Category: Blog Post (from under The Bo Tree)

People who don’t respond to emails crack me up—like…for example, *Noam Chomsky* responds to emails.

I am willing to bet that demands for Chomsky’s time are greater than yours or mine or (pretty much) anyone else’s. Yet, he, at 94, manages to answer emails.

Get it together.

Me, to my wife, after several excellent life-suggestions she’d just given me:

Me, with sincerity, as I exit to go to the washroom: “Wow, ever since [you started using] the CPAP, you’re really on it! I’m just gonna step back and let you make all the decisions…”
W: “Can I get that in writing?”
Me: <long pause> “no.” <quickly closes door behind me>
W: “Damn.”
Me: <from behind door> “so close…”

The Coffeebeat Cafe™ (which is not really trademarked), as a make-believe place wherein I hold onto my creative experience, is expanding —

Wait, hang on—here’s my logo, for effect:

Anyway, we’re expanding our imaginary cafe to include a Substack, which is, from now on, how I’ll be handing my newsletter. And the newsletter will be focused on my future projects as well as—get this—be published on a weekly basis, with new content (ie, poems, never before seen short works, …like that) each time.

I know, I know. How can you possibly handle all this change? First global warming, now this?

Well, don’t worry. It’s all already been taken care of. You just sit back and enjoy the stuff and business. That’s how we roll.

She sleeps in folds of thin sheets and thicker meds—
After twenty-four, then twelve more
hours of no food or water. Like two friends jogging,
her body stops to wait for her flagging spirit, redeeming no breath.

From the sidelines at home, I wait for the call.
Halfway ‘tween fear and relief, I don’t go to bed.
I stay up: listening to whistling snow, sounding like songs sung to us kids;
watching shows we might have watched, had she wanted more.

In the empty chill of a person’s final winter, too cold and tired is regret,
‘cause suddenly it’s midnight. And the day has arrived anyway.
And all I have done is miss the dream of a happier death.

AIs run on the data that users give them—freely and usually without regard to personal privacy.

People who make the “AI is only a tool”-type arguments might want to consider the possibility that they’re projecting…

#surveillancecapitalism
#politics
#life
#psychology
#BigTech
#medialiteracy

Them: “Hello! Do you have a minute to talk about Dracula?”
Me: “No—wait, Dracula?”
Them: “Yes.”
Me: “You’re vampires?”
Them: “Yes. We have pamphlets.”
Me: “Vampires have missionaries?”
Them: “Well, where else would new vampires come from?”
Me: “I assumed you bit people.”

[pause]
Them: “There are many hurtful stereotypes—May we come in…?”

I got a nice name check in Emma Darwin’s blog post about a curious prejudice in some literary circles. Is this BREAKING NEWS?