Kit Walker's Blog, page 7
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
June 25, 2024
It's preorder time again
I've moved into the new flat, which lacked a stopper for the kitchen sink. So I had to go buy one. Do you know how hard it is to just walk into a store and buy a sink stopper?
Regular retail stores don't have them, even the ones that ostensibly stock housewares. You can order them online, but mostly only in packs of 4 or more and you'll pay more in shipping than you will on the actual product. Instead I went on an arduous journey to the nearest big boy hardware store, where — after considerable time spent searching the aisles — I finally found what I needed. It was £1.
Anyway:
Preorder: "Jay Moriarty Has Seen You Naked"
The fourth story in The Casefile of Jay Moriarty, titled "Jay Moriarty Has Seen You Naked," comes out on July 9! It's up for preorder — from those among my vendors who allow preorders, anyway — here.
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.
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 LinksAn attempt by the Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute to catalogue various "consumer aesthetics" of the last 70 or so years. Pretty useful if you need to describe a room or a building.
Reconstructing shredded paper money
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority visitor center sells souvenir glass containers full of shredded paper money. Each container (costing $100 HKD) is advertised as containing 138 complete $1000 HKD banknotes. Researcher Chunt T. Kong set out to determine whether he could use "computer vision" to reconstruct the shredded banknotes.
The Collapse Is Coming. Will Humanity Adapt?
Just a lighthearted little piece about the upcoming climate-induced societal collapse, and what comes after. Features Canadian hard sci-fi author Peter Watts, who I've mentioned on this newsletter before.
Most storefronts don't allow me to see if anyone's preordered a book until after release day. This is a system designed to make me insane.
-K
June 4, 2024
Material possessions were a mistake
I'm moving this week, for the dumbest possible reasons.
At the end of April, my landlord informed me he'd sold the building and that I had two months to move out. I found a new flat, worked out a move-in date, and signed the lease.
Two days after I picked up the keys to the new place, the landlord of the old place informed me the sale of the building had fallen through and asked if it was too late for me to stay.
I have not stabbed anyone. I think I deserve credit for that.
Anyway. I'm on final revisions of the next Casefile of Jay Moriarty story, which is turning out to be around 25 000 words long. It's a bit hefty for what's fundamentally a beach episode, but I'm feeling indulgent this time around.
Podcast Appearance: I Will Fight YouThe latest episode of I Will Fight You is about the movie To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, and features a guest appearance from fellow podcaster MeganBob. Also included: discussions of 90s drag taxonomy and deep cut references to the Chappaquiddick incident.
You can listen to the episode here, or wherever podcasts are found.
This Week's LinksSora’s attempts to replace filmmakers are dead on arrival because these are impractical and ineffective solutions to problems that nobody complained about other than Hollywood executives. The AI hype bubble, as I’ve noted before, is one entirely reliant on us accepting the *idea* of what these companies will do rather than interrogating their ability to actually do it.
A great little flash fiction story about lasers and the problems that arise when the people you're accountable to got all C's in high school.
'Are We Dating the Same Guy' Guy Imprisoned for Tax Fraud
Definitely in the running for Most Lede of All Time:
A man who sued more than two dozen women for calling him “clingy” and “psycho” was just sentenced to a year in federal prison for tax fraud and generating mob-connected earnings from gambling machines. During his trial, his lawyers defended him by calling their client too stupid to be held accountable.
That's all for this week, because I need to go finish packing. Why do I own so much fucking garbage.
-K
May 14, 2024
Just some links today
I'm heads-down on getting the next Casefile of Jay Moriarty story finished, so I don't have a lot of time to dedicate to the newsletter this week.
This Week's LinksWhat Happens When a Romance Writer Gets Locked Out of Google Docs
There's been a lot of confusion over the last few months among writers — especially fanfiction writers — over content restrictions on Google Docs and whether they can ban you for writing smut. Google has not offered any clear verdict on the matter.
This is the fundamental problem of relying heavily on services controlled by third parties, like Google. By handing over all the hard stuff (hosting, admin, etc.), you also hand these companies leverage they can exercise for any reason they want, at any time they want.
Such is the bold vision of Guy Dupont, a developer whose recent entry into the Boston Stupid Shit Nobody Needs and Terrible Ideas Hackathon was the most sacrilegious gag I've ever seen: He added microtransactions into Doom earlier this month. That's the original, 1993 Doom. Can he ever be forgiven? No.
Ohio State commencement speaker says he got help from psychedelics while writing speech
My problem, as someone who enjoys writing fiction about dumb bullshit, is that it's getting difficult to keep up with the baseline dumb bullshit that is reality.
Also, I watched the Mean Girls musical movie over the weekend. It wasn't very good.
-K
April 30, 2024
Too old for the hype machine
My general outlook on the state of popular media is: it's too many. I can't keep up. Every movie I see advertised on the side of a bus is something I've never heard of and looks like a background gag from a 30 Rock episode.
Have I seen Civil War? Of course not. I only found it existed after it was already out and everyone suddenly had an opinion on it. I am busy rewatching Stargate: SG-1. Stop bothering me.
Podcast Appearance: I Will Fight YouThe latest episode of I Will Fight You is about Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, a game with too many subtitles which is also, according to my co-host Maquekenzie, High Art. Spoilers for a game that came out 20 years ago.
You can listen to the episode here, or wherever podcasts are found.
Recommendation: PRETTY GOOD
Jon Bois, the storyteller behind the YouTube video series PRETTY GOOD, is perhaps the only person on YouTube who understands that video essays are supposed to have a visual component. He's ostensibly a sports writer, but has managed to wedge himself into an online niche that allows him to talk about whatever he wants; PRETTY GOOD covers not only sports stories, but also bodybuilding forum drama, the show 24, and a flying lawn chair.
What continually impresses me about Bois as an artist is the visual complexity he's capable of pulling off with Google Earth, a (presumably office-supplied) copy of Adobe Premiere, and a budget of $0. This is a guy who understands exactly what he can accomplish with the tools available to him, and he pushes them all to their utmost. Watch the videos, and you'll see what I mean.
This Week's Linksweird vintage sci-fi fantasy books ily
A Neocities page about vintage sci-fi book covers. Mouse over each of them to read the back. This is the closest online equivalent to killing a half-hour in the sci-fi/fantasy section of a used bookstore.
IMMORTAL Pop!bat 2: funK.O. (Definitive Edition)
IMMORTAL Pop!bat 2: funK.O. (Definitive Edition) is a sequel to the much-beloved and often-played Mortal Popbat, the war game of empty-eyed vinyl bobbleless bobbleheads. Now even more chaotic and bloated, IMMORTAL Pop!bat 2: funK.O. (Definitive Edition) is sure to satisfy that primal desire to see little merchandise blobs maul each other. Spend, fight, destroy, and see who comes out on Pop™!
No, really — this is a wargame for Funko Pops. It's over 1600 pages long. The first 3 or 4 pages are the rules; the rest are stat blocks. There is a dedication on display here that I find both impressive and terrifying.
This video captures something fundamental about the human condition. I rewatch it on a regular basis. I can't stop thinking about it.
Yes, I started rewatching SG-1 after I saw the Stargate prop from the other week. That's how easy it is to reactivate an old obsession. It could happen to you.
-K
April 23, 2024
Free stuff and a book update
The first draft of the next Casefile of Jay Moriarty story is done and already sitting at over 17 000 words, which means the final draft will likely be somewhere over 20 000. This is probably why it's taking longer to write than the others did, even accounting for other circumstances.
The first book in the series, "Jay Moriarty Violates the Official Secrets Act," was about 10 000 words. The next two were around 15 000. I'm not married to 15k as the standard for the series — I'm content to let these be as long as they have to be — but it's interesting to see which stories end up needing more space to play out.
And it's not like the Sherlock Holmes stories are all the same length, either. I'm just following tradition, or something.
Community Copies on itch.ioThis week, I made some community copies available for all of my paid titles on itch.io. To find them, scroll down each book page until you see the "Community Copies" section.
Community copies of a book are available for free to readers who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford it. They're funded by book purchases; for every copy sold, a new community copy becomes available.
So if you buy one of my books, you're making a free copy available for somebody else — and if you couldn't afford my books before, you can now grab one of those free copies.
Recommendation: Leverage
If you know me personally, then you've already heard of this show because I literally never shut up about it. Leverage is a con-and-heist show that ran from 2008 to 2012, in which a team of professional criminals target the rich and powerful on behalf of the poor and powerless.
(As you can probably guess, it was a major inspiration for The Casefile of Jay Moriarty.)
Leverage isn't just a fun show; it's quite possibly peak television writing. Most shows I love have a weak first season and periodic flop episodes, but Leverage hit the ground running. I can't think of a single episode I actually dislike. And the writing is tight, covering a lot of ground with its long-form emotional storytelling by interweaving it with focused, self-contained heists-of-the-week.
It's a good show. You should watch it.
This Week's LinksI've known about Apollo Robbins for a while, but I just recently found out he has a website. And that the domain "istealstuff.com" redirects there. He's a stage pickpocket (among other things) and was a criminal consultant on Leverage. If you're a crime writer (or if you have a hobby interest in this sort of thing), Robbins' website is worth checking out.
Wrong couple get divorced after solicitor ‘clicks wrong button’
The solicitor (lawyer) in question works for Ayesha Vardag, who apparently calls herself the "diva of divorce." This whole situation is wild but I just want to draw attention to this paragraph at the end:
[Vardag] made headlines in 2019 after sending a memo to staff banning cardigans in the office. In a new dress code issued last year, she said staff could shun the cufflinks and business suits associated with “bankers and estate agents” and wear electric blue sequined jackets and gold leather trousers to the office instead.
Tory MP William Wragg admits to leaking phone numbers in ‘honeytrap’ scandal
Basically: UK Tory MP sends nudes to a guy he met on Grindr, who then blackmails him into providing the phone numbers of other MPs, who then also send nudes.
My friend Ian keeps insisting the British are not a horny people. He is wrong.
For those wondering: the next Casefile of Jay Moriarty story takes place in Marbella, Spain. Jay and Sebastian are having a completely normal holiday. Don't worry about it.
-K
April 16, 2024
Corporate warfare via journalism
There are things I write about in this newsletter specifically because my dad reads it, and would find those things interesting. This week, it's Hunterbrook Media.
Depending on who you ask, Hunterbrook is either a news-powered hedge fund or a hedge fund-powered newspaper. They've hired journalists to investigate various publicly-traded companies; if these investigations reveal any shady practices, Hunterbrook then shorts the companies in question before making their findings public. In their ideal scenario, the value of the targeted company's stock then goes down and Hunterbrook makes a lot of money.
Apparently this isn't insider trading, because Hunterbrook's reporters are instructed not to seek out sources within the companies they're investigating. And it's probably a solid investment on Hunterbrook's part; the cost of housing and feeding a newsroom of two dozen journalists has to be pocket change compared to the amounts of money hedge funds usually deal in.
It's not the most ethical thing in the world, obviously, but it is really, really funny.
Recommendation: The Maltese Falcon
The thing about seminal works of genre fiction is that everyone agrees they're good, but nobody actually reads them. And then you do read them, and they are good, but you can't tell anybody because they all agree with you already. But at least your opinion is informed, goddamnit.
Anyway. The brilliant thing about Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon is its refusal to tell you what any of its characters are thinking. The prose describes what they say, how they're saying it, their expressions, their actions, but gives you no insight as to anyone's motivations or what they're up to once they leave the reader's sight.
As a result, you can't trust anyone in The Maltese Falcon — not even its protagonist. And that's what keeps you guessing until the last page.
This Week's LinksAesthetically speaking, the Stargate might be the perfect science fiction object. It spins. It lights up. It makes satisfying cha-chunk noises. And now Kristian here has made a miniature prop version that does all of those things.
I love this. Not just because the project is cool, but because it's my favorite kind of website: the kind that exists because somebody built something interesting, and they want to show it to the world.
These Songs Are Still Legal in Chechnya
“From now on all musical, vocal and choreographic works should correspond to a tempo of 80 to 116 beats per minute,” Chechnya’s Culture Ministry said in a statement, according to the Moscow Times.
In a meeting, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov instructed Chechen Culture Minister Musa Dadayev to make Chechen music “conform to the Chechen mentality,” and added that “Borrowing musical culture from other peoples is inadmissible,” the Moscow Times reported.
Burglary crew allegedly nets up to $30M in one of the largest cash heists in LA history
In today's world of crypto scams and offshore digital assets, it's weirdly reassuring to know that you can still pull off a good old-fashioned heist. Also I was nowhere near Los Angeles that weekend, and you can't prove otherwise.
I wonder if that 3D-printed Stargate scales up to life size. I have ideas.
-K
April 9, 2024
Okay, I'm back
Took a week off the usual newsletter schedule to deal with, y'know. And also to figure out what the fuck is going on with my taxes. I won't bore you by complaining about that here, but let me assure you: shit's fucked.
Recommendation: Blindsight
In Peter Watts' novel Blindsight, a group of specialists are sent to make first contact with what appears to be an alien vessel at the very edge of the solar system. The resulting encounter begs terrifying questions about language, xenobiology, and the nature of consciousness itself.
This is hard sci-fi, and I mean hard. There's a list of citations in the back. It's ended up on the syllabus of more than one neuroscience class. I first read it at age 16, and it permanently altered my brain chemistry.
You can get Blindsight most places books are sold, but Watts has also made it available under a Creative Commons license on his website here.
This Week's LinksThere is no EU cookie banner law
Companies are making your life hard by choice. They got told by the EU they could not be secret abusers anymore, so now they decided to be irritating on top.
Billionaire Says His Long-Delayed ‘Titanic II’ Ship Will Be Antidote to ‘Woke’ Politics
The headline kind of says it all, but this feels like a good time to mention that I Will Fight You did an episode on the movie Titanic 2.
Trash from the International Space Station may have hit a house in Florida
It is notoriously difficult to predict where a piece of space junk will reenter the atmosphere. US Space Command precisely tracks tens of thousands of objects in Earth orbit, but the exact density of the upper atmosphere is still largely an unknown variable. Even a half-day before the reentry, US Space Command's estimate for when the battery pallet would fall to Earth had a window of uncertainty spanning six hours, enough time for the object to circle the planet four times.
And if you don't know when something will reenter the atmosphere, you can't predict where it will come down.
Speaking of Peter Watts, he was also a "genetics consultant" on Jurassic World Dominion, a gig that apparently consisted of drinking in a hotel room and complaining about the first Jurassic World movie. And then they spelled his name wrong in the credits. I guess there's worse ways to earn money.
-K
