Mindy Klasky shares her synopsis. Always good to see other people's work.
Catherine Schaff-Stump with that other d writers deal with, despair. I've been wallowing in the swamps of despair about my wright for the last 10 months.
Terri Windling on the lure of the woods and the fall of the oral tradition.
Tor.com is going to start a reread of Glen Cook's Black Company. And they're offering a special ebook price on the first volume. Insert crazy fan-boy squee here. Although, I have hard copy. The only two of this series I didn't like were the "look back" books, after the Black Company had left the North. I love me some Glen Cook. If you think you're a fan of military fantasy and you haven't read them… seriously, what are you waiting for? The first novel I made a full attempt at writing was in that style. It's still kicking my ass, but one day I want to get back to that.
George Takai responds to traditional marriage protestors' signs with signs of his own. Thanks, I needed that. (Grokked from Random Michelle K)
The new and old Merida. Really, Disney? I remember when Walt made the animators take the nipples off the female centaurs so they wouldn't be so racy. (Grokked from Jay Lake)
Jim Hines with some job hunting tips. Yes this. Also, learn what employers (and their computers) are looking for on your resume. Back when I was young, things were very, very different. For this last job search I had 3 standard resumes, which I would then select one for each position and then customized that for submission. That means, every resume is customized to the job.
Oh look, that Benghazi email the GOP echo chamber has been going nuts over for the past week turns out to have been faked by the GOP. While their version was "close" to what had actually been written, they added a bunch of other context which changed the focus of the comment. Say, which side are the liars on in your personal moral compass? (Grokked from Jay Lake)
"Here’s the lesson: marketing and promotion should never be a kick to the face. It should never be unearned or unasked for. It should not be unavoidable… This goes to any website that has anything that auto-plays ever. Sound. Music. Movie. Animation. If I’m sitting here at the ass-crack of dawn, sipping coffee, and I go to your website and get a blaring loud commercial for fucking Floor Wax and it wakes my toddler up I will find your house and shit on your pets." Chuck Wendig is smart about promotions. I'm looking at you pop-over ads and the becoming ubiquitous "sign up to get more" notices whenever I hit a website.
Twelve tips for people who have a chronic (or terminal) illness. Even for people who don't, it's pretty good advice. There's times for everything. You know those times when a friend is having a bad day and they need to talk, but don't really need you to fix their problems? That's really one of the ways you should think about dealing with friends who have chronic/terminal illness. This movie ain't about you. They don't need you to fix them. If you have something salient (just today I was able to help a friend who lost a loved one and was wondering what to do with the left over medications) you can help. But don't expect the other person to listen to you. Again, this movie ain't about you. And the "friends come and go" thing, I find, is sometimes that hardest for people to deal with. Some people don't handle these things well, that's all. While this movie ain't about them, sometimes they need to be in their own movie. It doesn't make them bad people. Also, you're allowed to feel the way you do (contradictory feelings and all). This goes for the sick person and the friend. (Grokked from Jay Lake)
The ten commandments of web design. Just like writing advice, use if it works for you.
"Aerospace giant Northrop Grumman has completed a lunar lander feasiblity study for the Golden Spike Company, which aims to begin ferrying paying customers to the moon and back by 2020." Bwa? "The company originally pegged ticket prices at $750 million per seat, but revenue from media rights and merchandising could end up cutting that by perhaps 30 percent, officials have said." Oh. But hey, 30% off sale! (Grokked from Tobias Buckell)
If only someone had a gun in the house. Oh, wait. Plus while it sounds like the mother was idiotic looking on WebMD for how to treat her son for a gunshot wound, my guess is the mother knew exactly what would happen when she took him to the emergency room and wanted to avoid that. (Grokked from Matt Staggs)
GOP senators and congresscritters of all levels are using sweepstakes and raffles of AR-15s as fund raisers. What the what?! Also, a local little league and girl's softball league. Considering these organizations support children of about the same age as those killed at Sandy Hook, exceptionally in poor taste. (Grokked from Jay Lake)
Know why the conservatives in Congress had a collective shit-fit when the idea of Elizabeth Warren being nominated for the Consumer Protection Bureau was floated? Well, it could be because of things like this. (Grokked from Tobias Buckell)
So, have conservatives come back from the brink and are now willing to work hard to fix the issues of the day, like maybe tackle jobs, the economy, immigration, doing an actual budget and appropriations that work instead of sequestration? Nope. That makes, what, the 37th vote to repeal Obamacare? Okay, time to call it, John Boehner is the worst Speaker in recent history. And he was up against Newt Gingrich. Not exactly a high bar to clear there, Johnny Boy. Or maybe you thought the game was Limbo instead of high jump?
Because conservatives are all about competition and the free marketplace, in North Carolina the conservatives there are trying to pass a law forbidding Tesla Motors from selling cars there because, you know, it's all about competition and the free market or something. You may need to know that Tesla sells their cars directly, not through dealerships (that is, what looks like a dealership is actually a company owned store). (Grokked from Neil Gaiman)
Jurassic Puddle. Okay, well the water trapped in bedrock under the Canadian Gold mine is way, way older than the Jurassic Period. But they're checking the samples for microbial life because of the presence of high levels of hydrogen. Living in the future.
Oh look, something else the right-wing media echo chamber can get all frothy about. You may have heard that scientists have figured out how to make a viable embryo/blastocyst that uses genetic material from a donor's skin cells. They call this cloning, and technically they're correct, but it's not the cloning that most of the public thinks they understand. As the researchers say, with this technique they've tried to create full grown clones of the mice and monkey tests with the results not leading to viable babies. There's a whole lot wrong with this advance (the ethics of paying egg donors, things like that), most people will freak the frock out about things that this doesn't do. Cue the right-wing freakout in 3… 2… 1…
Also, turns out the secret to human cloning is caffeine. "The magic signal is quite complex. It includes an electric shock, a cocktail of chemicals and a splash of caffeine." So, besides seeing the 1950's set of Frankenstein to deliver the electrical shock (if there isn't a Jacobs Ladder somewhere in the lab I'll be sorely disappointed), anybody else think some grad student spilt their Monster drink on the lab table? So, yea, we may be able to clone humans, but they'll all be coffee fiends from the womb.
Bread and circuses. That's all it took for the Romans. Apparently what we need is "scandals" which aren't ones, but we can all be thoroughly upset. In this case the IRS brouhaha.
Fred Clark pretty well sums up why most religious people and institutions don't really have a dog in the game regarding same-sex unions. They may want to argue, but they don't have a doctrinal leg to stand on.
Family Radio, the Harold Camping network, seems to have hit the reef, finally.
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