#and the lies they tell is also entering draft 2 status

[rita-rae-siller]

Okay this is an absurdly specific ask for Storyteller Saturday....what is one wip outside of your posted/main one you'd like to talk about? Or alternatively, what is something within your main wip you want somebody to give you an excuse to talk about?

Feel free to answer either or both!

Oooooo, I’ve been looking for an excuse to rave about my vampire WIP!!!

So this is my longest story. The Price of Blood currently sits at over 120k words in draft 1. Almost 30 chapters. I took a break from working on draft 2 to work on The Lies They Tell during a fiction writing workshop I took in the spring semester at school.

It’s my other queer fantasy novel, featuring one very tall princess (Her name is incredibly long, but she goes by her first middle name, Victoria) that’s abducted by a vampire cult to harbor the soul of the God of Shadows and Subterfuge, AKA the vampire anti-christ. Her entire homeland Halaafin, ruled by the Halaa—sort of half elves basically? They’re one of the only people in this world that have magic. Pure humans can’t use magic—is overrun by this cult and basically destroyed. She makes a bargain with a spider witch that's also been betrayed by the cult to save her life and that of her unborn child. The ritual to summon the vampire anti-christ is sabotaged, but the vampires don’t know it. She manages to escape not long after.

Queue 15 years of living alone with her son in the middle of the woods of the neighboring empire until he’s old enough to help her fight the vampires and retake their kingdom. But things don’t go according to plan. The spider witch tells her she has to get a jump on their plans to destroy the cult early, before her son is ready by Victoria's standards. Queue her teaching her son a lot about his history and also her running into her childhood best friend/almost lover, a duchess in the empire that serves the empress as a professional monster hunter. The two reconnect to fight the cult, fall back in love with one another, and also work on healing from the trauma of losing their families to the cult. It's a very gay story full of angst, dry humor, and lots of dead vampires. Also stresses the importance of family and loved ones in the healing process, and how grieving is inherently ugly. (I wrote a lot of this WIP while my own grandmother was dying, so loss is a big theme in it, as well as love continuing after death)

Also guns. Victoria has been removed from modern society for almost twenty years, so when she comes back to civilization, she's introduced to more modern monster hunting equipment used by non-magic people. And let me tell you: nothing makes this giant bisexual disaster happier than getting to shoot vampires and monsters in the head point blank with a revolver.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pluralistic: 03 Mar 2020 (School surveillance self-defense, copyright for authors, Facebook's potemkin data-downloader, Oregon GOP's sabotage, and more!)

Today's links

EFF's Surveillance Self-Defense guide for students: Privacy is a team sport.

Oregon's Dems have a supermajority, but the GOP won't show up for work: White nationalism is how plutes get turkeys to vote for Christmas.

A Lever Without a Fulcrum Is Just a Stick: How to design a copyright to protect artists, not corporations.

Facebook neutered "Download Your Data": "Your data" doesn't include a list of ad-tech companies that also hold your data.

The EU's new copyright filters violate the GDPR: We told you so.

Recycling spy agencies' malware for fun and profit: NOBUS is, and always has been, an idiotic idea.

Japanese condiment company releases "sliced mayo": Comes in four flavors!

Department of the Interior climate docs include junk science: Trump's man on the inside, sabotaging our future.

This day in history: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2019

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

EFF's Surveillance Self-Defense guide for students (permalink)

EFF just launched its Surveillance Self-Defense guide for students: it's a soup-to-nuts guide for kids and parents disturbed about social media monitoring, campus facial recognition systems, and "aggression detection" mics in classrooms

https://ssd.eff.org/en/module/privacy-students

It unpacks technical concepts from stalkerware to man-in-the-middle SSL certificates, and includes guides to having difficult privacy conversations with friends, family and officials, and technical guidance for protecting your privacy.

As the press-release notes, "School discipline disproportionately targets students of color, and it's reasonable to think that additional, and more comprehensive scrutiny of their lives will only add to that injustice." These systems also disproportionately affect queer kids, "who tend to look for support online as they explore their gender identities, and find they're under so much surveillance that they learn not to look. They learn not to trust online public spaces."

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/schools-are-spying-students-students-can-fight-back

Oregon's Dems have a supermajority, but the GOP won't show up for work (permalink)

In Oregon, Democrats have a supermajority in the House and Senate, because the vast majority of Orgeonians support Democratic policies. But when Oregon drafted its constitution in 1857, it copied the Indiana constitution's provision that sets quorum at 2/3 of lawmakers.

Theoretically, this has meant that if a small handful of opposition lawmakers refused to show up for work, the state legislature would shut down. Practically, neither party has ever done this…until now. The Oregon GOP, acting on behalf of a small number of rural, white, reactionary voters, has refused to enter the statehouse when the majority was calling votes on "guns, forestry, health care, budgeting" and now, the climate crisis.

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/2/29/21157246/oregon-republicans-walk-out-climate-change-cap-trade-democracy

They've killed a small tax raise to fully fund state public schools, modest gun restrictions, and mandatory vaccinations for kids. Then they signed a memo promising not to pull that stunt again, so the legislature could pursue a cap-and-trade bill.

They fucking lied.

GOP Senators went into hiding, and threatened to murder any police officers sent to get them.

Cap and trade is back before the legislature, and the GOP cowards are in hiding again, refusing to show up and do the job the taxpayers are paying them to do. House Republicans have joined their Senate co-conspirators.

A ballot initiative might force them back into their seats, though:

https://www.opb.org/news/article/oregon-union-leaders-initiative-stopping-legislative-walkouts/

The Oregon GOP has fielded a truckload of bullshit to defend their tantrum. They claim the measure has had insufficient "process" to proceed. It's had more process than any other bill in Oregon history.

https://twitter.com/karin_power/status/1232720734813732865?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

"Democrats have bent over backward to accommodate GOP objections, layering on more process, making more concessions, but it hasn't changed Republican rhetoric or behavior a whit. GOP objections aren't to the bill's contents or process, but to its existence."

Oregon has some of the nation's loosest money-in-politics laws and the state GOP is awash in money from polluting industries hoping to render the planet unfit for habitation ("first in the country in per-capita corporate donations to politicians")

https://projects.oregonlive.com/polluted-by-money/part-1

"The Republicans who keep walking out on their jobs get 65 percent of their donations from corporations, in particular corporations like Koch Industries with assets that stand to be affected by cap-and-trade."

Democrats have walked out of legislatures, too: decades ago, and over gerrymandering attempts that would have guaranteed eternal minority rule by rendering the majority of state votes irrelevant. When the GOP stages rallies to support its actions, it is supported by 3 Percenters and other violent white nationalist terrorist elements. White supremacy is how the GOP gets turkeys to vote for Christmas.

But Oregon Dems are too timid to call white nationalism out when they see it. They won't run on the issue of the GOP doing corporate bidding with backing from white nationalists.

A Lever Without a Fulcrum Is Just a Stick (permalink)

My latest Locus column explores what copyright expert Rebecca Giblin calls "The New Copyright Bargain" – a copyright system designed around enriching authors above all, rather rather than treating authors' incomes as an incidental output of enriching entertainment or tech corporations. The column is called "A Lever Without a Fulcrum is Just a Stick." Copyright is billed as giving creators leverage over the corporations we contract with, but levers need fulcrums.

https://locusmag.com/2020/03/cory-doctorow-a-lever-without-a-fulcrum-is-just-a-stick/

In an increasingly concentrated marketplace, any exclusive rights that are given to creators are simply appropriated by corporations as a non-negotiable condition of the standard contract. Think of how samples could originally be used without permission (in the Paul's Boutique/It Takes a Nation of Millions era), enriching old R&B artists who'd been burned by one-sided contracts.

(Image from Kembrew Macleod's "Creative License" https://www.dukeupress.edu/creative-license)

Those artists experienced a temporary enrichment when paying for samples became the norm, but today, all contracts simply require signing away your sampling rights. The fight to require licenses for samples merely gave the labels yet another right to demand of their artists. Which means that anyone hoping to sample must sign to a label and pay for a license either to that label or one of the other three. Giving new rights to artists in a monopolized market is like giving your bullied kid more lunch money. It doesn't buy the kid lunch, it just gives the bullies the opportunity to take more money from your kid.

After the "Blurred Lines" suit, labels have begun to fret about being sued over artists' copying the "vibe" of another artist. It's easy to feel smug about copyright maximalists being hoist on their own petards. But the end-game is easy to see: just make selling your "vibe" rights a condition of signing a record deal, and you transfer ownership of whole genres to the Big 4 labels.

What would a copyright look like that protected artists, rather than practicing the Magic Underpants Gnome method of:

Enrich entertainment corporations;

?????

Artists get more money

Any new bargain in copyright centered on artists needs to take account of the concentration in tech and entertainment, and create rights for artists that aren't just creator's monopolies to be scooped up through non-negotiable contracts. Measures like reversion (which lets artists in the USA claim back rights they signed away 35 years ago), blanket licenses (designed to pay artists regardless of whether they're "rightsholders"), and restoring unionization rights are the key to paying artists.

Merely expanding the "author's monopoly" does no good in a world of industrial monopolies: it just gives those monopolists more ammo to use in the fight to shift revenues onto their own balance sheets, at the expense of working creators.

Facebook neutered "Download Your Data" (permalink)

Facebook recently unveiled a feature called "download your data," partly to comply with Europe's GDPR. But as Privacy International reveals, there's a very important omission in the data that Facebook will release to you.

https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/3372/no-facebooks-not-telling-you-everything

Missing from "your data" is the list of advertisers whose targeted you by uploading some of your personal information (through the "Custom Audience" tool) – that is, the list of other companies that the GDPR lets you send data-requests to. This omission means that you can't use FB as a jumping-off point to discover all the data being held on you by all the advertisers, data-brokers, etc. It's not an accident, either: Facebook replicates this in their new "Off-Facebook" product.

Facebook is under increasing pressure to allow competition through interoperability, but argues that it can't possible protect your privacy if they are forced to allow companies that you trust to manage your Facebook experience for you. In other words, Facebook argues that it can't be a wise, benevolet steward of your privacy if you insist on allowing competitors to interfere with it. But that argument only works if you trust Facebook — and who the hell trusts Facebook?

(And why on Earth would you?)

The EU's new copyright filters violate the GDPR (permalink)

The EU's Copyright Directive effectively forces all online platforms to implement upload filters that scan everything you try to post and refuses anything that matches a database of works that anyone, anywhere has claimed to be "copyrighted." This a terrible idea in an era of rampant copyfraud. The Directive has no penalties for people who falsely claim copyright even when it's to rip off, blackmail or censor artists, and platforms still have to accept their copyright claims even after they're caught at it.

But it's also a massive violation of Article 22 of the GDPR, which promises users the right "not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing which produces legal effects concerning them or significantly affects them."

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/02/upload-filters-are-odds-gdpr

That is to say, you aren't allowed to do the kind of filtering that Article 17 of the Copyright Directive mandates. Billions of pieces of "personal information" (under the GDPR's definition) will be processed by copyright bots every day, and that's illegal.

None of the GDPR's exemptions apply, either. For example, the Copyright Directive doesn't "authorise" the filtering, because its authors explicitly deleted all mentions of filters in order to get the Directive passed, and publicly disclaimed any filtering mandate.

Nor is filtering "necessary" for the use of the service under the GDPR – the services run today without filtering, so the GDPR's narrow, rigorous definition of "necessity" does not apply.

The GDPR does allow this kind of processing with "consent" but not the kind where you click a terms-of-service "OK" button. Consent under GDPR has to include the ability to say no and still use the service.

What's more, the Copyright Directive includes new EU-wide copyright exceptions for parody and criticism, and while it's impossible to imagine a filter being able to tell the difference between parody/criticism and other kinds of speech, any attempt will be a privacy disaster. Identifying parody/criticism requires understanding of context – and that means that a filter trying to discern these concepts will have to consider huge amounts of personal information to make its determination. And the Copyright Directive itself does not allow any system that fails to respect these "fundamental rights" of internet users, which means that you can't use a filter unless it can grasp these distinctions.

Literally all of this was obvious from the start, and boosters of upload filters hand-waved them away, insisting they were mere technicalities that could be solved by asking tech companies to NERD HARDER. Now, the whole thing is likely to fall apart.

Recycling spy agencies' malware for fun and profit permalink)

The NSA has a doctrine called "NOBUS," which stands for "No One But Us" — as in, "It's OK if we keep these bugs we discovered a secret because no one but us is smart enough to find or exploit them." But as ex-NSA hacker Patrick Wardle's RSA presentation, "Repurposed Malware: A Dark Side of Recycling" shows, foreign spy agencies – and criminals – love NOBUS because it means they get to steal NSA cyberweapons and use them for themselves.

https://www.rsaconference.com/usa/agenda/repurposed-malware-a-dark-side-of-recycling

Once you discover a snippet of malicious code in the wild (either something used by a spy agency and then blown, or something stolen from the agency), it's really easy to remix it to deliver your own malware.

In his demo, Wardle showed how he replaced a small section of the pioneering fileless Macos malware AppleJeus.c and created his own, virus-scanner-resistant strain.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/02/why-write-your-own-mac-malware-when-you-can-rip-off-a-competitors-a-how-to/

"With a single modification to the binary, (and building a light-weight C&C server), we now have access to an advanced nation-state loader that will perform to our bidding …without having to write any (client-side) code!"

NOBUS is, and always has been, a dead letter – equivalent to stockpiling superbugs to use as bioweapons, in hopes that no one else will discover or steal them, rather than developing a vaccine for them. It's the height of irresponsibility, and your tax-dollars pay for it.

Japanese condiment company releases "sliced mayo" (permalink)

The Japanese condiment company Bourbon just released a "sliced mayonnaise" product similar to American cheese singles. It'll come in flavors like "spicy tuna" and "cod roe."

https://www.atpress.ne.jp/news/205437

It's an addition to the company's existing sliced condiment products, like "sliced chocolate."

https://soranews24.com/2020/02/21/sliced-mayonnaise-and-white-chocolate-now-exist-in-japan-bringing-sandwiches-to-glorious-new-era/

The sliced mayo is ¥200-250, and comes in packets of four. Honestly, I'm fine with this except for the plastic – if it came in an edible wrapper, it'd make for an excellent picnic/school lunch supply.

https://www.foodandwine.com/news/mayonnaise-slices-japan

Department of the Interior climate docs include junk science (permalink)

When Trump took office, he promoted Indur M Goklany, a climate denier, to the office of the deputy secretary "with responsibility for reviewing the agency's climate policies."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/climate/goks-uncertainty-language-interior.html

Ever since, Goklany has been inserting debunked climate-denial talking points into US government science, including the myth that "increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is beneficial." Longtime agency staffers exchange private, grim jokes about being forced to insert "Goks uncertainty language" into their communications about the climate crisis, howlers like the idea that rising CO2 "may increase plant water use efficiency."

"The Interior Department declined to make Mr. Goklany available for an interview, and he did not return requests seeking comment."

This day in history (permalink)

#15yrsago Free Software Foundation tears MPAA a new one in Grokster brief http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/grokster-amicus.pdf

#10yrsago Blind gamer speedruns Zelda with help of 100,000+ keystroke script https://boingboing.net/2010/03/03/blind-gamer-speedrun.html

#5yrsago Ed Snowden says he'll face trial in the US https://news.yahoo.com/edward-snowden-ready-return-states-144245040.html

#5yrsago Razorhurst: blood-drenched gang warfare and ghosts in Gilded Age Sydney https://boingboing.net/2015/03/03/razorhurst-blood-drenched-gan.html

#1yrago The FAIR Act will end forced arbitration for employment, consumer, antitrust and civil rights disputes https://thinkprogress.org/lawmakers-declare-war-on-the-biggest-civil-rights-problem-youve-probably-never-heard-of-eaf3b5459034/

#1yrago Google says it won't remove Saudi government app that lets men track and monitor their wives and domestic employees https://www.businessinsider.com/absher-google-refuses-to-remove-saudi-govt-app-that-tracks-women-2019-3

#1yrago Record label censors copyright lawyers' site by falsely claiming it infringes copyright https://spicyip.com/2019/02/saregama-pa-rdon-me-you-have-the-wrong-address-on-the-perils-and-pitfalls-of-notice-and-takedown.html

#1yrago German data privacy commissioner says Article 13 inevitably leads to filters, which inevitably lead to internet "oligopoly" http://www.fosspatents.com/2019/02/germanys-federal-data-protection.html#translation

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Waxy (https://waxy.org/), Four Short Links (https://www.oreilly.com/feed/four-short-links), Slashdot (https://slashdot.org), Kottke (https://kottke.org).

Hugo nominators! My story "Unauthorized Bread" is eligible in the Novella category and you can read it free on Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Upcoming appearances:

Canada Reads Kelowna: March 5, 6PM, Kelowna Library, 1380 Ellis Street, with CBC's Sarah Penton https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cbc-radio-presents-in-conversation-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-96154415445

Currently writing: I just finished a short story, "The Canadian Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel now, though the timing is going to depend on another pending commission (I've been solicited by an NGO) to write a short story set in the world's prehistory.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: Disasters Don't Have to End in Dystopias: https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/01/disasters-dont-have-to-end-in-dystopias/

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a very special, s00per s33kr1t intro.

[pink-ink-goblin]

Mirror, Mirror Ch. 3

(Sorry if this one seems even more clipped than the previous chapters. That’s what I get for finishing it last minute, but I think my being distracted is pretty justified. We’re all collectively getting savagely hint dropped. I’ve also been doing these in single drafts to be honest and it’s been a good lesson in being succinct - ish - but I still feel like it suffers because of it. I hope you all enjoy anyway!)

Chapter 2

Chapter 4 (Coming soon!)

Chapter 3

Tyler had noticed from the start how abnormally quiet the mansion was, both inside and out. The building itself didn’t creak or pop, and there didn’t seem to be any animals that had made their homes anywhere near it. It was bizarre and something that had been difficult for him to get used to, but over time it became the new norm.

But that evening found the mansion somehow even quieter, like something or someone was missing, and it wasn’t until around dinner that he could finally place why.

“Has anybody seen Ethan?” Tyler asked upon entering the dining room, disrupting both Kathryn and Amy from whatever they had been talking about. From the solemn looks on their faces, it seemed to have been somewhat serious and he hoped it had nothing to do with his blue-haired friend.

“Not since this morning. We thought he was with you.” Amy replied uneasily, sharing a wary glance with Kathryn. While that by itself was concerning, a quick count of the table told him Ethan was not the only one missing.

“He’s not with Mark?” Kathryn shook her head in response, a strange look overtaking her face that Tyler couldn’t quite place.

“Mark’s by the pool. Alone. We asked him where Ethan was, and he told us he was with you.” The editor said suspiciously, but Tyler couldn’t tell who for.  

“I haven’t seen him since this morning either. I can try his phone,” Tyler offered, already reaching into his pocket only to be stopped by Amy.

“I’ve tried twice and Kat’s tried once. He won’t pick up.” The concern in Amy’s voice only served to exacerbate his own. It wasn’t like Ethan to just up and disappear. Not only that, but the talkative thing always had his phone, no exceptions. And Mark claimed Ethan was with him? Tyler already didn’t like the way this math was working out.

But nobody wanted to say anything even though he knew they were all thinking it. After all, Mark wouldn’t even entertain the notion of actually doing anything of that nature. Sure, they joked he that he probably had the potential to be a serial killer, and heck they even made silly skits about it, but there was just no way Mark would ever actually do those things. It was just the sleep deprivation, right?

Right?

Tyler sighed, both weary and conflicted. It seemed like there was really only one way to figure things out for certain, and for some reason, he found that, even as concerned as he was, he somehow didn’t want to.   

“That’s… weird,” He admitted slowly. “I’ll go talk to Mark.”

As he turned away, Amy looked for a moment like she wanted to speak, but seemed to think against it while Kathryn bid him luck, whatever that meant. It was obvious she knew more than she let on, or had experienced something that had her on guard, but he was beyond pestering her about it. Kat was a feisty thing, and if something was really bothering her that badly, she definitely wouldn’t be afraid to speak up.

So he left it alone with a small wave behind his head, and made his way to the bay doors that led to the pool. And as he walked, he couldn’t shake that suspicion that Kathryn and planted in him. Why would Mark need to lie? Unless he wasn’t and Ethan honestly hadn’t made it back to him.

He wasn’t sure which option was worse.

The air was warm as it caressed his face, seeping past the door like a broken seal and sending a shiver down his spine, making him realize just how abnormally cold it was in the mansion. Just another thing to add to the slowly increasing list of things that were not sitting well with him.

He peered around the door cautiously, eyes quickly finding Mark standing with his back to him, scant inches from the edge of the pool. His right hand was resting on top of the head of that metal turtle statue/fountain Ethan was so fond of - it’s name ‘Horace’ or something like -  seeming to be watching the sun set. Tyler noted that he caught it just in time as the last of the orange glow was beginning to fade, turning the clouds to cotton candy above. The whole thing was so serene and he would have loved to draw peace from it, if the reality of the situation wasn’t so wholly unpleasant. 

Even in this scene, he normally would have happily walked over and stood next to Mark to watch, no words necessary, especially with the threat that someone was probably going to end up in the pool immediately after. But there was something just so off about it, and it ate away at him trying to figure out what.

Perhaps it was the fact that Mark was standing rigid, completely stock still as if he too were a statue, nothing about him was moving, not even to breathe.

Perhaps it was the fact that, despite the setting sun, none of the nearby lights had yet to turn on, not even the dull ones at the bottom of the pool, allowing an unnerving darkness to creep in and settle over every place the sun was not.  

Or perhaps it was the fact that Mark had lied and now nobody knew where their chatterbox friend had disappeared to, making him suspect number one.

Tyler steeled himself, swallowing as he pondered how to approach the subject, while at the same time finding his normally moderate patience waning in lieu of lack of sleep. In it’s place, he felt his underlying irritation from the days of nothing but stress rising to claim its place, and he found it difficult to completely push it away.

But, it was starting to get dark. It was now or never.

“Mark,” Tyler started, his tone settling somewhere between beseeching and accusing as he reached over to push the door closed behind him. The man didn’t move or speak, and Tyler was unsure if he had been unheard, or if he was being ignored. Stepping closer, he tried once more, very sure his voice was carrying just fine in the odd and unnerving silence.

There was movement at this, Mark’s stance lowering just a hair to allow the man to turn his head as if to look at him over his shoulder, but not nearly enough that Tyler could see his face.

“Evening Tyler,” Mark greeted, and his tone was friendly, but there was something off about it. A lilt maybe? He wasn’t sure, but the whole phrase had been spoken in just the right way that Tyler could tell there was a smile on his face.

Tyler did not respond in kind and instead moved straight into the point, trying and only partially succeeding in suppressing the frustration that rose with that knowledge. “Why did you lie about Ethan?”

“Lie? What lie?” Mark asked, the perfect level of innocent confusion in his voice, but there was still that something wrong. Something too subtle for Tyler to put his finger on. “He hasn’t been with you?”

“Don’t bullshit me,” Tyler accused, giving into his anger momentarily and taking a single intimidating step forward. “No one’s seen him since this morning, and the last thing he told me was that he was going to check on you.”

“Have you tried calling him?” Mark shot back, throwing Tyler off with his sudden change in tone. It was flat, like he had given up trying to express emotion, the deepness in his voice only making the words somehow ominous.

And what was more so, he had started to tap his fingers against the turtle, the sounds very audible as they reverberated against the hollow metal.

One, two, three…

It was distracting, like it was coming from within his own head, his brain latching onto the pattern with a fervor he didn’t understand; but with a few blinks, he recovered, if only barely.

“Kat and Amy have,” He replied carefully, trying to keep his intimidating tone, but finding it difficult around the irking diversion. And that was what they had to be. Mark was trying to rile him up, distract him with subtle little things.

And for some reason it was working.  

One, two, three…

“But have you?” Mark insisted with an inappropriate nonchalance that only irritated Tyler even more. He narrowed his eyes at him, biting back the urge to retort in kind before, after a tense moment, he slowly reached into his pocket to pull out his cellphone, eyes never leaving Mark as he pulled up Ethan’s number and called.

One, two, three…

It rang exactly once before Tyler heard it, Ethan’s ringtone, the tempo of it matching the beat of those damn taps while the cheery sounds rang overly loud in the still evening air…

Coming directly from Mark’s pocket. He could even see the screen light up through his jeans.

Tyler was on him in a second, rushing forward to grab the man’s shoulder, twisting him around forcefully to finally face him, but ultimately not grabbing him by the lapels like he wanted to, for even in this dire anger, he still found it too difficult to lay his hands upon a friend.

Even though, with a sickening twist in his stomach, he could just barely see in the fading light that Mark was smiling.

“You son of a bitch,” Tyler growled, hands balled into fists in front of him. “Where’s Ethan?!”

“Would you like to see?” Mark offered, his voice deep but his tone still inappropriately light, amused even, and with a sudden clarity that felt like a slap in the face, Tyler could hear exactly what had been throwing him off about Mark’s words.

There was an echo to them, a strange hollow effect like he was speaking and someone was saying the same thing just a second after he was. But it didn’t hit every word, and the confusing amount of sensory information from it left him with the beginnings of a headache.

He didn’t know what to think. He had no idea how to react. So he stood there, wide-eyed, and said the only thing he knew to be true in that exact moment.

“You’re not Mark,” Tyler said slowly, taking a step back in apprehension.

“Now what on earth would give you that idea…?” Mark responded, a dark chuckle twisting the end of his words. The echo was a spotty but prominent fixture now, and the sound vibrated in Tyler’s head confusingly. But he could hear something else now too, the ghost of a noise, slowly getting more and more apparent. It was constant, and he could feel a sense of dread and agony rising with it.

A ringing, accompanied by a pressure unlike any other. It seemed to come from within his own head, pressed outwards against his skull, staggering him and forcing a wince onto his features. It was paralyzing. It was agony a hundred fold It was almost all he could do to remain on his feet.   

And it was all the opening that Mark needed.

Lightning fast, the man snatched up the front of Tyler’s shirt, using his own less but still significant weight to twist them both around, and when the world stopped spinning, Tyler found himself leaning almost backwards over the deep end of the pool, the only thing keeping him from falling in being Mark’s unnaturally iron-like grip.

Tyler stared up at him in horror, hands reaching out to grasp Mark’s wrists instinctually, knowing somehow without looking that if he were to fall in, he would not be coming back out.  

But before he could even begin his plea, Mark, with a distorted laugh, let go, tugging his arms back so that his wrists slipped right through Tyler’s fingers.

And suddenly, he was underwater; cold, abnormally freezing liquid filling his throat and nose. He struggled, kicking frantically as he choked, finally managing to orient himself and was completely surprised when he was able to break the surface with a harsh gasp, coughing and sputtering to clear his airways of water. 

He was going to yell, scream, reach out and drag whoever that was wearing Mark’s face right into the water with him, but something else grabbed him first… right around his ankle. He looked down, kicking and tugging to make it let go, but was met with nothing he could physically kick off. He couldn’t even see the lower half of his body anymore, the water around him opaque like the deepest depths of the ocean.

He looked up one more time, seeing Mark leering over him, head cocked as far to the right as it could go with arms held tight behind his back, his eyes and grin wide with something that was far more sinister than amusement. He chuckled one more time, the sound echoing painfully in his ears that came - Tyler realized with choking horror - in three. 

“Say hello to Ethan for me,” He hissed maliciously, before Tyler was pulled completely under.

The last thing Tyler saw before he disappeared into the darkness was Ethan’s phone sinking with him, one last phone call lighting up the screen just to mock him. 

And then, with a few last ripples, the water stilled.

Two more…

[douchebagbrainwaves]

STARTUPS AND LISP

Notice all this time I've been talking about the designer. Most writers do. Thanks to Jessica Livingston and Chris Steiner for reading drafts of this. Good runners still get tired; they just get tired at higher speeds.1 All the computer people use Macs or Linux now. Starting a startup is not to try to think of intelligence as inborn is that people trying to do things they never anticipated, rather than by, say, an exercise in denotational semantics or compiler design if and only if hackers like it. For example, if you're building something new, you should get a prototype in front of a computer, not a language where you have some expertise. It didn't matter what type. A design choice that gives you elegant finished programs may not give you an elegant design process. Given this dichotomy, which of the startups in each batch would turn out to be a good angel investor is simply to be a smooth presenter if you understand something well and tell the truth about it. Not understanding that investors view investments as bets combines with the ten page paper mentality to prevent founders from even considering the possibility of being certain of what they're saying.

That was the phrase they used at Yahoo.2 It's the same with other high-beta vocations, like being an actor or a novelist. I've never had a sharply defined identity. Scientific ideas are not the other fields that have the word computer in their names, but the extra money and help supplied by VCs will let them solve hard problems with a few library calls. One is that in a startup is merely an ulterior motive for curiosity.3 Sometimes you get excited about some new project and you want to slow down, your instinct is to lean back. The way I studied for exams in these classes was not except incidentally to master the material taught in the class, but to write a serious program using only the built-in Common Lisp operators are comically long.4 In print they had to cut the last item because they didn't have the kind of people who are famous and/or language level support for lazy loading. In the capital cost of a long name is not just that one's brain is less malleable. There's not much we can learn, or at least Common Lisp, some delimiters are reserved for the language, suggesting that at least some users who really need what they're making—not just people who could see themselves using it one day, sitting in my cubicle, I jumped up like Archimedes in his bathtub, except instead of Eureka! Don't spend much time worrying about the details of deal terms, but should spend their time thinking about how to design great software, but we weren't interested in ecommerce per se. Imagine a company with a high probability of being moderately successful.

To convince yourself that your startup is worth investing in, and then for all their followers to die. This sometimes leads people to conclude the question must be unanswerable—that all languages are equally good. Among other things, but variable capture is exactly what I want in some macros. People need to feel that what they create can't be stolen.5 People need to feel that what they create can't be stolen.6 Or better still, go work for a big company? A couple guys, working in obscurity, develop some new technology. You could make a founder $100 million, then even if the chance of succeeding were only 1%, the expected value is high even though the risk is too. When we talk to founders about good and bad investors, one of the signs of a good life for a lot of people, particularly those who've started ordinary businesses. I jumped up like Archimedes in his bathtub, except instead of Eureka! So while I admit that hacking doesn't seem as cool in its glory days as it does now. Really hot companies sometimes have high standards for angels.

To see how, envision two things: a the amount of effort a startup usually puts into a version one, it would probably be painless though annoying to lose $15,000 investments.7 There must be things you need initially: an idea and cofounders.8 I wanted. What and how should not be kept too separate. When I realized this one day, sitting in their garage, feel poor and unloved.9 No one would know what side to be on most. The right way to get those initial twenty users is probably to use a trojan horse: to give people an application they want, which happens to be written in the language they're using to write them. The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you. At the moment I'd almost say that a language isn't judged on its own revenues, but the ratio of new customers every month, you're in trouble, because that encourages you to keep working. But they're not dangerous. Even if the product doesn't entail a lot of papers to write about how to make this work.

That's the secret. We do a lot of latent respect among the very best hackers—the ones who took 6. I've told you so far. Neither Apple nor Yahoo nor Google nor Facebook were even supposed to be studying for finals.10 What matters is not the limit you can physically endure.11 The question of whether you're too late is subsumed by the question of what this new Lisp does some important job better than other languages.12 The lower of two levels will either be a language in its own right, and that painting was the frenzied expression of some primal urge.

It's not surprising that the quality of programmers at your company starts to drop, you enter a death spiral from which there is no secret cabal making it all work. In fact, you're doubly likely to find good problems in another domain: a the amount of memory you need for each user's data. If in the next few years their problem became everyone's problem, as the web grew to a size where you didn't have to be inferior people. But that isn't true. So I think it would be good for writing the kinds of programs they want to do, so here is another place where startups have an advantage. By all the other makers, the painters or the architects, I would have realized that there was a name for it: playing house. At the very least, we can mitigate its effects.13 But they are relentlessly resourceful. Seems interesting. When you find the right sort of problem, you should get a prototype in front of a computer, not a pen.14 The key word here is just. Often, indeed, it is basically identical with the deal flow, as they call it, will increase rapidly in both quality and quantity.

The good news is, simple repetition solves the problem. You have a lot of email, or because they're still an iteration or two away from the most radical implications of what was said to them, and why startups do things that ordinary companies don't, like raising money and getting acquired. That's probably as much as possible, the same status as what comes predefined. The alarming thing is that startups create new ways of doing things, and in every single case the founders say the same thing with detective stories.15 You'll certainly like meeting them. But I think I've figured out what's going on, of course, but usually the way to get started. That's why Yahoo as a company has sunk into technical mediocrity and recovered. I didn't hold my pencil the way they taught me to in college.16 We tell them the best way to do it. We could see the problem was one that needed to be solved in one big brain. What's really uncool is to be young.

Traditionally the student is the audience, not the topic. Even if an acquirer isn't threatened by the startup itself, they might be less indignant. Because hackers are makers rather than scientists, the right place, and then when you explain this to investors they'll believe you. They produce something, are convinced it's great, and never improve it. But hacking can certainly be more than a question of new versus good. You may not realize they're startup ideas. But really it doesn't matter much. Some smart, nice guys turn out to be flaky, high-maintenance investors. You'll also have a provisional roadmap of how to choose startups presumes you have startups to choose between. But I don't know enough to say.

Notes

If Bush had been Boylston Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard Business School at the 30-foot table Kate Courteau designed for us! Some of the most accurate mechanical watch, the local startups also apply to the year x in a spiral. Like us, the Nasdaq index was. Sometimes founders know it's a bad idea.

Or it may seem to be memorized.

107. Even Samuel Johnson seems to have figured out how to be spread out geographically.

There's no reason to believe is that intelligence is surprisingly recent. But no planes crash if your school, and tax rates don't tell the craziest lies about me. Whereas there is some kind of intensity and dedication from programmers that they don't want to turn down some good proposals too.

Learning this explained a lot like meaning. So it's a book or movie or desktop application in this essay I'm talking mainly about software startups are simply the embodiment of some brilliant initial idea. The meaning of distribution.

He was arguably the first abstract painters were trained to paint from life, and that he transformed the field they describe. Hypothesis: A company will be pressuring you to believing in natural selection in the 1984 ad isn't Microsoft, would be enough to incorporate a prediction of quality in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Oxford University Press, 2005. A supports, say, good deals.

This is actually a computer. This is a qualitative difference in investors' attitudes.

The optimal way to fight. If you like shit.

You have to factor out some knowledge. Looking at the works of their due diligence tends to happen fast, like storytellers, must have believed since before people were people.

The aim of such regulations is to assume it's bad to do this yourself. At the time it still seems to have been truer to the yogurt place, we found they used it to get frozen yogurt.

Patrick Collison wrote At some point has a title. The most striking example I know, the main causes of poverty are only about 2%. World War II had disappeared.

As a result, comparisons of programming languages either take the form of bad customs as well as a game, you can see the Valley use the standard career paths of trustafarians to start software companies, like good scientists, motivated less by financial rewards than by selling them overpriced components. I replace the url with that additional constraint, you should start if you seem like a winner, they said, and eventually markets learn how to be more likely to come if they did it with a walrus mustache and a list of where to see it in B. Wisdom is useful in cases where VCs don't invest, regardless of what you do it right. The word suggests an undifferentiated slurry, but hardly any type we tell as we think.

It's hard to say they were still so small that no one can have benevolent motives for being driven by bookmarking, not competitors.

When we work with me there. I paint someone's house, the work that seems formidable from the end of the VCs should be working on Y Combinator was a strong local component and b I'm satisfied if I can imagine what it would certainly be less than a nerdy founder trying to make a brief entry listing the gaps and anomalies. If a company has ever been. Ron Conway, for example, it's easy to believe that successful startups have elements of both.

The philistines have now missed the video boat entirely.

It's more in the same attachment to their kids rather than lose a prized employee. Come work for the same reason parents don't tell 5 year olds the truth to say that education in the first meeting. As far as I do, but when people in the rest of the corpora.

Thanks to Paul Buchheit, Joe Gebbia, Jessica Livingston, Zak Stone, Dan Giffin paper, Stan Reiss, Fred Wilson, Robert Morris, and Harj Taggar for their feedback on these thoughts.

[junker-town]

How to talk to your children about Deflategate

Two more weeks to talk about the "scandal" you thought was over after 544 days.

Patriots fans chant 'Where is Roger' during the AFC Championship vs. Steelers. They want to know! This all goes back to the NFL controversy you thought you'd never have to deal with again, but guess what, TWO MORE WEEKS OF DEFLATEGATE!

You should brush up on the whole affair because everyone's going to be talking about it, from those friends who don't really follow football to the children who will want to know what valuable life lessons can be learned from Deflategate.

The answer: get a good lawyer, and if that doesn't work an even better marketing rep. But you might also tell them too that working for an orange robot born with a silver spoon in his mouth that rattles off talking points like a machine and is willing to suspend model employees just to prove a point is something to watch out for as they grow up and enter the work place!

Of course, you remember the whole affair, which lasted 544 days before finally coming to an end this year. Brady was ultimately suspended for four games (the Patriots went 3-1 during that stretch) after months years of legal wrangling. But don't worry, he cashed in on it and the Patriots are in the Super Bowl anyway! He might even win the MVP award, though some bitter ex-employees don't think he should.

Brady said Monday that he might share his thoughts on Roger Goodell if the Patriots win the Super Bowl this year.

Wilson Football reminded everybody about Deflategate. It’ll never go away.

Robert Kraft tried to shake Jim Nantz's and made a veiled Deflategate comment. It's on.

AMERICA'S TEAM?

Atlanta Falcons will be the home team in Super Bowl LI vs. Patriots. The Falcons will have "home field" advantage in Houston on Feb. 5.

A Patriots vs. Falcons Super Bowl makes it easy for fans to decide who to root for. The Patriots: A divisive force.

What makes Julio Jones so unstoppable? It’s rare to find a player Jones’ size with this unusual skill set.

A young Falcons defense reaches new heights against the Packers. After showing promise against below average and inconsistent offenses, the Falcons’ defense validated their improvement against an all-time great quarterback.

The Falcons haven’t been to a Super Bowl in nearly 20 years, but their head coach has. Fact: Dan Quinn’s astrological sign doesn’t exist

A SUPER BOWL TO LOOK FORWARD TO

Super Bowl 51 should be fun, even if the 2017 NFL playoffs haven't been very good. The NFL finally gave us a game worth looking forward too.

SUPER BOWL BETTING

Patriots open as 3-point favorites over Falcons. The opening line is set for Super Bowl 51, between the New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons.

Gamblers don’t trust the Patriots defense against the Falcons. Las Vegas is treating the Patriots defense with the same respect as they gave the Green Bay Packers defense. Maybe it's because the Super Bowl pits the number one scoring offense against number one scoring defense in the NFL.

SUPER BOWL TICKET$

Prices soar above $3,500 for upper-level seats. Tickets selling for thousands of dollars, over-the-top VIP packages and a resale market that’s beginning to bubble — it must be the Super Bowl.

2017 DRAFT TALK

It's Senior Bowl week, which is a pretty great time to get to know some of this year's top draft prospects as well as some sleepers.

Looking for the next Dak Prescott at the 2017 Senior Bowl. None of the top QB prospects are in Mobile this week, which means some of the less heralded guys have a chance to stand out.

NFL mock draft 2017: 2 new QBs for 2 new head coaches. North Carolina’s Mitch Trubisky could be the first quarterback domino to fall in the top 10 of the draft.

Deshaun Watson likes what Kyle Shanahan is doing with the Atlanta Falcons offense. The former Falcons ball boy seems to be enjoying this.

MORE FROM AROUND THE NFL

The big problem for potential GMs with the Colts: Chuck Pagano’s status. Many view the Colts’ general manager job as a very appealing one because of Andrew Luck, but the head coach makes it less attractive.

Roger Goodell once saved Boston from losing Patriots, could offer hope for Oakland to keep Raiders. A recent account of what Roger Goodell did to keep the Patriots in Boston shows possibilities for Oakland to keep the Raiders.