Must keep telling myself this. IIRC, in Tobias Buckell's survey of when authors first sold a novel, the average was novel number 3 with a mean of 5. (Grokked from Mer Haskell)
The Stop Predending Art Is Hard t-shirt. Bwahahaha. (Grokked from Neil Gaiman)
Catherine Schaff-Stump shares a squib by Gerald Warfield with a description and his experiences with the Odyssey Writing Worshop.
Nathan Bransford describes the publishing process with animated gifs. (Grokked from John Joseph Adams)
Justine Larbalestier on the supposed powers of (negative) reviews. Some views from the "so, you've had your book published, now what?" side of the equation.
Have a really bad plot idea? Hey, now you can win a book with it. And the book is the 2013 Guide to Literary Agents. You know, so you can inflict your bad plot line on them. Or you could win a query/synopsis critique.
Vince reminds us just why the Oxford comma is important. Yeah, you really don't want that.
This is why you hire professionals to handle your events. Here is Kate Upton and Irina Shayk at a launch party for the Samsung Galaxay. Note what phone Kate Upton is actually using. It's sitting on the couch next to her, in case you don't see it. There's a PR person that's looking for a new job.
Eleven things you didn't know about the Apollo 11 moon landing. Actually, I did know a number of those, but then I'm a geek. (Grokked from Tobias Buckell)
And continuing that theme, some of the most badass moments in space. (Grokked from Matt Staggs)
Erich makes the cogent argument of why being a CEO doesn't really prepare you for political office. Also, okay, I was going to do a post on this but I might be able to short hand it here. This is what a private equity firm does. They find a company who is sound on all other aspects except one, finance. Typically because of debt or cash flow issues. They then buy the company, which relieves the debt or cash flow issues. Then they leverage the shit out of the company (that is, they take out new debt on the company) to pay themselves a profit. The company then (with or without the equity firm's help) then must both meet profitability goals and repay all that debt the prevail equity firm took out. And just to be clear about this, it's all debt driven. That's right, the guy whom the conservatives of the "get us out of debt" stripe are nominating is the guy who got a lot of companies into a lot of debt. Some of them made it out, some of them didn't. That's his business experience. (Of course there's always other examples, but that's how private equity makes money from the companies they buy, they borrow it)
Ten pieces of bad news for the Romney Campaign. Although #9, as long as Romney can keep vague on just what he'll cut, everybody will be able to self delude themselves (again) into thinking the cuts will only affect those lazy people, not themselves. (Grokked from Jay Lake)
Tweet of my heart: @cstross: Economics of spam. Spam industry: $200M global annual revenue. Cost to society of dealing with the damage: $20Bn. Auto theft: $8-12Bn.
Alligator Quotient: Still outpacing them. Maybe I'm fooling myself and they're about to lap me.
2 comments:
Lotsa good stuff here. I loved the comment on the Apollo 11 moon landing asking why the dust from the capsule wasn't still suspended where it had been blown up during landing since there is no gravity on the moon.
And your observation on the Romney campaign that "everybody will be able to self delude themselves (again) into thinking the cuts will only affect those lazy people, not themselves," is spot-on. I keep dinging away at beloved inlaws that it's Republicans who are going to voucherize (yeah, I know it's not a word - work with me here) SS, Medicare, and raise taxes on the middle class to pay for the entitlement programs for the rich. Unfortunately I don't think that's quite as important to them as making sure the Negroidal socialist is removed from the White House before he and Michelle can put up any more Islamic curtains. Aaaaaaauuuuuggghhhh!!!!
Hey Jeri, I tend not to read comments on sites that don't have a moderation policy. I've found my sanity prefers it that way. And there's a few site that do moderate, and I've been staying away from certain comment threads, also to preserve my sanity.
What I think is especially interesting is that many conservatives became very disillusioned after the 2010 election (finding out that they elected social conservatives who were more interested in abortion and union busting than in fixing the economy, and that the cuts that needed to be made affected them as well). Some even gave to the DNC. However, I've notice many of them lining up again behind the conservative banner. And all the while they're believing the same lies.
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