apparently a real thing and well worth the read: Robot priests.
www.vox.com/future-perfe...

It’s like the day I was at a regional literary festival, and the local author next to me on the panel kept crowing about his movie option. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that everyone else on the panel including me had been optioned by bigger cos at least twice.

World class movie with the best lighting in film. Lighting was a character. Writing was excellent. Acting great. Plus Claudia Black of Farscape also stars.

Seriously if you haven’t seen it, see it.

GOOD NEWS! Researchers at the University of Florida have developed a UNIVERSAL vaccine that dramatically BOOSTS the immune system’s ability to fight tumors- even WITHOUT targeting a SPECIFIC cancer type. It has the potential to do away with chemotherapy, surgery AND radiation treatment.

When people say, “do your own research,” they generally mean, “google it.” They generally do NOT mean, “conduct an independent, ethical, peer reviewed study.” I would love if we spent more time differentiating between “research as knowledge production” and “research as knowledge consumption.”

US folks: Did you know the EPA (currently run by someone more concerned with businesses than the environment) has a public-comment period right now?

This is our opportunity to tell them why we think they should not repeal the 2009 Endangerment Finding.

www.epa.gov/regulations-...

My daughter is 13 and has social media, but I don't let her post on it. She saw several stories and videos of mass kidnappings and told me about it.

I asked her to find a credible source to back it up. When she couldn't, she realized she had been duped.

It's that easy.

As a power user of audiobooks, audiobooks with AI sounds subtly wrong in a way I can’t put my finger on but makes me want to turn off the book after a half hour no matter how much I like the content. But I may be an outlier.

For those interested, the writer of the survey is bsky.app/profile/jber.... He's primarily looking at hearing from nonfiction writers but is happy to hear from fiction writers too.

Gotham Writers is currently doing a survey of how writers are using AI and if you’re a writer it’s probably worth filling it out.

gothamghostwriters.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?...

This would be an absolutely amazing Captain Planet style no-powers superhero movie.

I’m really feeling off balance and worried as a human right now. Sigh. I think middle age is feeling the things and continuing to move through, take your kid to school, show up at work, do what you can, and hope it all ends up okay.

The world situation isn’t helping, sigh.

So cozy and wonderful.

yay!

Um, wow.

My new all time favorite thing is watching my kid play Barbies with my cousin, for literally hours. The storylines are complicated! The characters and accents are crazy! It's like a bonkers serial soap opera for friendships!

They seriously should make a cartoon about this stuff.

Tell me something good about your life right now. No detail too small.

I am literally never taking a sales call after a client call again--or at least a client call where I had to aggressively steer the conversation to get what I needed. Especially on deadline. I had WAY too much drill-sergeant energy, sigh. Which the specific client in the call needed / wanted! Sigh.

We’re not books but we went from not having a newspaper to being one of the most subscribed to newspapers in America in less than a year, and our social media conversion numbers are attributable to Bluesky by a good plurality.

A reminder that when Becky needed to help a co-worker get into English classes that were actually affordable to lower income immigrants, it was the library that facilitated that.

Libraries do so much more than you think they do. They are essential community builders.

So you know that study that showed that ChatGPT actually *slowed down* programmers by 20%, even though they felt faster?

Yep. I swear to you the authors I'm coaching through writing books are finding the same thing in writing. The level of revision you have to do is insane to make it work.

Tell me something you do to make conflict feel safer and more productive.

So I say thank you. And encourage them to do it again.

I used to be conflict averse. But over the last three years I’ve literally started thanking people for pushing back and bringing up small conflict when it’s honest and on the spot. The big stuff brews; if we do the little stuff constantly the big stuff doesn’t eat us alive.