Much like research 50+ years ago was mistreating the research subjects, internet service providers (social media etc.) are mistreating users through engagement goals at the expense of mental health, monetization of data, and other forms of data mining. Expecting individual users to be experts on the practices and outcomes for every online service is unrealistic. Research needs an IRB (institutional review board) approval, why can't we do the… View More

Last night, my husband and I were talking about our trial run chewing the chalky tablet that is lactaid to assist with bowls of old-fashioned mint chip. Had it worked for him as well as it had for me a few days previous? I asked. It had, he agreed. Now, I want some [expletive] cream cheese wontons, he added. Great! You should put some of these packets in your backpack–– The rest of my suggestion, that he could… View More

Years ago, I spent one angry evening attempting to set up a wireless HP printer on our network. There were epithets, there were tears, there was the temptation to cut open a screen and throw the cursed machine out the window into traffic. Eventually, I was successful, but at what cost. Five years ago, we moved to our house and I haven't had the stomach to attempt this feat on our new network. At first, I claimed that it was only… View More

One especially helpful term that I’ve heard for creative writing is to “park your writing downhill”: never leave your writing at the end of a scene because it’ll be harder to start up from a dead stop. Instead, write a few lines into the next scene to give yourself somewhere to start. In the way that parking your car pointed downhill is easier than pointing uphill, giving yourself somewhere to start makes getting going… View More

It’s that time of year for the retrospective, where on the cusp of a significant switchover from year to year, we look back on recent times and reflect. I haven’t done one of these in a while but it seems like a good idea now, both as a means of jumping into more writing and because, in spite of 2022 being a real slog, it was a slog with purpose. It was the final grueling steps on big quests and, well, that’s worth… View More

This is part of an experimental periodic series of posts with quick reactions to various novels. Rather than a full review, I’m pulling out one or two things that I think are interesting. To be honest, The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez isn’t exactly the kind of book I usually read. While I love the argument of it, as I’ll get to in a moment, both a space setting and the dreamlike writing style is not usually… View More