I'd be remise if I didn't point out a few other writerly patreon/drip items. Fran Wilde has a Drip were she offers a lot of things. She also was doing a LOUDBIRD thing (it was a twitter performance piece, but I think she was making it into a bigger project). I don't know if her general drip account gets you that as well, but her LOUDBIRD tweets were hilarious (and a welcomed respite from the news these past two weeks). Jason Sanford has a patreon and subscribers get a genre gossip column. I hear it's excellent. =Tobias Buckell has a patreon where you get exclusive stories and other things. Tobias is one hoopy frood and I dig his writing. And Kameron Hurley also has a patreon where you also get access to exclusive stories. Ms Hurley is also working to emigrate to Canada, but I'm not sure if she wants help through the patreon or her general tip jar for help with that (and if she's watching, there are many of us who are interested in this process, we'd all like to know more).
John Scalzi gives his endorsement for "distraction-free" software. I've heard of Freedom before (from Tobias Buckell, IIRC), and I think I had installed an earlier version, but then never activated it. I may need to do something like this soon.
"So go home. Sleep. And then when you are ready, spread your wings and begin to fly." Cat Rambo's morning keynote speech for the Surrey International Writers Conference (2016).
"Koko, a western lowland gorilla known for her impressive sign language skills, died in her sleep Tuesday morning at the age of 46, The Gorilla Foundation has reported."
"Last week, a giant dust storm on Mars took up about a quarter of the Red Planet. Now, it's officially "planet-encircling" global dust event, according to NASA." CNN, um, you do know the Curiosity tweets are not actually written by the Curiosity rover, right?
"A 9-year-old boy in Greece permanently injured his left eye when he repeatedly gazed into a laser pointer's green beam, doctors say." Don't do this.
"There has been increasing attention directed towards the rising rate of colorectal cancer in younger age groups. In the United States, there was a 51 percent increase in colorectal cancer incidence in adults younger than 55 years old between 1994 and 2014." Fuck cancer.
Just how stupid are we? "According to a recent survey, seven percent of Americans believe chocolate milk comes from brown cows." Yes, all the respondents were "adults." Actually most of our milk comes from holsteins which are black and white (and have been made into grotesque, monsterous parodies of cows by breeding to get high-milk production - yes, they still "look" like cows from a distance, but they're giants whose hips bulge out of their skin and they have weak legs). (Grokked from Saladin Ahmed)
"By the time Fridays roll around, 74-year-old Hale, a principal at West Elementary School in McArthur, Ohio, is overcome with worry, wondering whether her students will survive the couple of days away from school." Meth is making a comeback. About 2 years ago a house just west of the village blew up. It was a meth lab and they got careless. Meth never really went away, it's just heroin was cheaper. But now meth is made in Mexico. See drugs come and go, but the problem never does. It just stays and burrows deeper into the fabric of communities.
How go the Trade Wars? China tells their farmers to grow more soybeans.
"According to the suit filed by Underwood, who took over the A.G.’s office after her predecessor, Eric Schneiderman, resigned over abuse allegations, the Trump Foundation “was little more than a checkbook for payments to not-for-profits from Mr. Trump or the Trump Organization.” Here’s a taste of the allegations regarding how the family charity misappropriated its funds…" Someone's been naughty. Remember when Trump asked us if we wanted to have a president who was being investigated for criminal activity from day one of their presidency? (Grokked from Chuck Wendig)
"'The students reviewing these records were shocked by the abuse and neglect these children were subjected to at the hands of U.S. officials. The fact that these children were already so vulnerable — most traveling alone in hopes of escaping violence and poverty in their home countries — made the unlawful and inhumane actions reflected in the documents even more distressing,' said Claudia Flores, faculty director of the International Human Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School." And this was during the Obama Administration when it was just "unaccompanied" minors. Jail is no place to "store" kids. (Grokked from Xeni Jardin)
"The nonprofit, Southwest Key Programs Inc., is to be paid more than $458 million in fiscal 2018, according to the data -- the most among the organizations, government agencies and companies that run a detention and care system for immigrant children on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services. Southwest Key has about a dozen facilities in Texas, including a site at a former WalMart Inc. store in Brownsville that has drawn attention from members of Congress and national news organizations." Just because it's a "non-profit" does not mean they don't make a hellalotta profit. (Grokked from Kelli Link)
"The cost of holding migrant children who have been separated from their parents in newly created "tent cities" is $775 per person per night, according to an official at the Department of Health and Human Services — far higher than the cost of keeping children with their parents in detention centers or holding them in more permanent buildings." The problem is we don't have enough permanent buildings to implement this plan. It costs even less to release these families with some form of tracking. (Grokked from Xeni Jardin)
"As President Trump faced growing outrage over his child detention policy on the U.S.-Mexico border, conservative outlets like Fox News and Breitbart scrambled to his defense. They urged Trump to stand firm, describing the forced separation of migrant children from their families as part of a strategy to keep America's borders safe… But by Wednesday afternoon, that narrative began to unravel as national outrage grew and it became clear the president would reverse course."
"The order also seeks more authority to detain those families together until the end of their immigration proceedings. That process will begin immediately, which is likely to be met with swift legal challenges, though the order does acknowledge that current law may restrict their hands… But there are no new special procedures for children already in custody, according to the Department of Health and Human Services." This is not an actual reversal of the previous policy, and it adds a whole lot more bullshittery to the mix.
"According to the investigation, a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in California in late April alleges the Shiloh Treatment Center, a private shelter south of Houston that houses immigrant minors, was administering drugs to children against their will, leaving them 'dizzy, listless, obese and even incapacitated,' as described by the Reveal report. Reveal also reported that the children were told the injections were vitamins, and that they could not see their families again unless they cooperated." JFC!
"Immigrant children as young as 14 housed at a juvenile detention center in Virginia say they were beaten while handcuffed and locked up for long periods in solitary confinement, left nude and shivering in concrete cells."
"Dozens of federal agents descended on a major meat supplier in northeast Ohio on Tuesday, arresting 146 Fresh Mark employees in what the agency calls its largest workplace raid in recent history — and its second massive raid in the state this month." Still, no business owners have been arrested or charged with all these ICE business raids.
"You could call what (Sec. Nielsen) said a deception, an evasion or a technical nicety. NPR will not call what Nielsen said a lie because it cannot gauge her intent… I report about the media for NPR and in so doing, I periodically cover NPR and its policies. I don't speak for the network. I would say the word 'lie' fits here." Conservatives thought Obama lied all the time (mostly because the truth didn't fit into their worldview), so now they believe they also can lie all the time.
"'Was that a man or a woman? Because he needs a haircut more than I do,' Trump joked as the protester was escorted out of the Duluth event. 'I couldn't tell. Needs a haircut.'" Long-haired, hippy freaks need not apply. YEs, conservatives are still fighting the culture wars of the late 50s.
Tweet of my heart: @MykeCole "This is not who we are" is the new "thoughts and prayers." (Grokked from Matt Staggs)
No comments:
Post a Comment