The Wordsmith's Forge

Climate change, resistance, and doing the right thing now

No amount of intellectualising is going to change the fact that our climate is thermodynamically fucked.

That humans are economic toast.


Largely true.

( Read more... )

This year I've been running an experiment to see which type of pen lasts the longest for labeling plants outdoors. I have compiled links to the previous posts and added pictures from each month where I hadn't already posted them. Results: Sharpie Oil Pen lasted longest, Craft Smart Oil Pen was still legible at the end of the year, and Sharpie Permanent Marker faded very fast. If you're labeling plants outdoors, buy an oil paint pen, preferably Sharpie.

These are the other posts regarding the labels.
1/3/25 Photos: Testing Pens on Plant Labels
2/3/25 Photos: House Yard and South Lot
3/3/25 Photos: House Yard and South Lot
4/4/25 Photos: South Lot
5/6/25 Photos: South Lot
6/2/25 Photos: House Yard
11/3/25 Photos: Lantern Terrarium Assembly Part 2 Testing the Fit (labels at bottom)
Photos: House Yard 12-16-25

( Let's do science to it... )

One Critical Factor Predicts Longevity Better Than Diet or Exercise, Study Says

They then factored in other variables that can affect life expectancy, including physical inactivity, employment status, and educational level. The association between insufficient sleep and lower life expectancy still held. Only smoking had a stronger link.


Good, adequate sleep is a survival need. Modern society often sabotages it.

However, this study suggests that banking sleep on weekends can mitigate the effects of lost sleep during the week.  I used to do that in school, and people said it didn't work, but it certainly helped my energy level.  It may be a trick that some but not all bodies can do.

Scientists find hidden rainfall pattern that could reshape farming

Where rain comes from may decide the future stability of global food production.

New research shows that crops are far more vulnerable when too much rainfall originates from land rather than the ocean. Land-sourced moisture leads to weaker, less reliable rainfall, heightening drought risk. The U.S. Midwest and East Africa are particularly exposed due to soil drying and deforestation. Protecting forests and improving land management could help stabilize rainfall and crop yields.


Allow me to point out that the Midwest used to have copious fencerows of trees and bushes, more pocket forests, and more farmhouse yards. People cut down most of those to clear a few more acres of farmland. The results have been poor across multiple areas including wildlife losses, soil erosion, worsening winds with less interruption, and of course the aforementioned droughts.

Satellites spot rapid “Doomsday Glacier” collapse

Two decades of satellite and GPS data show the Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf slowly losing its grip on a crucial stabilizing point as fractures multiply and ice speeds up. Scientists warn this pattern could spread to other vulnerable Antarctic shelves.

The Poetry Fishbowl is now CLOSED. Thank you for your time and attention. Please keep an eye on this page as I am still writing.

Starting now, the Poetry Fishbowl is open! Today's theme is "Sentient and Self-Aware Machines." I will be checking this page periodically throughout the day. When people make suggestions, I'll pick some and weave them together into a poem ... and then another ... and so on. I'm hoping to get a lot of ideas and a lot of poems.

I'll be soliciting ideas for androids, robots, sexbots, sentient ships, other digital people, programmers, gizmologists and super-gizmologists, super-intellects, rebels, researchers, journalists, historians, explorers, partners, teachers, leaders, superheroes, supervillains, teammates, ethicists, activists, other people who work with self-aware machines, programming, changing or breaking programs, building hardware, choosing a hardware body, finding partners, upsetting predictions, expecting the unexpected, researching, revising theories, teaching, adventuring, leaving your comfort zone, discovering things, conducting experiments, observation changing experiments, experiments changing paradigms, adapting, improvising, troubleshooting, cleaning up messes, cooperating, taking over in an emergency, saving the day, discovering yourself, studying others, testing boundaries, coming of age, coming out, running away from home, going off the rails, subverting fate, learning what you can (and can't) do, sharing, preparing for the worst, fixing what's broke, upsetting the status quo, changing the world, accomplishing the impossible, recovering from setbacks, returning home, cyberspace, computer centers, HAMshack, robot factories, worldgates, liminal zones, schools, sharehouses, libraries, laboratories, supervillain lairs, makerspaces, nonhuman accommodations and adaptations, stores, starships, bizarre exoplanets, foreign dimensions, other places frequented by digital people, American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Robots, hardware, software, quicklife, artificial intelligence, ethics of self-aware machines, toolkits, space exploration, reversals, contradictions, conundrums, puzzling discoveries, sudden surprises, inventions that change everything, the buck stops here, trial and error, polarity, intercultural entanglements, asking for help and getting it, enemies to friends/lovers, interdimensional travel, lab conditions are not field conditions, superpower manifestation, the end of where your framework actually applies, ethics, innovation, problems that can't be solved by hitting, teamwork, found family, complementary strengths and weaknesses, personal growth, and poetic forms in particular.


Currently eligible bingo card(s) for donors wishing to sponsor a square:

December is amnesty month.


Among my more relevant series for the main theme:

An Army of One has the AYES.

The Blueshift Troupers is designed for easy crossing with other genres or tropes as they visit different planets, thus can easily accommodate self-aware machines.

Diminished Expectations has the gynoid and others.

Kung Fu Robots is entirely about self-aware robots.

P.I.E. has Zephyr, a digital person.

Polychrome Heroics has the rescued sexbots among others.

Schrodinger's Heroes is dimensional science fiction, designed for easy crossing with any other characters / setting / genre, thus convenient for self-aware machines.

The Steamsmith includes the tommies.

Or you can ask for something new.

Linkbacks will reveal a verse of any open linkback poem.

( New to the fishbowl? Read all about it! )