I have worked all day on the Holiday Inn Cluster timeline

The first case was reported late on Feb 7
This was the Authorised Officer who tested negative after a shift on Feb 4, returned to work on the 7th, developed symptoms and tested positive

So here is a secret: Not everything I write goes anywhere. I have at least 4 books completely written and edited that never went on submission. I have books that stalled out at 20k. I have docs on my computer with opening paragraphs I don't remember writing. But! 1/

Every now and then an idea sticks with me like that corner of tortilla chip that just won't go down your throat. It happened with SPARROWHAWK, which began as 40k of a YA story, died, and was reborn as a comic, thanks to @christopher_j_r and @boomstudios. And now... 2/

It's happening with THE WILLOWS, a short story that you'll see in @UncannyMagazine next year. This Southern Gothic horror story began as an attempt to sell my next Romance to @AbZurdity after the Blud books in 2014 or so. And she didn't buy it. Guess why? 3/

Turns out, it wasn't a Romance! It was Southern Gothic Horror. Even the bones of it screamed strangeness, not sexiness. I loved the taste of the world, but I hadn't found the right story yet. Tried to write it 2 more times and failed. Until I finally understood what it was. 4/

So I took the 50 pages I'd written and cut half of them, twisting the story around from a gothy Romance inspired by the band the Civil Wars and turned it into a spooky descent into madness. And it looked back at me from the abyss as if to say, DUH. Sometimes... 5/

So it turns out that Google Chrome was making everything on my computer slow *even when it wasn’t running*, because it installs something called Keystone which is basically malware.

I made a website because this shouldn’t

Wired first reported on how bad Keystone was 11 years ago when they put it into Google Earth (they seem to put it in all their popular

The fact that Keystone hides itself in Activity Monitor is bizarre. (The only sign of it was excessive CPU usage of WindowServer which is a system process).

I don’t know if Google was doing something nefarious with Keystone, or a third party figured out how to (which Wired warned about). But either way, I’m not inclined to give Google-the-organization the benefit of the doubt (despite the many good people who work on Chrome)...

...since it's been a decade+ and this still hasn't been "fixed".

There is no reason for auto-update software to need to do what Chrome/Keystone was doing. It also has a long history of crashing Macs.

So, I want to talk about how sexual harassment and fair pay are linked at Google (and beyond), because I think that's an angle that isn't being highlighted enough in the coverage of these walk-outs. I'm going to frame it largely around my personal experience there. Thread.

When I was sexually harassed by the director of the area I was working in, I was afraid to report it because I was worried that "getting him in trouble" would result in the subtle retaliation of missed leadership opportunities.

I wanted to continue working on the team I was on, because I'd gained a lot of very deep knowledge and expertise in that area, as well as reputation and camaraderie with the other folks working in that area. I didn't want to make the situation more "difficult."

To get promoted at Google, several need to happen: 1. you need opportunities for ownership and leadership above your current level (basically, opportunities to show you're working at the next level you're trying to get promoted to). The work you're "assigned" has a big impact.

2. You need glowing reviews from peers, *at or particularly above the level you're hoping to get promoted to.* Basically, you need people a lot more senior than you to say you're doing awesome work.