iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

You don’t need to say a thing! You do all the lovely! 🥰

So thank you @bookwormvaught.bsky.social because the prizes and visibility #Curae gives are amazing, but it’s also much more than that, and that value helps lift all of us skywards, sometimes by increments but we are rising.

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Owning the impact of caring on our lives enables us to own the depth it brings to our creative perspective, and more, it enables us to own who we are in a relationship with a status that can become one-sided and all consuming. #Curae is the only opportunity out there that does this so explicitly.

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but that also takes back a piece of ourselves by saying ‘I am a carer. I am a writer. I am both and they can co-exist’.

I think that’s the most valuable thing about Curae. It is a point where we can inhale deeply and click ‘submit’ on something that doesn’t just send a piece of ourselves into the electronic ether for judgement …

In that moment, we have a choice as carers. We can lose ourselves entirely to the all-consuming, daunting cascade of responsibility that becomes our day-to-day, or we can find some path to owning our creativity in a new form, a different incarnation.

Until we can’t. Until we realise, suddenly or gradually, that trying to carry on as normal in the torrent is like walking into the waves of the 100 Year Storm with a laptop and a saucepan and expecting to float.

Yes, I have to do more around my previous life … but that’s just life, right? We all pick up a bit extra here and there. I can do this. I can spin all the plates. I can care and create and work and not lose myself in the torrent.

For a long time, many people ‘just keep swimming’. We minimise the impact on us personally and creatively. We think the only way to keep our previous sense of self is to embrace the ‘doing it all’ mentality.

No matter how slowly or suddenly the condition of those we care for changes, our sense of self and understanding of our new identity, one that immeasurably changes us and entwines us with the responsibility and care of another, isn’t guaranteed to arrive on schedule with the responsibilities.

There is something more valuable than the physical prizes #Curae provides. It means that everyone who submits to the Curae Prize wins. My experience is that becoming a carer isn’t an event that happens to you. It’s a mindset change that creeps up on you slowly.

… but then publishing is not inclusive on so many levels, and honestly doesn’t seem to want to be unless it’s by publishing a niche the machine thinks it can profit from.

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🧵 I want to tell you why I think this is one of the most important prizes running and I’m sorry that the book press and mainstream publishing hasn’t dived on it with bells on and support …

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This isn’t politics. This is a regime modelling itself on an ideology we have already had to deal with the consequence of in Europe. I bloody love my vibrant and neurodiverse people. I see you. You do not deserve this

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When does ‘eradicating autism by September’ become eradicating autistic people? Then what? Are they coming for all the neurodiverse people? Then are they going to chase down anyone with an SLD? Can we expect those with dyslexia to be up next for the curative cull?

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What’s next? I mean, we know there can be a genetic element so when can we expect the forced sterilisations and reproductive restrictions that the next ‘Nazism for Dummies’ chapter deals with?

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Claire Kotecki @klarusu.bsky.social · 13/04/2025

Creating a US government registry to track autistic people using private medical records is like a ‘How to Nazi in Easy Steps’ manual. It’s not science. Science has an ethical foundation based on consent. Science already studies autism, and many other neurotypes ethically.

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In the true spirit of nature writers, I talk to the red kites that fly low over our garden every day. I love the proximity-but-distance. I wish it was something poignantly profound, but most often, I just say “Please don’t poo on my head.” 😂🤦‍♀️

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Reposted by Claire Kotecki

BookwormVaught - Dr Anna Vaught @bookwormvaught.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

Oooh it’s only a few weeks until we announce the #Curae 2025 shortlist I AM EXCITED ARE YOU EXCITED. Fundraiser for writers’ bursaries is still running, below. Do please help me if you can. This is the only opportunity of this kind for unpaid #carers 💙📚

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Reposted by Claire Kotecki

Library Innovation Lab @harvardlil.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

We just launched a 16TB archive of every dataset that has been available on data.gov since November. This will be updated day by day as new datasets appear. It can be freely copied, and we're sharing the code behind it to help others make their own archives of data they depend on.

lil.law.harvard.edu

Announcing the Data.gov Archive | Library Innovation Lab

Today we released our archive of data.gov on Source Cooperative. The 16TB collection includes over 311,000 datasets harvested during 2024 and 2025, a complet...

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Reposted by Claire Kotecki

Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

Well the award for most cowardly, boot-lickingest academic society has squarely gone to the American Society of Microbiology, who has taken down features of various non-white scientists. Absolutely pathetic behavior. Those articles are now coming up as “under review”. Truly sickening cowardice here.

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Reposted by Claire Kotecki

Alt CDC (they/them) @altcdc.altgov.info · 01/02/2025

The entire archive of CDC datasets can be found here. HUGE shoutout to data archivists- this work is important 👏🙌🏻 archive.org/details/2025...

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Claire Kotecki @klarusu.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

A day ahead of finalising exam papers. However much students dislike sitting them, it is equal in magnitude to how much I dislike the weeks that go into setting them … especially when our staffing has been cut to the bone and I’ve lost half my subject specialists. Sigh.

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Claire Kotecki @klarusu.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

It’s bad enough the OU has banned children and young people from campus (we are clearly not an #OUFamily as we always used to be), but according to the latest email “Following some recent reports …” children have been seen. Can we all agree that none of us have or will ever ‘see’ children on site?

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Reposted by Claire Kotecki

BookwormVaught - Dr Anna Vaught @bookwormvaught.bsky.social · 24/11/2024

Thread on resources for #publishing for #writers. First of all, if you are thinking about broader freelance work, then you need the best newsletter about. Sian Meades Williams's Freelance Writing Jobs, www.sianmeadeswilliams.com/freelance-wr... Weekly or monthly round-ups. Comps, opps, jobs & more

sianmeadeswilliams.com

Freelance Writing Jobs — Sian Meades-Williams

Freelance Writing Jobs is the UK's leading media industry newsletter for freelance calls for pitches and paying freelance writing jobs. Subscribe here.

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Claire Kotecki @klarusu.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

Ekko is #NotMyCat but he comes round to visit and eat all the food and looks a lot like a movie star.

A particularly handsome grey cat with a green collar and bell lying in a windowsill and gazing into the distance like a professional model

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Claire Kotecki @klarusu.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

It’s gone on my wishlist as a ‘When I have spare money’ aspiration 🤣 Relatively speaking, it’s at the more affordable end of the ‘looking at the night sky’ instruments. Is it fairly intuitive to use?

Claire Kotecki @klarusu.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

These are superb! I am so impressed you can just take them essentially from the back garden.

Alom Shaha @alomshaha.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

My supper companion was looking very dapper tonight. She dressed for dinner.

A black and white tuxedo cat sitting at a wooden dining table. She is on a wooden dining chair and just here head is visible above the table. The table has a place mat on it.

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Reposted by Claire Kotecki

Lots more videos with tips on how best to carry out demonstrations and practicals here alomshaha.com/project-type... and alomshaha.com/portfolio/vi...

alomshaha.com

Demo films – Alom Shaha

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Oh, how have I missed this game? My new favourite daily pastime 😀

Oh I have read a few of the earlier ones but I had forgotten about them! Thanks for the nudge 👍

Exactly this. I am currently unsure whether the document is a Picasso-like piece of representational genius or if Microsoft has simply cast the bones and randomly thrown words on a page 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

Current status: regretting my life choices 🤦‍♀️

Picture of a laptop screen with a whirring blue circle of doom that is superimposed over a dialogue box that says “Word will now convert your PDF to an editable Word document. This may take a while …”

She can’t abide being improperly attired 🤣

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They just know they’re beautiful 😍

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