her experience with miscarriage on Refinery29.
It’s hard to put the trauma of a miscarriage into words. It’s hard to explain the physical and emotional toll that losing a wanted pregnancy takes on your body and mind. One thing I can articulate is the rage I felt any time someone said, in an attempt to be comforting, “You know, it’s really common.” Grandparents dying is common. Cancer is common. Tragedy is common. And yet, people understand the social taboo it would be to respond to any of the above with a statement of the commonality of their grief. And the fact that miscarriages are more common for Black women isn’t comforting, it’s terrifying. It’s emblematic of larger societal issues — including a lack of adequate medical research — that Black people are disproportionately faced with this devastating situation.
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Panty hose is having a moment again. (Vanity Fair) I actually was expecting it to come back around, even though I only remember it being loathed in the early 90s. This isn’t how I expected it to be used, though — in cool high fashion ways. I’ve been expecting it to return because so many women feel pressure to be Instagram-ready, and pantyhose is the fastest way to sorta “airbrush” the texture out of legs that dare to have human features like veins, freckles, and scars.
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Donald Glover announced that he’s planning his last albums under the name Childish Gambino. (Variety)
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Canada has rightly ceded the titles for some 200 islands around British Columbia to the Haida Nation. (The Guardian)
