Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, #ugh, inspiration, Thoughts on October 11, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Brain is not really braining today, and the book I read at lunch actually dragged me deeper into existential day jobiness, so yeah. Bad book, bad!
Time for something simple, like a game of What Came First? Compare cultural moments in time
Which is older, the Mona Lisa or the Taj Mahal? Van Gogh’s The Harvest or London Bridge? Braille or the Empire State Building? I was surprised by quite a few of these.
You don’t have to sign in, just click through the Play Game button.
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, inspiration, Thoughts, winning, writing on October 10, 2024| Leave a Comment »
“Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other.”
— Walter Elliott
Hope you’re winning too.
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Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, change, community, inspiration, reading, Thoughts, Writers on October 6, 2024| Leave a Comment »
“It’s important to remember that we all change each other’s minds all the time. Any good story is a mind-altering substance.”
― Hank Green, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, awesome friends are awesome, creativity, inspiration, Thoughts on October 4, 2024| 2 Comments »
Recently I received the most amazing present.
I found a pickup tag in the mailbox. What could this be, I wondered, I hadn’t ordered anything. After a day or so of speculation it was off to the post office. I was given a cute little box covered in international signage (expected, I am in Canada), from Germany (unexpected, I have ordered nothing from Germany!). What could it be?
I put the box in the center of the kitchen table so that I could walk past it all day, wondering what was inside. Finally, I broke down and opened the package.
A puzzle box. You may remember that I wrote a recent post about puzzle boxes. A friend did, and she sent me this.
How incredibly, unbelievably, extremely cool.
I wouldn’t have guessed that in a million years, and yet it is absolutely perfect.
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, artists, awards, creativity, inspiration, Thoughts on October 3, 2024| Leave a Comment »
This year’s Genius Grants were announced this week. I love this award, not just for the secrecy and drama, or because deserving artists and innovators are being rewarded (monetarily, even!) for their work, but because the scope and creativity of their ideas helps us all think more expansively.
Here’s the 2024 MacArthur Fellows list – NPR
This year’s Fellows include performing and visual artists, writers, scientists, historians, activists and one filmmaker, Sterlin Harjo. The MacArthur Foundation considers these grants as investments in people whose “ideas, experiments, and solutions expand our expectations of what’s possible.”
Here’s to genius, whatever form it may take.
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, inspiration, nature, Thoughts on October 1, 2024| Leave a Comment »
“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”
— L.M. Montgomery
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, inspiration, mightaswellenjoyit, Thoughts on September 29, 2024| Leave a Comment »
“Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life’s quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result―eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly―in you.”
― Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything
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Posted in Science!, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, inspiration, magic, state parks, swamp, Thoughts, Virginia on September 24, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Sometimes you might look at the world and see only the meh, the drab, the muddy exteriors of your surroundings. It’s Tuesday, I get it.
But when the light is just right or you’re a little less tired and you take an extra moment to look deeper, you may find magic just waiting to be discovered.
Here’s one example; click through for photos, which are amazing.
Rainbow swamp: The flooded forest in Virginia that puts on a magical light show every winter
Every winter, when sunlight hits at the right angle, visitors to Virginia’s First Landing State Park are treated to a mesmerizing rainbow light show courtesy of the park’s bald cypress swamp.
I ran across this article and immediately wanted to know more. You too? Here you go!
An Array of Colors at First Landing State Park – State Parks Blogs
If you happen to visit First Landing State Park at just the right time, you might see people transfixed at the edge of one of the cypress swamps. I’ve been there and excitedly said aloud, “Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!?!” to no one in particular, while wearing a very silly grin. Why you ask? Because I saw this rainbow water for the first time.
What an incredible world.
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Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, creativity, inspiration, Thoughts, Writers, writing on September 21, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Success isn’t about how your life looks to others. It’s about how it feels to you.
— Michelle Obama
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Posted in Science!, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, climate change, creativity, environment, genre fiction, innovation, inspiration, Kim Stanley Robinson, science fiction, technology, Thoughts, writing on September 16, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Today’s question of the day:
BBC World Service – The Climate Question, Can Science Fiction help us fight climate change?
The acclaimed US sci-fi author Kim Stanley Robinson is also a star in the world of climate activism because his work often features climate change – on Earth and beyond. Robinson has been a guest speaker at the COP climate summit, and novels such as The Ministry For The Future and The Mars Trilogy are admired by everyone from Barack Obama to former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres.
Now, the answer to this question seems fairly self-evident to me. I see innovation as a conversation, in a way, between what is and what we can imagine will be. And fiction is excellent at helping us imagine new and better worlds.
Other examples of sci-fi ideas made real:
Ten Inventions Inspired by Science Fiction | Smithsonian
6 scientific innovations inspired by science fiction
10 ‘Star Trek’ Technologies That Actually Came True | HowStuffWorks
Look around you. What are our technological and social capabilities? What are our needs? And what do you think we’ll invent next?
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