Kit Walker's Blog, page 6

I return from the frozen north

So I'm back in the UK now, after three weeks visiting in Canada — specifically Edmonton, a city I am now woefully maladapted to living in. People here in Newcastle constantly complain about the state of its public transit system, but that's only because they've never been to Edmonton: a place where you will wait 90 minutes for a bus at 40 degrees below zero until the wolves get you.

Despite the jetlag, I'm currently working on final edits for the next Casefile of Jay Moriarty story. It's turning out to be around 12 000 words long, which brings the total wordcount of the series to a little over 80 000. That's long enough to justify a print collection, which is making me think about putting out a print collection — if only for the benefit of those among my friends and family who want to read my writing but struggle with ebooks.

They might also struggle with the gay transgender sex and constant railing against late-stage capitalism, but that part is more of a "buyer beware" situation.

Spooky Season Sale on itch.io

For the month of October, all my horror/dark fantasy books are on sale over at my itch.io store! "The Scent of Blood," "Possession," and "Move Fast and Break Things" are each 25% off, or you can get all three in a bundle for $1.50 USD.

This Week's Links

Officers allegedly damaged MRI machine after police rifle snatched by magnets

... an officer walked into the room with his rifle "dangling... in his right hand, with an unsecured strap," which was quickly ripped off his body and pinned to the MRI machine, the lawsuit said.

Bop Spotter

I installed a box high up on a pole somewhere in the Mission of San Francisco. Inside is a crappy Android phone, set to Shazam constantly, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It's solar powered, and the mic is pointed down at the street below.

Heard of ShotSpotter? Microphones are installed across cities in the United States by police to detect gunshots, purported to not be very accurate. This is that, but for music.

Alleged Tax Dodger Says It’s a "Legitimate Snail-Farming Operation"

In this case, the council says the ground-floor office space at 9 Dale Street is currently empty and the firm renting it should be paying full business rates. The firm and its landlord disagree, saying the space isn’t empty and is being put to an “agricultural use.” Specifically, the space is occupied by fifteen (15) crates each containing at least two (2) snails. So the firm—Snai1 Primary Products 2023 Ltd—says it’s exempt.

Some of my work on this latest Moriarty story involves tweaking one of Sebastian's fight scenes, following feedback that his opponents should — and I'm quoting directly — "hit his pretty face." It's good to have beta readers who understand your art.

-K

A dispatch from abroad

I'm on vacation back home in Canada, following 30 hours of transatlantic travel ending at 1:00 AM. If you ever need to completely reset your sleep schedule, I hightly recommend 30 hours of transatlantic travel ending at 1:00 AM.

Because I'm staying with my parents, who have more streaming subscriptions than I do, I've now seen Drive-Away Dolls. I missed seeing it in theatres, as I was reliably informed at the time that it wasn't very good. Now, having watched it, I can report that it isn't very good. It's not bad, but I don't think it achieves anything it sets out to do. Which is a shame, because it's exactly the kind of movie I'd like to see more of (low-rent crime comedy, but make it gay).

Podcast Appearance: I Will Fight You

In the latest episode of I Will Fight You, we discuss The Core. It's a movie about a train that goes to the center of the Earth. I'm not sure I need to sell it any harder than that.

You can listen to the episode here, or wherever podcasts are found.

This Week's Links

How Wall Street fleeces African countries coming and going

Inequitable resource extraction deals are one reason why Senegal struggles to raise enough revenue to run the country. When its coffers run dry, the government is driven to borrow from the international money markets. In a bitter irony, it often turns to the very same firms that are taking the lion’s share of the revenue from the Senegalese gold mining industry.

‘Ferrari in a junkyard’: Mules sold at auction are rare, endangered horses

Once extinct in the wild, around 2,500 Przewalski’s horses remained worldwide as of 2022. They’re native to Mongolia and in June, seven were reintroduced to nearby Kazakhstan as part of an effort to return them to their natural habitats. They are the only truly wild horse remaining (mustangs are feral horses).

Disney-obsessed couple lose lawsuit to get back into exclusive Club 33

At about 9:50 p.m. on Sept. 3, 2017, security guards found Scott Anderson near the entrance of California Adventure displaying signs of what they took to be intoxication, including slurred speech and trouble standing, according to trial testimony. ... The club swiftly ousted them.

The September 2017 incident was not the first time the Andersons had run afoul of Club 33 management. The year before, Diana had been briefly suspended for “using some salty language … a couple F-words,” as Macias put it.

$400 000 seems like a lot of money to spend on getting back into a club where you're not allowed to get drunk or swear.

Incidentally, if you also desire more gay crime fiction, check out my books.

-K

Meme fraud

Committing a crime is easy. Committing a crime and getting away with it — that's hard.

One of the big stories on the internet last week was the Chase bank "viral TikTok trend." Long story short:

There was a short-lived bug in the Chase banking system that allowed users to deposit a cheque, then immediately withdraw the full amount of that cheque (normally, the funds would be held until the cheque cleared).This bug became public knowledge. Social media posts popped up which encouraged people to write cheques for large amounts to themselves, then withdraw or transfer the funds from the account to give themselves "free" money.This is called cheque fraud, and in America it's sometimes prosecuted as a federal crime.Multiple people posted TikTok videos of themselves withdrawing huge amounts of cash from Chase ATMs and celebrating.These fraudulent cheques inevitably bounced, leaving those who attempted to exploit the "free money glitch" thousands of dollars in the hole.Again multiple people posted TikTok videos, this time crying over their negative account balances and impending criminal charges.

The prevailing narrative surrounding this whole thing is one of stupidity. There's no shortage of posts and TikTok videos mocking those who tried to exploit the "glitch" as idiots for not realizing what they were doing was illegal, or for believing there's such a thing as "free money."

And I'm not sure this is a matter of not knowing what cheque fraud is, or that it's a crime. I think a lot of people, even if they don't fully understand how or why, recognize that many great American fortunes are built on fraud.

An "entrepreneur" in Silicon Valley can put together a pitch deck for a startup based on a vague idea, pull in millions in investment, pay himself a ludicrous salary out of those funds for years, then fold the company with nothing to show for it — and as far as any legal authority is concerned, so long as the startup can claim they had one or two engineers doing something, all those lost millions were just the cost of doing business.

For that guy, there absolutely is such a thing as "free money." So it's possible to look at him and think to yourself, "Well, why not me?"

And your mistake there would be not realizing that the rules for the entrepreneur class are not the rules for the working class. A Silicon Valley founder who scams a bank out of millions is the Man in the Arena. A guy who works at Wal-Mart and scams a bank out of a few thousand is going to jail.

A criminal is not a special kind of person, or even a specific set of actions. A criminal is a context. And the failure of those who participated in the Chase cheque fraud scam may have been a failure to recognize context.

New Short Story: "Move Fast and Break Things"

My short story "Move Fast and Break Things", which originally appeared in the Grendel Press anthology The Devil Who Loves Me, is now available as a standalone work! You can get it as an ebook or read it on Medium; if you're one of my Ko-fi supporters, you can also read it on Ko-fi.

This Week's LinksDead birds get new life: New Mexico researchers develop taxidermy bird drones

Taxidermy bird drones - currently being tested in a purpose-built cage at the university - can be used to understand better the formation and flight patterns of flocks. That in turn can be applied to the aviation industry, said Hassanalian.

P(Dumb)

The narrative that artificial intelligence is rapidly accelerating toward "AGI" that will eventually outwit humanity’s efforts to contain it, has gone unchecked by one important segment of the population: the people who write the laws, and the people who whisper into the ears of those people. What they’re whispering is stuff like "P(Doom)": your personal confidence level (usually rendered as a percentage) that a rogue artificial intelligence — ​and not anything else — ​will annihilate humanity. A lot of things have to happen first for this to even be a possibility, let alone something you can assign a probability to.

Bill Gates, Big Agriculture and the fight for the future of Africa’s farmland

"We used to grow diverse crops," said Mary Sakala, a Zambian farmer and chairperson of the Rural Women’s Assembly, which commissioned the report. "But now governments and agribusiness have pushed farmers into monoculture that depends on inputs. Their programmes have made us all vulnerable."

If we're going to start resurrecting crimes from the 1930s, I'd like to see some rich people get ripped off in a huge elaborate confidence game. I think we've earned this, as a society.

-K

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 Links

FBI 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.

Posy - Some Kind Of

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

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 Links

OceanGate tried to scrub the internet clean of traces that it ever existed, taking down its Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn pages

The OceanGate and OceanGate Expeditions websites now redirect to a page that says the company "has suspended all exploration and commercial operations."

Catalog of Dark Patterns

Discover a variety of dark pattern examples, sorted by category, to better understand deceptive design practices.

A Prominent Accessibility Advocate Worked With Studios and Inspired Change. But She Never Actually Existed.

... 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

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 Links

Parody 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

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 You

In 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 Epilogue

The 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

Former Bungie devs show fury and sorrow over layoffs, following the revelation that CEO Pete Parsons allegedly spent at least $2,414,550 on vintage cars in the past 2 years

"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.

inferiorwit on TikTok

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

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 4

Chapter 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 Reader

Where 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 Links

Navy 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

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 3

Chapter 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: Bound

I 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 Links

Map of Metal

An 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

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 Sale

We'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 2

Chapter 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 Mysteries

Miss 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 Links

Erowid Experience Vaults

A 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.

Love letters from Fiat

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.

Mythbusters on YouTube

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