Miranda Suri sings the praises of writer retreats and Las Vegas. And I have to agree with her.
Fifty collective nouns to bolster your vocabulary. A "Worship of Writers", I'll have to remember that collective noun for the next convention. and a kindle of kittens sound silk you should be able to rub them together to get a spark. (Grokked from Jay Lake)
Kameron Hurley on her own hitting bottom and crawling back up. What she says is very true, especially the part about having some success and feeling on the cusp, and there is so much more to lose now.
Teri Windling reminds us what fairy tales tell us.
Misty Massey on writing stand-alone novels in a world where everyone has series and trilogies.
"Kids are so much braver than adults, sometimes, and so much less easily disturbed," (Neil Gaiman) says. "Kids will make their nightmares up out of anything, and the important thing in fiction, if you're giving them nightmares, is to demonstrate that nightmares are beatable." Neil Gaiman on NPR. I had a chance to meet Neil a very long time ago. I had read his "Neverwhere", which was new then. And a friend had a free ticket to a speech by him. I've always wondered how different my life would have been had I gone.
Nine SEO quirks. If you know what SEO is, cool. If not, no need to read. (Grokked from WannabeWriter06)
Why being slightly tired makes you a better programmer (and possibly, for those of us starting out, a writer). (Grokked from Christopher Cornell)
So, you know the NHS, that socialist, horrible, unresponsive and unwilling to spend money to save lives health care service in Britain that all the conservatives like to rail about. For an organization that, according to conservatives, wouldn't spend a farthing to save anyone's life and is just cutting costs, blah blah… yeah, well, they're creating a database of cancer genomics. Cancer patients will have their cancers fully sequenced to help them overcome some of the pitfalls of chemotherapy. Too bad our "best healthcare system in the world" doesn't do this, even to the point of having out government research gathering this kind of information, except for hideous amounts of private cash (see: Jay Lake's "Acts of Whimsy" fundraiser). (Grokked from Jay Lake)
"There’s a lesson in here somewhere about the Market and Meritocracy and how much money ends up being available for rewarding management when you don’t actually have to pay your labor force." Note that it's also applicable to low-wage jobs as well. Having worked at one of those fast food places mentioned (well, the Canton, Ohio franchises), you wouldn't believe the money they make. I saw the "hourlies", which is the profit calculated by the sales per hour minus CoB and wages. That's the profit that goes to the franchise owner (and to pay for the less profitable hours, like the prep work in the evening). But then you have the Congress forcing the Post Office to prefund their retirement plan for the next 75 years. Now. Forced by the GOP, you know, those people who are "good at business". Yeah. Tell me again how Obamacare, taxing the rich, and estate taxes are class warfare and are just so terrible to the rich. (Grokked from the Slactivist)
"In other words, guns are not evenly distributed across the U.S. population, they are concentrated in the hands of a minority. Most people that don’t own a gun are never going to buy one, so the best strategy for gun manufacturers is to convince people that they need lots of guns." Let me tell you the name of the game, boys. We call it "riding the gravy train." (Grokked from Jay Lake)
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