For your rejectomancy consideration… "If you’ve gotten more than a few rejections, maybe even from me, you may have heard 'I’m sorry, I just didn’t fall in love with this,' as a reason an agent isn’t offering representation or an editor isn’t offering a book deal." (Grokked from DongWon Song)
"I’ve found that the insidious problem for me in scrolling through social media is that it feels like action. Ironically, it also creates – in me – a profound feeling of being out of control over events in the wider world, while generating a huge amount of anxiety and worry. But while surfacing atrocity after atrocity, treason after treason, may feel like action, we often find that our righteous need for easy action turns us into agents in the proliferation of disinformation and chaos." Kameron Hurley puts it succinctly, although I do try and find what I believe are creditable sources for the links I post here (or at least see that other outlets are reporting on the same story). She is also truthful on reclaiming our own space. I wanted to do this in 2016, but then the election tossed those ideas in the bin. After this coming election (in November) I am thinking of taking an internet vacation for some duration. I need to break out of this mindset. In the last year I've reclaimed some time for writing (I really want to write those other projects but I feel relieved to write a stock sword and sorcery story like I loved when I was a kid). I like to designing silly things, which are the t-shirts I sell (buy my stuff!), but even that has been hard to prioritize in this last year. I could probably write 7000 words on the storms that are tearing at me even if I just focus on reclaiming myself (and not about the storms themselves, which tend to be the focus of this blog, for which I've written hundreds of thousands of words over the past 3 years).
"Scientists have taken a small step toward personalizing treatment for depression… A study of more than 300 people with major depression found that brain wave patterns predicted which ones were most likely to respond to the drug sertraline (Zoloft), a team reported Monday in the journal Nature Biotechnology."
"Tracking data from almost 350,000 patients with a large commercial insurer, the researchers found that more than 20% were hit with an unpaid balance, according to a study released Tuesday in JAMA. The average bill was over $2,000. The researchers didn't have the actual bills received by patients, so they calculated what health care providers could bill based on claims data: unexpected out-of-network charges minus average costs insurance would pay." Uh, yeah. I think they estimated low.
"In an incredible feat of remote engineering, NASA has fixed one of the most intrepid explorers in human history. Voyager 2, currently some 11.5 billion miles from Earth, is back online and resuming its mission to collect scientific data on the solar system and the interstellar space beyond." (Grokked from Dan)
"NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped a rare view of one of these dust devils in action. The MRO HiRise camera team at the University of Arizona shared the fascinating photo on Monday."
"NASA and SpaceX are closing in on the first launch of humans into orbit from US soil since 2011, when the space shuttle made its final flight… Although the space agency has not yet said so publicly, NASA is working toward a May 7 launch of a Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the International Space Station." (Grokked from John)
"Yet Ginsburg said on Monday that one of her life’s goals — writing a strong prohibition against gender discrimination into the Constitution — must be put on hold." That's not exactly what she said, but boy does that get the clicks.
"There was a time when congressional Republicans railed against the budget deficit. In recent history, think of the Tea Party movement, whose members called for driving down debt, deficits and government spending… But the U.S. deficit has soared, and the budget proposal (Trump) unveiled Monday is no match for it." It's so cute that some of the true believers still think they're a part of the party and haven't been pushed aside by the social conservatives that they rallied in the 80s to keep in power. Also, as the president likes to tell us, we are in the midst of a booming economy, this is exactly the moment we should not be having deficit spending and be paying down our debt. Because when the bad times come, government needs to spend.
"Today the Trump administration released its comprehensive budget for the Federal government for FY 2021. The White House has requested that Congress appropriate $33.4 million to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for the orderly closure of the agency. This amount includes funds to meet grants and matching offers awarded prior to October 1, 2020, as well as funds to cover administrative expenses." Autocrats and fascists don't need culture when they will tell you what you like, what your history is, and what you can appreciate. These programs, the National Endowments, have long been a target of conservatives.
"Fresh off a series of scathing attacks from Donald Trump because of his vote to remove the president from office, Mitt Romney spent Tuesday hunting for votes for the president’s agenda." Don't get caught up in the petty squabbles. They'll all support Trump when it comes down to the clutch. Romney knew he could cast his vote to find Trump guilty and it wouldn't mean a damn thing except for his positioning and self-gratification.
"The Department of Justice will reverse course Tuesday on its sentencing recommendation for President Donald Trump's longtime friend and former campaign adviser Roger Stone, a senior DOJ official said, only hours after Trump himself reacted to the recommendation by calling it a 'miscarriage of justice.'" For not having "any connections" the timing is awfully suspect. And despite having decided before Trump tweeted, according to the DoJ spokesperson, they waited to announce until after the tweet. But then the DoJ knows that if Trump's tweet and or ire is actually connected to their reversal, this is another impeachable act.
And then, "Two lead prosecutors on Roger Stone’s case abruptly withdrew from that proceeding Tuesday afternoon, just over a week before Stone’s sentencing — in an apparent protest of interference from Justice Department higher-ups over a sentencing recommendation for the longtime Trump adviser." With one of them resigning from the DoJ completely. I think that tells us exactly where the orders for this came from. And now all four lawyer who prosecuted the case have asked to be removed, with one resigning from the DoJ entirely.
"The New Hampshire primary is over and Sen. Bernie Sanders has been named the victor with 26% of the vote with 94% of precincts reporting." Shocking he won in his home state.
"Democratic voters turning out for Tuesday's New Hampshire primary say they are looking for a candidate who can beat President Donald Trump over one who agrees with them on the issues by a roughly 2-to-1 margin, according to early exit polls conducted for CNN… Six in 10 Democratic voters in New Hampshire prioritize a nominee who can beat Trump. Yet Democrats seem split over what qualities a candidate ought to have." Dear fellow Democrats, vote for the person of your choice, don't try to game the November election. And then support whomever is the nominee and get the fuck out to vote and we will win.
"President Donald Trump claimed that his rally on Monday had been attended by '40 to 50,000' people, despite the venue holding fewer than 12,000 people."
"Among them was a 1963 poem called 'The Snake,' which Trump interpreted as a parable on the dangers of illegal immigration. Many critics have repeatedly denounced Trump's version of the poem as racist scaremongering."
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