Author: marylowd

I’ve been re-watching Parks & Rec with my kids, and I always loved Leslie Knope’s journey, but it’s hitting me even harder this time, now that I’m further along mine.

The way she achieves her dream, loses her dream, readjusts, and just keeps struggling… It’s everything. Continue reading “The Power of Leslie Knope’s Journey”

I just finished writing a story about alittle lion with a mane of flowers, and I’m thinking of publishing it to Deep Sky Anchor
on Monday. It already has art from Midjourney, and my mom, who’s good enough to be a professional copy-editor, will probably look it over tomorrow. Continue reading “Taking Back the Power of Production, One Story at a Time”

I can tell the air is bad today just from the color of the light leaking in around the edges of the closed blinds in my room.

Everything is yellowed like life has become an old newspaper.

Sometimes as I’m scrolling twitter, wondering why exactly I’m doing that, I remember my parents reading the newspaper when I was a kid and think about how scrolling twitter is just the modern version.

I’m just not sure if that makes me feel better or worse about it.

The fifteen-year-old, coming downstairs after their bedtime: “So… I don’t eat fish…”

This was a lead-in to proposing that we should buy them a pet fish every time they finish an English assignment this coming term.

I love lots of pets… but… no.

The more I watch people rage against AI art programs (which are fascinating and bring beauty into the world), the more amazed I am that humanity has ever made any forward progress towards improving our lives and world in any way at all. Continue reading “Forward Progress”

I’m not sure there’s a more cynically toxic concept in existence than, “If everyone’s special, no one is.”

It’s pretty much the exact polar opposite of Mr. Rogers looking out from a TV screen and genuinely telling every person in the world how special they are to him.

I would rather live in a world where everyone has the opportunity to express their heart and soul through art and has easy access to the kind of art that will most comfort and inspire them, even if the flip side is that no one is ever paid for creating art.

We live in a time when people fight tooth and nail to claim creating art is a JOB and a CAREER and needs to be PAID, and the idea that art is something people do just for the love of it… is anathema to that. Continue reading “For the Love and Accessibility”

As someone who’s lost friends over and over again and been hurt by everyone from complete strangers to the people I thought I was closest to…

The idea of being able to summon art for myself to enjoy that’s not dependent on the whims of an actual person behind it… is restful. Continue reading “Art Freed from Artists”

When I was a kid, I entered a county fair poetry competition. When I got to the fair, I excitedly ran to see what poem won — it was a total plagiarized ripoff of a poem from Calvin & Hobbes. I recognized it immediately. Clearly, the adults in charge hadn’t.

The problem isn’t AI. Continue reading “Plagiarism in the 90s”