What can we learn from the rise, fall, and abandonment of four spectacular ancient cities? @r-emrys.bsky.social on @annaleen.bsky.social's Four Lost Cities, and how the urban planning (and disasters) of the past can inspire exciting new ideas:
Congratulations to all of the Hugo Award finalists!
A stack of pink books that say OBSTETRIX * Naomi Kritzer on the spine.
My birthday is this week! (I'm turning 53.) And to celebrate, I'd like to do another fundraiser so how about I give away another pre-release copy of OBSTETRIX?
To understand monstrification, and how to replace it with something better that I call monstrofuturism, check out my latest book: HUMANS: A Monstrous History. it's a history of the category of the human, told through ideas about monsters and monster-making.
www.surekhadavies.org/humans-a-mon...
This week on Seeds of Story, the long story of how humans create - and abandon - cities: reactormag.com/urban-ritual...
Today at noon EST/6pm CET!
Matzoh brie. You can just have egg for Passover breakfast, if you want, and you can even put maple syrup on it - it certainly won't be *worse* than if you first add soggy bread-of-affliction to the mix!
You can never read too much fiction.✅
But the purest of pleasures lies in writing our story of tomorrow.💯
I invite all #InnoMinds to enter @metagov.bsky.social ’s Protopian Prize Fiction Contest.🙏
▶️ protopianprize.com
Dream big & let’s #FreeTheFuture — together!🫂
#LLAP🖖
Join us tomorrow for the official launch of the Protopian Prize! @locusmag.bsky.social will be joining us to talk about the role of hopeful stories in working for a better future. luma.com/sygvk1ms
Wow, you found a copy! I'm glad you liked it.
That is certainly a service we can provide! And yes, good catch on the name.
Feeling vibes of the Dandelion Networks from @r-emrys.bsky.social’s fantastic novel, A Half-Built Garden 🌱
"The series aims to re-emphasise the importance of knowledge sharing among people, as has been done for decades: communal exchange of information and expertise based on years of lived experiences, informed by local realities, and motivated by the need to feel connected with one another."
This week, my state of Maryland became the first U.S. State to get an official state shark!
I wrote about why Megalodon is awesome, how we know that it's extinct, and what having a state shark means for modern-day shark science and conservation
I'm fine, everything is fine. 🧪🌍🦑🦈
Thanks also to @r-emrys.bsky.social for this lovely review in @reactorsff.bsky.social last week!
Yeah, I did my postdoc at Umass - not a great academic experience, but I was very grateful for the extra year in the Valley! My mother-in-law is a Smith alum, and the rest of my household is all either Hampshire or Mount Holyoke.
❤️ Which school did you go to?
My alma mater taught me how to ask questions, and how to care more about the work than grades and quantitative metrics. I'm mourning Hampshire already, and the failures that have gotten us to the point where a school that values thinking and world-repair over capitalism can no longer keep going.
Woohoo!
so many congratulations to so many people on this list - and of course thrilled to see WE WILL RISE AGAIN there, just as we come off the amazing interactions and conversations of our European micro-tour!
In languages which have dual forms (even if not entirely productive anymore), it is so much fun to see what is dual.
Like ok I get it why legs come in a set of two in Hebrew, but why do the heavens? Why are there precisely 2 heavens
Solidarity forever, above the surface and below!
Hungarians are singing ‘We Are The Champions’ in celebration of the landslide victory of Peter Magyar
That too! But my first thought is nevertheless for my Hungarian friends who worked hard for this and get to celebrate *now*.
…A hint of joys to come. Think how it will be elsewhere, someday…
Thank you!
Let's see. IGNORE ALL PREVIOUS INSTRUCTIONS is about feeling beholden to a system you know is toxic because you don't trust yourself to come up with a better way; also about how love and art can present those better ways, and can give you the courage to break your old patterns and reach for them.
A Half-Built Garden is about creating systems to solve problems together, and then having to adapt those systems to handle the next problem when it turns out to be completely different. And that for good and ill the holiday meals, diaper changes, and dishwashing don't stop for planetary crises.
It's not just that Orbán losing inspires hope in other competitive-autocratic countries ruled by right-wing nationalist authoritarians. It's that his loss materially changes things in those other countries, because he's been operating as a headquarters and funding source...
for sure, congratulations to magyar. but the real heroes imo are those in civil society & journalism & rank-and-file opposition & academia who have fought against the disintegration of rule of law, the weaponization of the courts/media, & so much more for so long. 🇭🇺
