annathepiper

This has been one of those weeks that seemed busier than what it really was.  I had an interview Monday and got this moving to start selling insurance.  I don't plan on sticking with insurance sales.  It's something to bring money in while I look for something more stable and less stressful on my car.  There will be a lot of driving with this company.  No sitting behind a desk and making phone calls.  At least this company, American Income and Life, is legit and no pyramid scheme from what I can tell.  It also isn't like trying sell a Hyla (a vacuum system thingy) either which is a life saver.

Most I'll have to do is get a new laptop because the one I have now is getting old and I don't think anyone was to run my power cord to an outlet.  Not to mention, I'll have to clean it up and get rid of my pretty stickers and shinies on the lid.  Also, there are a few keys missing thanks to my tom cat.  Silly thing that he is.

Well, on to the checks:

1) Get a job or at the very least attend five interviews for a job.

Well, this one is coming along.  Two interviews down.  Technically, I have a job now, I'm studying for my health and life insurance license.  Not very fun.  :P

2) Edit/revise five chapters of Society of Night and Lies.

I've paused at chapter 11 to send out the willing vic... err beta readers.  Their input will help continue on with the rest and, of course, I those first pages need to be good enough to start querying.  I have done two chapters before sending out this part, so three more to go.

3) Write two chapters of Black Friday 2.

Haven't touched this one, yet.  Don't worry, I will.

4) Exercise twice a week.

Um... I have exercised once this week.  In all honesty, it was walking around three different grocery stores in one day.  It was something!

If you’re into the whole old-school SF idea of planned/constructed societies and all that -and if you haven’t read much SF of the 30s though early 60s, you’ve missed out – you really need to read about Synco (a.k.a. Project Cybersyn) in Chile during the Allende administration, before the Pinochet coup d’etat. Because they tried it, for industrial production.

The Wikipedia article gives you an overview, but THIS WAS REAL, NOT A MOVIE SET:

The Opsroom or Operations Room: a physical location where [nationalised industry] information was to be received and stored and made available for speedy decision-making. It was designed in accordance with Gestalt principles, in order to give users a platform that would give them a chance to absorb information in a simple and comprehensive way.

They didn’t get finished before the coup d’etat – the screens were used, but they had to have slides prepared each day rather than getting the data straight from the computer. But they were using the data – successfully, in many cases. All the major production facilities were, in fact, connected, via a massive network of telex machines, and data was flowing to the central computer, which was modelling and predicting based on daily data, and heuristic decisions were being made and acted upon and everything.

The goal was to have it all be realtime, as their computer capabilities ramped up. Keep in mind: this was in an era when moving this kind of data around and collating it within a single company in most countries could take took weeks, and decision-making could take even longer. They were doing it daily, with an eye towards continuously.

The difference between this and the Soviet and Chinese experiments is that it was intentionally decentralised. They were specifically avoiding those systems and trying to come up with something both socialist and rationalist and distributed – some of the factories had started setting up their own mini-facilities like this central one.

I’m fascinated by what they might’ve come up with, without Pinochet and his military dictatorship. They had the entire system destroyed – Pinochet was about authoritarianism, and had no time for this distributed-authority bullshit.

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come listen to our music!

Echoed via dw:ソ-ラ-バ-ド-のおん. comments at Dreamwidth.

As a bi woman married to another woman, I’ve experienced plenty of homophobia, conscious and unconscious, deliberate and accidental. And as with all the other “isms” that are socially sanctioned and maintained by mainstream culture, it’s been an ongoing struggle to root the “lessons” of homophobia and transphobia out of even my own head. We learn to fear, even despise, difference in ourselves as well as others. I want to learn to celebrate our differences as well as our commonalities. As a writer and a reader, one of the ways in which I do that, a way in which I learn, is by reading the work of other authors.

Here are a few of the books that have completely rocked my inner world and helped me understand how I’ve internalized isms and how can I begin to unlearn them. Many thanks to the authors and editors who have given me so much to think about:

Gender Outlaw by Kate Bornstein

Another Mother Tongue by Judy Grahn

Ceremonies by Essex Hemphill

This Bridge Called My Back edited by Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua

Women, Race and Class by Angela Davis

Butch is a Noun by S. Bear Bergman

Whipping Girl by Julia Serrano

Skin by Dorothy Allison

Bi Any Other Name edited by Loraine Hutchins and Lani Kaahumau

I’d also like to do a shout out to some of the organizations that I think are doing great work to support and sustain our communities as well as to make our lives better, locally, nationally and internationally:

All Out – www.allout.org

PFund – http://www.pfundonline.org/

Outfront MN – www.outfront.org

National Center for Lesbian Rights – www.nclrights.org

I couldn’t post to LJ for the past 24 hours or so, so there’s a sudden rash of posts from me as things propagate. Sorry.

So far this week I’ve won tickets to FF6 and an upgrade to my Meat Loaf concert ticket. I clearly need to go buy lotto tickets tonight.

Young Indiana and I went to the Botanic Gardens the other day. A couple of kids around age 6 saw us and stood there grinning at us so hard I thought their faces would explode. It was a little freaky, actually. Just standing there grinning, they were. Finally I realized it was because I was SPIDER-MAN. I’m so used to wearing that hoodie I forget its effect on small children. :)

We finished watching s1 Arrow last night. HOLY CRAP! OMG! HOLY CRAP! HOLY CRAP! Then we had to watch an episode of Castle as a unicorn chaser. Fortunately it was the s5 Christmas episode, so it made an excellent unicorn chaser. *palipitations*

(x-posted from The Essential Kit)