author of speculative fiction.
For a long time, I resisted reading Murderbot, despite all the accolades (for reasons I’ll get into in a sec). I just finished watching it on Apple+, it’s brilliant, hopepunk AF, you should definitely watch/read it. I’ve read Science Fiction since I was a kid in the 70s, and I’ve been a huge fan of […]
It’s wild to see folks on bluesky wrestling with the knowledge that they’re unlikely to outlive this dark turn in America. And what that means for them, for their kids. I say “wild” because the responses are predictably dark (nihilistic if not suicidal) or tone-deaf (“You gotta keep fighting!”) but so few have walked through […]
The world is absolutely crazy right now, and yes, it’s Trump’s fault: There’s a lot of very understandable free-floating stress (punctuated by moments of terror and glorious protests), but the response I’m seeing is often a reflexive turn toward rugged individualism—Quick! I need to learn how to grow my own food!—a pulling away from community […]
I put solar on my roof three years ago, and since then, I’ve helped plenty of solar-curious friends figure out the options—there are plenty (and you don’t need a PhD in Environmental Engineering to figure them out). GET SOLAR TO SAVE THE PLANET People immediately want to know if solar will save them money, or […]
My friends and I had an impromptu watch party as Senator Cory Booker didn’t just break a record, he performed a massive service for the country: his stamina and determination and incredible eloquence at any time, much less after speaking for twenty-five hours straight, all in service of calling out the fascist takeover of America, […]
A nightmare woke me up in the wee hours. My subconscious was once again doing the work of processing the daylight horrors of the world. But my barely-awake body was so full of fear hormones I knew the only way to dispel them was to literally physically get out of bed: move the body, complete […]
Folks like to blame the internet for everything, and I’m the first to say Technofeudalists, tech companies, and especially tech billionaires are a real and present danger, but we didn’t get to this stage of society breakdown overnight or even in the last eight years. Neoliberalism and cowboy conservatism have corrupted the culture for decades […]
If you’ve been paying attention at all, you’ve seen articles with increasingly horrifying information about how much our world is swimming in pollution, PFAS, chemicals of all kinds, and in particular, microplastics (and nanoplastics). We now have a plastic spoon’s worth in our brains and that’s up 50% in the last eight years, rising with […]
Dammit. My kid had to evacuate from the Palisades fire at 2am last night. They’ve been on red flag watch all week at the edge of the fire and the drop in winds I guess backdrafted the fire toward their apartment. They’re safe in a hotel but my god I hate this. They say everyone […]
Learning From Climate Disasters I try to learn something out of every climate disaster (sadly, there’s no end of supply of those), but this fire in LA is particularly rough because my kid is like 1/2 mile from the evacuation zone (they’re safe and now that the fire’s maybe being contained, I’m less freaked out). […]