This theme emphasizes the importance of inclusion and diversity in reading. It encourages readers to explore different voices, perspectives, and cultures through literature, promoting empathy and global understanding.
Good news includes all the things which make us happy or otherwise feel good. It can be personal or public. We never know when something wonderful will happen, and when it does, most people want to share it with someone. It's disappointing when nobody is there to appreciate it. Happily, blogging allows us to share our joys and pat each other on the back.
What good news have you had recently? Are you anticipating any more? Have you found a cute picture or a video that makes you smile? Is there anything your online friends could do to make your life a little happier?
New paper highlights 500+ interconnected drivers behind global insect decline. Insects are disappearing at an alarming rate worldwide, but why? Agricultural intensification tops the list of proposed reasons, but there are many other, interconnected drivers that have an impact, according to new research.
Lights of ships moved in the fairway — a great stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars. “And this also,” said Marlow suddenly, “has been one of the dark places of the earth.”
There are people who do not see a broken playground swing as a symbol of ruined childhood
and there are people who don't interpret the behavior of a fly in a motel room as a mocking representation of their thought process.
There are people who don't walk past an empty swimming pool and think about past pleasures unrecoverable
and then stand there blocking the sidewalk for other pedestrians. I have read about a town somewhere in California where human beings
do not send their sinuous feeder roots deep into the potting soil of others' emotional lives
as if they were greedy six-year-olds sucking the last half-inch of milkshake up through a noisy straw;
and other persons in the Midwest who can kiss without debating the imperialist baggage of heterosexuality.
Do you see that creamy, lemon-yellow moon? There are some people, unlike me and you,
who do not yearn after fame or love or quantities of money as unattainable as that moon; thus, they do not later have to waste more time defaming the object of their former ardor.
Or consequently run and crucify themselves in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha.
I have news for you— there are people who get up in the morning and cross a room
and open a window to let the sweet breeze in and let it touch them all over their faces and bodies.
At some point, we realise all our little hopes and dreams for the web are pointless because it’s all out of our hands. And yet we can’t shake those dreams off, because it seems to us like the culture is so busted that the only way to connect it up is through the open web. Because the open web is open access and some form of the web pervades most of our lives now.
Sadly, the web we have is the mediocre network-tv version.
But this is where we all were forty-odd years ago with relation to the previous generations of dominant media. We lived inside broadcast television and print culture that we had no control over. So we got zine culture and tape culture and even a pirate radio revival.
People in the US in the Sixties used to talk about going out to “find America.” Now I see people doing their damnedest to find the web.
Today is mostly sunny and warm with a light breeze, a beautiful spring day. :D
I fed the birds. I've seen several sparrows and house finches, two brown-headed cowbirds, a mourning dove, and two fox squirrels.
I put out water for the birds.
EDIT 4/22/25 -- We went out shopping. I picked out roughly 5 flats of plants at DeBuhr's. We found a garden hose, nozzle, and reel plus a gas can at Home Depot. Also at Home Depot I spotted a modular garage storage system that looks very promising. It has mounting rails for shelves and a wide variety of hooks. That ought to combine well with a pegboard.
EDIT 4/22/25 -- I planted a 'Sugar Snack' cherry tomato and a 'Yellow Pear' tomato in the large pots by the septic garden, each with 4 marigolds around it.
I really didn’t think Spotify’s expansion of its audiobook catalogue into more of Europe would have that much of an effect, but I’m watching my analytics go haywire.
Neat.
Oh heck yeah. Gonna listen on there then leave a 5 star review :D.
💖💖💖.
It’s on Spotify?? 😍
Lend my physical copy to a friend so this is great to hear
It’s been on US Spotify for a while now (Spotify acquired the audiobook distributor used by most indies) but they are finally expanding audiobooks to the European market after a gradual roll out. I got the email last week. So if anyone’s got a premium account they can access it.
One thing I really appreciate about my therapist is that she stopped asking me a long time ago, “and do you think that [anxious thought] is rational?”
Because she knows. She knows I grew up in and escaped a high control group (cult) before. She knows that when I’m noticing things other people are scoffing at, I’m the canary in the coal mine beating my wings to try and escape the cage before I get dragged under by the people around me who are refusing to see the signs. Either because they believe it will never happen to them or because they don’t see it as a problem.
And she knows I can’t run. Not really. So instead her responses are, “it’s good you can acknowledge you feel this way, but let’s try and focus on your breathing and what we can do to help you get through today,” because that’s really all I can do at the moment. And I know it’s all a lot of us can do right now too.
So if you need permission to do nothing but the bare minimum to survive today, here it is. Take one step at a time, one breath at a time if you need to. And outlive the fuckers no matter what.
In the following 1961 interview, Jean Renoir discusses with French New Wave director Jacques Rivette his design of the “seventh art” and art in general, demolishing certain generally accepted ideas, and evoking some memories from his own career.
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