Why friendship makes us healthier – BBC Future
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230329-why-friendship-makes-us-healthier
Well, I trust company executives…
To put their own interests first and their company’s interests second, and both of those interests above those of their employees and customers…
There’s a trust gap between business leaders, employees, and consumers. This is why
The best way to introduce yourself
https://www.fastcompany.com/90867258/this-formula-introduce-yourself-like-a-pro
With a bit of adaptation, this seems like something useful for writers and other folk that need to introduce themselves to others.
Are you feeding your characters?
If so, please stop!
How Shrinking perpetuates Hollywood’s most sexist cliché – BBC Culture
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20230315-how-shrinking-perpetuates-hollywoods-most-sexist-clich
The German clinics for burnt-out parents – BBC Future
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230228-the-german-clinics-for-burnt-out-parents
Gee, wouldn’t it be nice if Americans had a right to health retreats?
But this is America, where only billionaires have rights.
How shrinking teams are pushing workers to the brink – BBC Worklife
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20230217-how-shrinking-teams-are-pushing-workers-to-the-brink
Having been on teams built on the principle of “fewer and fewer people”, all I can say is that businesses managed that way will eventually fail.
Advice about moving to Hawaii to work
If you’re thinking of moving to the Hawaiian Islands, get hired for a job you can do here first, then move! And be prepared to sacrifice a lot to stay here.
Or be very rich.
Why?
- Living here is very expensive.
- Pay scales are not competitive with pay scales at other, similarly-expensive areas.
- Many employers won’t hire people new to the islands until you’ve been here 3-6 months.
They’ve been burned too many times by people that came to the islands on vacation, decided they loved the islands so much they had to stay, got hired somewhere here – then went back to where they came from when our cost of living hit them. Like when their first two-weeks’ paycheck came to less than their apartment rent.
And how does keeping secrets affect your characters?
Your secrets hurt your mental health. What’s the alternative? | Aeon Essays
A lot in here that can apply to us (as a person) and to story characters.
How many stories have you encountered where characters keep secrets from one another? How did it affect them and their relationships?
It also talks about guilt and shame: the differences between them, their effects on people, and ways to handle them.
The author pursued these studies of keeping secrets because he and his brother are products of a secret his parents decided to keep from them before the kids were even born: That each was the product of sperm donors. Different donors. So the usual childhood discussions of “who was the most like Dad” had a secret depth they weren’t even aware of.
If you’ve followed the Marvell Comics Universe stories about Thor and Loki, those are stories of keeping secrets, and what happened when they came out.
The movie Thor: Ragnarok is particularly about keeping secrets. The secret of their banished sister Hela, the secret of how Asgard became so powerful. When the secrets came out, Asgard was destroyed!
The James Bond movies starring Daniel Craig regularly have secrets coming back to bite the characters. In fact, the entire plot of Skyfall is about M’s secret betrayal of an earlier Double-Oh agent to the Chinese, and how that eventually kills her and massively damages the agency.
So read the essay and think of how keeping secrets affects themes, plots, characters.
Interesting article about the impact of plagiarism and generative AI on fiction markets
Have a minute of sunset beach peace
I posted a video I made of a recent trip to Nimitz Cove, Oahu. Sunset on the water, the sound of waves and occasional wind.
You can enjoy it at my YouTube channel, @gnomenomad.
Dancing Treefrog 