Weekly Round-up, February 1, 2025

I am back home and in blissed-put recovery mode after four days of Monumental ConFusion. I will post a write-up in the near future.

Reading

I finished Speculative Whiteness, and am in the final stretch of Doctor Zhivago. Zhivago has been a very long project, due in large part to chaos in my day job and also chaos in the world at large. Concentration and focus have been in very short supply this year.

Writing

My brain is recovering from the past three months of *gestures at everything*, so not much writing this week.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Undead, Genius Loci
Setting: Library
Genre: Solarpunk

Listening

Marianne Faithfull and The Chieftains, “Love is Teasin’”, from the magnificent album The Long Black Veil.

Faithfull died this past Thursday, after a long, difficult, and beautiful life.

Interesting Links

• Bookshop.org is now selling eBooks, which means independent bookstores can now sell eBooks.
• “OpenAI Furious DeepSeek Might Have Stolen All the Data OpenAI Stole From Us” (Jason Koebler, 404 Media) – Everyone who is mad about this hates the free market and capitalism.
• “How Climate Change and Widespread Unaffordable Home Insurance Will Wreck Property Values” (Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism)