Thursday Miscellany!

• Syria's secular rebels are considering joining with Assad's forces in order to kick Al Qaeda out. That's how weird the Syrian civil war has gotten.


• The NSA is tracking pretty much everyone's location, all the time, thanks to our smartphones.


• Ivan Eland clarifies the neocons' priorities for us with respect to Iran.


• In the wake of Detroit's bankruptcy, New Deal Democrat writes about the hard, terrible lessons that decades of raided pension plans should have taught us, and what we could do about it if Democrats were the economic populists they think they are.


• When you tell me that "nobody is talking about taking guns away," this is why I don't believe you.


• In July 2012, General Motors signed a seven-year, $600M deal with Manchester United to promote the Chevrolet brand. Today, GM announced plans to withdraw most Chevrolet models from the European market (including the UK). That's GM "management" for you.

My Introduction to The Ultimate Cheat Sheet for Reinventing Yourself

I've bookmarked The Ultimate Cheat Sheet For Reinventing Yourself, and I think you should, too. I've had to reinvent myself a couple of times, and it's a lot tougher than it looks, but I succeeded in no small part because I had no other choice.

Just for example:

• As an undergrad in Math, I was sure that I would go on to a doctoral program and have a career teaching and researching mathematics. Then I saw just how horribly grim the employment picture was for Math PhDs and abandoned that idea. I regretted that decision for years, but in hindsight it was absolutely sound; I would have just had to reinvent myself anyway after a few years of underemployment.


• After the 2001 dot-bomb and a subsequent period of unemployment and underemployment, I got burned out on software engineering. I then spent a few years trying to figure out what to do next. Once I figured that out, I abandoned software engineering as a career and reinvented myself as a systems administrator, which is my current occupation.


• My wife was a metals student but got burned out on metal work; five years later, she's a world-class printmaker.

Also, any Thelemite who's serious about their path is eventually going to run into a Crisis of Will, and this commonly (but not always) manifests itself as "I know my Will is X but X looks impossible to do from here." The good news here is that X is possible. The bad news is that you're just going to have to be smart and tough about getting to X. The ugly news is that you're very likely to be ill prepared for the transition to X. Fortunately, this guide covers all that.

I like this guide a lot, but I present it with a few caveats.

1. The author states in his second paragraph:
   
   

   I’ve had to change careers several times. Sometimes because my interests changed. Sometimes because all bridges have been burned beyond recognition, sometimes because I desperately needed money. And sometimes just because I hated everyone in my old career or they hated me.

   
   
   This tells me that the author probably had to do this several times because he's an asshole, and also because he was probably incompetent at more than a few of his careers. That doesn't mean his advice is bad - in fact, it speaks to how much experience he's had trying to rebuild. But if you need to get your advice from people who are nice, or people who have never failed, then you should skip this guide. (If you're in this category and a Thelemite, you should sell all your Crowley books, leave whatever Thelemic organizations you've joined, and become a Unitarian. I'm not kidding.)
   
   
2. You may be nothing (see "B"), but your prior experience will also be your mentor (see "D3").



3. For my money, I would not publicly claim "I do X!" (See I) until you've done X for three years (see F). It just makes you look like Adam in this conversation:
   
   

   Beth: So, what do you do?
   Adam: I'm a professional stage actor!
   Beth: Oh. So, what do you do for a living?




4. As for (K), three years of this kind of dedication won't necessarily put you in the top 200-300 people. For example, if you're talking web application design, multiply those numbers by ten. You'll still make a living at it.



5. As for (UU), I think that's bad advice. Do this instead: read (A). Then (B). Then (E). Then (N). Then (R). My rule of thumb is that if you're treading water, it's only a matter of time before you drown.

One more bit of advice: it is always possible to re-invent your way back to what you loved before, even if it's not exactly what you did before.

Good luck.

On Mandela, and the coming revisionist history of the American right.

I know the media won't do this, but for every bloviating politician who waxes poetic about what a great man Nelson Mandela was, I hope the news outlets do us a solid and remind us of what those same politicians were saying about Nelson Mandela in 1988, back when America's and Britain's conservative blowhards were calling him a Communist and a Terrorist out to destroy everything good and decent.

Or we can just go and look at what they're saying about Mandela right now (2).

If we're lucky, we might hear a few words from Rachel Maddow on this topic.