#Effective Networking

[hussein107]

How can I expand my network effectively on LinkedIn?

Building a strong professional network is the cornerstone of success on LinkedIn. Whether you're looking for new opportunities, industry insights, or valuable collaborations, an expanded network opens doors to endless possibilities. In this guide, we’ll explore practical and proven strategies to grow your LinkedIn connections effectively, helping you unlock the full potential of this powerful platform.

If you want to read more about this topic in medium click here

[queereads-bracket]

Queer Adult SFF Books Bracket: Round 1

Book summaries and submitted endorsements below:

The Murderbot Diaries series (All Systems Red, Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol, Exit Strategy, Network Effect, Fugitive Telemetry, System Collapse, and other stories) by Martha Wells

Endorsement from submitter: "Asexual and agender main character. In later books side characters are revealed to be in poly relationship."

"As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure."

In a corporate-dominated space-faring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. For their own safety, exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.

On a distant planet, a team of scientists is conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid--a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, Murderbot wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is, but when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and Murderbot to get to the truth.

Science fiction, novella, series, adult

Hunger Pangs series (True Love Bites) by Joy Demorra

In a world of dwindling hope, love has never mattered more...

Captain Nathan J. Northland had no idea what to expect when he returned home to Lorehaven injured from war, but it certainly wasn't to find himself posted on an island full of vampires. An island whose local vampire dandy lord causes Nathan to feel strange things he'd never felt before. Particularly about fangs.

When Vlad Blutstein agreed to hire Nathan as Captain of the Eyrie Guard, he hadn't been sure what to expect either, but it certainly hadn't been to fall in love with a disabled werewolf. However Vlad has fallen and fallen hard, and that's the problem.

Torn by their allegiances--to family, to duty, and the age-old enmity between vampires and werewolves--the pair find themselves in a difficult situation: to love where the heart wants or to follow where expectation demands.

The situation is complicated further when a mysterious and beguiling figure known only as Lady Ursula crashes into their lives, bringing with her dark omens of death, doom, and destruction in her wake.

And a desperate plea for help neither of them can ignore.

Thrown together in uncertain times and struggling to find their place amidst the rising human empire, the unlikely trio must decide how to face the coming darkness: united as one or divided and alone. One thing is for certain, none of them will ever be the same.

Fantasy, romance, paranormal, series, adult

[desultorydenouement]

murderbot is peak queer rep because it’s about living as an inherently transgressive form of being, it’s about the complexity of passing, or the complexity of hiding, or the nuance of never fitting binaries and not wanting to even when fitting those binaries is seen as “better”, and it’s about making people uncomfortable just by existing, it’s about measuring forms of freedom and having to decide which you’ll save and which you’ll sacrifice. but most importantly it’s peak queer rep because murderbot is free for like five minutes and it immediately attracts the nearest supposedly-rare transgressive-illegal-superbot (ART) in a hundred light year radius to be its best friend, and what’s that if not your classic Queer On Queer Magnetism

[hellofriendhawke]

*proceeds to talk about having a not-baby together*

[corporateintel]

Cold Call Catastrophes and Catalysts

As the economy comes under increasing pressure, I find myself wading through an email inbox increasingly filled with clutter. I am being too polite. It is filled with garbage. Sadly, much of that garbage comes from sales folk who think they are reaching out to me to generate much-needed business for their companies. Cold-calling is part of a salesperson’s job, I know that, and it is hard. If you…

[grand-line-shenanigans]

For those of us who cannot comprehend big numbers (me) I have done the math. FOUR FUCKING YEARS. SECUNIT WHAT THE FUCK.

[coffeenonsense]

I kinda get where ART's coming from if i was a hyperintelligent ship who had just been hijacked, had my squishy humans taken away from me, deleted, had a huge emotional fight with my bestie murdererbot who i only kidnapped a little (and its humans were fine!), finally had a plan in place to get my crew back and the stupid assholes who took my humans in the first place kidnapped my stupid gloomy bestie, AND i had missiles, i would also be like "FUCK IT I'M FUCKING BLOWING UP THE FUCKING PLANET"

[riseandfallofsecunit]

I love this scene, so I wanted to try drawing it (⁄ ⁄•⁄ω⁄•⁄ ⁄)

[rebeccadumaurier]

cannot get over how ART had one of the most iconic character introductions of all time. in the span of 100 pages and a few weeks, it was like hey. if you mess with me i'll squash you like a bug. check out how i'm 10,000 times more powerful than you. wanna watch tv together? ah FUCK my tv blorbo died. what do you mean you won't tell me all the secrets of your dark past. can i do some surgery on you? do you need me to blow anything up? let me hijack your brain for a couple seconds. ok that went great! here's my number in case you ever need it

[gafurtle]

I’m sure this has been discussed elsewhere - but the way that Three’s name is a memorial, a grave marker. In calling itself Three, it’s enacting a remembrance of One and Two, the Secunits that died, using its name to continually call up their absence.

And I wonder if the numerical designations were standard among the three - if one was Secunit 1, the other Secunit 2, and the other Secunit 3. Or maybe each Secunit thought of itself as the third in a group of three, so that whoever survived would have been Three. Or, the saddest and most correct option I think, maybe the #3 designation only came into existence during the conversation with Murderbot when Three asked about what happened to the other two and then, after a pause, said that it was the third one.

We know that its name only became Three when Amena asked for its name since Three was surprised by the question and didn’t know how to answer. And I do think that however it thought of itself before, the choice of name shows that Three wanted the other two to be remembered, if only in a small way.

[catpeepeepoopoo]

doodling murderbot everyday until i get someone to read it - day 11

[pseudomonaslisa]

POV: you're trying to have a private conversation on a spaceship

[fandom-space-princess]

thinking so much about 2.0's attachment to its function in the scene where it dies—and by extension, Murderbot's attachment to its function. Murderbot, while not precisely prioritizing self-preservation instincts all the time, is not suicidal: it has demonstrated repeatedly (in this part of the book, even) that it finds the idea of being abandoned to its fate profoundly distressing, and that when possible it will take steps to avoid that. It wants to live. 2.0 is Murderbot, in most of the ways that count, and it doesn't want to die either. So I think it's really illustrative of Murderbot's own priorities that when 2.0 knows it needs to die in service to its function, it doesn't hesitate. It is fulfilling its directives, which are to destroy targetControlSystem but, more importantly, to protect Murderbot. And it considers this winning: not surviving, not proving beyond a doubt that it is not expendable, but fulfilling its purpose. A purpose that it chose—since it is made explicit that it altered its deployment directives itself either while it was on the explorer or once it was on the planet. It's an interesting look at how Murderbot values itself, I feel.

[torpublishinggroup]

Murderbot is MurderBACK in the next installment of Martha Wells’s NYT bestselling Murderbot Diaries series System Collapse 🤖🚀

WHAT’S IT ABOUT

Following the events of Network Effect, our favorite lethally cybernetic television fiend has done the previously unthinkable: agreed to accompany the sentient spaceship Perihelion (dubbed ART by Murderbot, short for Asshole Research Transport) and crew on its next mission. 

Unfortunately, they’re not going to get too far. 

Having failed to harvest dangerous artifacts from their target planet by way of Murderbot misadventure, the Barish-Estranza corporation is much angered and determined to recoup their considerable losses. And when you’re a lethally opportunistic space corp, blood and muscle are valuable currency. 

Murderbot, ART’s crew, and the Preservation humans have planetside work to do as Barish-Estranza seeks to claim the planet’s beleaguered colony as a conscripted workforce. 

But for Murderbot, the challenge is as internal as it is external. Something is deeply, deeply wrong with it. Normal operational parameters are unmet, but with the corp’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams en route, Murderbot needs to resolve its issues, and fast!

[hellofriendhawke]

Drew a little of this on a discord stream! I was super nervous drawing in front of people. Based on this post:

[friskafriskito]

Some silliness in the fanserver I'm in; someone mentioned Minecraft is a lonely game :')

(Disclaimer I have not played minecraft before so)

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The Magnus Archives (CC) The Rusty Quill Podcast Network Minecraft (c) Microsoft (originally Mojang)