Kit Walker's Blog

Checking in briefly to report that, unlike John Denver, I did not die in a plane crash.

I'm mostly settled now in Edmonton; so is the cat, although she briefly escaped into the great outdoors where, thankfully, she managed to evade getting eaten by coyotes. (They have those here.)

Writing has been on a bit of a hiatus while I took care of all the moving stuff, but I'm now back on track with the next Casefile of Jay Moriarty story. Watch this space.

This Week's Links

Queer developers speak out as adult games remain in limbo following payment processor showdown at Steam and itch.io

Right now, it's 100 percent acceptable to make a game where you kill people graphically, but it's not to make games about your experiences with sexual abuse/violence/trauma. People are using the spectre of sexual violence to silence people from talking about their own lives.

A New Video Game Allows You to Repatriate African Artifacts by Looting Western Museums

Earlier this month at the annual Summer Game Fest in Los Angeles, Nyamakop unveiled its latest project, Relooted, a side-scrolling puzzle platformer—think early Tomb Raider or Prince of Persia games—where players join a crew of Robin Hood-esque thieves staging elaborate heists to take back stolen artifacts from Western museums, and repatriate them to the peoples from whom they were taken.

Jellyfish swarm forces French nuclear plant to shut

A French nuclear plant temporarily shut down on Monday due to a "massive and unpredictable presence of jellyfish" in its filters, its operator said.

I'm also back on Instagram for the sake of keeping up with my Newcastle friends, plus a halfhearted attempt at the #bookstagram thing. We'll see how that goes.

-K

Moving still underway; this time next week, I'll be on a plane back to Canada. Overall, the prospect of leaving the UK has been less heartbreaking than I expected—but then again, it's been increasingly apparent to me over the past year or so that this is not a country that believes in the things I believe in.

One example: in Edmonton there's a yearly event called the Heritage Festival, where all the city's cultural communities come together and set up pavilions showcasing their cuisine, art, and history. You can get in for free, eat some excellent Ecuadorian food, then walk ten feet and watch a Métis sword dance. It's one of the best weekends of the year.

In Britain, prevailing political sentiment holds that everyone involved in this proceeding should be either punished or ejected from the country for "refusing to assimilate."

New Flash Fiction: "Discipline"

Sebastian’s Saturday night had effectively started with him naked on his knees at the foot of his own bed, hands held behind his back because Jay had ordered him to keep them there.

If you happen to be one of my parents, maybe skip this story. It takes place a month or two after "Sebastian Moran Gut-Punches a Pimp," and you can read it for free here!

Podcast Appearance: I Will Fight You

The latest episode of I Will Fight You is about the movie Devil (2010), which absolutely should have been called Hellevator.

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

This Week's Links

'Vicious compliance': Alberta premier decries Edmonton Public Schools' banned book list

Long story short: the Alberta government orders schools to remove LGBT books from their libraries using the dogwhistle "explicit sexual content," and the school board in my hometown sarcastically responds by compiling a list of 200 books that match this definition—including The Handmaid's Tale, The Color Purple, and Jaws. Needless to say, the government isn't happy about this.

Buy an invite to a wedding

Invitin is a French startup that allows couples to sell seats at their weddings to help finance their event.

Pigeonetics

A browser-based game about genetics and pigeons.

The Trans-Atlantic Cat Transport Subsidization Fund is still accepting donations! If you'd like to help out, click the "Buy me a coffee" button below.

-K

My move back to Canada is well underway; so far it's consisted largely of calling up various utility and service providers and informing them that no, they cannot persuade me to stay, not even if they give me a special discount, as their service is not available at my new address (across the fucking ocean).

Anyway, this newsletter's schedule may slip a bit while I get everything sorted.

New Flash Fiction: "Witching Hour"

If Sebastian hadn’t woken up yet, it was probably safe for Jay to check his phone. But as he reached toward the bedside table where he’d left it charging, a soft pained noise sounded from the other side of the bed.

Jay rolled to face him. “Sebastian?”

Sebastian’s body was a vague outline in the dark; he didn’t answer, but after a second or two made another sound, low in his throat, and shifted uneasily beneath the covers.

Sebastian Moran has a nightmare in Jay Moriarty's bed, and things go sideways. This interlude takes place between "Jay Moriarty Ruins Everybody’s Childhood" and "Jay Moriarty Has Seen You Naked," and you can read it for free here!

This Week's Links

The Philosophy of Final Destination

I think the presence of artistic trash is a very good indicator of the health of a pop culture ecosystem. You can only subvert standards of taste if those standards exist to begin with.

UK Asks People to Delete Emails In Order to Save Water During Drought

Like so many other systemic issues linked to climate change and how people live in the 21st century, small-scale personal solutions like “delete your old emails” won’t solve the problem. The individual water bill for a person’s old photos is nothing compared to the gallons of water required by large corporate clients running massive computers.

Queer Authors Withdraw From Writing Prize En Masse Over Inclusion of Self-Proclaimed TERF

The 2025 prizes became mired in controversy after an author and self-proclaimed TERF, John Boyne, was named to the longlist for the Polari Prize. Boyne had recently published a tribute to J. K. Rowling in the Irish Independent in which he proudly stated his support for Rowling’s extreme anti-trans views. Those views include a recent call by Rowling to boycott a department store for employing a tall woman an irate customer believes was trans.

Thanks so much to everyone who's donated to the Trans-Atlantic Cat Transport Subsidization Fund, especially whoever the hell this was:

-K

Ever since Sir Keir Starmer personally told me to go fuck myself, it's been looking more and more likely I'll be returning to Canada. Which is just as well, since the UK is getting weirder.

One example: the Online Safety Act, a law passed under the premise that only internet users over the age of 18 should be able to access "adult" sites. There is, of course, a logistical problem at the core of that idea: how do you tell which users are over 18, and which are not?

The British government's solution to that problem appears to be "compel everyone in the country to hand over sensitive personal data to US-based tech companies, many of whom will completely fail to secure it properly."

On top of the fact that everyone in the UK now has to doxx themselves to watch videos on PornHub, it turns out the government's idea of "adult" websites is, uh, broad. For example, they're attempting to age-gate Wikipedia. There are various reports that mental health resources, LGBTQ+ communities, and sites documenting war crimes in Ukraine and Palestine are all under pressure to block any user who hasn't verified their identity.

The true purpose of the Online Safety Act appears to be twofold: to block access to information the British government has deemed "sensitive," and to chill online speech by ensuring every post made by a UK resident is tied in some way to their legal ID.

Nobody likes this! In fact, there's a petition on the UK parliament's website to repeal the Online Safety Act. If a petition reaches 10 000 signatures, the government must issue a written response; if it reaches 100 000 signatures, the issue must be debated on the parliament floor. The OSA petition has, at time of writing, just under 500 000 signatures. Several opportunities for debate have come and gone, and the written response issued boils down to "we are doing this whether you like it or not."

So ... yeah. Time to go home. Although this does mean I must now submit myself to the annoying and expensive process of transporting my cat from the UK to Canada.

She's lucky she's cute.

Incidentally, if you've been thinking about buying any of my books, subscribing to The Casefile of Jay Moriarty, or dropping a few bucks into my Ko-fi, now would be a good time to do that. (And if you've read my work and enjoyed it, try recommending me to a friend!)

New Serialized Chapter: "Sebastian Moran Gut-Punches a Pimp," Chapter 5

Frustrated and furious, Lucas took to hanging around the borough. He spotted Moriarty more days than not, and even managed to follow him a few times—although he always managed to slip away sooner or later.

Then he’d tailed Moriarty to that restaurant, and seen him with the man from the photos: Sebastian Moran.

And Jay had kissed him.

Chapter 5 of "Sebastian Moran Gut-Punches a Pimp" is now available to read on the Casefile of Jay Moriarty website! If you don't want to read the story in serialized form and would prefer to get it all at once, you can also buy the entire novelette as an ebook.

This Week's Links

Self-proclaimed 'gay furry hackers' breach nuclear lab

"We're willing to make a deal with INL. If they research creating irl catgirls we will take down this post," SiegedSec wrote in a post announcing the leak on Monday.

Bringing Sexy Back

One of the great ironies in the history of sex is that pathologization used to be a way of controlling sexual desire. (All are familiar with the many myths that masturbation would turn one blind.) Now it is a way of exempting oneself, of relinquishing control of one’s actions so as to absolve them of scrutiny. My little bondage moment couldn’t be problematic if it couldn’t be helped. It couldn’t be subjected to interrogation if there was something I could point to to say “it’s beyond my control, don’t judge me!”

We watched activists disrupt a ‘gender-critical’ meeting dressed as clowns

“This is more than just a panel discussion for us,” says Lorde, explaining why the Dyke Project chose to target this particular event. “We want to disrupt it because it’s a symbol of the threat which these people in power have: their biological essentalist values and gender rigidity will roll back hard-won feminist victories, from abortion acess [sic] to queer rights.”

The damn cat's plane ticket is more expensive than mine.

-K

So Steam has banned games featuring "adult content" from its storefront, with itch.io following suit a few days later. Both cite pressure from their payment processors (Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Stripe, etc.) as the primary reason for the bans. itch.io specifically points out this pressure was induced by anti-porn activist group Collective Shout, which has some interesting ties to other conservative, pro-censorship movements.

(I've linked to archived versions of those articles because the original publisher, Vice, later deleted them from its website due to their "controversial content.")

This means Steam and itch.io have joined Patreon, Gumroad, and other sites like them in censoring the art that can be hosted and sold on their platforms. First off, it's worth noting that banning adult content from a platform doesn't actually remove it from the platform. It just removes the incentive for creators to properly flag and categorize their work, as doing so becomes the most effective and immediate way to get it deleted. Instead, creators inevitably start using euphemistic categories and tags—or, even worse, stop tagging their work at all. And that only increases the odds that you (or your kid) will end up seeing something you don't want to see.

Secondly, two quotes from 404 Media's reporting on this development stand out:

The 15th item on a list of “what you shouldn’t publish on Steam” now reads: “Content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam’s payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers. In particular, certain kinds of adult only content.”

Valve did not respond to questions about where developers might find more details about payment processors’ rules and standards.

As I've mentioned before, it's actually against censors' best interests to provide clear guidelines on what they do or do not prohibit. It isn't logistically feasible to identify and punish every possible infraction; instead, censors make the rules vague and confusing, the punishment harsh and specific, and rely on fear and doubt to force self-censorship on their target population.

itch.io's new content guidelines are a bit clearer, but not by much. You may note that itch's list of "prohibited themes" includes rape, incest, and underage sex — but does not clarify whether they're prohibited only within a pornographic context, or whether any works addressing these themes are now banned.

I've seen defenders of these content bans claim that they're just targeting specific forms of porn which "glorify" rape and child abuse, but it's clear that creators examining these subjects from an artistic, literary perspective are also being censored, because the moderation systems in place on these platforms either don't know or don't care what "glorifying" actually means. Call me an apologist all you want, but if you can't tell the difference between rape fetish porn and Toni Morrison's Beloved, you don't deserve to cast moral judgment on either of those things.

The good news here is that the latest group to be affected by these censorship policies are gamers. Who are, uh, notoriously aggressive about losing access to their entertainment products of choice, especially when it's product they've already paid for. By many reports, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, and Stripe are getting absolutely swamped with complaints — so Collective Shout and the payment processors they're targeting may have finally swung their bats at the wrong hornet's nest.

(If you'd like to be one of the hornets, check out this page.)

On a personal note: itch.io is one of the sites through which I sell my books. I don't appear to have been caught in the ban (yet), but I can't guarantee indefinite access to my work through the platform; as a writer who not-infrequently explores dark subjects, I'm likely to run afoul of that "prohibited themes" list I mentioned earlier. If you've bought books from me on itch, I recommend downloading and archiving all of them.

itch.io also allows its sellers to choose how much of their revenue to share with the platform. Historically my revenue share with itch has been set to 10%, meaning itch received ⅒th of the cover price on every book I sold through their site. I have now reduced my revenue share to 0%, and it will stay there until itch's new censorship policies are reversed.

Podcast Appearance: I Will Fight You

The latest episode of I Will Fight You is about Hellboy (2004), directed by Guillermo del Toro. It is a movie full of the Things Guillermo Likes. We like those things, too.

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

New Serialized Chapter: "Sebastian Moran Gut-Punches a Pimp," Chapter 4

The handle turned, and the door slammed open as the intruder on the other side barrelled into the bedroom. There was a gun in his hand.

He’d clearly expected to surprise Sebastian in bed, and was unprepared for Sebastian to dart in from the side and twist the gun out of his grip. It fell to the floor, and then Sebastian’s knife was up under the intruder’s chin as he pushed them both back through the doorway.

Chapter 4 of "Sebastian Moran Gut-Punches a Pimp" is is now up available to read on the new Casefile of Jay Moriarty website!. If you don't want to read the story in serialized form and would prefer to get it all at once, you can also buy the entire novelette as an ebook.

End of the Summer/Winter Sale

We're into the last few days of the Summer/Winter sale over on Smashwords! You can get most of my books at a discount of up to 75% off until July 31.

Check out the sale here!

This Week's Links

Mastercard: Sex Work is Work. End Your Unjust Policy.

A petition by the ACLU to end Mastercard's discriminatory policies against sex workers and adult content, from which so many other censorship troubles stem. Only signable by US residents or citizens.

Buying and Selling Queer Content in Interesting Times

Adult content has always been and always will be the euphemistic term used to go after queer art, especially art by trans creatives. It doesn’t matter if the art or book or movie is about two ace women in a queer-platonic relationship going to adopt a cat or if it’s seven men having a twenty-four hour orgy doing some of the most taboo acts known to humanity. It’s the same thing to these Christofascists. And they want it gone.

Death by AI

... to the best of my knowledge, I did not pass away last November 20. That is not just my opinion. In recent months I have been examined by two different licensed physicians, and if I had been dead, I'm pretty sure at least one of them would have mentioned it. ("Dave, your pulse is zero, and your blood pressure is zero over zero. I'm going to try your other arm, but frankly at this point I'm concerned.")

"The trouble about fighting for human freedom is that you have to spend much of your life defending sons-of-bitches; for oppressive laws are always aimed at them originally, and oppression must be stopped in the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."

H. L. Mencken

-K

By a plurality of reports, I have been released from the Gmail dungeon. Big thanks to all of you who let me know whether your copy of the newsletter came through. I still have no idea why that one email was marked as spam, and I suspect I'll never find out.

New Serialized Chapter: "Sebastian Moran Gut-Punches a Pimp," Chapter 3

The building’s interior was essentially one massive room; catwalks and rigging criss-crossed high overhead, and the film’s various sets were arrayed around the concrete floor. The sets were little more than open-sided boxes lined with green or blue screens, each surrounded by cameras and lights and other bits of equipment.

Nobody appeared to be shooting anything at the moment. The crew were all gathered in loose groups, chatting or tweaking their setups or grazing off the craft services table. The cast were at similarly loose ends; some of them had costumes on, but many were in black or green bodysuits dotted with sensors that would be digitally painted over in post-production.

Overall, Sebastian would be hard-pressed to identify exactly what kind of movie was being shot here—and so would Romayne Bellamy.

Chapter 3 of "Sebastian Moran Gut-Punches a Pimp" is now up available to read on the new Casefile of Jay Moriarty website! If you don't want to read the story in serialized form and would prefer to get it all at once, you can also buy the entire novelette as an ebook.

This Week's Links

The Open-Source Software Saving the Internet From AI Bot Scrapers

Iaso, who said she deals with some generative AI at her day job, told me that “from what I have learned, poisoning datasets doesn't work. It makes you feel good, but it ends up using more compute than you end up saving. I don't know the polite way to say this, but if you piss in an ocean, the ocean does not turn into piss.”

Pilot Callsigns: The web's largest collection of callsign stories

The Three Rules of Callsigns If you don't already have one, you will be assigned one by your "buddies".You probably won't like it.If you complain and moan too much about 1. and 2., you'll get a new nickname you'll like even less!

Fake Hafez: How a supreme Persian poet of love was erased

Ladinsky claims that Hafez appeared to him in a dream and handed him the English “translations” he is publishing:

“About six months into this work I had an astounding dream in which I saw Hafiz as an Infinite Fountaining Sun (I saw him as God), who sang hundreds of lines of his poetry to me in English, asking me to give that message to ‘my artists and seekers’.”

It is not my place to argue with people and their dreams, but I am fairly certain that this is not how translation works.

Listen, sometimes you get distracted trying to cook a brisket and forget to put your newsletter to bed until the day it's supposed to go out. It's fine. Don't worry about it.

-K

Well, it looks like Gmail sent last week's newsletter to the spam folder. Possible reasons for this include:

current or former subscriber of this newsletter reported it as spamcurrent or former subscriber of a different Buttondown newsletter reported it as spam, and Gmail is now suspicious of the entire Buttondown domaintoo many links to saucy websitestoo many links in generalsaid "fuck" too muchmassive corporate conspiracy against me specifically

Google (like most tech companies), doesn't employ humans to deal with issues like this anymore, so it's basically impossible to know which of the above is the case. Hopefully this week's newsletter goes through—and if you missed it last week, maybe check your spam folder.

New Serialized Chapter: "Sebastian Moran Gut-Punches a Pimp," Chapter 2

Jack Woodley’s home turned out to be the upper-floor flat of a house at the corner of the block. Moran knocked briskly on the door; there was a brief delay, and then the sound of someone making their way down the stairs. The door opened to reveal a surprisingly clean-cut man somewhere in his late twenties.

“Jack Woodley?” Moran asked.

The man swore and slammed the door shut.

Chapter 2 of "Sebastian Moran Gut-Punches a Pimp" is now available to read on the Casefile of Jay Moriarty website! If you're not a fan of serialized works, you can also get the entire novelette as an ebook.

This Week's Links

Conservative activists gave Alberta government list of ‘inappropriate’ books in school libraries

Action4Canada is a conservative Christian group with more than 60 chapters across Canada. The group promotes deeply conspiratorial beliefs, claiming the Canadian government and education system have been “infiltrated by radical LGBTQ activists” and that SOGI education and sexually explicit books are part of a “global agenda to sexualize children, interfere with parental rights, eliminate the natural family and normalize pedophilia.”

Mia Khalifa says selling body On OnlyFans is better than 'selling it to the army'

"Honestly, I think that selling your body, like if we are going by that definition, being in the army is worse than being on OnlyFans. You're selling your body to the government."

Fitness App’s ‘Anonymized’ Data Dump Accidentally Reveals Military Bases Around the World

... it’s easy to deduce who’s using Strava in places where American-based technologies are relatively rare. Smartphones and Fitbits might be scarce in a particular remote area of Afghanistan, leaving us to conclude that it must be the presence of US troops.

I guess I could try saying "fuck" less to avoid getting classified as spam, but the very idea offends my principles.

-K

Despite the fact that I'm mostly writing episodic shorts in an ongoing series, I try to make sure each individual story has a definitive ending. Most stories in The Casefile of Jay Moriarty could, in the event of my untimely demise, serve as a conclusion to the series.

This makes it all the more frustrating when I pick up a 300-page novel, for which I paid 15 whole Earth dollars, and find out it doesn't actually have an ending. Just a sloppy cliffhanger and an ad for the next installment in the series. And this has happened multiple times.

I'm not sure when publishers started charging full price for books that aren't finished, but it's fucking inexcusable.

Summer/Winter Sale

It's time once again for the Summer/Winter sale over at Smashwords, and most of my books are on sale up to 75% off!

You can find my books on Smashwords here, and sale prices are valid through to July 31.

New Serialized Chapter: "Sebastian Moran Gut-Punches a Pimp," Chapter 1

Kitty Winter hadn’t been sure whether to attend the grand reopening of the Marigold Cinema until it was announced the evening’s screening would be a double feature: Body Heat and Serial Mom.

The first chapter of "Sebastian Moran Gut-Punches a Pimp" is now available to read on the Casefile of Jay Moriarty website! If you don't want to read the story in serialized form and would prefer to get it all at once, you can also buy the entire novelette as an ebook.

This Week's Links

Police use controversial AI tool that looks at people’s sex lives and beliefs

The police memo states that Nectar will “require and be used to access” 11 different types of “special category information” held on an unspecified number of individuals. This information includes “race”, “political opinions”, “sex life”, “religion”, “philosophical beliefs”, “trade union membership” and “health”.

Thoughts and Prayers

This body of work composed of 15 pieces was designed to bring awareness to the destructive epidemic of gun violence. I threw series of vases and shot them, while wet, with a variety of real firearms. They were then buried in a pit and pit fired with the wounds intact.

Billionaire Dies After Swallowing a Bee During Polo Match

In what sounds like a lower-tier Final Destination death, Indian auto parts billionaire Sunjay Kapur died after reportedly swallowing a bee during a polo match at the Queen’s Cup in Windsor.

A lot of my fiction might technically be cyberpunk simply by virtue of the fact that it’s set in contemporary Britain.

-K

This video on Women and the Men Who Write Them discusses, among other things, the way The Last of Us Part II ends up arguing against itself on the subject of revenge because it tries to apply a narrative about "breaking the cycle of violence" to a character whose experience of violence and power is vastly different from that of a conventional male protagonist. And it got me thinking about marginalized characters and revenge plots.

In stories where the thesis boils down to "Revenge Bad," the character pursuing revenge is usually positioned as someone who's taking justice from the hands of a rightful authority and into their own. They are circumventing a fair and correct process and abusing their own power for the sake of personal satisfaction — attempting to kill a murderer themselves instead of turning that murderer over to a court of law, for instance.

Of course, this kind of story hinges on a number of assumptions: that the character's world contains a rightful authority, that the systems of justice in this world function fairly and correctly, and that the character has any power to abuse.

If a character is disempowered, if there's no justice to be had from authority, then revenge (as mentioned in the video) becomes the only form of justice available. And if you're still trying to use this character and world to say "Revenge Bad," you're not making the point you think you are.

New Novelette: "Sebastian Moran Gut-Punches a Pimp"

Kitty Winter is in trouble. She can just about make rent by posting photos to subscription service SecretStar, but now an exploitative agency called Wayward Talent is attempting to seize control of her account. The law can't help ... so it's a good thing Sebastian Moran and Jay Moriarty are the furthest thing from the law.

But as Moriarty and Moran set out to dismantle Wayward Talent, an old enemy of Moriarty's resurfaces — one eager to tear apart not only the con, but Moriarty and Moran's lives.

"Sebastian Moran Gut-Punches a Pimp" is the eighth story in my series The Casefile of Jay Moriarty, a modern-day queer take on the iconic Sherlock Holmes villain, his partner Sebastian Moran, and the various crimes they commit together.

You can get "Sebastian Moran Gut-Punches a Pimp" most places ebooks are sold, or by clicking here.

This Week's Links

Massive Creator Platform Fansly Bans Furries

The changes blame payment processors for classifying “some anthropomorphic content as simulated bestiality.” Most people in the furry fandom condemn bestiality and anything resembling it, but payment processors—which have increasingly dictated strict rules for adult sexual content for years—seemingly don’t know the difference and are making it creators’ problem.

Unauthorized sexual enhancement products may pose serious health risks

The risk posed by these products is very real, but unfortunately the names are also very, very funny.

EP-1320 medieval - the world's first medieval electronic instrument

Hurdy gurdys, lutes, Gregorian chants, thundering drums and punishing percussive Foley FX. The EP-1320 is the first of its kind: featuring a large library of phrases, play ready instruments and one-shot samples from an age where darkness reigned supreme, the instrumentalis electronicum is the ultimate, and only, medieval beat machine.

God, how funny would it have been if another pope died right before the release of this book?

-K

A few years ago, the company I worked for at the time hired a speaker to come and do a talk about "growth mindset." Attendance was not optional. The speaker listed, among his qualifications, that he was quite good at table tennis. In one part of his presentation, he talked about factory owners during the Industrial Revolution and claimed that their major failing was a lack of "growth mindset" in embracing new technologies. The rampant labor abuse and child exploitation in these same factories was a point left undiscussed.

Growth Mindset Guy is now advocating for war against Iran, claiming that a nation of 90 million people is a "death cult" and that "they want to die."

Also, near as I can tell, he's still doing the corporate talk circuit.

Preorder: "Sebastian Moran Gut-Punches a Pimp"

Kitty Winter is in trouble. She can just about make rent by posting photos to subscription service SecretStar, but now an exploitative agency called Wayward Talent is attempting to seize control of her account. The law can't help ... so it's a good thing Sebastian Moran and Jay Moriarty are the furthest thing from the law.

But as Moriarty and Moran set out to dismantle Wayward Talent, an old enemy of Moriarty's resurfaces — one eager to tear apart not only the con, but Moriarty and Moran's lives.

The eighth story in The Casefile of Jay Moriarty, titled "Sebastian Moran Gut-Punches a Pimp," comes out on July 1! You can preorder it (from those vendors that allow preorders) here.

Additionally, Ko-fi supporters who subscribe at the Early Access tier ($5 CAD/month) can download the book for free, right now.

Podcast Appearance: I Will Fight You

The latest episode of I Will Fight You is about the movie Madame Web, which is a frustratingly bad movie, but we do get to talk about it with New Hampshire's favorite son (and Madame Web scholar) Jake Mason.

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

This Week's Links

Fuck Tree

The Fuck Tree is a sessile oak tree on West Heath on Hampstead Heath in north London. It is located in an established gay cruising area. It is noted for its slender trunk which facilitates gay sex.

40,000 Cameras, From Bird Feeders to Baby Monitors, Exposed to the Internet

The company wrote in a press release that it “doesn’t take elite hacking to access these cameras; in most cases, a regular web browser and a curious mind are all it takes, meaning that 40,000 figure is probably just the tip of the iceberg.”

One of the Dreamliners That Gave a Boeing Manager Nightmares Just Crashed

Years earlier, [former quality manager Cynthia Kitchens] had asked a boss if he would let his children fly on a plane with the litany of flaws and non-conformances he was urging her to “pencil-whip”: “Cindy, none of these planes are staying in America, they’re all going overseas,” he retorted, much to her horror.

It feels weird to be talking about books and podcasts right now, but if I wait for things to get Not Fucked Up before I publish anything, I suspect I'll be waiting for a very long tme.

-K