With the coming festivities this fall, I think for the weekends, I'm going to go to one linkee-poo. IIRC, the past few weekends have been this way anyway, so I'm just formalizing the procedure. There's a lot of things I need to get done before classes start, so I don't have as much time to play on the internets.
Neal Stephenson is running a kickstarter campaign to create a real swordfighting game. Olay, well, you may not want to give to the campaign, but the top video is worth watching just for the fun of it. Also, as someone who loves swordfighting, this is right up my alley. "We need HR, IT, and whatever the hell these guys do." How come you all need money for cool stuff when I'm approaching broke? (Full disclosure, I do have some of those manuscripts he refers to in my own collection, and I've read others, and I am seriously thinking of the perks for the $150 level) (Grokked from Neil Gaiman)
A couple of posts on Scalzi's new book, The Human Division. While all the geeks will get their thrills on John returning to the OMW universe, I think us writers will be more interested in both the structure and marketing of this novel. While eventually it will be released as a single volume (paper and ebook), Tor and John are trying a strategy that hasn't worked so well before (e-releases in a serialized manner). But, they are changing a few of the variables, and this isn't Scalzi's first foray into alternative novel structures. So he has prepared a market, and the ebook market has matured a bit. It'll be interesting to see how well they pull this off. At risk of stroking John's ego, my original thought on reading their description was "Huhn, Scalzi does his own Martian Chronicles".
What's a designer to do when faced with the reality of design becoming a commodity? They do the work they should have been doing all along. Like we did back in the 90s, when design really transitioned to a commodity. What is not discussed in there is the expectation of immediacy that the client has been trained to. Design process? Forgetaboutit. If you haven't internalized that process by now, very few clients have the finances to run a full process anymore, and you're going to be lost in a sea of impossible deadlines.
Imaging the shadow of an atom. Okay, we'll, it's a big atom to beginning with, but still cool none the less. (Pointed to by John)
"To be fair, there is one case in which the United States does better, battling breast cancer… But overwhelmingly, the most effective care for diseases come from countries with much lower costs." Fareed Zakaria on curbing the cost of health care. (Grokked from Jay Lake)
"Many of the governors threatening to stymie implementation of the Affordable Care Act preside over states with high uninsurance rates, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation." Really? You could have knocked me over with a feather.
To all those conservatives bewailing the recent job reports, where the fuck were you in 2006 when this started? Looking at that chart, the last few months look comparable to the Bush Administration.
Conservatives and progressives held to different ethics standards? Why no, that can't possibly be. (Grokked from Jay Lake)
"America's Billionaires: Are They Crazy Enough?" An interesting sociologic squib on the psychology of the different income groups, mostly skewed to the top. But what you find at the top isn't the generous magnanimousness you might expect from people who have it all. (Grokked from Patrick Nielsen Hayden)
The PA Voter ID might disenfranchise more legitimate voters than expected? Almost 9.2%, mostly in urbanized areas? Why, that's shocking.
"The Romney camp… accuse(ed) the Post of confusing outsourcing and offshoring, but this is a pretty pathetic defense. For one thing, there weren’t any actual errors in the article. For another, it’s simply not true, as the Romney people would have you believe, that domestic outsourcing is entirely innocuous. On the contrary, it’s often a way to replace well-paid employees who receive decent health and retirement benefits with low-wage, low-benefit employees at subcontracting firms. That is, it’s still about redistribution from middle-class Americans to a small minority at the top." And I believe that's about the most succinct description I've seen yet. (Grokked from Jay Lake)
Tweet of my heart: @Cbarzak: It's easier to write 1st drafts than to rewrite, but it's better to rewrite than to let 1st drafts think they're so damned special. #writing
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