There's battle lines being drawn.
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong.
Young people speaking their minds
getting so much resistance from behind

Tuesday, January 8, 2019

Linkee-poo Tuesday

Wanna be a paperback writer. "Writing has never been a lucrative career choice, but a recent study by the Authors Guild, a professional organization for book writers, shows that it may not even be a livable one anymore… According to the survey results, the median pay for full-time writers was $20,300 in 2017, and that number decreased to $6,080 when part-time writers were considered. The latter figure reflects a 42 percent drop since 2009, when the median was $10,500. These findings are the result of an expansive 2018 study of more than 5,000 published book authors, across genres and including both traditional and self-published writers." I hope you like raman.

"The best way to learn how to write a screenplay is to read great scripts. So, download it while you can (studios have the right to pull the scripts down, so don’t delay)!" Links to the scripts for Green Book and The Americans. (Grokked from Writers Digest)

If you want to be a (fiction) writer and you're not following Delilah Dawson on twitter, I don't think you're doing this right. Note for all writer advice, YMMV. Keep what works and toss the rest.

Wikipedia's "(l)ist of mythological objects." For you game or novel world building process. Although I've found I have a habit of creating non-standard items. Unfortunately no Holy Hand-Grenade is listed. (Grokked from Matt Staggs)

"An investigation by Kaiser Health News into thousands of recent drug recalls reveals a frightening record of medicines in the US being tainted with dangerous bacteria, mold, glass shards, rubber bits, cancer-causing chemicals, mysterious powders, and worrying metal particles. There were also cases of medications with too much or too little ingredients—or simply the wrong ingredients entirely." This is just gross negligence. (Grokked from John)

"For the study, published in Radiology, Sohn and his team fed a common type of brain scans to a machine-learning algorithm, and it learned to diagnose early-stage Alzheimer’s disease about six years before a clinical diagnosis could be made. The AI’s diagnostic skills could give doctors a much-needed headstart on treating the degenerative disease." And that may be enough of a head start to actually treat or slow the progress of the disease that robs people of their memory, dignity, and finally their selves. However it's not ready for real clinical use, and trying to get insurance to pay for the PET scans so far in advance may also be tricky. (Grokked from Janiece)

"It’s part of a statewide effort to stop several outbreaks of measles from turning into an epidemic. (New York) has had 122 cases of the highly infectious virus since September, making it the worst year for measles since the 1990s."

"Food intolerances are not the same as food allergies, but it seems a lot of people mistake one for the other." For most people, the difference isn't all that much (except for severe allergies). And people have a word for something so they apply it to their own experience.

"During WHEC-TV's Friday evening broadcast, Jeremy Kappell said "Martin Luther Coon Park," when referring to a downtown Rochester park named after slain civil rights movement leader Martin Luther King Jr… In a video viewed by CNN, Kappell says 'King' immediately after using the slur and continues with the broadcast."

"After months of pressure, Tennessee's governor granted clemency to Cyntoia Brown, who was convicted of murder at 16. She killed a man who had paid to have sex with her." "Rahaf Mohammed Alqunun, the 18-year-old Saudi woman who barricaded herself in a Bangkok hotel room as she posted pleas for asylum over the weekend, will be allowed to stay in Thailand for up to a week while U.N. refugee agency officials study her case, according to Thai authorities."

Ah, finally a profile of a rural town full of good Trump supporters. "The shutdown on top of the hurricane has caused Ms. Minton to rethink a lot of things… 'I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,' she said of Mr. Trump. 'I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.'" What wonderful Christian values they have. (Grokked from Patrick Nielsen Hayden)

"The average of polls taken since the shutdown began indicate that Americans are blaming Republicans for the shutdown. In the average, about 50% think Trump is most to blame, 35% think congressional Democrats are most to blame and about 5% think congressional Republicans are most to blame."

No transcript yet, but worth the listen. "It's Day 18 of the partial government shutdown, and it's now the third-longest on record. In the 90s, it took President Clinton and House Speaker Gingrich a record 21 days to settle an impasse." A rundown of previous shutdowns and why this one is different.

"Lawyers for Paul Manafort appear to have missed a significant court filing deadline of midnight Tuesday to respond to the special counsel's office's accusation that he lied about five topics during his post-guilty-plea cooperation sessions." Well it wasn't midnight in Moscow (oh wait, time zones don't work that way). (Grokked from Kathryn Cramer)

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