LANSING, MI—Fretting anxiously over what the future held for him, local childless man Gary D’Amore reportedly wondered Tuesday who would be there to neglect him when he grew old. “Most of my friends can count on their kids to shove them in a nursing home and completely forget about them in their twilight years, but…
After two years of pandemic panic and interruptions, Texas book festivals were back in full swing—the San Antonio festival was packed for its 10th anniversary celebration despite May heat that made even the city poet laureate, Andrea Vocab Sanderson, sweat as she opened the festival on an outdoor stage backed by mariachis. In November, our rose-colored Capitol and surrounding tents filled with crowds for the return of the in-person Texas Book Festival. Meanwhile, indie bookstores opened or expanded all across the state—with many hosting events. All that activity means plenty of good reads out there for Texans. Here are some of this year’s top titles.
A group of tough Texas women teamed up to bring us The One Ann Only: Wit and Wisdom from Texas Governor Ann Richards, definitely one of the holidays’ very best gifts for all book-loving Texans. A big thanks from all of us to Margaret Justus, founder of the Ann Richards Legacy Project, and to Sarah Bird and Mary Beth Rogers. Read more about why this carefully curated collection of quotes and photos brings “light in dark times.”
Keri Blakinger of the Marshall Project trained her sharp eye and sharp pen on her own story as an ex-figure skater and an ex-prisoner-turned-journalist. The result is the memoir Corrections in Ink. Blakinger really knows how to write a lede, as Gus Bova described in his Texas Observer review: “Heroin, Cornell, Prison, and Journalism.”
Lance Scott Walker also turned in a provocative biography this year called DJ Screw: A Life in Slow Revolution.
Perhaps this year’s best nonfiction narrative on Texas is The Fishermen and the Dragon surprisingly by a California-based journalist—Kirk Wallace Johnson—who dug up lots of dirt on the activities of the KKK in his compelling tale about the Klan’s attack on Vietnamese fishermen in the early 1980s. The unlikely result of that ugly mess, he explains, was forging new alliances between white and Vietnamese shrimpers and other allies who still try to protect the environment all along the Texas Gulf Coast.
Will Hurd, the ex-congressman and ex-CIA agent, took aim at political extremism and weighed in with his own more moderate ideas in American Reboot: An Idealist’s Guide to Getting Big Things Done.
Texas novelists—Austin’s Amanda Eyre Ward and Houston’s Chris Cander—used their keen-eyed observation of neighborhood dynamics and their imaginations to create two very different fast-moving narratives that spin odd mysteries around hallowed Texas icons, like the dark side of Austin’s Barton Springs pool and Houston’s enclave of West University Place.
Check out Ward’s The Lifeguards and Candler’s A Gracious Neighbor.
That versatile and prolific Texas bard Sarah Bird dove deep into the all-but-forgotten subculture of dance marathons for her latest novel, The Last Dance on the Starlight Pier. Her book features women and men caught up in the competitive world of literally dancing till you drop, a popular spectacle that arose during the Great Depression. Bird’s book explains how some people danced while sleeping. And it lovingly recreates a Galveston that had pulled itself up after the 1900 hurricane—with the help of mobster money—and became a destination for those looking for fun in dark times.
Sergio Troncoso, a Yale Writers’ Workshop professor originally from Texas, took readers on a crazy ride in a tractor-trailer across America with a Texas teen, his Mexico-born friend, and a Missourian they meet along the way in Nobody’s Pilgrims.
Poet and former Observer editor Geoff Rips turned in his own novel this year, Personal Geography.
And if you’re still catching up, here are three more nonfiction books to read from 2021: Forget the Alamo by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford; Let the Lord Sort Them by Marshall Project Staff Writer Maurice Chammah (and Code of Silence by Observer Senior Editor and Writer Lise Olsen).
The post Last Dance with Ann Richards: Best Texas Books of 2022 appeared first on The Texas Observer.
This post, update: my office isn’t acknowledging my adopted baby , was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.
Remember the letter-writer whose office wasn’t acknowledging her adopted baby? Here’s the update.
I didn’t mention this in my original letter, but my wife and I (yes, folks correctly guessed that I am a woman married to another woman) had staggered our parental leave. We took the first two months together, and then she finished out her remaining several months of fully-paid leave (so nice!) while I went back to work, then we switched back. The goal was to extend the leave time period as long as possible since the little one had some potential developmental concerns we wanted to be fully on watch for.
Luckily (and perhaps expectedly) while I was out for those initial two months, the texts and emails from work became much less frequent. A lot of commenters—as well as you, Alison—were rightfully much more incensed by the lack of respect for my leave than the interpersonal stuff, which in retrospect was a sign that some of my norms were a bit warped.
I initiated a call a couple days before my return to check in about transitioning back in and was gently and professionally informed that a lot had been going poorly in my absence. The person who took over most of my duties was a peer whose specialty is a lot different from mine, even though we worked closely together—the best analogy I’ve come up with is an anesthesiologist taking over for the surgeon they usually work with; theoretically similar training, to a point, but WILDLY different day-to-day duties—and the “patients” were unhappy to the point of being downright rude. Everyone was extremely happy to see me when I came back for that reason.
I also heard through the grapevine that someone else (who had stepped in to help with the transition and was a half-step above me on the organizational ladder) had been badmouthing me in an all-staff meeting, saying things along the lines of, “I don’t even know what Lucinda has been DOING these last months” (I’d celebrated my five-year anniversary just before leaving with no serious concerns raised about my work since year one). I almost immediately confronted her about it politely, using AAM-inspired language: “I heard you may have expressed some concerns and I was surprised because our previous conversations had indicated everything was going well! Is there anything I should be aware of?” She denied having any concerns and basically said she would have just been venting due to the stress of being down a staff member. But since I didn’t say where I’d heard it from, she let slip that she thought that I would have heard from clients that she was badmouthing me! I was floored.
Anyway, I felt like I was in putting-out-fires mode from my first day back. Communication continued to be a huge issue and I felt consistently unsupported in doing my job, sometimes even significantly undermined. My mental health took a giant nosedive after having been as happy as I’ve ever been while on leave. I think the reality of why I wrote my letter was that I had been dissatisfied for a while with the feeling that I was giving so much for a job that, despite the warm and fuzzy exterior, made me feel like a cog in a machine. My wife and I talked about it extensively and I decided to leave my job with the intention of my spending 1-2 years at home with my son and working on some personal projects.
So, a couple of weeks before the second part of my leave was supposed to begin, I put in my notice that I wouldn’t be returning from leave the second time around. I don’t know if this would have happened had I not been leaving, but the whole-staff meeting on my last week was converted into a combination baby shower/goodbye party for me. A few people brought gifts—interestingly, all of those people were my peers or below me in the hierarchy, although I had already gotten a small gift each from my boss and grand-boss on my return to work.
I also had two people on my team reach out specifically to apologize for interrupting my leave, but never got any sort of acknowledgement of that from those above me on the hierarchy.
Since then, I’ve reached out to a company where I’d had a previous “side hustle” to see about a part-time remote position. The answer was an enthusiastic yes without so much as a phone screen! It’s been a nice reminder of what it feels like to have my work appreciated.
Tl;dr, a lot of the specific stuff that I was complaining about in my original letter was resolved, but those things were symptoms of bigger issues, so … I got out!
Finally, some commenters, especially those with connections to adoption, expressed some very kind wishes and hopes about how things would go at home. I hope you’ll all be glad to hear that baby boy, birth mom, and both adoptive moms all seem happy with how things have turned out so far. Adoption is complicated and messy but we are putting in our best effort to show up for our son and his birth mom and I’m so grateful to be able to do it. Being his mama is the best thing I’ve ever done.
We hope all of you had a lovely holiday break from the library grindstone. Holly and I are busy shoveling snow and complaining about sub zero temps here in Michigan. Our pickings are kind of thin this year, but we had a few standouts. Stay tuned for part 2.
Just in time for for the holidays! Celebrate your inner Mormon.
You get to “keep house” on a boat. Cuz chores on a boat are much more exciting.
Barbie, G.I. Joe, and Rainbow Brite are agents of the devil.
You could ruin your life by dating the wrong person. Find out the keys to finding your perfect partner.
The post ALB’s Best of 2022 (part 1) appeared first on Awful Library Books.
Hovertext:
Now and then I make a comic just to convince the world I haven't set foot in a bar in 20 years.
Hovertext:
The murderer accidentally ended up looking like Maggie Koerth, but I feel like this is probably the approach she'd take.
Cowboy Who?If you don’t have 150 armed protesters, and a SWAT team on the roof, outside your show are you even doing Drag?
As the sun was setting on a cold December day in Grand Prairie, the latest escalation in the war on Christmas drag unfolded outside the Texas Trust CU Theater.
A small group of anti-LGTBQ+ protesters gathered there on December 17 to accost attendees and defenders of a Christmas-themed drag show, who they baselessly accused of being “groomers” and “pedophiles.” As the night went on, the initial contingent of bigots were joined by a series of increasingly extreme groups: Christian nationalists, neofascists, and eventually open neo-Nazis who threw up stiff-armed salutes and wore symbols associated with Hitler’s genocidal regime. But they were not unopposed. The right-wing extremists were outnumbered by a community defense coalition, including the Party for Socialism and Liberation and armed members of the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club. Grand Prairie SWAT police were deployed to the scene.
Brooke Lynn Hytes, one of the performers in the Christmas drag show, remarked about the event on Twitter, “If you don’t have 150 armed protesters, and a SWAT team on the roof, outside your show are you even doing Drag?”
“If you don’t have 150 armed protesters, and a SWAT team on the roof, outside your show are you even doing Drag?”
A similar scene had played out in San Antonio just four days prior. Open-carrying members of the FBI-designated extremist militia, This Is Texas Freedom Force (TITFF), protested a drag show alongside members of Patriot Front, a neofascist group with roots in North Texas. Members of a far-right religious activist group that opposes all forms of birth control, the San Antonio Family Association, were also in attendance. They were significantly outnumbered and outgunned by another coalition of community members, including armed members of multiple John Brown Gun Clubs and Veterans for Equality, who joyously partied as a form of resistance.
“A far-right extremist group announced its intent to use guns to intimidate and essentially terrorize actresses and theatre goers who were attending a widely promoted and legal holiday event,” the Austin John Brown Gun Club wrote in a statement to the Texas Observer. “They intended this to be a message to both attendees to stay away and to the Texas Legislature to encourage them to pass bigoted laws. It was a real life example of one hateful group threatening harm and decent people supporting and defending their community.”
Representatives from TITFF, which has a reputation for protecting Confederate monuments while carrying rifles, have said they are not opposed to LGTBQ+ rights but believe that “children shouldn’t be allowed in this type of entertainment.” Their calls for age restrictions are specifically for drag shows, not other forms of entertainment that children are allowed into with parental consent such as R-rated films. In San Antonio, TITFF stood alongside protesters who hurled homophobic slurs and vulgar sexual comments. Antisemitic conspiratorial thinking was on display, with some people baselessly claiming that the so-called “trans agenda” is a “CIA psyop” and that group defending the theater were paid by George Soros.
Protect Texas Kids (PTK), an anti-LGTBQ+ organization that has organized several similar protests, called for the protests in both Grand Prairie and San Antonio. Kelly Neidert, the PTK’s self-identified Christian fascist leader, has called for the “rounding up” of people who attend Pride events. Both protests featured noxious “groomer” rhetoric that’s been endorsed by the Texas GOP. Both targeted the traveling A Drag Queen Christmas show featuring several nationally renowned performers which, despite marketing itself as containing adult content, was technically open to all ages. In both instances, no one was hurt, no citations were issued by police, and the drag shows went off without a hitch. But the increasingly common presence of armed fascists outside of spaces hosting queer expression is something that’s difficult to ignore.
According to a November report by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), there have been more than 17 anti-LGTBQ+ protests in Texas in 2022—a number that does not include these recent events, as well as pro-LGBTQ+ events that were canceled or delayed as a result of threats of counter-demonstrations or violence from anti-LGBTQ+ extremists. Several LGBTQ+ events in Texas have been canceled for such reasons, including a drag show slated for December 18 in Austin that was called off after a Christian neofascist youth group threatened to protest it.
While the events in Grand Prairie and San Antonio did not result in violence, in part due to proactive albeit inconsistent efforts by police to prevent agitators from engaging community defenders, ACLED data says that demonstrations are over four times more likely to turn violent or destructive when far-right militias or militant social movements are involved. While reporting on minor assaults and scuffles involving right-wing extremists across North Texas, I was called an antisemitic slur and assaulted while reporting on an anti-LGTBQ+ protest which was organized by PTK and attended by Christian nationalists.
The presence of far-right extremist groups has been incited in part by the likes of the Texas GOP. Republican state Representative Bryan Slaton, who has proposed a bill banning children from attending drag shows—a law that’s so broadly written that it could effectively push some queer people out of public life—has embraced the dangerous “groomer” rhetoric and was photographed with a member of TITFF who made threats outside of drag shows. Recently, the Texas GOP also evoked the “groomer” rhetoric while refusing an opportunity to unambiguously disavow the presence of neo-Nazis outside a drag show that the official Texas GOP Twitter account had tweeted about to its tens of thousands of followers.
At a time when fascist elements in Texas are emboldened and LGBTQ+ families are fleeing the state, Texas Republicans seek to further restrict access to gender-affirming care. A recent bill filed by state Representative Brian Harrison seeks to ban the use of state funding for gender-affirming care. The Texas GOP recently shared a post of Harrison’s on Twitter that reads, “No Texan should be forced to pay for their neighbor’s sex change.” This comes not long after disturbing revelations that Attorney General Ken Paxton requested a list of all Texans who had changed their gender on their driver’s license.
But the repeated optics of swastikas at anti-LGBTQ+ protests has concerned Neidert of PTK, who has also advocated for the banning of books about LGBTQ+ people in schools. She told the Dallas Morning News that she was worried about neo-Nazis showing up to the protest in Grand Prarie. Within 30 minutes of Neidert making the comment, neo-Nazis arrived. One of them who wore a swastika patch had a visible handgun sticking out of his pants pocket. (It bears mentioning that transgender people were among the first marginalized group the Nazi regime targeted after it took power in Germany. The Institute for the Science of Sexuality was the target of organized attacks that resulted in the burning of the organization’s archives.)
While Neidert has deflected responsibility by saying she doesny invite the neo-Nazis to her events, it’s clear her rhetoric has inspired such extremist groups to show up. In Grand Prairie, members of the Aryan Freedom Network, a neo-Nazi group with roots in Texas who have shown up outside multiple drag shows, carried signs that looked a lot like those carried by the non-Nazi protesters. Neidert has yet to denounce other far-right groups who show up regularly to her protests, such as the Proud Boys—a neofascist street gang with chapters across the country whose leaders are currently in trial facing seditious conspiracy charges. Toward the end of the protest in Grand Prairie, Neidert was seen speaking with what appeared to be a member of Patriot Front.
Neidert did not respond to a request for comment.
“It was a real life example of one hateful group threatening harm and decent people supporting and defending their community.”
In response to a shameless GOP-endorsed hate campaign that paints queer people as pedophilic “groomers” and incites armed fascist groups to menace LGTBQ+ events, some Texans have decided to organize in defense of their local LGTBQ+ communities. While armed members of John Brown Gun Clubs have opposed fascists in a handful of cities and made waves in the media, the face of antifascist resistance is not uniformly clad in black. Scenes from across Texas illustrate that a wide variety of people have stood up to oppose hate. Most of them have been unmasked and unarmed, such as the parents who prevented Proud Boys from disrupting an event at a library in McKinney.
Neidert, whose activism is supported by a 501(c)(4) nonprofit with unknown funding sources, has baselessly claimed that such community defense mobilizations are “paid protesters.” During a True Texas Project meeting in September, Neidert said her nonprofit doesn’t take “Soros money,” which one of her supporters clarified to mean “Jew money.” A recent report in the Texas Tribune revealed that her brother Jake Neidert, a fellow anti-LGBTQ+ activist and legislative director for Republican state Representative Tony Tinderholt, received payments from Defend Texas Liberty PAC, a fundraising group tied to West Texas oil billionaires.
Among the volunteer community defenders in San Antonio and Grand Prairie were David Michael Smith, a retired professor of political science who lives in the Houston area, and his wife Rona, a licensed counselor. David and Rona, both longtime activists, are involved with the Houston Socialist Movement and the United Front Against Fascism. They traveled to San Antonio and Grand Prairie to stand in solidarity with local LGTBQ+ communities. Carrying long arms, they stood stoically and unmasked.
“When we saw that a militia group would be in San Antonio, we thought we should go and support the folks who were organizing there,” Smith told the Observer.
Smith, who said his first participation in antifascist action was in Tupelo, Mississippi in 1978, has been heartened by the diverse and sizable community defense mobilizations across the state. He and Rona were also in Houston outside a drag show earlier this year that neo-Nazis and fascists had targeted for harassment.
“We have to have antifascists of all ages and hues,” Smith said. “And we have to have truly liberatory politics. That’s how we’ll beat them.”
The post The War on Christmas Drag Shows appeared first on The Texas Observer.
A weathered, yellow building stands tucked between two high-rises on 24th Street. It’s not an eye-catching sight, especially amongst the continuous development taking place in the neighborhood. However, with rents ranging from $700-$2000 per room in West Campus, this building is one of the last affordable housing options left for University of Texas at Austin students.
It took 20 tours and three real estate agents over the course of a couple of months for Kayla Angel to find an apartment that fell within her price range. In West Campus, where rent averages in the thousands, Angel was able to find a place for $425 per month—but it came at a cost. The building has been through a succession of management companies, leaving Angel in the dark about who’s responsible for her home.
“I don’t know who has our deposit money,” she told the Texas Observer. “And last year, we had a rat in our apartment [and] there was a big pipe that burst. It smelled terrible for weeks, and we received no notification of when this was going to get fixed [or] what was going on.”
West Campus, a neighborhood steps from the University of Texas at Austin, primarily houses college students due to its proximity to campus. A neighborhood that was once littered with colorful homes has become filled with high-rises that grow in size each year. The neighborhood’s zip code, 78705, is now the third most densely populated in Texas. With West Campus expanding at such a rapid rate, luxury student apartments have been popping up throughout the majority student neighborhood. While the city offers some affordable housing options within West Campus, these continue to be extremely limited and become more sparse each year.
With students having to take out loans and work excessive hours to keep up with ever-increasing rent prices, Angel said she finds it upsetting that the university isn’t taking the initiative to make college as accessible as it should be.
“There was a big pipe that burst. It smelled terrible for weeks, and we received no notification of when this was going to get fixed.”
“The university holds so much power,” Angel said. “If they can make a law saying that nothing can be built between the tower and the Capitol, they can make some sort of policy where there’s a rent cap for students.”
To Angel, it’s incredibly troubling that students have to work long shifts coupled with their academic responsibilities, all while worrying about whether they’ll be able to afford rent.
“You should be able to have your college experience, it’s your first time away from home,” Angel said. “It would be nice if money wasn’t as big of a factor as it is. … They keep making it tough on everybody.”
This year, Democratic Representative Yvette Clark introduced an affordable housing bill that would create a federal low-income housing assistance program by lowering rent based on area median income while simultaneously aiming to increase the number of affordable housing options for purposes of a federal low-income housing assistance program. The bill was referred to the House Committee on Financial Services on May 12, 2022, and has languished there since.
Democratic state Representative Gina Hinojosa told the Observer that, as of now, the state doesn’t have any rent relief programs geared specifically towards student housing. In 2013 the city of Port Arthur passed legislation that allowed the Port Arthur Economic Development Corporation to fund affordable housing leading to a $6 million investment in the construction of affordable student housing on Lamar State College’s campus. Hinojosa said she wonders whether a similar model could be reused at more universities.
“In getting the rent to be lowered, building affordable housing is a start,” Hinojosa said. “Because of affordable housing, they have a cap on what they can bill the student, and usually that cap is much lower than the average rate of rent in that area … making it affordable for the students to be able to live there on campus.”
“You should be able to have your college experience, it’s your first time away from home. They keep making it tough on everybody.”
After living in an apartment complex during his freshman year, Joey Samfield transitioned into a co-op in West Campus three years ago and hasn’t left since. While he lives with 25 other students, he still has his own space within the seemingly packed housing accommodation.
Samfield pays $870 per month, which includes Wi-Fi, utilities, and food. While other UT-Austin students’ rent has increased by hundreds over the past couple of years, his rent has only increased by $90 throughout his time at the co-op. While he originally switched to a co-op because of the social aspect, Joey doesn’t think he’d be able to afford an apartment within West Campus now if he didn’t have this option, especially thanks to the rising cost of living.
“Things have been tighter the last year of my degree,” Samfield said. “The amount I’d be working outside of my degree would completely burn me out. It would be physically possible.”
He feels discouraged after witnessing historic landmarks and apartments throughout West Campus get demolished with expensive high-rises sprouting up in their place. It’s disheartening to see how other students are struggling while the university essentially lets it happen.
“As an institution, UT has so much public power, you’d think they would do something to mitigate the rising cost of rent, in this iconic student neighborhood where people live and work to finish their degree,” Sanfield said. “They’re letting people get priced out. … I don’t think UT is doing nearly enough. In my eyes, it’s not just negligent, it’s evil.”
The post UT-Austin Students Can’t Afford the Rent appeared first on The Texas Observer.
Good morning. Much of Houston has once again sunk into the upper teens this morning, as a hard freeze grips the region. However, this will be the worst of it, with Houston seeing one more night in the 20s heading into Christmas morning. Next week looks considerably warmer.
Skies will be mostly sunny today, and if you live south of Interstate 10, highs may eventually climb to 40 degrees or higher. Further inland you’ll probably remain in the upper 30s. A noticeable, and welcome, change today will be much reduced winds out of the north at 5 to 10 mph. Clear skies tonight will allow temperatures to drop into the mid-20s in the city of Houston, with colder conditions further inland. In terms of electricity, the state power grid seems to be holding steady. We expect that to continue.
Don’t tell my niece, but she’s getting a trampoline for Christmas. While it will still be cold on Sunday, with highs in the mid-40s it will certainly feel warmer than recent days. So if you dress warmly, with the sunshine and just a light wind, conditions should be fine for outdoor activities such as trampoline jumping after the early morning chill burns away. Overnight lows on Sunday night will get down to about freezing in Houston, with colder conditions inland, and more moderate ones along the coast.
A bit of uncertainty remains about whether a reinforcing front pushes into Houston on Monday night, or washes out, but I don’t think it matters in terms of precipitation. Both of these should be mostly sunny days, probably with highs slotting into the 50s. Monday nights lows may drop into the 30s, but Tuesday night will be warmer.
This has the look of a pleasant, partly sunny day with highs in the 70s.
The pattern turns more unsettled by the end of the week as high pressure shifts eastward, and we’re opened up to a warmer, more humid flow from the Gulf of Mexico. This will bring a notable increase in rain chances. Accordingly I expect both of these days to be mostly cloudy, with at least a 50 percent chance of rain, and highs in the 70s.
The forecast is fairly muddled by this point, but my general expectation is that some kind of weak front is going to push into the region on New Year’s Eve, or thereabouts. This probably will bring an end to the rain showers before festivities start later on New Year’s Eve, but at this point out it’s too far away to say that with any confidence whatsoever. The front may sap some of the humidity, as well. My bet for highs on New Year’s Day would be about 70 degrees, but again, it’s a long ways off.
This will be our last post until Tuesday, December 27. It has been a long week due to the cold weather, and with relatively calm conditions ahead we’re going to take a couple of days off to celebrate the holiday weekend. So for Matt, Maria, Lee, Dwight, Hussain and everyone else who contributes here at Space City Weather, let me wish you joy on Christmas Day and during the rest of this holiday season. Your trust is the greatest gift we can receive.
When the BitLocker Drive Encryption wizard steps you through the process of applying BitLocker full volume encryption to a drive, one of the steps is backing up your recovery key. There are a number of options, one of which is to save the key to a file.
If you try to save that file to an encrypted drive, you are told, “Your recovery key cannot be saved to an encrypted drive.” Why is that not allowed?
Saving your recovery key on an encrypted drive is the equivalent of locking your keys in the car. In order to get the recovery key, you would have to decrypt the drive, but decrypting the drive requires the recovery key!
The BitLocker wizard could in theory let you save the key to an encrypted drive that is unrelated to the drive being encrypted. For example, saving the system volume’s recovery key on a data volume is a bad idea (because you need to boot the system volume before you can get to the data volume). But saving the recovery key for a data volume to the system volume could be allowed since you can boot the system volume first, and then use the recovery key to access the data volume.
But for simplicity, the BitLocker Drive Encryption wizard doesn’t try to detect these scenarios. For your own safety, it simply refuses to save the recovery key to any encrypted volume.
Furthermore, the BitLocker Drive Encryption wizard won’t save the recovery key to an unencrypted fixed drive. That would be the equivalent of leaving your keys on the hood of the car. If you computer is stolen, the bad guys can just look on the unencrypted drive and find your recovery key, and use that to access the encrypted volumes.
You can save your recovery key to a cloud service (such as your Active Directory account), to a removable drive, or to a network location. Somewhere that is not on the computer being encrypted.
A security vulnerability report came in that said that they could trick the BitLocker Drive Encryption wizard into saving the recovery key to a local drive by sharing a local drive over the network and then net use‘ing that network share via loopback. This tricks the BitLocker Drive Encryption wizard into thinking that it’s saving the recovery key to another computer on the network, thereby circumventing the enforcement that the recovery key not be saved on an encrypted volume. The finder then requested a bounty payment.
First of all, the BitLocker Drive Encryption wizard requires administrator privileges, so this is an attack against the local machine coming from a user who already has administrator privileges, which is not interesting since there is no elevation of privilege.
Let’s look at the usual questions when evaluating a security vulnerability report. Who is the attacker? The attacker is the person who bypasses the BitLocker Drive Encryption wizard’s protections and saves the recovery key to an encrypted volume. Who is the victim? The victim is presumably the person who has now lost their recovery keys. But the attacker and the victim is the same person! The attacker has gained the ability to lock himself out of his own computer.
Now, you can circumvent the block in the BitLocker Drive Encryption wizard much more easily by just saving the recovery key to a removable drive, and then copying the file to an encrypted drive. Ooh, the recovery key is on an encrypted drive!
Or you can just use the Enable-BitLocker PowerShell cmdlet to enable BitLocker and tell it to put the recovery key on the encrypted volume. The PowerShell cmdlet doesn’t care.
Returning to the “locking the keys in the car” analogy: Say you have a fancy car that detects that the key is inside the car when you try to lock the door, and it beeps at you to remind you that you left the key in the car. All of these mechanisms to circumvent the Bitlocker Drive Encryption wizard are like taking the key and wrapping it in tin foil so the car sensor can’t see that the key is inside the car. “Using this trick, I am able to lock my keys inside my car. I have found a vulnerability in the don’t-lock-your-keys-in-the-car feature!”
Congratulations, you locked your keys in your car.
Not allowing you to save the recovery key on an encrypted volume is not a security feature. It’s a “Prevent you from making stupid mistakes” feature. When the wizard says “Your recovery key cannot be saved to an encrypted volume,” it’s not saying that saving the key to an encrypted volume is somehow illegal or invalid. It’s saying “Saving the recovery key to an encrypted volume is such a bad idea that I’m going to stop you if I notice that you’re trying to do it.”
But if you want to wrap your key in tin foil and do lock your keys in your car, then you are welcome to do so. I hope you’re happy now.
The post Why doesn’t the BitLocker wizard let me save the BitLocker key on an encrypted drive? appeared first on The Old New Thing.
This post, my team is flipping out over a lunch, correcting coworkers who use the wrong words, and more , was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
I’m on vacation. Here are some past letters that I’m making new again, rather than leaving them to wilt in the archives.
1. My team is flipping out and thinks a colleague didn’t deserve to attend a thank-you lunch
My workplace holds an annual conference/event for all of the employees (250+ people). There is a committee in charge of planning and all the logistics. A few people who were on the committee had retired or left for jobs at other places, and the committee was a bit short-staffed. One of the employees in my division, “Meghan,” was asked to join and she accepted (being on the committee is completely voluntary).
Meghan was only on the committee for one month before the event. Everyone else had been on the committee for a full 12 months before the event. The event was a success. Everyone enjoyed it and the directors and members of the C-suite were especially impressed. The CEO held a lunch for the committee to thank them and celebrate the success at a very exclusive restaurant (all paid for by the company).
Meghan went to each of the committee members individually and said that if they weren’t comfortable with her attending the lunch because she was only on the committee for one month prior, she would understand. She was clear she didn’t want to seem like she was stealing the glory from all the work they did before her. Every member individually confirmed it was fine for her to attend. They also confirmed it again at the debriefing meeting they had after the event.
However, after the meeting the committee members (for reasons unknown) are shunning and talking badly of Meghan. They think she should have declined the lunch anyway. The manager of our division is included in this. He has called Meghan delusional for not realizing she “overstepped” after he himself told her to attend. She deferred praise at the lunch because she was only on the committee for a month. There are emails where people told her to come. The committee members saying all kinds of nasty things about her. The majority of the members work in my division. I’m not a manager or supervisor, I’m a lead so I have no authority to tell people to stop. They all think she should have known they were being polite when they told her to go.
It has gotten really bad here. The snipping and vitriol is out of control. I don’t know what to do or where to go since my manager is in on it and he leads our division. Meghan is confused and upset by all this negativity directed at her.
You work with really petty people, and your manager in particular sucks. Even if Meghan hadn’t asked people if she could attend, it would be ridiculous for them to be sniping at her like this — she was on the committee, and it’s reasonable that she attended. And it’s not like she’s taking anything away from them by being there — it’s a lunch, not a pile of money that she’s grabbing an unfair share of. And then throw in that she asked them if it would be appropriate to attend (thus displaying some sensitivity to her shorter tenure) and they all told her yes, and they’re still sniping at her? Over a lunch? They’re being remarkably small-minded and unpleasant.
But it doesn’t sound like you’re in a position to do a lot here since your manager is part of the problem. You can tell your manager and others that you think the reaction to Meghan is unwarranted and point out that she specifically checked with people before attending (and point out that it’s just a lunch — she didn’t steal part of their Grammy or something), and you can push back when you hear people say unkind things, and you can make a point of being kind and supportive to Meghan … and you can take note that you work with people with terrible judgment, and factor that into future decisions. But I think your question is about how to stop this, and it doesn’t sound like you have the power to do that.
– 2018
2. Is it rude to shush someone?
Is it generally considered rude or disrespectful to “shhhhh” someone? Context is that there is a small break room pretty close to patient care areas. Anytime lunchtime talk or other loud conversations can be heard outside the door, the manager from that department comes in and shhhh’s everyone — as in literally “shhhh-shing” us.
One of my coworker gets triggered and low-key pissed off every time. I don’t see the big deal personally because sometimes we do get rather loud when catching up at work. But because its always the same manager/person doing the shhhh-shing, my coworker thinks she is being personally targeted and disrespected regardless of who else is in the kitchen at the time.
“Can you please keep it down in here?” isn’t rude. Literally shushing you is … well, kind of scoldy and unnecessary when she could use actual words. But since it sounds like this happens a lot, she may just be frustrated that she has to keep asking you to be quiet over and over again.
Your coworker who’s getting pissed off about it is being unreasonable. The manager is on solid ground in asking you to stop letting noise carry to patient care areas, and the fact that she’s had to ask repeatedly isn’t good. You might try pointing out to your coworker that you’re risking losing access to the break room altogether if the noise problems continue, and she’s not doing any of you any favors with her stance.
– 2018
3. My interviewer asked me what I admired most and least about my parents
I had two phone interviews this week with the same company, and things are heading in an exciting direction! I thoroughly prepared, and felt comfortable with all of the questions asked and with all of my answers … except for one question. It was a two-parter during the interview with HR: (1) “Tell me the trait you most admire about your parents.” (Ummmm – why? But okay, I tied this in to what we had been talking about.) (2) “And what about least?” That was actually what she said. I asked her to rephrase – she had to think about it, and said, “What traits about your parents do you like the least?”
In my mind, I laughed and thought: well, definitely that they are dead. I happen to HATE that about them. But I BS’d an answer, and we moved on.
I can think of 50 reasons why you shouldn’t ask someone you are talking to for the first time / you don’t know about their parents! Have you ever heard of such questions for an interview? What could the reason be for asking? The interviewer had no way of knowing of my relatively recent loss. I love my parents more than anything. But what if they had just passed and I reacted very emotionally to this question? What if I never knew my parents? What if my parents abused me? What if I had answered the way I truly feel: I hate that they are dead? What if, what if, WHAT IF?
I have posed this to several friends, and everyone thinks this is a very strange line of questioning – mostly because what I have been through, but also for all of the possible what-if’s you could imagine. The interviewer is in a position where she’s been interviewing people for a long time. I just can’t imagine this being a standard question she uses each time she interviews someone.
If the company wants to proceed with the application process, should I bring this up with someone? If I end up being offered the position and accepting, is this something I can talk to the interviewer about once I have hit the ground running? The question will have no impact on my decision to accept an offer should we get to that point – the more I heard about the job, the more I really see myself being the perfect fit.
Yeah, this is just bad interviewing. It’s overly personal and invasive and there’s no job-related reason for asking it. She probably heard or decided at some point that this is a brilliant way to learn about your values, but there are far more effective ways of doing that, and ones that won’t turn off candidates.
I don’t think there’s any benefit to bringing it up at this stage, but if you’re offered and accept the job, you can definitely mention it after you’ve been there a bit, framing it as something that you found off-putting and that they should re-think asking.
– 2018
4. Correcting coworkers when they use the wrong words
I’m seeking advice on how to correct coworkers when they misuse words. Whenever I notice this, it’s often in a group setting, and I don’t want to come across as obnoxious and rude if I speak up. Precision of language is very important to me, and I internally cringe whenever this happens. Plus, I think it can negatively impact a person’s professional persona, however subtly. Examples, from colleagues senior, peer-level, and junior to me, include: “treasury” instead of “tertiary,” “exuberant” instead of “exorbitant,” and “weary” instead of “wary” (this is a common one). One of the culprits is my direct report, but there are others beyond my purview. Help me help them!
It’s not really your place to address this except with your direct report. With her, you can certainly correct her language — although unless polished communication is a key part of her role, I’d let occasional mistakes go and just focus on the times when you hear the wrong word more than once (or if it’s a word she’s going to be using a lot in her work). Do it in private, and say something like: “A quick thing I noticed in that meeting earlier — you said exuberant a couple of times when I think you meant exorbitant. Exuberant means enthusiastic or abundant, so I wanted to flag it in case you’d confused the two words.”
With everyone else though, it’s not your place to correct people’s language (assuming it’s not in a written document you’re reviewing). If you were talking one-on-one, you could possibly do an on-the-spot “wait, do you mean exorbitant?” — but in a group setting, it’s not going to come across well. (Written documents that you’re reviewing are different; you can definitely flag it there.)
– 2017
5. I don’t want to participate in my office’s weight loss competition
HR sent an email out this morning that they want each individual office to hold wellness competitions. Any office who partakes will get $150 in prizes to hand out to the winners. The challenges can be as mundane as 10k Steps a Day (whoever gets closest/goes over for the time period wins) up to The Biggest Loser (whoever loses the most weight wins).
There’s already an odd obsession with food here. If we all go out to eat, my choices are usually commented on by a few of the women here. (I can’t help it, a cup of soup is not going to be enough for me, I need at least a sandwich.) My office has done The Biggest Loser independently and it’s always A Big Thing if I don’t participate. Call me crazy, but I don’t exactly cherish the idea of having a weekly weigh-in with coworkers, especially when it’s pushed by my two male bosses. The first year we did it, we all had to sign up to cook healthy meals and then all eat together.
I know my office fairly well, so I know the odds of it being the more mundane activities are next to zero. Seeing as we do The Biggest Loser on our own twice a year, I’m pretty sure they’ll jump at the chance to do that one. Any advice on how to bow out as gracefully as possible?
“I’m not interested in competing over weight loss.” That’s it! But the trick probably isn’t in what initial wording you use, but in dealing with any pressure afterwards. You’ll just need to hold firm — “I’m really not interested,” “Please don’t keep asking me — this is not for me,” etc. And if your bosses get in on the pressure, which it sounds like they do, you may need to say something to them specifically like, “I’m really not interested in discussing my weight or diet at work, so please assume I’m sitting this stuff out.”
Any chance you’re up for pointing out — either to your bosses or to HR — that this kind of thing is out of place at work? You’d be doing the world a service if you pointed out that workplace weight loss competions are dangerous for people with eating disorders, overlook people who are trying to gain weight or maintain it rather than lose it, and can promote really unhealthy habits.
– 2018
