Kit Walker's Blog, page 5
September 3, 2024
Read my degenerate literature
I've got a new(ish) story out this week, which means I must once again calculate how much of my personal dignity to sacrifice in the name of selling books. I don't have the personal charisma or humiliation kink necessary to become an "author-influencer," so my marketing options are limited to this newsletter, what little social media I can tolerate, and stuff like whatever the hell Crad Kilodney was doing.
Anyway:
New Short Story: "Move Fast and Break Things" 
There is something wrong with Victor Keane. This makes him the ideal choice to lead a team of mercenaries, hired to recover an oil baron's granddaughter from a tech billionaire's personal cult. But the job gets more complicated when the team encounters Adrian Yates, a kidnapped academic with peculiar insight into the darkness of Victor's own mind. And when things go wrong, Victor must make a choice between the success of the mission and Adrian's life.
My short story "Move Fast and Break Things" originally appeared in the Grendel Press anthology The Devil Who Loves Me, and can now be read as a standalone work!
You can get "Move Fast and Break Things" as an ebook, or read it on Medium. It's also available for all supporters on Ko-fi.
This Week's LinksFBI Uses January 6 Rioter’s Self-Published Amazon Book as Evidence Against Him
Thornsberry also published a book called Dakota Black: or ‘The Dragon,’ which he lists as being coauthored with Moby Dick author Herman Melville, who died in 1891.
Boar’s Head plant linked to deadly outbreak broke food safety rules dozens of times, records show
Between Aug. 1, 2023, and Aug. 2, 2024, inspectors found “heavy discolored meat buildup” and “meat overspray on walls and large pieces of meat on the floor.”
I don't think I've ever read the words "meat buildup" used together like this before.
Do you want to completely ruin the experience of watching Star Trek: Voyager? Watch this.
If the book promotion self-debasement campaign ever gets to the point where I'm doing little TikTok skits about my own characters, just put me down like the dog I am.
-K
August 27, 2024
This is my brick
I finally got around to uploading an avatar for this newsletter. It's a photo of the brick I keep on my desk at work:

It is perhaps worth noting that the brick was not a decision I, personally, made. A colleague bought it for me (and commissioned an Etsy artist to engrave the words "TEXT LOCK" on the side) and, later, another colleague stuck some googly eyes on it.
However, I cannot recommend enough the practice of keeping a brick with googly eyes on your desk. It's a very effective communication tool. What it communicates, specifically, is that you have a brick.
New on Ko-fi: "The Scientific Method"I wrote a semi-smutty coda to "Jay Moriarty Has Seen You Naked," where Jay and Sebastian try out some stuff post-top surgery. You can read it for free here.
Preorder: "Move Fast and Break Things"Preorders are still open for the ebook of my short story "Move Fast and Break Things." It originally appeared in the Grendel Press anthology The Devil Who Loves Me, and will be available as a standalone work on September 3. You can preorder the ebook here.
If you're subscribed to my Ko-fi at the Early Access tier ($5 CAD/month), you can download the book for free, right now. If you'd like to read the story early but don't have a spare $5 kicking around, you can also get a free advance review copy over on Booksprout.
This Week's LinksThe OceanGate and OceanGate Expeditions websites now redirect to a page that says the company "has suspended all exploration and commercial operations."
Discover a variety of dark pattern examples, sorted by category, to better understand deceptive design practices.
... in the years since Banks’ alleged death, mounting evidence and accounts from those close to her work suggest that she was not the person she claimed to be. In fact, some are convinced that Banks may never have existed at all.
Oddly enough, the name of this newsletter is not derived from the brick on my desk. It's a paraphrase of Harlan Ellison paraphrasing a Kafka quote, the general gist of which is "art should be a brick through a window." Meaning that art shouldn't be nice, or polite, or soothing; it should break something inside of you.
But from an artistic standpoint, having a literal brick on hand is also pretty useful.
-K
August 20, 2024
On breaking into imaginary buildings
Still working on the next Casefile of Jay Moriarty story, which involves an art gallery heist. The thing about writing crime fiction is that you are constantly figuring out:
why someone needs to get into a room,why they can't get into the room, andhow they get into the room anyway.At least one of those things needs to be something your characters haven't handled before, and ideally all three of them should be novel and interesting.
This is probably why most long-running heist serials turn into science fiction after a while; they've simply exhausted all the real-world security measures and countermeasures the writers can find and have to start making stuff up.
Well, that's what I hope happened to them.
Preorder: "Move Fast and Break Things" 
There is something wrong with Victor Keane. This makes him the ideal choice to lead a team of mercenaries, hired to recover an oil baron's granddaughter from a tech billionaire's personal cult. But the job gets more complicated when the team encounters Adrian Yates, a kidnapped academic with peculiar insight into the darkness of Victor's own mind. And when things go wrong, Victor must make a choice between the success of the mission and Adrian's life.
My short story "Move Fast and Break Things" originally appeared in the Grendel Press anthology The Devil Who Loves Me, and will be available as a standalone work on September 3. You can preorder the ebook here.
Ko-fi supporters who subscribe at the Early Access tier ($5 CAD/month) can download the book for free, right now. If you'd like to read the story early but don't have a spare $5 kicking around, you can also get a free advance review copy over on Booksprout.
This Week's LinksParody site ClownStrike refused to bow to CrowdStrike’s bogus DMCA takedown
McSherry pointed out that CrowdStrike's takedown notice came at the time when Senk's parody site would be most relevant as commentary on the fallout from the IT outage. Potentially, the two-week counter notice period could have helped CrowdStrike take down the parody site during the most heightened period of criticism, which could make it appear to be inappropriately using the DMCA to censor online criticism.
Palo Alto Networks execs apologize for 'hostesses' dressed as lamps at Black Hat booth
It's worth noting that at the start of my career in tech, just over a decade ago, marketing ploys like this were everywhere and largely immune to criticism. On the one hand, things change fast — on the other, things clearly haven't changed that much.
Disney wants wrongful death suit thrown out because widower bought an Epcot ticket and had Disney+
Court documents show that the company is trying to get the $50,000 lawsuit tossed because the plaintiff, Jeffrey Piccolo, signed up for a one-month trial of the streaming service Disney+ in 2019, which requires trial users to arbitrate all disputes with the company.
A bunch of what appear to be #booktok dark romance fans have signed up to review "Move Fast and Break Things" on Booksprout, and I'm a little worried they haven't realized what they're in for. I guess they'll find out soon enough.
-K
August 13, 2024
Stargazing in Tynemouth
I went to the beach with some friends last Friday night in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the Perseid meteor shower. Unfortunately I live in a country forsaken by the sun with near-100% cloud cover most of the time, so that didn't exactly work out.
There was also a vague plan to roast some marshmallows, but fires weren't allowed on the beach. My friends did, however, have a collection of tea candles and a couple of lighters.
The result was this stunning example of British ingenuity:

It did not work.
Podcast Appearance: I Will Fight YouIn the latest episode of I Will Fight You, our cohost Maq whips out her literature degree and takes us through the different types of satire. This includes an extended section on Historical Fuckboy John Donne and his religious gijinka waifus.
 
You can listen to the episode here, or wherever podcasts are found.
New on Ko-fi: "Jay Moriarty Has Seen You Naked," Chapter 5 and EpilogueThe fifth chapter and epilogue of "Jay Moriarty Has Seen You Naked" are now up for all supporters on Ko-fi. You can also get the entire novella as an ebook.
This Week's Links"I remember the Friday before the first layoffs, me and another CM were in the lobby and I was literally talking about how I didn't have enough money for groceries … Pete walked right up to us and bragged about a few new EXPENSIVE cars he bought and that we should come to his house and see them."
Security advice - The Collections Trust
A list of documents providing advice to museums and galleries on various security measures. Very helpful for any writer who needs to plot out a museum heist.
TikTok finally decided to let me follow people, so here's my profile if anyone wants to see that video of my cat.
I got about 8 000 words into a new Casefile of Jay Moriarty story before I realized the emotional and relationship development involved meant it belonged much later in the series and the next installment would have to be something else. I hate it when that happens.
-K
August 6, 2024
I have immediately failed at TikTok
My mum has been asking me about ways to promote my dad's work online, and TikTok came up as a possibility. So I decided to sign up for a TikTok account and see what it was like from the creator side.
My findings were as follows:
I registered a new account on the desktop version of the website and set up the basics of my profile.I attempted to upload a video of my cat, only to find out TikTok's built-in video editing tools only worked on the mobile app.Already dreading the prospect of trying to cut video on a tiny touchscreen, I installed the TikTok app on my phone.I was immediately shunted into TikTok's onboarding flow for new users, which involved picking vague topics of interest like "Entertainment" and "Lifestyle."I elected to skip that whole process and instead searched for a few people I knew on TikTok. The app responded to this by demanding access to my contacts, which I refused.I quickly realized I couldn't follow anyone; clicking the "Follow" button on a profile did absolutely nothing, and my "Following" feed remained empty.TikTok's official help site contained no useful information, but third-party sites suggested this might be because my account has been shadowbanned.I'm not sure why I'd be shadowbanned, as I've barely posted and haven't commented at all. It's possible that registering on desktop first or skipping the onboarding convinced TikTok that I'm a bot. Or maybe they're just sore about the contacts thing.A support ticket filed through the TikTok app has, to date, received no response. A support ticket filed through a form on TikTok's website did receive a response, telling me I needed to report the problem via the app.Thus ends my experiment with TikTok (for now, at least). I'm not sure what I learned, if anything. If this is supposed to be the app brainwashing the world, I don't think it's doing a very good job.
New on Ko-fi: "Jay Moriarty Has Seen You Naked," Chapter 4Chapter 4 of "Jay Moriarty Has Seen You Naked" is now up for all supporters on Ko-fi. If you don't want to wait for Chapter 5, you can also get the entire novella as an ebook.
Recommendation: Terry's Sunday ReaderWhere this author, reformed journalist and retired consultant waxes on with cringe-worthy yet occasionally humorous personal anecdotes, the odd essay (emphasis on odd), short videos, favourite tweets and Facebook posts, shameless plugs for favoured projects, and whatever else tweaks his fancy.
You know how I mentioned my dad and his work earlier? His latest venture is a free weekly newsletter, the first issue of which went out this last weekend.
Dad used to write a weekly humor column back in the day, and he's pretty damn funny. You can subscribe to the newsletter here.
This Week's LinksNavy Ad: Gig Work Is a Dystopian, Unregulated Hellscape, Build Submarines Instead
The gig economy is obviously not the Navy’s direct responsibility. But it is quite striking that instead of trying to improve the state of gig work run by multi-billion dollar corporations that actively oppose measures to improve their workers’ lives, the government has simply opted to agree that it is bad, and use those working conditions to recruit for the military.
CrowdStrike offers a $10 apology gift card to say sorry for outage
On Wednesday, some of the people who posted about the gift card said that when they went to redeem the offer, they got an error message saying the voucher had been canceled. When TechCrunch checked the voucher, the Uber Eats page provided an error message that said the gift card “has been canceled by the issuing party and is no longer valid.”
Hugo awards organisers reveal thousands spent on fraudulent votes to help one writer win
“We have no evidence that Finalist A was at all aware of the fraudulent votes being cast for them, let alone in any way responsible for the operation. We are therefore not identifying them,” the subcommittee said.
Announcing an attempt to cheat a Hugos finalist to victory but not revealing which finalist sounds like something that should trigger the biggest and most toxic social deduction game of all time.
If we ever do get my father on TikTok, all the Gen Z gays with daddy issues are going to imprint on him like baby birds. He'll probably handle it okay but I'm not sure I will.
-K
July 30, 2024
ACAB apparently includes horses
Thanks to the shortest and least effective real estate deal in the world, I recently moved to the town of North Shields. It's out on the coast — roughly 20 minutes away from Newcastle by car, a little longer than that by transit. By Canadian standards, this is a pleasantly short commute. By British standards, I may as well have moved to the furthest corner of Hell.
North Shields is not a rural area by any stretch of the imagination. So you can imagine my surprise when, on a trip to the grocery store, I encountered a massive pile of horse shit in the middle of the sidewalk.
My best guess is that a cop on horseback passed through the neighborhood; the police will ticket you for not picking up after your dog, then let their horses relieve themselves anywhere they like and refuse to clean it up. This is just one of many reasons all cops are bastards.
Anyway. As I carefully evaded this environmental hazard, I looked up to see an 80- or 90-year-old man out on what was probably his daily walk. He looked at me and — in tones that suggested he was speaking from personal experience — said, "It was cleaner when Hitler was bombing the place!"
Needless to say, I completely lost it.
New on Ko-fi: "Jay Moriarty Has Seen You Naked," Chapter 3Chapter 3 of "Jay Moriarty Has Seen You Naked" is now up for all supporters on Ko-fi. If you don't want to wait for the next chapter, you can also get the entire novella as an ebook.
Recommendation: BoundI have a hard time connecting with a lot of contemporary lesbian fiction. I'm just not interested in fluffy, conflict-free relationships between conventionally feminine women who bear no resemblance to real-life femme lesbians and kiss like someone bonking two Barbie dolls together.
Bound is not that. For one thing, look at the poster. I have seen both of those women in gay bars.
This is the first movie the Wachowski sisters ever directed. It features Jennifer Tilly seducing Gina Gershon into robbing Tilly's boyfriend, Joe Pantoliano — interweaving sexual tension with dramatic tension to spectacular effect. The whole thing almost feels like a stage play, with most of the action taking place across two next-door apartments in the same building.
Also, they hired Susie Bright onto the project to serve as a queer sex consultant. Which may be the best possible thing to have on one's resume.
This Week's LinksAn interactive map detailing the history and evolution of Metal music, with samples. This is another kind of website I had thought extinct, and I'm really happy to find out I was wrong.
How to Copy a File From a 30-year-old Laptop
While the laptop has no networking software, it does have fax software. We confirmed the modem could dial, so this might just be crazy enough to work.
Mary Carillo's Badminton Rant - Athens 2004
The Olympics are on, which means it's once again time to watch Mary Carillo explain the finer points of backyard badminton.
The other day my brother asked me, "What’s the quintessential lesbian media?"
I then had to explain to him that asking this question in the wrong circles would start a fistfight and end several relationships.
-K
July 23, 2024
Y2K24
Usually when I write about absurd technological fuckups, I'm exaggerating; the point is to show what happens when you push current tech policy and practice to its furthest extent. And then something just as dumb as a thing I sarcastically made up hits the news.
Case in point: Crowdstrike.
One bad patch managed to paralyze digital infrastructure worldwide because:
weak antitrust allowed Microsoft to virtually monopolize computing and Crowdstrike to virtually monopolize enterprise cybersecurity,boneheaded corporate policy resulted in a simultaneous poorly-tested update on Friday afternoon (right before everyone's IT guy should be leaving for the weekend), andmultiple industries' dependence on remote servers and cloud computing made it difficult, if not impossible, to physically access the affected machines.This feels like something I wrote. A friend of mine is convinced I have reality-distorting powers, and I'm sure this will do nothing to assuage those fears.
Smashwords Summer/Winter SaleWe're into the last week of the Summer/Winter Sale over at Smashwords! A lot of my books are on sale for $0.99 USD each, and my novelette "Jay Moriarty Violates the Official Secrets Act" is currently free to download.
You can find my books on Smashwords here, and sale prices are valid through to July 31.
New on Ko-fi: "Jay Moriarty Has Seen You Naked," Chapter 2Chapter 2 of "Jay Moriarty Has Seen You Naked" is now up for all supporters on Ko-fi. If you're not a fan of serialized works, you can also get the entire novella as an ebook.
Recommendation: Miss Fisher's Murder MysteriesMiss Fisher's Murder Mysteries is a show about a nosy bitch in the 1920s solving murders and wearing fabulous outfits, and is therefore scientifically engineered to be one of my favorite things in the world. Even if they do run out of plausible ways for the main characters to discover a dead body by about halfway through the second season. It's also notable for featuring one of the few heterosexual couples in fiction that I find interesting.
(Seriously, the chemistry is insane.)
This Week's LinksA collection of over 45 000 first-hand accounts of experiences with various drugs. A good writing resource if you can't go out and try certain substances yourself, for whatever reason.
The company sent letters on pink stationery to some 50,000 young Spanish women, urging them "to have a little affair." ... One Madrid police station received complaints from three women, one of whom stayed home for three days thinking a psychopath was after her, El Pais said.
For those who may not know, Mythbusters aired on the Discovery channel from 2003 to 2016 and was dedicated to testing and debunking urban legends and popular misconceptions. Usually by blowing stuff up. Full episodes are now being uploaded on YouTube, which are worth a (re)watch.
Oh, it turns out Crowdstrike's CEO used to be CTO at McAfee. That explains a few things.
-K
July 16, 2024
I only lie to you sometimes
My dad reads my writing. Well, some of it. He can handle the gay stuff okay, but the parts of my work which involve graphic werewolf maulings are a bit much for him. Anyway, he just got to the point in "Jay Moriarty Ruins Everybody's Childhood" where a device called a Pardella is used to intercept signals from a keycard reader, and asked me where I got the idea.
Here's the thing: the Pardella is real. Sort of.
It's based on a device called the ESPKey and its successor, Mellon. They function much like the Pardella does, by hooking into the connection between a card reader and its controller and recording credentials as they pass from one to the other.
The name "Pardella" is a deep cut reference to the movie Hackers, because I have a disease of the brain.
Podcast Appearance: Not If I Reboot You First!I joined the delightful Tanner and Lindsay on the latest episode of Not If I Reboot You First!, pitching a contemporary reboot of the 1976 mystery farce Murder by Death. The words "do not put that twink in here" are eventually uttered, as well as "the Pope is not your Dark Blorbo."
 
You can listen to the episode here, or wherever podcasts are found.
(You can also listen to my previous appearance on the podcast, in which I propose a Kelvin Timeline version of Star Trek IV, here.)
New on Ko-fi: "Jay Moriarty Has Seen You Naked," Prologue and Chapter 1The prologue and first chapter of "Jay Moriarty Has Seen You Naked" are now on Ko-fi and free for anyone to read. Subsequent chapters will be posted every Tuesday as supporter-only posts. You can also get the entire novella as an ebook.
This Week's Links
  ‘We’re Living in a Nightmare:’ Inside the Health Crisis of a Texas Bitcoin Town
  
“The European Environmental Agency tells us that everything above 55 decibels is making us sick,” he says. The fact that the Granbury Bitcoin mine is emitting 70 or even 90 decibels on a nightly basis is “like torture,” he says. “The most spectacular cardiovascular diseases will develop. They have to stop the machines.”
  Goldman Sachs: AI Is Overhyped, Wildly Expensive, and Unreliable
  
“AI technology is exceptionally expensive, and to justify those costs, the technology must be able to solve complex problems, which it isn’t designed to do,” [Jim Covello, Goldman Sachs’ head of global equity research] said. “People generally substantially overestimate what the technology is capable of today. In our experience, even basic summarization tasks often yield illegible and nonsensical results. This is not a matter of just some tweaks being required here and there; despite its expensive price tag, the technology is nowhere near where it needs to be in order to be useful for even such basic tasks.”
  The Roomba That Screams When it Bumps Into Stuff
  
I'm not sure I really need to summarize this one.
Before you ask: yes, I do write every sex scene with the understanding that my parents might read it. At this point, I think they're just grateful that I'm not John Waters.
-K
July 9, 2024
"Why, it's New Book Day, sir!"

I've got a book out today, which means it's time to make myself utterly insufferable on those few social media platforms I actively use.
Fortunately I have a day job, which means — for the moment, at least — I can forego signing up for a TikTok account and attempting to sell my work as "dark academia grumpy sunshine booktok-ready romance" etc., etc. I don't know what any of those things are and I don't care to learn.
New Novella: "Jay Moriarty Has Seen You Naked" 
A spur-of-the-moment invitation brings Sebastian Moran along for the ride as Jay Moriarty recovers from surgery in a Spanish resort hotel. When Jay exploits a security vulnerability in the hotel network, he finds an array of exposed cameras — and comes across hints that one of the other guests is hiding a dangerous secret. A secret that, once uncovered, may put Jay and Sebastian's own lives at risk.
"Jay Moriarty Has Seen You Naked" is the third story in my series The Casefile of Jay Moriarty — it’s a modern-day queer romance take on the iconic Sherlock Holmes villain, his partner Sebastian Moran, and the various crimes they commit together.
This one's the beach episode. And also a little bit Rear Window.
You can get "Jay Moriarty Has Seen You Naked" most places ebooks are sold, or by clicking here.
Smashwords Summer/Winter SaleThe Summer/Winter Sale is still on over at Smashwords! A bunch of my books are on sale, and my novelette "Jay Moriarty Violates the Official Secrets Act" is currently free to download.
You can find my books on Smashwords here, and sale prices are valid through to July 31.
This Week's LinksThe delivery rider who took on his faceless boss
Samii’s app performed a simple, yet crucial function. UberCheats was able to extract GPS coordinates from receipts and calculate how many miles a courier had actually travelled, compared to the distance Uber claimed they had. ... Whichever city they were in, drivers were seemingly being underpaid by an average of 1.35 miles per trip, according to the data they were logging in UberCheats.
If you've ever wondered, "would someone write and submit an entire paper solely for the purpose of being sarcastic about impractical demands for double-blind trials?", the answer is "yes."
AMC Networks Renews Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire for a Third Season
“Thank you to the brilliant casts and crews of the first two seasons that got us to this day. Thank you to the rabid, beautifully unwell fandom that scaled the castle walls to get us to this day. Thank you to Dan McDermott, Ben Davis for the funds and tools to continue the great work of dramatizing Anne Rice’s extraordinary novels. And sincere apologies to the family and friends of actor Sam Reid, for the possession that continues to this day. Monsieur L extends his promise to return his body upon cancellation (may that evening never come.)”
Sometimes I think Crad Kilodney had the right idea, standing on a street corner wearing a "BUY MY BOOKS" sign. I respect the honesty.
-K
July 1, 2024
My back hurts but I have so much pizza
I helped a friend move this weekend, which is one of those social rituals that has remained oddly unchanged throughout my lifetime. So much of what we once considered the building blocks of society have been paywalled and offshored and app-ified, and yet the most effective way to get your shit from one address to another still involves wrangling a group of friends and colleagues with the promise of free pizza.
On a related note: if you make the mistake of referring to Papa John's Pizza as "Daddy John's" in mixed company, this is a door you can never again close and the delivery guy will be very confused that multiple people are now calling him "Daddy."
Summer/Winter Sale 
Smashwords' Summer/Winter Sale has come around yet again, and I've got a few books participating:
"Jay Moriarty Violates the Official Secrets Act" is available for free (regular price $0.99 USD)"Sebastian Moran Gets Mauled by a Tiger" and "Jay Moriarty Ruins Everybody's Childhood" are on sale for $0.99 USD (regular price $1.99 USD) Endling: 600 Years from Home is on sale for $0.99 USD (regular price $3.99 USD)You can find these and my other books on Smashwords here, and sale prices are valid through to July 31.
Preorder: "Jay Moriarty Has Seen You Naked"Preorders for "Jay Moriarty Has Seen You Naked," the fourth story in my Casefile of Jay Moriarty series, are still open!
You can preorder the book here. Or, if you're one of my Early Access supporters on Ko-fi, you can download the book for free, right now. And if you'd like an advance review copy of the book, you can get one on Booksprout.
"Jay Moriarty Has Seen You Naked" releases next week on July 9.
This Week's Linksjulie_never_streamsMy friend Julie plays piano and does livestreams every Tuesday and Friday where she performs arrangements of video game music. A very nice thing to have playing in the background as you go about your day.
My Dinner With AndreessenRecently, I read about venture capitalist Marc Andreessen putting his 12,000-square-foot mansion in Atherton, California, which has seven fireplaces, up for sale for $33.75 million. ... Upon reading this, I realized it was time to stop procrastinating and tell you all a story I’ve been meaning to set down for a long time now about the time I visited that house (the cheap $33.75 million one, I mean). Strictly on a need-to-know basis. Because you really need to know how deeply twisted some of these plutocrats who run our society truly are.Sesh Gremlin Q | Kill James Bond Highlight
A clip from the podcast Kill James Bond. Both the clip and the podcast are extremely good.
In the tech industry, the difference between producers and quality control is this: given a £100 pizza budget and a 50% off coupon, the producer will say, "Oh good, I only need to spend £50," whereas QC will say, "Oh good, we can order £200 worth of pizza."
Internalizing this revelation will explain a lot of things about tech for you.
-K

 
   
  

