About this site
Tom's Takes is an independent publication launched in April 2023 by Tom Marsland. If you subscribe today, you'll get full access to the website as well as email newsletters about new content when it's available. Your subscription makes this site possible and allows Tom's Takes to continue to exist. Thank you!
About the author
Tom is a grandfather, a father, a husband. He is also a technology enthusiast and an ardent supporter of military servicemembers. He served for over 20 years in the US Navy's nuclear power field, serves on the Board of Directors for VetSec (https://www.veteransec.org), and works as the VP of Technology at a cybersecurity training company, where he is responsible for all things training content, training delivery, and technology stack.
He is an avid outdoors enthusiast, and believes in self-sufficiency and neighborhood connectedness. He is also a strong advocate for mental health awareness. He lives on some rural acreage in the greater Seattle area, and is working on becoming self-sufficient on his land with his family, while incorporating as much technology as will make their lives easier on the property.
This newsletter
He started this newsletter to go beyond his social media postings, which, depending on the platform, were topic-specific (professional content on LinkedIn, for example). He realized through his own military transition, the COVID-19 Pandemic, and recent show releases like Ted Lasso, Shrinking, and Star Trek: Picard (Season 3), that we should get to know more about people as a whole and not just their single topic they share. This newsletter really came to fruition as a result of watching The Ready Room and learning so much more about the actors behind the scenes of Picard, and wanting to share more about all of the topics that interest him, not just technology, and not just his military and veteran advocacy.
"This newsletter will be a broad array of topics - home automation, politics, veteran and military advocacy, mental health, and, of course, technology. I hope this gives you a view into the mindset of someone who, just like so many people I talk to on a daily basis in the VetSec Slack or on social media, struggles, sometimes succeeds, and sometimes fails. I'll do my best to categorize everything as I go for my followers."
The News Tag
Unlike modern media, I revere the news. I believe there has to be journalistic integrity behind new reporting, and that there should be fact-checking associated with news. With that said, I have a News tag here on my site. If I tag something with my news tag, I have attempted to adhere to the same journalistic principles I believe news agencies of old used to adhere to. While I do not claim to be a journalist, and have no formal training in the field, I do aspire to the same principles, and have summarized those here below (taken from Five Principles of Ethical Journalism: Implications for Media Representations of Autism Treatment - Association for Science in Autism Treatment (asatonline.org)):
Truth and Accuracy. Getting the facts right is important. I strive for accuracy, to give all of the relevant facts I discover, and double-check them. If I cannot, I will say so.
Independence. Journalists must be independent voices, not acting on behalf of any special interests, and disclose any conflicts of interest.
Fairness and Impartiality. Stories should be balanced and add context - impartilaity builds trust and confidence. When I state the conclusions I've drawn, I will state that those are my conclusions.
Humanity. Do no harm. Be aware of the impact of the words and images have on the lives of others.
Accountability. When I commit an error, I will admit it and correct it.
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