Summer This and That 🍦🕶️🌞🍉
A little Italia, AI, History, Nostalgia and a #BookLoversDay Giveaway!
The above photo is a strange one, of an iconic art installation on the Boston waterfront. They almost look like solar panels, but they’re not, just strange metal slabs folded up to catch the light. The view beyond, as you can see, is beautiful. I have no idea what the meaning of it is, if there even is one. But it’s been soaking up the sun’s rays for longer than I have, solid, steady, timeless. I don’t know why, but it makes me strangely happy.
I’m in need of some extra distraction and happiness. The world is spiraling into awfulness, several close members of my family have had health scares, and my kitty has kidney disease. It’s an ebb, when I really want the flow. There IS a lot in my life to be happy about, and that’s what I’m nattering on about today, a reminder to myself that the world keeps spinning, and time heals all the wounds. It’s part of the reason I wrote The Happiness Collector—as a reminder to myself.
So let’s talk about some of the things that are distracting me and making me happy these days, starting with…
It’s time for a:
One thing that makes me crazy happy is writing. And the fact that I’m lucky enough to have almost four books out in the world! And #BookLoversDay is coming up on Saturday, August 9th, so I’m doing a weekend giveaway (starting a bit early, today, August 7th), and ending on Sunday, August 10th. I realize many of you reading this may have already read my novels, but if you haven’t, or if you want to give a bookish, history and food-laden gift, I’m giving away copies of all three of my available novels to one lucky winner. And hopefully that will make YOU or a loved one happy. You can enter to win here.
And if you want to make me crazy happy, you can pre-purchase my new book, The Happiness Collector, which will be available on Dec. 2nd. Every pre-purchase helps my publisher decide how they’ll support the novel, and early buzz can make all the difference for an author. 🙏
A Fun Anti-Social Media App: Minutiae
Many of you know that in my day job I’ve been in social media, pretty much since its inception, although in the last couple of years that’s shifted more toward AI. I’ve been ok with that, because social media isn’t as fun as it used to be. People feel like they have carte blanche to say whatever they want and be horrible to each other. And when my favorite platform of choice, that bird site, became a haven for trolls and fascists, well, I just spend a lot less time hanging out in social media in general. But I love this little app I ran across, Minutiae. It’s the opposite of Instagram. You do take photos, and you share them with strangers, but it’s a very different concept.
It works by sending a daily notification at a random minute to all users worldwide, prompting them to take a photo of whatever is in front of them at that exact moment. You have just one minute to respond and capture this unfiltered, unposed moment—there are no filters, likes, or comments, and you cannot follow anyone. After taking your photo, you have sixty seconds to briefly view your past captured moments as well as those of a randomly matched stranger somewhere in the world, all before the app closes and awaits the next day’s prompt. The goal is to create an anonymous digital archive of the mundane moments that usually go undocumented in curated social media, emphasizing real life rather than highlights or staged events.
I love it. 💗 It’s so cool to see what strangers in Sweden or Michigan or Australia are viewing at any given moment. It’s a brief moment of surprise. I get so excited when I get the text to take my photo! You can get Minutiae here.
Italia
Back in 2019, I had the opportunity to go to Siracusa but didn’t get to see the rest of Sicily, which I would love to do sometime. I would likely get there by plane, but looks like in the future, there will be a new option for people to go by car! Italy gives final approval for world's longest suspension bridge to Sicily.
Every time Rome digs around in the city they find archaeological ruins. I know this makes the Romans groan because it extends the life of every urban update by years, but I think that it’s pretty cool that Homes of ‘working-class Romans’ were discovered during Rome metro dig.
And it looks like I need to go back to Rome, to visit some of these off-the-beaten path locations for historical art.
Cool AI Things
As I mentioned before, I’m doing a lot more with AI these days in my day job, so I’m really mired in all the new possibilities. And yes, there is a LOT of reason to be super concerned about AI, but there are just as many reasons to be excited about it. I spend my time equally split on being fascinated and extremely horrified by the new technologies. Our world will be so completely different in the next five years, and most of us aren’t ready for it.
But here are a few really wonderful things that AI is doing that I can get behind.
Universal' cancer vaccine heading to human trials could be useful for 'all forms of cancer - As someone whose life has been deeply touched by cancer, this is INCREDIBLE. But this is also why you should call your representatives to tell them they need to fight to reinstate the $500M in funding mRNA vaccine research that Mr. Brainworm eliminated. Because there are not enough angry words to describe how I feel about that.
I can spend way too much time playing Semantris, a word association research game made by Google.
New AI model helps historians complete damaged Latin texts - I love that we’ll be able to dive even deeper into the history of the ancient world.
AI is helping researchers make incredible discoveries about history in general. If you are geeky like me, you’ll enjoy this video that walks through some of the coolest discoveries this year.
Nostalgia
And finally, let’s round out this post with a bit of nostalgic bliss. I grew up watching The Young Ones on MTV. Loveable, ridiculous, young guys living in a flat together made for hilarious comedy. There were only twelve episodes in total, so they played ad nauseum at the time. I love watching them…it really takes me back to my high school years. Here’s one of the episodes I remember, when the band The Damned was on. They performed their song “Nasty” which the wrote just for the episode!
If you love food and love Italy, and haven’t read IN THE GARDEN OF MONSTERS, THE CHEF’S SECRET or FEAST OF SORROW, click the links to learn where to buy your copy! And now you can pre-order my latest, THE HAPPINESS COLLECTOR!
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Love these books. Got my library to shelve In the Garden of Monsters. I think, they don't like to admit such things, and I'm far too respectful to pry : )