Another author's experience with self-publishing and "traditional" publishing (a "no-advance" deal). (Grokked from Kameron Hurley)
Project (and time) management for writers. Something at which I am failing miserably at. The beginning is a promo, but after a few paragraphs it settles down. (Grokked from Kameron Hurley)
Terri Windling with a recommend reading list of articles and papers. Man I wish I could read faster.
One-hundred and twenty-eight words you can use instead of "very …". (Grokked from Dan)
A Game of Thrones Battle of the Bastards VFX reel. Because, CGI allows you to do things you can't in real life.(Grokked from Dan)
The Note to Self podcast on becoming bored and getting brilliant. Or, put down the damn phone and live. As a note in there they talk about how people who don't take lots of photos tend to remember what they see better. I'm am 100% on that. In the last vacation I took about 5,000 photos (many redundant or on sports mode, so there's a lot of nothing in there). There are times I intentionally put the camera down and didn't take a photo and just experienced. This is something I realized going to Yellowstone, there was a lot there I didn't remember because my brain was working on "taking the good photo" instead of just being. Because of my training, that "good photo" is work, and takes up a lot more of my headspace than it does for most people, and that crowded out processing being in the space as an experience. Instead I processed the space to determine how to take the best photo. Part of my personal goals is to get back to being, existing in space and time, mindful.
"We've had a global shortage of helium for years now, but thanks to an aggressive search in Tanzania, scientists have just discovered 54 billion cubic feet of the gas, an amount that can last for several years." Peak Helium? Although I know have an image of a squeaky-voiced Indiana Jones in my head.
After nearly half a century of study you would think there wouldn't be much left to discover on the Antikythera 2,000-year-old shipwreck. You would be wrong about that.
"When security firm Sucuri investigated the source of a 50,000-request/second DDoS attack on a jewelry shop, they discovered to their surprise that the attacks originated on a botnet made of hacked 25,500+ CCTV cameras in 105 countries." And here I thought criminals would just hack those cameras to aid their own nefarious ends. Just remember this when someone tries to sell you a fridge that is connected to the web. Auto defrost anyone? (Grokked from Chuck Wendig)
"'We've found these (pear-shaped atomic) nuclei literally point towards a direction in space. This relates to a direction in time, proving there's a well-defined direction in time and we will always travel from past to present,' Marcus Scheck from the University of the West of Scotland told Kenneth MacDonald at BBC News." Okay, you all are having me on here, aren't you? So, the universe is not symmetrical? Somebody better do some hard math real damn quick now. (Grokked from John)
"For the past six years, ProPublica has tracked industry payments to doctors, finding that some earn hundreds of thousands of dollars or more each year working with drug and device companies. We've reported how the drugs most aggressively promoted to doctors typically aren't cures or even big medical breakthroughs."
"American trade policy could certainly be improved upon, but… nothing Trump or any other trade skeptic proposes is going to bring back the heyday of American manufacturing jobs, for the simple reason… the decline of manufacturing employment actually doesn't reflect a broader decline in the state of American manufacturing… the output… of the US manufacturing sector is higher than it's ever been, even as manufacturing employment has barely recovered from its recession-era lows." Welcome to automation. While I disagree with the overall conclusion, it's certainly a trend I've seen. What we have left is the "high-skills" manufacturing where the higher cost (relatively) employee produces more value than ever before. There are jobs that can come back, but it'll only happen when employers and owners accept lower profit margins (I remember when 5% was considered respectable, it's now 15-25%) and are willing to pay their skilled workers more. There is a second problem going on where the available employee base's skills don't match to the current employers' needs. That can only be solved with training (both on the job and off the job), and the problems that brings (workers not willing to invest without a promise of actual employment, jobs don't want to invest when workers can just leave at the end of their training) can only be solved with higher wages. See how we keep coming back to the same point? (Grokked from Robert J Bennett)
US Customs and Border Patrol wants to know your social media handle. I'm sure it's all… "The public and affected agencies are asked to comment on the request within 60 days of its publication (i.e until August 22, 2016), but haven’t offered an online form… the commenters are asked to write them down and send them via snail mail." Fuckstockings. (Grokked from John)
An escape tunnel is located in one of Lithuania's Holocaust sites. In other news, they also discovered what maybe the largest mass burial site in the area (and they already knew about a lot of them). "'If we had never discovered the tunnel, people would have thought in another 20 years it was a myth, and they would have questioned – What do we really know happened?' said Dr. Freund. 'This is a great story about the way that people overcame the worst possible condition, and still had this hope that they could get out.'" Out of the 80 or so Jewish forced laborers (who were excavating other mass burial sites to burn the bodies and rebury them in an attempt by the Nazi's to cover up the Holocaust) who went through the tunnel, 12 were able to escape, 11 survived the war.
Okay PM Cameron, time to come out and tell us all we've been punked. (Grokked form John)
"Many of the state’s residents may have flirted with the idea, but the news out of Britain revived the debate, inspired a Texit hashtag and raised the hopes of the Texas secession movement." Please Texas, just fucking leave already.
Remember during the Obamacare debate where the Democrats stood up and said the Republican healthcare plan boiled down to "hurry up and die"? Remember how much they were derided for it? So, Mississippi "State Rep. Jeffrey Guice [R-Ocean Springs] sent (a mother asking for help to meet the $2000 a month expense for her daughter's diabetes after Medicaid funds were cut) a short message reading, "I am sorry for your problem. Have you thought about buying the supplies with money that you earn?" Clueless privileged asshole. (Grokked from Ellen Datlow)
The Trumpsters new fundraising efforts go magnificently awry. Seriously, guys, there are professionals who can help with these things and the laws are pretty straight forward. Also, if you send out fundraising emails you can't continue to claim your independence. My guess is Donald Trump sold his business email list to his campaign and the people in the campaign forgot basic campaign laws. (Grokked from Dan)
The Trumpster in an attempt to solidify his street cred said that "If you want to know Hillary Clinton's honesty & judgement, ask the family of Ambassador Stevens." So, the New Yorker asked Amb. Stevens' sister. "But what was the underlying cause? Perhaps if Congress had provided a budget to increase security for all missions around the world, then some of the requests for more security in Libya would have been granted. Certainly the State Department is underbudgeted… I do not blame Hillary Clinton or Leon Panetta." Reality isn't the conservatives' strong point. (Grokked from Joshua Parker)
"Now it seems that the Trump campaign, at least in the person of one of his big-foreheaded gits, Eric Trump, is actively soliciting donations from British Members of Parliament." There are also reports of emails going to Iceland and France. This, BTW, is a felony. While I would normally say "never chalk up to criminal intent what can be explained by incompetence," I'm not entirely sure here. (Grokked from Dan)
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