http://www.societyofrobots.com/images/robot_arm_mobipulator.jpg
You're basically going to be in deep shit if he tries to help you.
WRT taking a break, as a long-time reader I'd far rather you do anything necessary to make it possible for there to be lots more books down the line than keep feeding the beast and end up losing the ability.
I'm a visual artist rather than a writer and I'm really struggling to find my feet and start work again a whole year after a terrible month that involved very traumatic family event and the loss of my long-time studio. I have no idea how to find that creative space again and I have a show booked in April.
Hearing about what other folk have done/are doing to regain their mojo (assuming the basics of diet/sleep/exercise/routine are well in hand so go without saying) is immensely helpful at this point.
]]>On entirely another note, the first thing that came to mind when Russia and France joined in bombing was target selection. Unless, as seems very unlikely, they had new information that the US did not have, then they would be bombing almost at random for the sole purpose of posturing. This very obviously could not end well.
That there were hospitals and civilian homes under bombardment pretty much immediately was therefore practically guaranteed. The US holds the gold standard of surveillance and if there were known-good targets then they'd already have flattened them.
Semi-random bombing is a fantastically terrible idea and seems basically guaranteed to create enemies, doing Daesh's work for them. Why any nation not under direct internal threat from its own extreme right would even consider it is beyond me.
]]>Aside a few old trusted male authors from whom I will buy basically anything, every last piece of fiction I have finished (note that I started way more than I finished, I'm pretty ruthless these days) during 2015 has been by a woman. I'm not gonna list them, too damn many, but I read primarily SF.
I didn't set out to do this, it just happened organically. Here's how: Ann Leckie's Ancillary books totally blew me away. In the process of looking for work of comparable quality many authors were recommended. The point of initial interest happened to be a woman author, so perhaps that influenced the recommendations. Almost certainly true for algorithms but I'd have thought not from actual people, at least not the ones I personally know.
Then I noticed that I was doing it, and in the wake of that caught up with the existence of efforts of the kind Kristine is engaged in, then focused on threads like this one, in that order.
Then last but not least, as a number of previous posters have pointed out,] this thread has itself functioned as a list of recommendations. After due research I will doubtless buy at least some of the books. Lots of tabs open in the background here to that end.
Points: 1. Most of the new SF that I have considered interesting enough to finish in the last 12 months has been by women. It may be that women's voices are the ones least content to rest on tradition, or just that it's been a great year for women writers, but there it is.
Incidental: despite the name, I'm male. cf Johnny Cash, A Boy Named Sue.
]]>This could very quickly leave young genre-bending authors facing all the cons of (for instance) Amazon with none of the pros. We'd all be poorer for it. Best that these fuckers get properly nobbled before they get a clawhold.
]]>I'm suggesting this for purely helpful, altruistic reasons, not at all because I'd like additional opportunities for puerile pubescent giggles.
]]>Also what you say about "cunt" in Scottish vernacular is interesting, it's similar in Australia. I think there's a distinction between it and the various penis synonyms in that the latter tend to denote hubris with or without malice whereas the former implies conscious viciousness. I've heard various arguments as to how this distinction ties in with (very real) gender inequality but they all seem sort of tenuous.
The software is alarming and offensive and makes me wonder whether a boycott of any imprint that feeds to it might work. My instinct is that it won't, sadly, because people don't stop to consider the political ramifications of buying a book any more than they consider those of buying a beer or a cigarette. If you're doing any of those things you're not probably doing it from motivations that are subject to much careful scrutiny.
]]>The government depends upon them for propaganda - their brief defection to Labor in 2007 was a straightforward show of power to a conservative government that was beginning to think it governed in its own right - and in turn the government will, MUST, give them anything they want.
This is the reason that the government and commercial media make relentless unified assaults on the public broadcaster, and decry it as "biased" - it is a direct threat to all of them because it is the last unbiased media outlet in Australia.
What megpie71 is talking about is that right-wing commercial media figures are able to issue clear policy shopping lists to conservative politicians and expect to see corresponding policy changes in reasonably good time. When the commercial media whistles a tune, the government dances. The presence of music and dancing in this clusterfuck doesn't make it entertainment.
Furthermore, when Gina Rinehart speaks, the government listens. She and a couple of mates toppled a sitting Prime Minister with a brief media campaign in June 2010. If she says we ought to do a 60 hour week for $2 a day (and she really did) then you can be sure there's some head scratching going on in Parliament House while they try to figure out how to deliver it.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-05/rinehart-says-aussie-workers-overpaid-unproductive/4243866
]]>a) are small enough so that a couple renting a poor quality dwelling in a city they are forbidden to leave are left with $80 per week to feed, clothe and clean themselves and meanwhile to maintain communications, search for work, travel to meetings and purchase power for their home, and
b) are only available inside a Skinner-box Kafka nightmare that requires an iron will and detective-grade pattern recognition for mere survival
then it's actually pretty hard to argue that, considering the counterbalancing artificial detriments, there are any benefits being provided at all. One could more easily do substantially better by finding some laws to break. This defeats the purpose of social security.
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