In business, the million-dollar question is how to get people to buy stuff. But in wildlife conservation, the challenge is: how do we get people to not buy stuff? How do we bring down demand for fur, ivory and rhino horns? Today on the show, the story of a business trying to make lab-grown rhino horns and the backlash that followed.

Check out more of Juliana Kim's reporting for NPR here.

Related:
Supply, demand, extinction (Apple / Spotify)
Rhino Bonds
Shooting Bambi to Save Mother Nature

For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.

Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.

There may be times where you need to make an API do nothing. It’s important to have it do nothing in the correct way.

For example, Windows has an extensive printing infrastructure. But that infrastructure does not exist on Xbox. What should happen if an app tries to print on an Xbox?

Well, the wrong thing to do is to have the printing functions throw a Not­Supported­Exception. The app that the user installed on the Xbox was probably tested primarily, if not exclusively, on a PC, where printing is always available. When run on an Xbox, the exception will probably go unhandled, and the app will crash. Even if the app tried to catch the exception, it would probably display a message like “Oops. That went badly. Call support and provide this incident code.”

A better design for “supporting” printing on Xbox is to have the printing functions succeed, but report that there are no printers installed. With this behavior, when the app tries to print, it will ask the user to select a printer, and show an empty list. The user realizes, “Oh, there are no printers,” and cancels the printing request.

To deal with apps that get fancy and say “Oh, you have no printers installed, let me help you install one,” the function for installing a printer can return immediately with a result code that means “The user cancelled the operation.”

The idea here is to have the printing functions all behave in a manner perfectly consistent with printing being fully supported, yet mysteriously there is never a printer to print to.

Now, you probably also want to add a function to check whether printing even works at all. Apps can use this function to hide the Print button from their UI if they are running on a system that doesn’t support printing at all. But naïve apps that assume that printing works will still behave in a reasonable manner: You’re just on a system that doesn’t have any printers and all attempts to install a printer are ineffective.

The name we use to describe this “do nothing” behavior is “inert”.

The API surface still exists and functions according to its specification, but it also does nothing. The important thing is that it does nothing in a way that is consistent with its documentation and is least likely to create problems with existing code.

Another example is the retirement of an API that has a variety of functions for creating widget handles, other functions that accept widget handles, and a function for closing widget handles. The team that was doing the retirement originally proposed making the API inert as follows:

HRESULT CreateWidget(_Out_ HWIDGET* widget)
{
    *widget = nullptr;
    return S_OK;
}

// Every widget is documented to have at least one alias,
// so we have to produce one dummy alias (empty string).
HRESULT GetWidgetAliases(
    _Out_writes_to_(capacity, *actual) PWSTR* aliases,
    UINT capacity,
    _Out_ UINT* actual)
{
    *actual = 0;

    RETURN_HR_IF(
        HRESULT_FROM_WIN32(ERROR_MORE_DATA),
        capacity < 1);

    aliases[0] = make_cotaskmem_string_nothrow(L"").release();
    RETURN_IF_NULL_ALLOC(aliases[0]);

    *actual = 1;
    return S_OK;
}

// Inert widgets cannot be enabled or disabled.
HRESULT EnableWidget(HWIDGET widget, BOOL value)
{
    return E_HANDLE;
}

HRESULT Close(HWIDGET widget)
{
    RETURN_HR_IF(E_INVALIDARG, widget != nullptr);
    return S_OK;
}

I pointed out that having Create­Widget succeed but return a null pointer is going to confuse apps. “The call succeeded, but I didn’t get a valid handle back?” I even found some of their own test code that checked whether the handle was null to determine whether the call succeeded, rather than checking the return value.

I also pointed out that having Enable­Widget return “invalid handle” is also going to create confusion. An app calls Create­Widget, and it succeeds, and it takes that handle (which is presumably valid) and tries to use it to enable a widget, and it’s told “That handle isn’t valid.” How can that be? “I asked for a widget, and you gave me one, and then when I showed it to you, you said, ‘That’s not a widget.’ This API is gaslighting me!”

I looked through the existing documentation for their API and found that a documented return value is ERROR_CANCELLED to mean that the user cancelled the creation of the widget. Therefore, apps are already dealing with the possibility of widgets not being created due to conditions outside their control, so we can take advantage of that: Any time the app tries to create a widget, just say “Nope, the, uh, user cancelled, yeah, that’s what happened.”

HRESULT CreateWidget(_Out_ HWIDGET* widget)
{
    *widget = nullptr;
    return HRESULT_FROM_WIN32(ERROR_CANCELLED);
}

HRESULT GetWidgetAliases(
    _Out_writes_to_(capacity, *actual) PWSTR* aliases,
    UINT capacity,
    _Out_ UINT* actual)
{
    *actual = 0;
    return E_HANDLE;
}

HRESULT EnableWidget(HWIDGET widget, BOOL value)
{
    return E_HANDLE;
}

HRESULT Close(HWIDGET widget)
{
    return E_HANDLE;
}

Now we have a proper inert API surface.

If you try to create a widget, we tell you that we couldn’t because the user cancelled. Since all attempts to create a widget fail, there is no such thing as a valid widget handle, and any time you try to use one, we tell you that the handle is invalid.

This also avoids the problem of having to produce dummy aliases for widgets. Since there are no widgets, there is no legitimate case where an app could ask a widget for its aliases.

Bonus chatter: To clear up some confusion: The idea here is that the printing API has always existed on desktop, where printing is supported, and the “get me the list of printers” function is documented not to throw an exception. If you want to port the printing API to Xbox, how do you do it in a way that allows existing desktop apps to continue to run on Xbox? The inert behavior is completely truthful: There are no printers on an Xbox. Nobody expects the answer to the question, “How many printers are there?” to be “How dare you ask me such a thing!”

Another scenario where you need to create an inert API surface is if you want to retire an existing API. How do you make the behavior of the API consistent with its contract while still doing nothing useful?

The post If you’re just going to sit there doing nothing, at least do nothing correctly appeared first on The Old New Thing.

A customer was developing an automated test that required the system to suffer a blue screen crash. They configured their test systems to crash when the ScrollLock key is pressed twice while holding the Ctrl key, and they wrote a simple program that ran as administrator and injected the appropriate keystrokes. But no crash occurred. What did they do wrong?

The key sequence for triggering a manual blue screen crash must be typed on a physical keyboard. Injection doesn’t work.

You may have gotten a clue that the physical keyboard was part of the story since enabling the diagnostic key sequence requires you to apply a different setting depending on what kind of keyboard you are using: There is one setting for PS/2 keyboards, and another for USB keyboards, and yet another for Hyper-V keyboards. It is clear that they keyboard driver is somehow involved.

There is another remark later on the page that talks about limitations of the USB keyboard driver, since it runs at a lower IRQL than the PS/2 driver.

The sequence must be pressed on a physical keyboard because it is the keyboard driver that recognizes the key sequence and triggers the crash screen. Injecting the keys into the window manager is inserting the keypresses at far too high a level in the input stack.

The best way to trigger an artificial kernel crash is to use NotMyFault, part of the SysInternals family of tools.

Please do not use sneaky tricks like terminating critical processes like winlogon.exe. These failures get reported through the Watson service as a winlogon.exe crash, which creates confusing among the winlogon.exe team as they try to identify the source of a nonexistent bug. If you use NotMyFault, then the system recognizes that the crashes were initialted by NotMyFault, and the Windows team knows that any crashes initiated by that tool were intentional and not an indicator of a system problem that needs to be debugged.

The post Why can’t I trigger a manual blue screen crash by injecting the magic key sequence? appeared first on The Old New Thing.

Summary: A couple more very warm days are upon us before a Thursday night front cools us down just a little for Friday and the weekend, mainly in the mornings. We warm back up again early next week with another possible front after Tuesday. Rain looks to be at a premium over the next week or so.

Before we begin today, there was an article published yesterday by AccuWeather that sounded the alarm on the upcoming hurricane season. It singled out Texas as being at higher risk than normal as well. Over at our companion site, The Eyewall, I have a post up this morning explaining why we think it will be an active hurricane season but also why we believe it’s too soon to be singling out specific places. I have to warn you now: The next few months are going to be chock full of noise about the upcoming hurricane season. It does look setup to be active. We will continue to share what we know and what we think here and over at The Eyewall so you can make sense of what you might hear or see shared on social media.

Today

We’ve got some fog out there this morning, so use caution through 8-9 AM or so. Houston officially rocketed to 78 degrees yesterday, oddly the same temperature we hit exactly one year ago. But it likely begins a somewhat lengthy stretch of 70 degree days in Houston. Look for warm temps again today, with a chance at hitting 80 degrees in spots. Winds will be noticeably gustier today, at times 25 to 30 mph. Overall, a windy, mild day. For those of you that suffer from seasonal allergies, get ready.

Thursday

Expect a few more clouds tomorrow with morning lows in the 60s and daytime highs around 80 degrees or so. I don’t know if “humid” is the right word, but it will feel a little “thicker” outside.

Our next cold front will be moisture-starved and hit right around midnight tomorrow night. Maybe a few raindrops could get squeezed out ahead of the front Thursday afternoon, but I’d probably be more likely to bet on the Oakland A’s to win the World Series this season.

Friday

With the front past us on Friday, expect a lovely day: Sunny, with morning lows in the 50s, warming into the 70s.

Weekend

If you want stereotypical spring weather, this is absolutely your weekend. The streak of rainy weekends is in the past. Look for morning lows in the 40s and 50s with daytime highs in the 70s Saturday and upper-70s Sunday.

Early next week

I’d expect a pair of warm days Monday and Tuesday with increasing cloud cover. A slight chance of rain may enter the picture midweek with our next front knocking at the door. But details on that one are TBD right now. Either way, expect a slight cooldown after next Tuesday or Wednesday.

HAMILTON, ON ― Inside sources report that your boss soon plans to announce a major promotion for Nathan Crane, a coworker currently working the same position as you.  A significant factor in the boss’ decision to pass you over for the coveted senior financial advisor position in favour of Crane, who has half your tenure, […]

The post Breaking: Coworker who gave entire office Covid promoted for never taking a day off appeared first on The Beaverton.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
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Today's links

• Google reneged on the monopolistic bargain: A search monopolist should never do a layoff, buyback or dividend for so long as it's enshittifying.
• The Bezzle excerpt (Part IV): LA Sheriff's Deputies are the most violent gangs in LA.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• This day in history: 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023
• Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading

Google reneged on the monopolistic bargain (permalink)

A funny thing happened on the way to the enshittocene: Google – which astonished the world when it reinvented search, blowing Altavista and Yahoo out of the water with a search tool that seemed magic – suddenly turned into a pile of shit.

Google's search results are terrible. The top of the page is dominated by spam, scams, and ads. A surprising number of those ads are scams. Sometimes, these are high-stakes scams played out by well-resourced adversaries who stand to make a fortune by tricking Google:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/phone-numbers-airlines-listed-google-directed-scammers-rcna94766

But often these scams are perpetrated by petty grifters who are making a couple bucks at this. These aren't hyper-resourced, sophisticated attackers. They're the SEO equivalent of script kiddies, and they're running circles around Google:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Google search is empirically worsening. The SEO industry spends every hour that god sends trying to figure out how to sleaze their way to the top of the search results, and even if Google defeats 99% of these attempts, the 1% that squeak through end up dominating the results page for any consequential query:

https://downloads.webis.de/publications/papers/bevendorff_2024a.pdf

Google insists that this isn't true, and if it is true, it's not their fault because the bad guys out there are so numerous, dedicated and inventive that Google can't help but be overwhelmed by them:

https://searchengineland.com/is-google-search-getting-worse-389658

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Google has long maintained that its scale is the only thing that keeps us safe from the scammers and spammers who would otherwise overwhelm any lesser-resourced defender. That's why it was so imperative that they pursue such aggressive growth, buying up hundreds of companies and integrating their products with search so that every mobile device, every ad, every video, every website, had one of Google's tendrils in it.

This is the argument that Google's defenders have put forward in their messaging on the long-overdue antitrust case against Google, where we learned that Google is spending $26b/year to make sure you never try another search engine:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-27/google-paid-26-3-billion-to-be-default-search-engine-in-2021

Google, we were told, had achieved such intense scale that the normal laws of commercial and technological physics no longer applied. Take security: it's an iron law that "there is no security in obscurity." A system that is only secure when its adversaries don't understand how it works is not a secure system. As Bruce Schneier says, "anyone can design a security system that they themselves can't break. That doesn't mean it works – just that it works for people stupider than them."

And yet, Google operates one of the world's most consequential security system – The Algorithm (TM) – in total secrecy. We're not allowed to know how Google's ranking system works, what its criteria are, or even when it changes: "If we told you that, the spammers would win."

Well, they kept it a secret, and the spammers won anyway.

A viral post by Housefresh – who review air purifiers – describes how Google's algorithmic failures, which send the worst sites to the top of the heap, have made it impossible for high-quality review sites to compete:

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

You've doubtless encountered these bad review sites. Search for "Best ______ 2024" and the results are a series of near-identical lists, strewn with Amazon affiliate links. Google has endlessly tinkered with its guidelines and algorithmic weights for review sites, and none of it has made a difference. For example, when Google instituted a policy that reviewers should "discuss the benefits and drawbacks of something, based on your own original research," sites that had previously regurgitated the same lists of the same top ten Amazon bestsellers "peppered their pages with references to a ‘rigorous testing process,’ their ‘lab team,’ subject matter experts ‘they collaborated with,’ and complicated methodologies that seem impressive at a cursory look."

But these grandiose claims – like the 67 air purifiers supposedly tested in Better Homes and Gardens's Des Moines lab – result in zero in-depth reviews and no published data. Moreover, these claims to rigorous testing materialized within a few days of Google changing its search ranking and said that high rankings would be reserved for sites that did testing.

Most damning of all is how the Better Homes and Gardens top air purifiers perform in comparison to the – extensively documented – tests performed by Housefresh: "plagued by high-priced and underperforming units, Amazon bestsellers with dubious origins (that also underperform), and even subpar devices from companies that market their products with phrases like ‘the Tesla of air purifiers.’"

One of the top ranked items on BH&G comes from Molekule, a company that filed for bankruptcy after being sued for false advertising. The model BH&G chose was ranked "the worst air purifier tested" by Wirecutter and "not living up to the hype" by Consumer Reports. Either BH&G's rigorous testing process is a fiction that they infused their site with in response to a Google policy change, or BH&G absolutely sucks at rigorous testing.

BH&G's competitors commit the same sins – literally, the exact same sins. Real Simple's reviews list the same photographer and the photos seem to have been taken in the same place. They also list the same person as their "expert." Real Simple has the same corporate parent as BH&G: Dotdash Meredith. As Housefresh shows, there's a lot of Dotdash Meredith review photos that seem to have been taken in the same place, by the same person.

But the competitors of these magazines are no better. Buzzfeed lists 22 air purifiers, including that crapgadget from Molekule. Their "methodology" is to include screenshots of Amazon reviews.

A lot of the top ranked sites for air purifiers are once-great magazines that have been bought and enshittified by private equity giants, like Popular Science, which began as a magazine in 1872 and became a shambling zombie in 2023, after its PE owners North Equity LLC decided its googlejuice was worth more than its integrity and turned it into a metastatic chumbox of shitty affiliate-link SEO-bait. As Housefresh points out, the marketing team that runs PopSci makes a lot of hay out of the 150 years of trust that went into the magazine, but the actual reviews are thin anaecdotes, unbacked by even the pretense of empiricism (oh, and they loooove Molekule).

Some of the biggest, most powerful, most trusted publications in the world have a side-hustle in quietly producing SEO-friendly "10 Best ___________ of 2024" lists: Rolling Stone, Forbes, US News and Report, CNN, New York Magazine, CNET, Tom's Guide, and more.

Google literally has one job: to detect this kind of thing and crush it. The deal we made with Google was, "You monopolize search and use your monopoly rents to ensure that we never, ever try another search engine. In return, you will somehow distinguish between low-effort, useless nonsense and good information. You promised us that if you got to be the unelected, permanent overlord of all information access, you would 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.'"

They broke the deal.

Companies like CNET used to do real, rigorous product reviews. As Housefresh points out, CNET once bought an entire smart home and used it to test products. Then Red Ventures bought CNET and bet that they could sell the house, switch to vibes-based reviewing, and that Google wouldn't even notice. They were right.

https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/welcome-to-the-cnet-smart-home/

Google downranks sites that spend money and time on reviews like Housefresh and GearLab, and crams botshittened content mills like BH&G into our eyeballs instead.

In 1558, Thomas Gresham coined (ahem) Gresham's Law: "Bad money drives out good." When counterfeit money circulates in the economy, anyone who gets a dodgy coin spends it as quickly as they can, because the longer you hold it, the greater the likelihood that someone will detect the fraud and the coin will become worthless. Run this system long enough and all the money in circulation is funny money.

An internet run by Google has its own Gresham's Law: bad sites drive out good. It's not just that BH&G can "test" products at a fraction of the cost of Housefresh – through the simple expedient of doing inadequate tests or no tests at all – so they can put a lot more content up than Housefresh. But that alone wouldn't let them drive Housefresh off the front page of Google's search results. For that, BH&G has to mobilize some of their savings from the no test/bad test lab to do real rigorous science: science in defeating Google's security-through-obscurity system, which lets them command the front page despite publishing worse-than-useless nonsense.

Google has lost the spam wars. In response to the plague of botshit clogging Google search results, the company has invested in…making more botshit:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/16/tweedledumber/#easily-spooked

Last year, Google did a $70b stock buyback. They also laid off 12,000 staffers (whose salaries could have been funded for 27 years by that stock buyback). They just laid off thousands more employees.

That wasn't the deal. The deal was that Google would get a monopoly, and they would spend their monopoly rents to be so good that you could just click "I'm feeling lucky" and be teleported to the very best response to your query. A company that can't figure out the difference between a scam like Better Homes and Gardens and a rigorous review site like Housefresh should be pouring every spare dime it brings in into fixing this problem. Not buying default search status on every platform so that we never try another search engine: they should be fixing their shit.

When Google admits that it's losing the war to these cack-handed spam-farmers, that's frustrating. When they light $26b/year on fire making sure you don't ever get to try anything else, that's very frustrating. When they vaporize seventy billion dollars on financial engineering and shoot one in ten engineers, that's outrageous.

Google's scale has transcended the laws of business physics: they can sell an ever-degrading product and command an ever-greater share of our economy, even as their incompetence dooms any decent, honest venture to obscurity while providing fertile ground – and endless temptation – for scammers.

The Bezzle excerpt (Part IV) (permalink)

This week marks the publication of my latest novel, The Bezzle, and to celebrate, I'm serializing an excerpt from Chapter 14 in six parts:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

The Bezzle is a revenge story, a crime novel, and a technothriller. It stars Martin Hench, a hard-fighting forensic accountant who specializes in unwinding high-tech scams. Hench made his debt in last year's Red Team Blues (now in paperback!); The Bezzle is a standalone followup:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865854/redteamblues

The serial tells the tale of Stefon Magner, AKA Steve Soul, a once-famous R&B frontman whose disintegrating career turned to tragedy when his crooked manager forged his signature on a rights assignment contract that let him steal all of Stefon's royalties, which ballooned after modern hiphop artists discovered his grooves and started buying licenses to sample them. The first three installments related the sad circumstances of Stefon's life, and the real-world analogues (like Leonard Cohen and George Clinton, both of whom were pauperized by sticky-fingered managers) as well as one real-world countermeasure, copyright termination, a thing that more artists should know about and use:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/26/take-it-back/

Today's installment weaves in a major subplot for the first time in the serial: Los Angeles's notorious, murderous Sheriff's Deputy gangs. These are another unbelievable true tale: for decades, the LASD's deputies have formed themselves into criminal gangs, some of which require that an initiate murder someone to be inducted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LASD_deputy_gangs

They sport gang tattoos, have secret signs, and run vast criminal enterprises. This has been the subject of numerous investigative press reports, and one extensive official report that called the gangs "a cancer":

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/deputy-gangs-cancer-los-angeles-county-sheriffs-department-scathing-re-rcna73367

The sordid tales of the LASD gangs beggar belief. For example, deputies in charge of LA County jails forced inmates to pit-fight and took bets on the outcomes:

https://www.aclu.org/publications/report-cruel-and-usual-punishment-how-savage-gang-deputies-controls-la-county-jails

The taxpayers of LA have shelled out tens of millions of dollars to settle claims against LA's criminals with badges:

https://news.yahoo.com/deputies-accused-being-secret-societies-230851807.html

Periodically, LA judges and officials will insist that they are tackling the problem:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-05-17/dozens-of-lasd-deputies-ordered-to-show-suspected-gang-tattoos-reveal-others-who-have-them

But at every turn, the LA police "unions" manage to crush these investigations:

https://abc7.com/los-angeles-county-lasd-deputy-gangs-cliques/13492081/

And top cops are right there with them, insisting that these aren't "gangs" – they're just "subgroups":

https://lapublicpress.org/2024/01/former-la-sheriff-villanueva-sheriffs-gangs-are-just-subgroups/

It's very weird being an Angeleno and knowing that one of the largest, most militarized, best funded police departments in the world has been openly captured by a hyperviolent crime syndicate. When I was in the Skyboat Media studios last December with Wil Wheaton recording the audiobook for The Bezzle, Wil broke off from reading to say, "You know, someone's going to read this and google it and have their mind blown when they discover that it's real":

https://sowl.co/8nyGh

That's one of my favorite ways to turn literature into something more than entertainment. It's why I filled the Little Brother books with real-world surveillance, cryptography and security tech, giving enough detail to advance the plot and give readers an idea of what search terms would let them understand and use the concepts in the novel. That's something I'm happy to keep up with in the Hench novels, unpicking the inner workings of scams and corruption. The more of us who are wise to this, the sooner we'll be able to get rid of it.

Here's part one of the serial:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/17/the-steve-soul-caper/#lead-singer-disease

Part two:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/19/crad-kilodney-was-an-outlier/#copyright-termination

Part three:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/20/fore/#lawyer-up

And now, on to part four!

The last of the boxes had been shelved.

Benedetto rose from his chair. “Thank you, gentlemen,” he said to the movers, and dug a roll of twenties out of his pocket and handed each of them two of their own. He turned to me as they filed out. “You wanna get sushi? The place next door is great.”

The empty storefront was in a down-­at-­heels strip mall in Eagle Rock. On one side, there was a Brazilian jujitsu studio that never seemed to have any students training in it. On the other side was Sushi Jiro, name on a faded sign with half its lightbulbs gone. Beyond that was a vaping store.

“The place next door is good?”

He laughed. “You San Francisco motherfuckers got terrible LA restaurant radar. Put Sushi Jiro in the Mission and it’d have a Michelin star and a six-­month waiting list. Here it’s in a strip mall and only the locals know how good it is. Bet you never had a decent meal in this town, am I right?”

“I’ve had a few,” I said, “but I admit my track record isn’t great.”

“Let’s improve it.”

The sushi was amazing.

#

Inglewood Jams had the kind of books that were performatively bad, designed to foil any attempt at human comprehension.

But whoever cooked them was an amateur, someone who mistook complexity for obfuscation. Like cross-­referencing was a species of transcendentally esoteric sorcery. I don’t mind cross-referencing. It’s meditative, like playing solitaire. I had Bene­detto send over some colored post-­it tabs and a big photocopier with an automatic feeder and I started making piles.

One night, I worked later than I planned. Sushi Jiro was becoming a serious hazard to my waistline and my sleep-­debt, because when your dinner break is ten yards and two doors away from your desk, it’s just too damned easy to get back to work after dinner.

That night, I’d fallen into a cross-­referencing reverie, and before I knew it, it was 2 a.m., my lower back was groaning, and my eyes were stinging.

I straightened, groaned, and slid my laptop into my bag. I found my keys and unlocked the door. The storefront was covered with brown butcher’s paper, but it didn’t go all the way to the edge. I had just a moment to sleepily note that there was some movement visible through the crack in the paper over the glass door when it came flying back toward me, bouncing off my toe, mostly, and my nose, a little. I put my one hand to my face as I instinctively threw myself into the door to close it again.

I was too late and too tired. A strong shoulder on the other side of the doorframe pushed it open and I stumbled back, and then the guy was on me, the door sighing shut behind him on its gas lift as he bore me to the ground and straddled my chest, a move he undertook with the ease of much practice. He pinned my arms under his knees and then gave me a couple of hard hits, one to the jaw, one to the nose.

My lip and nose were bleeding freely and my head was ringing from the hits and from getting smacked into the carpet tiles over concrete when I went down backward. I struggled—­to free my arms, to buck off my attacker, to focus on him.

He was a beefy white guy in his late fifties, with watery dark eyes and a patchy shave that showed gray mixed in with his dark stubble. As he raised his fist for another blow, I saw that he was wearing a big class ring. A minute later, that ring opened my cheek, just under the orbit of my eye.

Apart from some involuntary animal grunts, I hadn’t made a sound. Now I did. “Ow!” I shouted. “Shit!” I shouted. “Stop!” I shouted.

He split my lip again. I bucked hard but I couldn’t budge him. He had a double chin, a gut, and he was strong, and used that bulk to back up his strength. It was like trying to free myself from under a boulder. That kept punching me in the face.

The strip mall would be deserted. Everything was closed, even the vaping store.

Shouting wouldn’t help. I did it anyway. He shut my mouth for me with a left. I gagged on blood.

He took a break from punching me in the face, then. I think he was tired. His chest heaved, and he wiped sweat off his lip with the back of his hand, leaving behind a streaky mustache of my blood.

He contemplated me, weighing me up. I thought maybe he was trying to decide if I had any fight left in me, or perhaps whether I had any valuables he could help himself to.

He cleared his throat and looked at me again. “Goddammit, I messed your face up so bad I can’t tell for sure. I hope to fuck that you’re Martin Hench, though.”

Even with my addled wits, this was an important piece of intelligence: he came here for me. This wasn’t a random act of senseless Los Angeles street violence. This was aimed at me.

I was briefly angry at Benedetto for not warning me that Chuy Flores was such a tough son of a bitch. Then I had the presence of mind to lie.

“I don’t know who the fuck this Mark Hendricks is.” My voice was thick with gargled blood, but I was proud of Mark Hendricks. Pretty fast thinking for a guy with a probable concussion. The guy slapped me open-­handed across the face, and as I lay dazed for a moment, he shifted, reached into my back pocket for my wallet, and yanked it—­and the seat of my pants—­free. Before I could react, his knees were back on my biceps, pinning my arms and shoulders. It was a very neat move, and fast for an old guy like him.

He flipped my wallet open and squinted at it, then held it at arm’s length, then smiled broadly. He had bleach-­white teeth, a row of perfectly uniform caps. Los fucking Angeles, where even the thugs have a million-­dollar smile.

“Shoulda sprung for botox,” I slurred.

His grin got wider. “Maybe someday I will. Got these in trade from a cosmetic dentist I did some work for.” He dropped my wallet. “Listen, Martin Hench, you stay the fuck away from Thames Estuary and Lawrence Coleman.”

“It’s Lionel Coleman,” I said.

“What the fuck ever,” he said. He labored to his feet. I stayed still. He looked at me from a great height, and I stared up his nostrils. Without warning, he kicked my ribs hard enough that I heard one of them crack.

“You’ve been told,” he said to my writhing body, and let himself out.

Hey look at this (permalink)

• Street Of Satisfaction https://soundcloud.com/dj-moule/street-of-satisfaction

• Don’t Fall for the Latest Changes to the Dangerous Kids Online Safety Act https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/02/dont-fall-latest-changes-dangerous-kids-online-safety-act

• Why The New York Times might win its copyright lawsuit against OpenAI https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/why-the-new-york-times-might-win-its-copyright-lawsuit-against-openai/

This day in history (permalink)

#15yrsago Tesla coils sing the Doctor Who theme in orgy of electric awesomesauce https://arcattack.com/about-us/

#15yrsago HOWTO Make a duct-tape corsage https://www.instructables.com/How_to_Make_a_Duct_Tape_Corsage_and_Flowers/

#15yrsago 419 scammer impersonates the nation of Ethiopia, takes $27 million from Citibank https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/21/nyregion/21scam.html

#15yrsago On the demise of books, newspapers, music and movies https://web.archive.org/web/20090301000000*/https://www.internetevolution.com/document.asp?doc_id=171555&

#15yrsago Future of News video from 1981: epitome of foolish futurism https://memex.craphound.com/2009/02/20/future-of-news-video-from-1981-epitome-of-dumb-futurism/

#10yrsago Comic explains problems with Oakland’s Domain Awareness Center surveillance plan https://medium.com/the-nib/the-testing-ground-for-the-new-surveillance-db4f129a7177

#10yrsago Well-Sorted Version, an alphabetical Bible https://www.wellsortedversion.com

#10yrsago Sculptor collaborates with honeybees to cover statues with comb https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2014/02/artist-aganetha-dyck-collaborates-with-bees-to-create-sculptures-wrapped-in-honeycomb/

#10yrsago Obama’s top Trans-Pacific Partnership officials were given millions by banks before taking the job https://www.republicreport.org/2014/big-banks-tpp/

#10yrsago Report from a meeting of Wall Street’s secret, tasteless plutocrats’ club https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2014/02/i-crashed-a-wall-street-secret-society.html

#10yrsago Edgar Allan Poe’s interior design proscriptions https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/edgar-allan-poe-interior-design-critic-180949543/

#10yrsago Museums and the free world: keynote from the Museums and the Web conference in Florence https://mwf2014.museumsandtheweb.com/paper/glam-and-the-free-world/

#5yrsago Florida inmates sue prisons for digitally confiscating the music they were sold https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/crime/2019/02/19/florida-prisoners-could-form-class-action-to-demand-refund-on-confiscated-media-players-and-files/5881894007/

#5yrsago Owner of civil war reenactment business sues school district that canceled field trips after his far-right social media came to light https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-rileys-farm-lawsuit-oak-glen-20190219-story.html

#5yrsago FDA: infusing young people’s blood will not improve your health https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/19/health/plasma-infusion-young-blood-fda-bn/index.html

#5yrsago A malicious USB cable with its own wifi rig https://twitter.com/_MG_/status/1094389042685259776

#5yrsago Magic Lantern: feature-rich addons for Canon EOS cameras https://www.magiclantern.fm

#5yrsago Google admits Nest security product has a secret mic, insists it wasn’t supposed to be a secret https://www.businessinsider.com/nest-microphone-was-never-supposed-to-be-a-secret-2019-2

#1yrago Turbotax is blitzing Congress for the right to tax YOU https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/20/turbotaxed/#counter-intuit

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

• Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS JAN 2025

• The Bezzle, a Martin Hench noir thriller novel about the prison-tech industry. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2024

• Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM

• Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM

Latest podcast: How I Got Scammed (https://craphound.com/news/2024/02/18/how-i-got-scammed/)

Upcoming appearances:

• The Bezzle at Weller Book Works (Salt Lake City), Feb 21
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• The Bezzle at Mysterious Galaxy (San Diego), Feb 22
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• The Bezzle at Vroman's (Pasadena), Feb 24
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• The Bezzle at Third Place Books (Seattle), Feb 26
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• The Bezzle at Powell's (Portland) Feb 27:
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• The Bezzle at Changing Hands (Phoenix), Feb 29:
  https://www.changinghands.com/event/february2024/cory-doctorow

• Tucson Festival of Books, Mar 9/10
  https://tucsonfestivalofbooks.org/?id=676

• Enshittification: How the Internet Went Bad and How to Get it Back (virtual), Mar 26
  https://libcal.library.ubc.ca/event/3781006

• Wondercon Anaheim, Mar 29-31
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• The Bezzle at Anderson's Books (Chicago), Apr 17
  https://www.andersonsbookshop.com/event/cory-doctorow-1

• Torino Biennale Tecnologia (Apr 19-21)
  https://www.turismotorino.org/en/experiences/events/biennale-tecnologia

• Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (Winnipeg), May 2
  https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cory-doctorow-tickets-798820071337?aff=oddtdtcreator

• Tartu Prima Vista Literary Festival (May 5-11)
  https://tartu2024.ee/en/kirjandusfestival/

• Media Ecology Association keynote (Amherst, NY), Jun 6-9
  https://media-ecology.org/convention

• American Association of Law Libraries keynote (Chicago), Jul 21
  https://www.aallnet.org/conference/agenda/keynote-speaker/

Recent appearances:

• This Is Hell
  https://thisishell.com/interviews/1701-cory-doctorow

• From privacy to paper jams, a look at printer problems
  https://www.ctpublic.org/show/the-colin-mcenroe-show/2024-02-15/from-privacy-to-paper-jams-a-look-at-printer-problems

• Big Story Podcast
  https://thebigstorypodcast.ca/2024/02/13/a-story-about-how-anyone-yes-even-you-can-get-scammed/

Latest books:

• The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.

• "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

• "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

• "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

• "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

• "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

Upcoming books:

• Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025

• Unauthorized Bread: a graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

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BOSTON—Calling the routine a nice way of blowing off steam and building connections with each other, staff at the new American bistro Bad Wolf told reporters this week that they had a fun after-work ritual where they all enabled each other’s alcoholism. “Yeah, it’s great after a killer Friday shift to just head…

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PALM BEACH, FL—Urging his supporters to act now before it was too late, Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign reportedly sent a new fundraising email Wednesday claiming that the candidate needed $5 for the bus to New Jersey so that he could see his ailing mother. “I am so sorry to bother you, but my mother is…

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Hovertext:
I feel like every ethical system works better if you just have people ask themselves 'is this a bit much?' once in a while.

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. A recruiter got angry that I contacted a company directly

Someone contacted me through LinkedIn and said he was recruiting for an executive assistant role and asked if I had any contacts who might be interested. I used to work as an administrative coordinator with a specific community that the organization he was hiring for also worked with. I asked if he had a job description and any other information about the company, which he provided. The job description was thorough, but it wasn’t on company letterhead and when I checked out the company website, they didn’t have the job posted.

I was starting to worry that this might be a scam. I may just not be used to working with recruiters but I wanted to be sure before I sent it to anyone I knew. He also had the same name as a TV character (think Walter White), which made me a little more suspicious.

This is where I may have messed up. I didn’t think it would be a big deal to contact someone at the company he was recruiting for and just confirm that this was a legitimate position. I left a message with reception and left it at that.

I got an email from the recruiter the next day saying he heard that I had contacted the company and he was obviously hurt and angry. He sent me a rather hostile and condescending message about how this had never happened to him before and he deals in trust, etc. and made it clear he was no longer interested in my help.

I messaged him back apologizing for offending him but said that I’ve known people who were scammed while looking for work, I wanted to be sure this was a real opportunity, I don’t think it was unreasonable for me to contact the company, and I didn’t regret doing it. I got another rude response about how I don’t understand recruiting and then he blocked me.

I know I shouldn’t let this bother me, but I haven’t been working for three years because I had a kid, and I’m starting to think about going back to work. Now I’m sort of dreading the prospect. Was I wrong to have contacted the company? For what it’s worth, I considered applying to the job myself but decided I’m not ready for a full-time job as busy as this one seemed like it would be. At the same time, this company seemed really cool and even if I don’t want to work there now, maybe I will in future and have burned a bridge there.

Lastly, should I inform the company he was recruiting for about the messages he sent me? He didn’t swear or threaten me but he was definitely rude and immature. But I admit that I may just want to tell them because he was a jerk and it cheesed me off. If I was already wrong to contact them in the first place, I should probably quit while I’m ahead.

There are legitimate reasons recruiters are sometimes annoyed if a candidate contacts a company directly, including that the company may have hired them to recruit for a position that isn’t public yet (for example, because it’s a new role/initiative that they aren’t ready to publicize yet, or they’re replacing someone who doesn’t know they’re being replaced — which would also be reasons the job wasn’t listed on their website). Companies also sometimes hire recruiters when they don’t want to be bothered by calls from candidates.

But the recruiter’s reply was ridiculous and over-the-top. He could have simply explained what the issue was (or declined to work with you further if he felt that strongly). Sending you a hostile message about how this had never happened to him before (is he brand new to the work?) was a weirdly intense reaction.

I wouldn’t bother putting energy into informing the company. They know him, they don’t know you, and it risks muddying your name with them a little (even though it shouldn’t). You’re better off just figuring he’s not someone you would want to work with and moving on.

2. Can I do anything about my aggressive-driver coworker?

I work at a campus hospital in a medium-sized city. Sometimes, like everyone else, I encounter rude drivers on my morning commute: people who tailgate, people who cut you off, people who tailgate you until they get the chance to pass you and then cut you off as tightly as possible to express their anger that you were only going three miles above the speed limit in a residential neighborhood — you know, humans! Unfortunately, over the last year, one person has done this so frequently and with such vehemence that I now recognize both his face and his Audi. (Once he passes me, he immediately begins tailgating the next person, and I’ve seen him cut off plenty of other people. So I think this is just the terrible, terrible way he drives.)

Can anyone do anything about this? We work at the same place. We park in the same parking garage. With minimal effort, I could find the name to match that scowling face, and frankly I’d like to make him a custom bumper sticker with a cartoon version of his face and his personal cell phone number printed on it, along with a “how’s my driving” message. Anyway, what I would like even more than that is to just never think about this man again, but instead he pops up at least once a week being a real jerk behind the wheel. The answer is just, “you just have to let this one go,” right? There isn’t even a possible work-related reason this man should have to get his shit together? (Yes I’m autistic, no I can’t ever let anything go, yes OF COURSE I wish that was not the case.)

Yeah, you probably have to let it go. I suppose in theory you could leave a note on his car telling him he’s endangering other people — which would have the subtext of “some of the people you’re tailgating and cutting off are your coworkers, which means you’re not anonymous” — but I’m skeptical it’s going to do much good. If you have campus police, you could potentially alert them but I’m not sure they could do much with the report. Ultimately, there aren’t really good options here. (I do like the bumper sticker though.)

3. Should I be worried about maxed out company credit cards?

I work for a healthcare group that recently got bought out by private investors. It’s been a challenge for a few reasons, but I am nervous about one situation in particular. All the offices share one line of credit for our office credit cards. Most things, including bills, are charged to this account. About two months ago, I had some transactions for supplies decline. I emailed our accounting team and it was resolved in a day, with them stating they needed to pay down the balance.

This month, the same situation happened. I went to charge about $40 to the credit card for supplies, and the card declined. I emailed our accounting team, and no response. A few days went by and more bills were declined. Payments for vital supplies to run the business would not go through. No one responded to my emails questioning this, or emails from another staff member at another office. It took seven days for the card to work again, and no one has addressed what was going on. I’m nervous that the new investors do not have the money to be paying our bills. I do know our office is generating enough money to cover our expenses, but I’m not sure about the other locations. Could this be an indicator of a larger issue? Should this be a big enough red flag to look for another job? I don’t want to wait around if I’m seeing indicators that this business could be going under or is being mismanaged!

Yes, it’s a red flag. Either they’re not investing enough money to keep the business running or their systems are so disorganized that basic things aren’t happening, which means other basic things might not be happening either. (For example, are you going to find out three months from now that your retirement contributions were never deposited?) It’s possible there’s some less alarming explanation, but when payments for vital supplies aren’t going through, there’s a problem. I’d start looking around.

4. My employer hasn’t prepared for my departure

I gave notice two and a half weeks ago that I was resigning from my job for a new opportunity. My boss acknowledged the resignation, and talked about how she’d have a plan in place for my transition. I am now two days from my last day and my transition plan of who will take over my projects is still incomplete! I work in a client-facing role, and less than half of my clients have been reassigned to other client managers. I have clients who do not even know that I am leaving (if I haven’t met with them as recently) or know that I am leaving but still do not have someone to take over the projects from me. I also worry I won’t have time to bring my team members up to speed on the projects or introduce my clients to their new project lead.

What do I do? How much responsibility do I have in this situation? I worry I won’t have time to transition my projects before I go, and I don’t want to leave my clients or coworkers in the lurch because my leadership was ill-prepared.

Ultimately, this is their responsibility, not yours (unless you’re in a senior role where you’d be expected to lead the transition work yourself). That said, in a lot of roles, ideally you would have been taking the initiative on some of this — “here’s a list of my projects and where they stand, we need to train someone on XYZ, these clients still need to be reassigned,” etc. (and then what they did with the info from there, if anything, would be up to them). On the other hand, there are some roles where you wouldn’t even be expected to do that.

At this point, since you’re two days out, I’d give just give your boss a list of all of this and leave it with her; even if you ideally would have done some of it earlier, she’s been more responsible for managing it than you are are.

One thing to think about is how you want to handle clients who still don’t know you’re leaving. If you haven’t been explicitly told not to tell them, in many cases it would make sense to email and let them know (although be aware some companies very much don’t want you to do that without their okay, so you need to know your company on this one).

5. My interviewer offered me a feedback call but then never got back to me

I recently interviewed for a job and got a rejection email. In the email, the interviewer said, “If you would like feedback on your interview please let me know and we can arrange a time to speak.” I was happy to hear that, since I’d really like to get a job at an organization like theirs. I thought the offer to speak was a little strange, since usually I’d expect to get feedback via email if at all, but I went with the way they offered and replied asking when would be a convenient time for them.

This was four days ago and they haven’t replied. I wonder if I should have offered times myself, or suggested receiving the feedback by email to avoid taking up their time. At this point, can I follow up or should I just leave it be?

Sometimes people make offers like this fully intending it at the time but then higher priorities intervene. Other times they make the offer without thinking (sometimes because they’ve seen others make similar offers and haven’t thought through what’s really involved). Who can say which it is in this case, but it would be fine to follow up once after at least a full week has gone by — something like, “Just wanted to check back on this. I know you must be busy but if there’s a time that works for you in the next two weeks, I’d love to take you up on your offer for feedback.” If you still don’t get a response, let it drop at that point.

Installation view of “Tsz Kam: Like A Circle, Like The Moon,” on view at Ivester Contemporary. Photo: Scott David Gordon

Tsz Kam’s dynamic solo show, Like A Circle, Like The Moon, at Ivester Contemporary, serves as a sort of memoir, portraying the culmination of the artist’s memories and interests leading to their current identity. 

Kam was born in British colonial Hong Kong and grew up during the post-colonial period. At age 13 they immigrated to Houston and eventually found their way to Austin, their current base, to attend the University of Texas and obtain a BFA in Studio Art. With an upbringing marked by erratic changes in environment, it follows that Kam’s perspective as an artist is one that encourages the mingling of contrasting personalities, concepts, and decorations. 

The title Like A Circle, Like The Moon communicates the marriage of Kam’s facets. In Chinese poetry, the moon is recurrently alluded to as a unifying object. The same moon overlooks everyone and everything, and connects us to the people and places we feel far away from. The exhibition underscores this notion of links and unity. Exploring connections in places we may not expect to find them is a fundamental part of Kam’s expression.

Tsz Kam, “Black Lion,” 2023, acrylic gouache on cotton rag mounted on panel, 18 x 24 inches

Constructed with acrylic gouache, the paintings give off an air of regality with their vibrance, precision, and lush textures. Equally stimulating in its messaging, Kam’s work does not encourage passive consumption, but grabs you and makes you examine its various parts and piece together a cohesive picture. Dreamy, discursive, and impressively intricate, each piece references different experiences, traditions, and symbols from Kam’s development. Hong Kong’s prevalent neon lights inspire the vivid coloring that permeates every composition. Fond memories of all-girls Catholic school produced the affectionate appearances of Sacred Heart imagery. Romantic accounts of Texas culture appear in the form of John Wayne-esque wardrobe embellishments and recreations of the Texas capitol’s pink granite. The assorted details are the most delightful features of the exhibit, and reveal the artist’s sentimentality compiled in each tableau.

A particularly compelling representation of the show’s concepts is found in three paintings that welcome the viewer into the gallery: Mrs. and Mrs. Kam, Marigold and Chrysanthemum, and Cantonese Cowgirl and Bevo. Each image showcases Cantonese cowgirls, who are sporting outfits that merge accessories like bolo ties, cowboy hats, boots, and gloves, with traditional Chinese garb. Each painting in this series is a contemporary recreation of a familiar scene, like that of a hat-tipping, rose-offering, chivalrous cowboy romance taking place between two female subjects. 

Installation view of “Tsz Kam: Like A Circle, Like The Moon,” on view at Ivester Contemporary. Photo: Scott David Gordon

Cantonese Cowgirl and Bevo particularly gives gravity to this playful exploration. The cowgirl sits contemplatively under a full moon amongst limp foliage, in the company of Bevo, the longhorn steer mascot for the University of Texas at Austin. Her slumped posture indicates a heaviness. Identity is a costume, with the potential to be just as uncomfortable as it can be freeing. A self-objectification process can occur as we attempt to claim a culture, and leaves us to reduce ourselves to the shoes we wear. The artist seems to suggest that the best way to avoid confining ourselves is simply to put on more layers and accept that attempts at defining ourselves will routinely be swarming with shortcomings.

“The truth is, all traditions are fiction, and they only continue to have meaning because we believe in them,” Kam writes in the show’s notes. “There will always be those from the outside looking into the tradition of another and finding meaning in it, and there will always be those on the inside who choose to exile themselves from traditions when they begin to feel like shackles.”

Tsz Kam, “Lion and Chimera,” 2023, acrylic gouache on cotton rag mounted on panel, 24 x 30 inches

The conversation becomes more elaborate as the exhibition goes on. High Noon sharply conveys conflict between opposing natures. The painting gets its namesake both from the definition of a “high noon” as a decisive confrontation, and from Kam’s favorite East Austin bar. It depicts a battle between two horses, one dressed in old-fashioned garb and the other wearing an outfit that’s both metallic and modern. Lion and Chimera, a layered and mythical self-portrait, intensifies the theme of hybridity. A nude sphinx version of Kam, accompanied by a Cantonese lion and various significant objects, sits on the floor of an ornate room. The elegant clutter of cultural symbols includes umbrellas under the bed, which acknowledge Hong Kong’s 2019 anti-extradition protests, a cooking fish, which pays tribute to Hong Kong’s humble past existence as a fishing village in the 19th century, and even the floor tile patterns that reference Islamic art designs. The intricacy is pleasantly overwhelming, and connects vastly different times, places, and ideas through their shared beauty.

In a world where we’re constantly prodded to pigeonhole ourselves and select a label, Kam rejects the burden of choice and opts to to complicate. Forging new definitions, their collection of work posits that one’s sense of self is best communicated by blending the surfeits of their distinct parts. 

Like A Circle, Like The Moon is on view at Ivester Contemporary through February 24, 2024.

The post Review: Tsz Kam’s “Like A Circle, Like The Moon” at Ivester Contemporary, Austin appeared first on Glasstire.

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Summary: Houston will see mild, mostly rain-free conditions for the foreseeable future. We’ll warm up the next couple of days before a moderate front cools us down for the weekend. Speaking of which, outdoor activities look good to go on Saturday and Sunday, so make your plans with confidence.

Tuesday

If you found Monday’s sunny skies and cool air a bit too cool for your liking, you may appreciate today more. With a moderate southerly flow in place, temperatures today will rise into the mid-70s beneath mostly sunny skies. Winds will be light, from the south and southwest at 5 to 10 mph. With dew points generally in the 50s, the air will still feel somewhat dry. Lows tonight should only drop to around 60 degrees for much of the area, and this could aid in the development of some fog during the overnight hours.

Wednesday

This will be another day with mostly sunny skies and highs in the 70s. The most notable change from Tuesday will be an increase in southerly winds, with daytime gusts of 20 to 25 mph. We’ll see more clouds overnight, and lows will be warm-ish for this time of year, only dropping into the low 60s.

Thursday

This should be the warmest day of the week, with partly to mostly cloudy skies in the morning and some clearing in the afternoon. Expect highs of nearly 80 degrees with a southerly breeze. Change will come in the form of a front dropping out of the northwest. As of now it appears likely the front will reach areas such as Katy and The Woodlands by around sunset, push through most of Houston by around 8 to 10 pm, and move off the coast by around midnight. Some light rain is possible with the front, but at this point I believe it is unlikely. Lows drop into the 50s overnight, behind the front.

Friday

Friday morning looks a bit breezy, with northerly winds gusting up to 15 or 20 mph. But these winds should slacken during the afternoon hours as Houston enjoys sunny skies and highs in the mid-70s with drier air. Lows on Friday night will likely drop to around 50 degrees in Houston, with cooler conditions for outlying areas.

Saturday and Sunday

The weekend continues to look splendid for outdoor activities—so if you picked this weekend for a wedding or family reunion give yourself a gold star. Saturday will be sunny, in the mid-70s, with light winds and low humidity. Overnight lows drop into the low-50s. Sunday will be a bit warmer, with a bit more humidity. It will also be somewhat breezy, as a southerly flow returns, with some gusts around 20 mph. Under this Southerly influence lows on Sunday night will be warmer, perhaps dropping only to about 60 degrees.

Next week

Spring continues. Houston should warm into the upper 70s to possibly 80 degrees through Tuesday or Wednesday of next week before some sort of front arrives. This may bring a few cooler days and some better rain chances, especially toward the end of the week. Do I have much confidence in the details? I do not.