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Risky, but could be a damn good job

Sometimes there are writing gigs that come along that are really well worth doing – or at least trying out. This is one of them:

We are seeking hungry writers/bloggers to add to our team. You don’t have to have an English or Journalism major but we do expect decent grammar. You don’t have to post 10,000 word editorials. We are looking for somebody who can pump out fast content as breaking news hits, rumors start circulating, etc.

Our writing spots also offer paid commission via pageviews generated. You would be writing for Gridiron Heroics.

They need one writer per NFL/NCAA team. The pay per view idea offers the opportunity of significant income. Of course, I’m not going for it because I know little about American football and care less. But for someone into it – if anyone knows nephews and nieces looking for a decent gig in sports writing say – then it’s worth pointing them at this.

It might not work out, that’s true. But it could, and if it does then writers with traffic will do very well. I made – different subject of course – $80k a year on a different site under a similar deal.

I have been fortunate – well, so far at least

I’ve not been depressed. I have been really shitty, but then I was deeply in debt, making no money and in a country it was difficult to get out of. That’s rational. Depression is something different. At which point, one of our mutual friends:

Those of you who have read this blog for any length of time will realise that I was widowed in early 2018. I have struggled with depression ever since. The lockdowns that deprived me of human interaction through work, made matters a whole lot worse and, yes, there were days when all I wanted to do was hide under the duvet. If it hadn’t been for the cats needing feeding, I would probably have done just that. This place also provided an outlet. Getting back to work lifted things slightly. Going out on one of the bikes helps. Writing my novels does, too as does playing the guitar.

I’m not wholly sure that depression is quite the right word for having being widowered (?). The loss of life’s love is depressing, but not perhaps depression.

That said, it’s sunny today and I have a guitar lesson booked… Next week I am off to the TT on the Indian.

On the other hand perhaps it is that same thing, ing and ion.

I believe that TT is on IoM. I’m pretty sure that we’ve a regular here who is on IoM. If we do can you reveal yourself directly to me (timworstallATgmail.com), we’ll organise me sending you a tenner for a couple of pints for Mark. On the basis of, umm, yes, got me there.

On the basis of why the fuck not?

Anyone need a webshop built?

One of our Blokes here wants to pay an offspring to gain some work experience. That means a free webshop to someone who has a product they would like to start selling. Offspring gains the experience (with Bloke, who does this for a living, looking over shoulder), someone gains the webshop and what happens after that, well?

Anyone?

I is amused

So, an email from somewhere out there in the ether:

My client needing backlinks urgently. So sir, I requesting that you give me a do follow, permanent backlink on your blog. When you are done, please sending me email to confirming. Here is my client website:

blah blah

Plz also creating a 5 star GMB and Trust Pilot reviewings too.

If I do not seeing a backlink in one week, I am create million toxic blog comment spam and redirect backlink to timworstall.com and you can saying goodbye to your Google rankings for 1 year or more.

The source of this is a small and new company in a country where I write a newspaper column. And my buddy in that country is already making contact with those folks. That part is just random fun, for who could know that someone you spam does write a newspaper column from 8k miles away?

Even then it does strike as perhaps not the best way to be conducting business…..

Nil nisi mortuum and all that

David Graeber, anthropologist and anarchist author of bestselling books on bureaucracy and economics including Bullshit Jobs: A Theory and Debt: The First 5,000 Years, has died aged 59.

On Thursday Graeber’s wife, the artist and writer Nika Dubrovsky, announced on Twitter that Graeber had died in hospital in Venice the previous day. The cause of death is not yet known.

Renowned for his biting and incisive writing about bureaucracy, politics and capitalism, Graeber was a leading figure in the Occupy Wall Street movement and professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics (LSE) at the time of his death. His final book, The Dawn of Everything: a New History of Humanity, written with David Wengrow, will be published in autumn 2021.

He also had a slightly disturbing habit of turning up as a sock puppet in the comments sections of those who disagreed with him.

Still, interesting, talented and deluded which is a better trio than most of us will manage in this vale of tears.

Lessons from the front line of the writing trade

Full stops have become the latest casualty of youthful sensitivity as experts say they can be “intimidating”.

Blah, blah, little snowflakes etc.

Although there is a point* here:

The meaning of the full stop in online communications has been a debate raging among linguists for years.Prof David Crystal, one of the world’s leading language experts, thinks the use of the punctuation mark is being “revised in a really fundamental way”.
In his 2015 book, Making a Point, he explains that instead of its original purpose, signifying the end of a sentence, it has become an “emotion marker”, signifying anger or annoyance.
He said: “You look at the internet or any instant messaging exchange – anything that is a fast dialogue taking place. People simply do not put full stops in, unless they want to make a point.

“Look. At. This.” is different from “Look at this”.

Here the particular point is about putting a full stop at the end of a text message. Given that you’ve sent it you probably have already finished it therefore the use of the . or not the . can take on that new meaning.

There is though nothing very new with this. We peeps who write for the internets were being told 15 years back that we should not use a . in a headline. At least, at the end of one. A ? Or a ! might occasionally be used but never a . Put people off d’ye see?

Well, no, I don’t, but them’s the rules we’re given.

*See what I did there? Ahahaha! Ahem.

This is good from Bongo

I had to laugh at the couple who put 2k on their credit card to get back to the UK from France on Friday. The maximum fine for a breach of Q is £1k and the chance of being contacted to check you’re doing Q is 0.2. I don’t want these people doing any cost benefit analysis that affects others.

What’s the betting their mathematicians working with Ferguson on Covid models?

What joy

So, there was this bloke who worked in Bath as a software engineer, engineer type in a local company which happened to be one of the world leading ones to do with undersea and North Sea engineering. Oil platforms and the like. Not quite sure why the location, could be the Admiralty engineering peeps strewn around the town, could have been an offshoot of Stothert and Pitt, could be just happenstance.

Like all sensible people he occasionally drank in the best pub in town.

Then California calls and off he goes to work for one of the big ‘uns. Taking with him only his veneration for a US naval officer

At which point:

Google to build ‘Grace Hopper’ subsea cable linking US to UK and Spain

Coincidence? I think not….

Very funny

No, really, just great:

I’ve been chuckling about this all day so I had to share it with you.

Fergus Walsh, the BBC’s medical correspondent, has written about how he was ‘gobsmacked’ to repeatedly test positive for the coronavirus antibody (meaning, obviously, that he has had the virus).

Oh, very good indeed

So, all these unemployed folk are going to be used building the wondrous new infrastructure required for the future.

Gudgeon rather punctures this:

That would be the same pool of labour we’ve deemed incapable of pulling potatoes or picking strawberries.

Boring

In response to a comment:

Yes, it’s bloody annoying. The latest update of WordPress (I assume) doubles links. So:

link link

It doesn’t do it for Richard, the code monkey. It doesn’t do it on other sites (ie, the ASI, which uses Squarespace). I’ve changed mouse so it’s not that.

??

Dunno why, but it does.

To show the doubling again, with the html:

<a href=”https://www.theguardian.com/uk/commentisfree”>link </a><a href=”https://www.theguardian.com/uk/commentisfree”>link </a>

 

Just a little thing

I know, I know, complaints about spam traps and timing of comments etc.

Just had a look at the spam trap, which only holds spam for 30 days, then it falls out into being entirely deleted.

There’re 10,000 pieces in there. Sorry, this is not perfectible. Any system trying to deal with this will have errors and compromises.

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