Michael E. Marotta as Processed by Google Gemini NotebookLM

Michael E. Marotta
Technical Communicator & Data Architect

Kyle, Texas | 734-223-9054 | books78640@gmail.com 

LinkedIn Profile - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike7marotta/ 

Technical Editorial Portfolio - https://had.aas.org/resources/astro-history

Note: I started with the latest of very many resumes that I enjoy writing and I gave it to Gemini to rewrite. I took that new resume and directed Gemini to rewrite it against four posts about technical writing from this blog. 

This is the AI's first pass. I am editing a new version.
Observations on Automation, Accuracy, and the Evolution of Knowledge 

Michael E. Marotta is an experienced technical writer and editor. His resume details a diverse background in industrial automation, aerospace documentation, and automotive technology, as well as his expertise in using artificial intelligence to manage complex data. Complementing his formal credentials, Marotta's personal blog explores a wide range of interests including amateur astronomy, literature, and ancestral history. The combined texts portray an individual who balances high-stakes technical accuracy with a deep passion for scientific inquiry and lifelong learning. Overall, the collection serves as a comprehensive portrait of a communicator dedicated to explaining emerging technologies and objective truths.

Created by Gemini NotebookLM
I could talk for 50 minutes about this slide.

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THE MANIFESTO: A PROFESSIONAL PROFILE

I understand technical writing—procedures, plans, policies—as stories because when a machine operator faces a crisis, reading a meter becomes a socially impactful event. My career is a commitment to documenting the evolution of autonomous and intelligent systems, seeking truths that are perceivable and reasonable, empirical and logical. With over 20 years of experience, I serve as a technical editor and data manager, ensuring that complex systems remain rational and accessible. My expertise ranges from hardwiring Zilog processors in the early 1990s to the ethical "gathering" of insights from modern Generative AI.

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CHRONICLES OF EXPERIENCE: OBSERVATIONS ON INDUSTRY

University of Texas (Austin) | Parking Enforcement Officer | 09/2023 – Present In this role, I coordinate with AI-driven identity tracking systems to manage the equitable allocation of 13,000 vehicle-specific records for a population of 79,000 users. I treat database integrity as a necessary fact, interpreting complex regulations to ensure the system remains logic-proof and efficient.

American Astronomical Society | Editor | 02/2020 – 12/2024 Serving as a technical editor for a scientific body, I solicited, edited, and approved submissions, adhering to rigorous standards of quality assurance. I built SharePoint delivery systems to streamline the editorial process, ensuring that the history of discovery is documented with absolute data accuracy.

Green Revolution Cooling, Inc. | Senior Technical Writer | 08/2022 – 02/2023 I applied critical thinking to create product release notes and operations instructions for high-capacity immersion cooling systems. I wrote for an international and transnational readership, recognizing that the best way to make a "story" stop is often a well-documented "Ctrl-Z".

Austin Community College | Instructional Designer | 07/2021 – 11/2021 I developed a textbook on Optics and Lasers for the Advanced Manufacturing department. My goal was to create a midrange guide that integrated clear narratives with the relevant and necessary mathematics of electromagnetic radiation.

EOS North America | Senior Technical Writer | 07/2019 – 04/2021 Documenting additive manufacturing (3-D printing) systems for aerospace and medical applications, I conducted investigations into newly developed mechanical, electronic, and optical components of selective laser sintering (SLS) machinery.

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PREVIOUSLY ON THE CAREER PATH: HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS

• Kapsch TrafficCom USA (2018): Interpreted complex design specifications for highway tolling solutions, including electro-mechanical and optical sensor systems.
• Carl Zeiss IMT (1997–1998): Translated German manufacturer specifications for high-precision optical gauges used in General Motors quality assurance.
• Kawasaki Robotics (1991–1993): Translated complex parts lists from Japanese to English and delivered technical training in robot operations and programming for Ford Motor assembly plants.

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CORE COMPETENCIES & INTELLECTUAL TOOLS

• Data & Editorial: High-Volume Data Entry, Peer Review, OEM Data Interpretation, and Quality Assurance.
• The Scientific Method: Proving intuitive insights through rigorous testing so that others can replicate the work.
• Technology & AI: Proficiency in Google Gemini/ChatGPT, MS Excel, Jira, Salesforce, and Content Management Systems (SharePoint/Confluence).
• Critical Literacy: Navigating the ecosystem of pseudographic simulations and ensuring digital literacy in the age of AI impersonation.

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THE PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE: EDUCATION

• Master of Arts, Social Science | Eastern Michigan University.
• Bachelor of Science, Criminology (Summa cum Laude) | Eastern Michigan University.
• Continuing Education: Introduction to Generative AI (LinkedIn Learning, 2024); Introduction to Astrophysics (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, 2021).

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COMMUNITY SERVICE & PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS

• Greater Austin Regional Science and Engineering Fair: Administering professional academic peer-review standards for research.
• ArmadilloCon: Planning and delivery committee for literary conventions involving professional editors.
• OWASP: Contributed to the planning committee for computer security conferences.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Forbidden Planet

For the Glory of Old Lincoln High 

Hurricane Harvey 

Love, Loss, and Redemption in Atlas Shrugged 

Rory Sutherland’s 10 Rules of Alchemy

Rory Sutherland is a vice president at Ogilvy in the UK. His YouTube videos advertise and promote the powers of myth, emotion, creativity, and passion. He tells good stories. He nods to reason, logic, and rationality because those are the proof of known, workable solutions. Sutherland’s thesis is that if we have a problem now it must be logic-proof or it would already have been solved and would not now exist. 

This is my summary. I recommend that you watch the video for yourself with CC:Closed Captions on. 

Rory Sutherland’s 10 Rules of Alchemy

1. The opposite of a good idea can be another good idea. When we narrow down all options to the single rational choice, if it fails, no one can be blamed because they followed the data and the model. In fact, problems often have multiple solutions, different alternatives for other people whose values are not our own. 
2. Do not design for the average. Look for the extreme. The average person will reject the unknown until other people make it a trend. Go for those other people.
3. It does not pay to be logical when everyone else is logical. To overcome your competition in the market, find the errors in their models and meet those needs. He points out that every military seeks to design and implement surprises. 
4. The nature of our intentions is the source of our internal tensions. His example is extreme though telling. His best hotel experience was in an East Berlin pad that must have been a police cell. If you were looking for a Ramada Inn you were going to be disappointed, but he wanted the experience of an East Berlin vacation and he was ecstatic. Know your true intentions and it will minimize your emotional tensions.
5. A flower is just a weed with an advertising budget. Nature rewards and invests in reproductive strategies that are effective, even when seemingly inefficient. 
6.  Logic kills off magic. The payoff for magic is the change in perception. Apple changed the perception of the computer. 
7. A good guess plus empirical observation is still science. You can have a lucky guess and be right. **See below.
8. Test the counter-intuitive things because nobody else will. Businesses must mainly follow the rational and logical and the data-driven because that is what is known to work. You still must set aside space—I take that to mean organizational as well as physical—to test random journeys.
9. Rationality is a tool. If it is your only tool, then you are playing golf with just one club.
10. Dare to be trivial. The butterfly effect is that a small change can have a large consequence. Add one sentence to the script of a call center and see what change it brings. 
11. Do not limit yourself to ten rules. Rational people are everyone else. So, if there is a problem not solved now, it is logic-proof or would not exist. Be creative.
12. Dare to look stupid. “Why do people dislike standing up on trains?” In fact, some prefer it for a moderate ride of 20 to 30 minutes because they have been sitting in a chair all day. If you notice, some people still stand even after sufficient seats have been vacated. For others, it might be the physical challenge of juggling one’s kit after you are already latched on to a pole. Ultimately, now we have privileged window seating perhaps with a tray or armrest and so on, and with others forced to stand in the middle with not much to do. He asks, what if, instead, we had rows of seats in the middle with the spaces near windows specially designed for restful standing, perhaps with cellphone chargers as well. Now, it looks different.
13. Create net utility with a multivariate choice. Give people choices that optimize or minimize more than one variable and in disproportion so that whatever the outcome for the individual, you bring less regret. This is adaptive preference formation, a narrative for the support of choices.

** (Rory Sutherland cites Paul Feyerabend in asserting that advances in science have not come from applications of the scientific method but from intuition and insight. What the postmodernists ignore and would have us ignore in their program against reason is that you can only prove that your intuitive insight is truly scientific by following the scientific method so that you first and then others can test and replicate your work. Otherwise, you have nothing. The flash of insight and awareness can only be a reward for the rational, logical, empirical, experiential modes of learning as the preparation for better understanding and, ultimately, therefore, material abundance.) 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Entrepreneurship 

Innovation and Discovery 

The One Percent are the Atlases 

Shrugging the Stigma of Success 

Katherine Anne Porter

“She has simply an eye and an ear sharp, shrewd, and true as a tuning fork. She has given to this little story all her wit and observation, her blistering humor and her just cruelty; for she has none of that slack tolerance or sentimental tenderness toward symptomatic evils that amounts to criminal collusion between author and character.” From Katherine Anne Porter's Introduction to A Curtain of Green by Eudora Welty (Doubleday, 1941) in The Collected Essays and Occasional Writings of Katherine Anne Porter (Seymour Lawrence/Delacorte Press, 1970).

I sought out Katherine Anne Porter because Austin science fiction author Nnedi Okorafor spoke at Kyle’s Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center (508 West Center Street, 78640) and a review in the Hays County Free Press popped up for scrolling in my Kyle email. When I read the story, I merely recognized Porter’s name, not having read her before, but was nonetheless surprised that she is considered a local Kyle author. So, I went to the library. 

I found her pleasurable. Katherine Anne Porter is good company. I love listening to her  across our distances. In addition to a dozen essays here, some several times, I also read short stories and poems in The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter (Harvest/Harcourt Press, 1965, et seq). I read “Pale Horse/Pale Rider” through three times because that is what it took to understand the sequence of events. Clearly, even  though I read several other stories ahead of that, I was not prepared for a serious engagement. Nonetheless, she was an inspiration. I could have fattened these two anthologies with post-its bearing exclamation points or quotation marks tagging the juxtapositions, the clever and insightful phrases. 

[Added 12 April 2026 8:48 PM - I checked out Ship of Fools from my local library but after about twenty pages, some even from the middle, it is going back tomorrow. She writes well. Her word portraits are cinematic. However, her sense of life is entirely negative and she only delivers a long torrent of small, spiteful insults.]

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Soldier’s Heart by Elizabeth Samet 

Neighborhood Book Kiosks 

When Worlds Collide

Dealers Make the Show: ArmadilloCon 41 Day 3 

Dude, I am so Asian.

In my family, we always knew that we Hungarians are Asian, originating in the vast steppes between the Himalayas and the Urals. A recent publication in Nature pushed our ancestral homeland even farther east: “Ancient DNA reveals the prehistory of the Uralic and Yeniseian peoples,” by Tian Chen Zeng, Leonid A. Vyazov, et al., (2 July 2025), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09189-3. 

"Uralic languages, distributed from Western Siberia to Central Europe, are geographically separated from languages of the Eastern Steppes and far Northeast Siberia, but linguists have discovered ... high levels of typological similarity with languages in the ‘Altaic’ language area (Mongolic, Tungusic and Turkic) ... To resolve this conundrum, some linguists have suggested a recent eastern origin of the population giving rise to later expansions of Uralic speakers (for example, a “pre-proto-Uralic spoken further east… probably somewhere… near both Mongolia and the watershed area between the Yenisei and the Lena, possibly as recently as 3000 bc”60)—a scenario compatible with our results. Future ancient DNA sampling from this region would allow for a more precise determination of the archaeological identity of the Proto-Uralic-speaking community, and illuminate the relationship between it and the wider social world of the West Siberian Bronze Age." (ibid)

They still name boys Attila. Among very many, consider Attila Losonczy, MD, PhD,  neuroscientist at Columbia University (briefly at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attila_Losonczy). Bela Lugosi and Bela Bartók were named for Attila’s brother, in whose honor the village of Beda/Buda was dedicated. When I was about eight or ten, at our branch library, I found The White Stag by Kate Seredy, which was honored with Newberry Medal and Lewis Carroll Shelf awards. In that retelling, when the Magyars are surrounded, the Huns come riding out of the sky to turn the battle. 

Sometime in my mid-thirties to mid-forties, my brother sent me some references to the Samoyed, Ostyak, and Vogul languages of western Siberia and I found cognates to words such as "dog" and the numbers one, two, three, that I knew in Hungarian.

(Wikimedia. Marotta Commune.)

As for the paternal line, Marotta is a commune on the east coast of Italy, opposite Croatia. How they got to Sicily is lost to history. My father told me that his parents “came from Palermo.” Decades later, my half-brother explained that Palermo was just where they got on the ship that brought them here. They really came from a village called Sant’Agata on the east side of the north coast of Sicily, near the Straits of Messina and the "toe" of Italy. 

That the commune of Marotta lies across the Adriatic from Croatia touches on the fact that my maternal grandmother’s maiden name was Kovanics (Covanič); her father was Croatian having moved into the Hungarian realm of the Austrian empire to pursue business in pottery. Her mother and her husband were ethnic Magyars. That easy interaction across tribes defines the first Asian ancestors of the Hungarians. 

“… we show that the Early-to-Mid-Holocene hunter-gatherers harboured a continuous gradient of ancestry from fully European-related in the Baltic, to fully East Asian-related in the Transbaikal. …Ancestry from the first population, Cis-Baikal Late Neolithic–Bronze Age (Cisbaikal_LNBA), is associated with Yeniseian-speaking groups and those that admixed with them, and ancestry from the second, Yakutia Late Neolithic–Bronze Age (Yakutia_LNBA), is associated with migrations of prehistoric Uralic speakers.” (ibid)

I have B-positive blood.

As the various tribes were disrupted by as-yet-undiscovered forces, individuals migrated west and merged into new, admixed populations, now tagged for convenience as Admixed Inner Eurasians, “a term designating all populations in Central and Northern Eurasia that are the product of Holocene admixtures between West Eurasian ancestries and East Asian ancestries, including present-day and ancient Mongolic, Turkic, Tungusic and Uralic populations, as well as ancient Scythians, Sarmatians and pre-Scythian nomads of the Iron Age Steppes.” (ibid) 

We have a big family. 

I believe that everyone does. Every ethnic tree you trace has tangled taproots and evidence of cross-pollination. 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

The Living Fish Swims Under Water 

The Atlatl

Sándor Kőrösi Csoma 

The Problem of Cultural Patrimony

Humor

Martin Perscheid "Ceres Science" on Facebook
15 August 2024; see also
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Perscheid

Previously on Necessary Facts

Tom Lehrer, Ashleigh Brilliant, and the Limits of Humor 
Big Bang Theory: More Friends Than Seinfeld 
Gilda Radner: It's Always Something 
Merry Newtonmas 2025 

One Million Pageviews

Because I get paid to write what other people want, I write whatever I want here. And I am cognizant of the fact that other people read this. I put the URL on business contact cards and in email signature blocks. Lately, more hiring applications ask for links to portfolios and other social presence. Now, I more carefully inspect my attire before I step out into public spaces. Some market decision-maker might not like my opinions but they would find out the truth eventually. So, we are better off not starting a relationship. 

And I do take pride in writing what other people need. I love the craft of writing. I understand technical writing—procedures, plans, policies—as stories because if a machine operator has to call their boss at 4:00 AM, then reading a meter can be socially impactful, and maybe the best way to make the story stop is to hit ctrl-z. 

Last Seven Days Most Popular Posts and Locations

Last 30 Days Most Popular Posts and Locations

Last 12 Months Most Popular Posts and Locations

All Time Most Popular Posts and Locations

Top Referrering URLs Past 12 Months

One common phrase used against AIs is they are “scraping the web” and not being truly creative. “Scraping” sounds bad. I prefer the word “gathering.” The word “harvesting” implies “planting” or “seeding” and for that, we have no evidence, but gather—not scrape—is what they do. It is likely that many of the million pages viewed were touched by non-sentient programs, gathering information. Some of those might have been malicious seekers of exploitable vulnerabilities. That is why NecessaryFacts is closed to comments. I also rely on Google’s Red Team/Blue Team because when we lived in Ann Arbor, some of our colleagues in user groups touted their reward payments from Google for finding those vulns.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Supplies and Demands 

Money as a Crusoe Concept 

Mutiny Aboard the San Antonio 

Shifting the Paradigm of Private Security 

Why I Served 

Setting Up and Using Three Small Telescopes

21-March-2026 General Observing - 14:00 - With a weather forecast of clear and warm (70F) tonight, I took out my usual telescope, an Explore Scientific 102mm doublet refractor. I also unpacked my 5-inch Celestron tabletop Dobsonian reflector from Astronomers Without Borders. I even took out the Sears 6307B/4 60-mm refractor that Laurel found on the street in 2023. My goal was to use this one with my iPhone 15 on a NexYZ adapter to take pictures, at least of the crescent Moon. 

The extra gear was too much weight for the 1962 hardware. I did get to see the Moon at 35X with the 20mm Huygens and then 46X with the 15 mm Kellner oculars. I had other telescopes set up and waiting for use, so I stopped fussing with the camera. With clear nights ahead and no work in the morning, this could be a project. All of us old guys on the astronomy boards started with telescopes like this. (See Mr. Olcott’s Skies: An Old Book and a Youthful Obsession by Thomas Watson, on Cloudy Nights as desertstars.)

I am going to make this joke again: With a 60mm doublet refractor and Huygens eyepieces, I can see what the universe looked like in 1750. 

The AWB Newtonian needed collimation after over a year in storage. The process was the easiest it has ever been. I went in to the archives here under \Astronomy\OtherInstrumentManuals\Collimation and found 63 files. I chose Astro Babys Guide to Collimation. After the introductory materials,  they say on Page 3: 

Rule 1 – Before starting collimation don’t assume that anything is out of kilter and check each element before adjusting anything. About 90% of collimation errors are down solely to the primary mirror so don’t jump in and start meddling with the secondary unless you are sure that there is a problem. Each stage of this guide will show you how to check the various elements – only if they are out

of alignment will you need to make adjustments.[The red is in the original.] 

They continue with a reminder to get all the tools you need before you begin and allow enough time to work this through slowly and do not over-tighten anything. Then on Page 4, they jump right in adjusting things that don’t need attention. “Collimation Step 1 – The Spider Vanes and Secondary Mirror Holder.” So, I put that aside and went to my bookshelf. Philip S. Harrington’s Star Ware: The Amateur Astronomer’s Guide to Choosing, Buying, and Using Telescopes and Accessories.  A quick look at his directions agreed with Astro Baby’s preface. Sighting through the collimating eyepiece and rotating the three adjustment screws and their set-screws, it was easy to put the donut in the center view. 

21:23 - with Meade 5000 14mm 82-degree. Messier 41. 

21:55 Messier 42 - Trapezium sharp. Then, Messier 41, Sigma Orionis, and. Mintaka. 

(There was a lot of playing with the Red Dot Finder on the AWB. I finally got it aligned into agreement with the telescope.)

Put the reflector on a different tripod and put it back in the storage shed with the Sears.

Continued with the ES-102. 

22:29 - Jupiter. wavery; in and out of focus; lots of atmosphere. 

Spent ten minutes lying on the picnic table bench looking up at Leo because it was not distinct at first. The view did not get any better with exposure.

22:32 - a last look at Sigma Orionis; another look around: the Big Dipper was behind the oak tree. I put everything away.

Overall, although I made no personal discoveries it was a good night out following an afternoon of setting up two telescopes that I had not used in over a year. 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Observation Log (December 28, 2023) 

Virgin Galactic VX01 VX03 

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions 

Tunguska, Chelyabinsk, Berlin, and New York