@virginiaeeubanks
Writer working for an abundant, peaceful, and equitable future. NEW MEMOIR (8/11/26): A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving: Lessons on Love, Care and Survival. Preorder: bit.ly/4hAFUJb https://virginia-eubanks.com/
Author scam? I've gotten several emails fr people claiming to be v. popular writers of romance/historical fiction who admire Automating Inequality. The emails feels like AI, tho, & the addresses are suspect. But if it's a con, I can't figure out the angle. Anyone else experienced this? What gives?
Items with question marks are stories we've heard *about* the halftime show that we want to factcheck.
A plot diagram on a whiteboard, which reads: Cane field, PR Highlights tour/Jobs & Economy, NYC, Wedding (real?) + Power Lines, Grammy (ICE?), Hawai'i/imperialism/colonialism, Flags. Underneath, in blue ink, the theme reads: "Together we are America."
Today, we asked, "Was the halftime show a political story?" based on our reading of Francesca Polletta. Does it have:
1) An identifiable beginning, middle, and end;
2) Setting, character(s) & point(s) of view;
3) A plot;
4) A normative conclusion?
Here's our (admittedly incomplete) plot diagram:
The final shot of Bad Bunny's Halftime show. He holds a football reading "Together, We Are America" up to the camera while musicians holding the flags of the Americas celebrate behind him. Red white and blue fireworks explode in the background.
I'm teaching my Political Storytelling class this semester. Thank you Bad Bunny for dropping this performance right between the classes on political identity and the one on stories of personhood - we'll be talking about it for weeks. #PoliticalStorytelling
Thanks to: @fsgbooks.bsky.social s.bsky.social @goldinagency.bsky.social cy.bsky.social @msjennajohnson.bsky.social on.bsky.social
✨ AGTOWL receives a Kirkus Star! ✨
A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving received a starred review from Kirkus! Out August 11, the memoir is the hardest & best thing I’ve ever made, so the honor touches me deeply.
www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews...
Make sure to share what you write! Inquiring minds want to know.
Email headline from a university that reads "UAlbany scientist proposes meth"
My university media office really should have counted the letters on this newsletter headline...
(3/3): "There’s even evidence that a sense of purpose, strong social connections, and emotional resilience can protect the brain from age-related decline.” www.sciencenewstoday.org/what-is-neur... [I'm thinking about getting a BDNF tattoo.]
(2/3): "Physical exercise is also a potent stimulant of neuroplasticity. Aerobic activity increases blood flow to the brain, supports neurogenesis in the hippocampus, and boosts levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)—a protein crucial for maintaining plasticity. ..."
Neuralplasticity for the win, at least for an old gal like me (1/3): "Lifelong learning and novelty-seeking are among the strongest predictors of cognitive longevity. ..."
"Dendritic arborization." Yaaas.
Read this morning while exploring feedforward & predictive interneural connections: "The NMDA is a glutamate receptor cation channel that is also widely referred to as a 'coincidence detector'."
Down the rabbit hole for sure.
But "coincidence detectors"?! What wonderful worlds brains are.
Reading on PTSD and neural plasticity this month. Looks like there is some interesting preliminary research. Anyone have recommendations for me?
"Data centers consume approx 200 billion gallons of water annually in the US alone, w/ cooling systems accounting for 80-90% of demand. ... The WRI classifies 17 U.S. states as experiencing high or extremely high water stress. These states host approximately 40% of U.S. data center capacity."
Thinking about universities' promotion of AI from a resource- and labor-extraction angle -- something I'm not hearing come up a lot in conversations about AI and education. But I'm part of the Anthropic class action, and data centers themselves are concerned about their water and energy use... e.g.:
My understanding of the book is that they are arguing explicitly that democracy is *best* understood as an information system.
Here's my latest, a review of Schneier and Sanders' new boo, Rewiring Democracy (with some big thoughts of my own), in Nature. AI has a democracy problem — here’s why www.nature.com/articles/d41...
The Kindle version of Automating Inequality as available at a deep discount currently! It's definitely worth $2.99. 🤣
a.co/d/bPaqACH
The skills I learned in the woods and on the water were surprisingly transferable to surviving violence and traumatic care.
What unexpected survival skill do you possess? Comment below, and follow me here on Bluesky, and I’ll DM you an excerpt from the memoir!
The happiest surprise of writing the book was how much I learned about staying alive in the wilderness: I studied kayak self-rescue, winter survival, map and compass navigation, bushwhacking, monastic discernment, lifeguarding, wilderness first aid.
The lesson: Nobody survives the wilderness alone. In love with hazard orange and tranquil blue, the humor and danger all caught up together. Thanks @corraldesign.bsky.social (design) and Giacomo Girardi (art), and everyone at @fsgbooks.bsky.social, for promoting beautiful, true caregiver stories.
Hi Brian! Amazing to see you. Invite me back to Idaho!!
A mysterious image, in tones of hazard orange and blue. The letters "al" appear on the left. A puzzling image that might be a rock of a turtle, appears in the center.
I’m excited to share that I have a reported memoir, *A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving: Lessons on Love and Survival,* arriving in the world on August 11, 2026.
Tomorrow, Oct 30, @fsgbooks.bsky.social will reveal the book’s extraordinary cover. Follow FSG (or me) to get the first glimpse.
@brianmannadk.bsky.social explains why this series? Why now? (Hint: It's not to encourage women to have a bunch more babies) www.instagram.com/reel/DQZfk-k...
Excited to be digging into this fascinating new series on worldwide population shifts.
www.npr.org/series/g-s1-...
Even, meticulous, ambitious reporting has me rethinking so many things that I thought I knew.
Kudos to @brianmannadk.bsky.social @sarahmccammon.bsky.social & everyone at @npr.org
"The Trump administration’s tax and domestic policy bill... is projected to cost the country’s 1,512 community health centers roughly $7.3 billion annually in increased uncompensated care costs as they take on the treatment of new, and newly uninsured, patients." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/22/h...
Shteyngart brilliant as always. "Frivolity and absurdity are kryptonite to authoritarians who project the stern-father archetype to their followers. Once the pants are lowered and the undies of the despot are glimpsed, there is no point of return." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/o...
@fsgbooks.bsky.social @goldinagency.bsky.social @msjennajohnson.bsky.social
(8/8) Built from cataclysmic loss and tenacious love, A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving challenges readers to reconsider the networks of care that sustain our lives, reminding us that no one survives the wilderness alone.
(us.macmillan.com/books/978037...)