. ..with an existing organization, links into the party structure at pretty much all levels, and all the advantages of being the sitting Democrat incumbent with a long record in a deep-blue state.
And Manning brings what, exactly, to the table ???
Virtually every writer, you say ? I find plenty of major SF writers, with multiple NY Times Bestsellers, who aren't members.
So I did an experiment. I looked at the first 500 names in the SFWA directory. Now, I've been reading SF for 40+ years, and have been to a couple of Worldcons.
I recognized, at least by name, 24 of those 500 names (and several, I've just heard the name. ..). I've read at least 17 of them. I conclude, that SFWA membership is not an indicator of being a "major science fiction writer". . . .
There is SOME truth here: Government pay DOES seriously lag behind private sector pay. But the contracting world isn't MUCH better. High-end federal contractors make perhaps a quarter to a third higher than "govvies", but the 10 times cost of a fed is an exaggeration. On the average, a contractor, at fully-burdened rate, costs somewhat more than a Fed does, for the same skills and experience (and that varies by the skill in question, and location), but not overwhelmingly more.
The advantage to contractors, is that they can be dropped almost immediately at no cost to the Government. An actual Fed can drag out a dismissal for years, collecting pay and seniority while doing so. And in the meantime, if they transfer to another agency. . . the attempt to drop them goes away. . .
. . ..among her complaints were being pigeonholed (i.e. if you were good at a particular thing, they want you to concentrate on that thing, instead of broadening one's skill base), promotions were glacial (she had her Masters and STILL was a GS-9-equivalent), and the pay is abysmal, compared to their peers in the private sector.
On the other hand, 6 years experience out of undergrad, plus a Masters, and she wanted 300+K. You're not going to get that ANYWHERE in Club Feb. . . .
. ..which is why I use old tech. My current phone is a refurbed Samsung Galaxy S5. With a 64 GB SD card. It does more than I ask it to do, so it's fine. I still really don't understand people who ***insist*** on paying the Bleeding Edge Tax. . .
I've had moose. I prefer elk, but that's even harder to get than moose. But that was in my younger days, when the Moosestomper Ball at (now closed) Loring AFB had a buffet that included venison, elk, bear, moose, and other 'wild' meats. I'd pass on the bear, though: quite fatty and greasy-tasting.
I've also had bison, beefalo. and, while in Australia, Water Buffalo. All very good. . .
Want real security? Pass regulations that actually put some serious pain on a company, like the GDPR. Assuming the GDPR will be enforced and companies start being fined percentages of their revenue, not made into a toothless law like SOX, HIPAA, or other items which at best, might be used against a fall-guy worker.
Actually, hold corporate officers and the management chain PERSONALLY liable for lapses in security. Suddenly, an ROI will erupt from the ether. . .
I still remember the days of small, local ISPs. . . before they all got plowed under by Charter/Comcast/Cox/TimeWarner. Ah, for the the old days of Digital Gateway Systems (before the Church of Scientology took it down to silence Arnie Lerma) and Huskynet (an ISP so long gone that there's no trace I can find, 25 years later. . ..)
The important question, is how did the classified data get onto an unclassified system to begin with. SENSITIVE data, I can believe, but not everything sensitive is classified. If someone placed classified on an unclassified system . . ..that, technically, is a felony. Which is sporadically enforced, based on who did it. . .
I've seen, but cannot find now, that the US Department of Agriculture defined being "at risk of hunger" when the particular food you wanted was not immediately on hand. Best I could find was ranges of "food insecurity"
Specifically:
Food Security
High food security (old label=Food security): no reported indications of food-access problems or limitations.
Marginal food security (old label=Food security): one or two reported indications—typically of anxiety over food sufficiency or shortage of food in the house. Little or no indication of changes in diets or food intake.
Food Insecurity
Low food security (old label=Food insecurity without hunger): reports of reduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet. Little or no indication of reduced food intake.
Very low food security (old label=Food insecurity with hunger): Reports of multiple indications of disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake.
Now if we could only get the hiring managers to realize this. 2 cheap H1bs, that together, provide half the productivity (which is roughly my experience with them. ..) of an American worker for the same outlay, is NOT a smart business deal. . .
One last time: we do not directly elect the President. The States do. As they have since the founding of the Republic. That being said, why is it wrong for taxpayer funds to be directed to American citizens and American products ??
And, as a (former) geologist, the resultant shock of the Caldera Collapse would also likely trigger the entire San Andreas and New Madrid fault systems, so we're looking at massive earthquakes in areas outside the ash zones.
So even MORE death and devastation would be the sprinkles on top of the Sundae of Doom (grin)
> The "best part" is that these blogs filled with innuendo, incorrect information, and metric-tons of bias are done by hobbyists. Brilliant!
In other words, they're just like CNN and Fox News.
What's sad, is that the best coverage of U.S. news seems to come from the UK. The Mail, the Telegraph, the Beeb, and, occaisionally, the Guardian , , ,
. . . could have told you that. Heck. the K/T Event has a distinct signature in any rock column, and its' characterization. . . in the 1980s. . . led to the TTAPS paper, better known as the "Nuclear Winter" paper. This is 35+ year-old "news". . .
Culture. I've been at places where it was unofficially frowned on if you took "excess time off". Defined as your annual two week's leave in more than 2 or 3-day packets.
Slashdot Mirror
. . .with an existing organization, links into the party structure at pretty much all levels, and all the advantages of being the sitting Democrat incumbent with a long record in a deep-blue state.
And Manning brings what, exactly, to the table ???
. . . of Leeeeeerrooooyyyyyy Jeeeeeeeeennnnkkkiinnsssss!!!
(grin)
Virtually every writer, you say ? I find plenty of major SF writers, with multiple NY Times Bestsellers, who aren't members.
So I did an experiment. I looked at the first 500 names in the SFWA directory. Now, I've been reading SF for 40+ years, and have been to a couple of Worldcons.
I recognized, at least by name, 24 of those 500 names (and several, I've just heard the name. . .). I've read at least 17 of them. I conclude, that SFWA membership is not an indicator of being a "major science fiction writer". . . .
There is SOME truth here: Government pay DOES seriously lag behind private sector pay. But the contracting world isn't MUCH better. High-end federal contractors make perhaps a quarter to a third higher than "govvies", but the 10 times cost of a fed is an exaggeration. On the average, a contractor, at fully-burdened rate, costs somewhat more than a Fed does, for the same skills and experience (and that varies by the skill in question, and location), but not overwhelmingly more.
The advantage to contractors, is that they can be dropped almost immediately at no cost to the Government. An actual Fed can drag out a dismissal for years, collecting pay and seniority while doing so. And in the meantime, if they transfer to another agency. . . the attempt to drop them goes away. . .
. . . .among her complaints were being pigeonholed (i.e. if you were good at a particular thing, they want you to concentrate on that thing, instead of broadening one's skill base), promotions were glacial (she had her Masters and STILL was a GS-9-equivalent), and the pay is abysmal, compared to their peers in the private sector.
On the other hand, 6 years experience out of undergrad, plus a Masters, and she wanted 300+K. You're not going to get that ANYWHERE in Club Feb. . . .
It's not porn, it's HBO. . . . (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
. . .which is why I use old tech. My current phone is a refurbed Samsung Galaxy S5. With a 64 GB SD card. It does more than I ask it to do, so it's fine. I still really don't understand people who ***insist*** on paying the Bleeding Edge Tax. . .
I've had moose. I prefer elk, but that's even harder to get than moose. But that was in my younger days, when the Moosestomper Ball at (now closed) Loring AFB had a buffet that included venison, elk, bear, moose, and other 'wild' meats. I'd pass on the bear, though: quite fatty and greasy-tasting.
I've also had bison, beefalo. and, while in Australia, Water Buffalo. All very good. . .
. . .Do you want fries with that ?
Want real security? Pass regulations that actually put some serious pain on a company, like the GDPR. Assuming the GDPR will be enforced and companies start being fined percentages of their revenue, not made into a toothless law like SOX, HIPAA, or other items which at best, might be used against a fall-guy worker.
Actually, hold corporate officers and the management chain PERSONALLY liable for lapses in security. Suddenly, an ROI will erupt from the ether. . .
I still remember the days of small, local ISPs. . . before they all got plowed under by Charter/Comcast/Cox/TimeWarner. Ah, for the the old days of Digital Gateway Systems (before the Church of Scientology took it down to silence Arnie Lerma) and Huskynet (an ISP so long gone that there's no trace I can find, 25 years later. . . .)
The important question, is how did the classified data get onto an unclassified system to begin with. SENSITIVE data, I can believe, but not everything sensitive is classified. If someone placed classified on an unclassified system . . . .that, technically, is a felony. Which is sporadically enforced, based on who did it. . .
The breaches on AWS have been, for the most part, the failure of users to actually configure the security correctly, if at all. Plenty of stories of failure to secure S3 buckets full of sensitive documents. More troubling, was the hazard of using systems that you don't control, as evidenced by the AWS East-1 outage in March of this year. . . .
I've seen, but cannot find now, that the US Department of Agriculture defined being "at risk of hunger" when the particular food you wanted was not immediately on hand. Best I could find was ranges of "food insecurity"
Specifically:
Food Security
High food security (old label=Food security): no reported indications of food-access problems or limitations.
Marginal food security (old label=Food security): one or two reported indications—typically of anxiety over food sufficiency or shortage of food in the house. Little or no indication of changes in diets or food intake.
Food Insecurity
Low food security (old label=Food insecurity without hunger): reports of reduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet. Little or no indication of reduced food intake.
Very low food security (old label=Food insecurity with hunger): Reports of multiple indications of disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake.
Perhaps you've never heard of Project Orion. . . . exceptionally heavy lift via nuclear detonations. . .
Where's the profit in THAT ?? Disposable, high-maintenance items are good for the bottom line. . . as long as you're selling. . .
Feedstock for tasty, tasty Soylent Green. . . .(evil grin)
In other words, you need SMOD. . Of course, SMOD would bring substantial Global Warming all by itself. . .
Now if we could only get the hiring managers to realize this. 2 cheap H1bs, that together, provide half the productivity (which is roughly my experience with them. . .) of an American worker for the same outlay, is NOT a smart business deal. . .
One last time: we do not directly elect the President. The States do. As they have since the founding of the Republic. That being said, why is it wrong for taxpayer funds to be directed to American citizens and American products ??
And, as a (former) geologist, the resultant shock of the Caldera Collapse would also likely trigger the entire San Andreas and New Madrid fault systems, so we're looking at massive earthquakes in areas outside the ash zones.
So even MORE death and devastation would be the sprinkles on top of the Sundae of Doom (grin)
I've found https://www.nextdoor.com/ to be a far more reliable source of what's going on in my neighborhood than anything else.
I concur. Our local discussions on NextDoor brought up issues that didn't even make the remarkably bad bi-weekly local paper. . .
> The "best part" is that these blogs filled with innuendo, incorrect information, and metric-tons of bias are done by hobbyists. Brilliant!
In other words, they're just like CNN and Fox News.
What's sad, is that the best coverage of U.S. news seems to come from the UK. The Mail, the Telegraph, the Beeb, and, occaisionally, the Guardian , , ,
. . . could have told you that. Heck. the K/T Event has a distinct signature in any rock column, and its' characterization. . . in the 1980s. . . led to the TTAPS paper, better known as the "Nuclear Winter" paper. This is 35+ year-old "news". . .
Culture. I've been at places where it was unofficially frowned on if you took "excess time off". Defined as your annual two week's leave in more than 2 or 3-day packets.