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Jack Preston King

@jackprestonking.bsky.social

1.8K followers 3.7K following 2.3K posts

Author of In Defense of Magical Thinking: Essays in Defiance of Conformity to Reason and other books for rebels against the spiritual, creative, and cultural status quo. Writes unruly poems, short stories, and novels, too. jackprestonking.com

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Jack Preston King @jackprestonking.bsky.social · Apr 13

For anyone interested, my author website currently has over 200 essays, short stories, flash fiction, poems, a novel, bunches of book reviews and more, all free to read. No subscription needed! Just a good old fashioned author website full of cool things. Come see what I'm about! jackprestonking.com

Jack Preston King

Jack Preston King - author, poet, philosopher

jackprestonking.com

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Alison Birch @irishali13.bsky.social · 5h

For your Tuesday
We Lived Happily During the War
~ ILYA KAMINSKY
—And when they bombed other people's houses, we protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not enough.

We Lived Happily During the War
BY ILYA KAMINSKY
And when they bombed other people's houses, we
protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not
enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America
was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.
I took a chair outside and watched the sun.
In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the house of money
in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money, our great country of money, we (forgive us)
lived happily during the war.

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FRINGE QUEST @fringequest.bsky.social · 23h

"I never am really satisfied that I understand anything; because, understand it well as I may, my comprehension can only be an infinitesimal fraction of all I want to understand about the many connections and relations which occur to me." ~ Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), world's first computer programmer

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FRINGE QUEST @fringequest.bsky.social · 23h

"Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology." ~ Terry Eagleton

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Jack Preston King @jackprestonking.bsky.social · 6h

𝑃𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑙𝑒𝑡𝑒! 𝐶𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑛 ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑑. 𝐻𝑒𝑙𝑝 𝑚𝑒!

"𝐺𝐼𝑉𝐸 𝑇𝐻𝐸 𝐶𝑂𝑀𝑀𝐴𝑁𝐷."

"𝐴𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑚𝑒𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑠𝑚," ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑎𝑖𝑑 𝑎𝑙𝑜𝑢𝑑. "𝑁𝑜𝑤."

𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑔𝑢𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑠 𝑒𝑥𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑑 𝑔𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑠, 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑏𝑎𝑐𝑘𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑤𝑎𝑦.

"𝐴𝐶𝑇𝐼𝑉𝐴𝑇𝐸𝐷."

Manifest Destiny Inc

Paraclete?

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin.bsky.social · 16h

These grandiose visions of AI becoming ever more powerful seemingly without limit, do they account for the fact that AI, like humans, is a dependent part of the earth?
Will chip supply chains keep flowing at 3 degrees of warming? At 3.5? Will data centers stand through flood and fire?

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Jack Preston King @jackprestonking.bsky.social · 15h

Sorry I posted this twice. Bluesky glitched and it looked like it didn't post at all the first time.

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Dr. David Pecotić @djp1974.bsky.social · 16h

To create, we must first receive—it has something to do with the involvement of the feelings, body, intuition and imagination. Expressing solar light in a creative way requires something more than intellect. It has to come from subtler faculties. It has to be felt.

- #LizGreene

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Christine Webb @christinewebb.bsky.social · 1d

Pioneering scientists past and present have broken from the pressures and limitations of human exceptionalist thinking. Charles Darwin, Lynn Margulis, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Frans de Waal–their work looms large in my own research (1/3).

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Jack Preston King @jackprestonking.bsky.social · 16h

Funny, I have a gray cat with white paws named Boots. When he showed up in our yard my wife asked why I was calling him Boots. I said that a gray cat with white paws has to be named either Boots or Mittens, and this big head Tom didn't look like a Mittens! Your post is validation.

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Megan McDermott (she/her) @megmcdermott92.bsky.social · 17h

"...life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end." - Virginia Woolf

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Jack Preston King @jackprestonking.bsky.social · 16h

The magic of turning words into "reading" is something separate/different from either looking at a page or listening to an audiobook. Reading is a magical thing our brains do, and I'd say brains can turn printed, spoken, even felt words (think braille) into reading.

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Jack Preston King @jackprestonking.bsky.social · 16h

I don't think "looking" ever becomes a synonym for reading. The magic of turning words into "reading" is something separate/different from either looking or listening. Reading is a magical thing our brains do, and I'd say brains can turn printed, spoken, even felt words (think braille) into reading.

Jack Preston King @jackprestonking.bsky.social · 17h

By this definition, though, reading a paper book is also not reading, it's "looking." Also a verb.

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 23h

From predominant brown the season now starts to silver. Swirls of cloud & smoke wet or dust the trees, coat houses in vapour, in fine ash & oxides. Sometimes sight itself, silted with autumn’s pyres of death, soothed with the damp, polishes the silver. Everything glistens, moonlight-edged & spectral

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Jack Preston King @jackprestonking.bsky.social · 17h

It's also odd that they're limiting UBI to 2,200 people, in a country of 5.5 Million. That's 0.0004 of the population. Surely there are more artists than that? How will they choose who gets subsuduzed?

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Abra, The Everwife 🏳️‍⚧️ 🇲🇽🌼👻 @pairofclaws.bsky.social · 19h

The list of books from this era that will be considered classics in 100 years would probably horrify you.

Rachel Feder @rachelfeder.bsky.social · 1d

Tell me your most unhinged literary opinion, as a little treat

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Jack Preston King @jackprestonking.bsky.social · 17h

𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐄 𝐃𝐎𝐖𝐍𝐋𝐎𝐀𝐃 𝐎𝐍 𝐀𝐑𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐕𝐄 . 𝐎𝐑𝐆!

archive.org/details/like...

Jack Preston King @jackprestonking.bsky.social · 18h

By which I mean that a term like "people of color" means everyone on earth who is not white. Pretty outrageous. Similarly when literary folk say "genre" they mean every book on earth that is not literary fiction. It's something people ought to think about.

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Jack Preston King @jackprestonking.bsky.social · 18h

100%. My hot literary take is that literary fiction IS a genre, just like science fiction, horror, mystery etc. The way lit fic is treated in western culture as though it is not a genre (those awful unwashed genre masses!) is disturbingly similar to how white people are thought not to have a color.

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Jack Preston King @jackprestonking.bsky.social · 1d

It’s #SpookySeason! Read "Night Fall, Moon Rise," a brand new 2,000 word story set on #Halloween night!

#HappyHalloween #shortstory #HalloweenStory #HalloweenFiction #magicalrealism #weirdstories #weirdfiction

jackprestonking.com/home/f/night...

Night Fall, Moon Rise

A Halloween Vignette

jackprestonking.com

Jack Preston King @jackprestonking.bsky.social · 22h

When we insufficiently imagine the world we fail to engage the world fully. We leave half (or more) of our lives in this world unlived. People who disregard imagination as childish or silly close their eyes to the real

Jack Preston King @jackprestonking.bsky.social · 22h

People rarely seriously question why the human imagination exists in the first place. If imagination was not vital for our survival evolution would have rid us of it long ago. It is much more likely (IMHO) to be a sense organ than some vestigial leftover like the appendix.

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Ursula K. Le Guin Bot @leguinbot.bsky.social · 1d

To enter with heart and mind into the world of the imagination may be to head deliberately and directly toward, or back toward, engagement with the real world.

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Jack Preston King @jackprestonking.bsky.social · 23h

“𝐵𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑠𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑙𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑌𝐴 𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑛𝑒𝑟.”

“𝑇𝑤𝑜 𝑓𝑒𝑚𝑎𝑙𝑒𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎 𝑚𝑎𝑙𝑒. 𝑆𝑢𝑝𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑒𝑑𝑙𝑦.”

#libraries #librarians #flashficiton #200WordStory #2MinuteRead

Library Lions

“I think you should call her parents.”

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Jack Preston King @jackprestonking.bsky.social · 1d

It looks like the image worked ok on my phone. Let me know if you could read it!