Author: Ridley

I’m seeing quite a few discussions on social media regarding wages that are below minimum wage in the United States. I’m glad this is getting a lot of attention, but it’s raising more questions and spawning incomplete and incorrect answers. I have some experience with this and thought it might be helpful to share what I know. For the purposes of examples, I’m going to use the national minimum wage ($7.25), but it works the same way for all sub-minimum wage tipped employees. I’ve been working in this space for 35 years now, so I may gloss over some things that need explaining because I’m just so used to them, so please bear with me. Here’s how it works: 1. The minimum wage is $7.25/hour. All employees must be paid $7.25 an hour at a minimum. 2. There is something called a “tip credit” that employers are allowed to claim for tipped employees. In most cases, this is an amount of $5.12 per hour. What this means is that the employer can claim that $5.12 an hour worth of an employee’s tips aren’t really tips, they’re wages paid by the employer. 3. To get to $7.25 an hour, the employers must pay $2.13 an hour in addition to the $5.12 an hour tip credit. So, while the employer is effectively paying $2.13 an hour, they are administratively paying $7.25 an hour and meeting minimum wage requirements. 4. Overtime for subminimum wage is weird. The “time and a half” is not $2.13 times 1.5. ($3.20 an hour). It’s $7.25 * 1.5 = 10.88 – 5.12 (tip credit) = $5.76/hour. This is one of the reasons that the distinction between tip credit and a flat $2.13 an hour wage matters. It also affects things like paid vacation, sick pay, etc. If your restaurant is just paying time and a half on a subminimum wage, they are absolutely breaking the law. 5. If an employee does not make $5.12 an hour in tips, the difference must be made up in paid wages by the employer. If the employee only makes (or claims) $4.00 an hour in tips, the employer must add another $1.12 an hour in wages. Employers hate doing this and will usually find a way to get rid of employees who do this. 6. Now, in addition to tip employees being paid at a subminimum wage, there are also indirectly tipped employees and the same rules apply to them. Indirectly tipped employees are employees who are given are paid a portion of the directly tipped employees tips. Jobs within restaurants that qualify to be indirectly tipped are (traditionally) hosts, bussers, food runners, and bartenders (who are directly tipped as well). 7. This one’s a bit technical. There were guidelines for the maximum percentage of a directly tipped employee’s tips that they could be forced to pay to indirectly tipped employees. In Texas, this was 15% of their tips (see section 3b of the Texas Workforce Commission document on Tip Pooling/Tip Sharing). So, let’s do a little math here. I worked 5 hours and I made $50 in tips. My restaurant requires that I contribute 15% of my tips to the indirectly tipped employees, so I pay $7.50 into the tip pool. We’re good, right? Not quite. The TWC document notes: However, only those tips that are in excess of tips used for tip credit…may be taken for a pool. Remember, the tip credit taken by the restaurant means that $5.12/hour of my “tips” are classified as “wages” instead. So, $25.60 (5 hours times $5.12) should be subtracted from my tips before calculating what I contribute to the tip pool. I only made $24.40 in tips, so I should be contributing $3.66. I am actually contributing THIRTY-ONE PERCENT OF THE TIPS I RECEIVED ($7.50 divided by $24.40) TO INDIRECTLY TIPPED EMPLOYEES. 8, There are (or were, in some states) limits to how much non-tipped work a tipped employee can do and still be classified as a tipped employee. This is to prevent employers from using people being paid subminimum wage to do maintenance and cleaning work for most of their shift, knowing that they’d make enough in tips to bring their take for the day above $7.25 an hour. The limit is/was normally 20% of their hours and you had best believe that employers milked this for all it was worth. It’s called “sidework” and it’s pretty unethical. 9. Unfortunately, from 2016-2020, a lot of these guidelines and laws in 7 and 8 were weakened, the interpretations changed, and enforcement of the remaining rules was not pursued. The 15% maximum tip percentage and 20% maximum not-tipped work guidelines are effectively dead in many states. 10. The net here is that tipping and subminimum wage should just be done away with. The practice of tipping is extremely problematic for a number of reasons: It’s racist, it’s sexist, it’s an administrative nightmare that encourages fraud. So when you’re dining out, know this: * Your server is likely making less than minimum wage as a base wage. * Much of their time at this wage is spent doing things that don’t generate tips. * They are forced to share the tips you think you are giving directly to them with the other employees. This whole thing is stupid, too. If tip credit and subminimum wage were outlawed tomorrow, every restaurant could raise their prices by 20%, which would be no net change to their patrons since they wouldn’t be tipping, and could pay their employees exactly what they were making before with the additional money. There’s literally no change to the outcome except that there’s a lot less administration and now the managers control how their employees are paid instead of the customers. So, that’s how it all works. Let me know if you have any questions on this. I know it’s complicated and I know I probably assumed that some of this information was more generally known than it is. -RK

The obvious Bowie song link would be wildly inappropriate here, but don’t think I wasn’t tempted. Five years ago last Friday, Nicole and I were married. It was both a blessing, in that we got to have a party with a lot of great friends, and a formality, in that we’d been permanently bonded in an informal sense long before the event. Thanks to all of you who were there and those who wished us well from a distance as it wasn’t the largest affair. It was a lovely day and commemorating its anniversary is the most important holiday on my calendar. Of course, he seems to have been well-protected… This year, I took a week off (mostly, because you never really leave work these days) and we got as far off the grid as we can and still remain near enough to visit the kitten because what kind of a person doesn’t go visit kittens? Nicole found a place in Fentress, Texas and, if you’ve never heard of Fentress, you’re not alone. It’s only 30 miles from here, but it might as well be on another planet. It’s a little resort/camping place called Wahwahtaysee on the banks of the San Marcos river on a big patch of farmland in the middle of absolutely nowhere. That it to say, it suited our needs perfectly. Our room was an absurdly large “tent” well worthy of the quotation marks as the walls were wooden and only the top was three layers of canvas. Gorgeous bathroom with a big tub and bigger shower, galley kitchen, comfy bed, living room area, and one of the most over-the-top grilling patios I’ve ever seen, featuring both a gas and charcoal grill. There ought to be a word for “glamorous camping” but I can’t think of anything that doesn’t sound douchy AF. Freed from having to interact with any other humans, either in person or online, we did what came naturally: We relaxed. We grilled, obviously, drank a little, napped a lot, read, chilled, and, of course, missed the kitten. We also saw stars, although not as many as we had expected as the full moon was pretty greedy with regards to the light. The tents came with golf carts which, well, the percentage of the grounds where the carts could go was awfully small. The interesting bits down by the river required navigating trails that were off-limits for the carts, or at least for drivers with my skill. . We made due with taking it off the trail and into a recently plowed field and sitting on the back bench as the sun went down The second-best sunset we saw. We were a little too enthralled with the first to pull out our cameras. What else do people of our age and maturity do when on vacation in the middle of nowhere? Nicole brought bubbles and they were magnificent. What else? Well, the outdoor shower was fantastic. There was more wildlife than we expected. We assumed we’d see deer, armadillos, spiders (oh so many spiders), and birds. What we did not expect was to be awakened in the wee hours by a mountain lion. We only heard it, and if you’ve never heard one, I can assure you that there is no mistaking it. Wooden walls were very, very welcome at that point. Friday was our anniversary night and decided to celebrate it with…lobster rolls, which seemed appropriate as we had a lobster roll truck at our wedding. We hit up Little Em’s in San Antonio which has an extremely limited menu but it also had exactly what we wanted. It’s been years since we’ve been to a fancy restaurant, but they had a lovely patio and it didn’t seem particularly risky. If it was risky, it was worth it. Holy smokes, the lobster rolls were fantastic, just absolutely fresh and loaded with, well, lobster. The tuna appetizer was perfect, and the service was great. Oh, and the people watching? It’s in the King William district of San Antonio, so the people watching was very on point and I’m not just saying that because a dude tried to parallel park his sports car across the street from us and gave up after trying for literally ten minutes. So, wow. Five years that flew by like minutes. Ten years together now, which also seems impossibly long considering how short it seems. My big takeaway here? Find yourself someone you really love being with and make sure you have chances to have some quality, uninterrupted time with them because, from my point of view, there’s nothing better. -RK

…is not a shortage of workers. We have a shortage of jobs in these United States of America. Now, I’m going to use a definition of “job” that has fallen out of favor, but it’s certainly in line with historical usage: A “job” is paid work that provides a good living in a standard 40-hour workweek. That’s the minimum standard for a “job.” Anything else is a hobby, a side hustle, or some such thing. Now, since I mentioned the word “minimum,” this is when I should bring up “minimum wage.” If your upbringing was anything like mine, you were probably taught that minimum wage was never meant to be a living wage; it existed to provide work for teenagers and other people who apparently did not need and/or deserve a living wage. This is, of course, absolutely false. Minimum wage was supposed to have been a good living wage from the very beginning. Here’s what the father of the minimum wage had to say about labor during his first term: “In my Inaugural, I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By “business” I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living. Throughout industry, the change from starvation wages and starvation employment to living wages and sustained employment can, in large part, be made by an industrial covenant to which all employers shall subscribe.” — President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 I would say that, while we can argue about the specifics of what constitutes “living wages,” I think the intent is pretty clear. The bare minimum any business should pay any employee is a living wage. I threw in the bit about the 40 hour work week because it’s the only way you get parity with the different classes of workers described in Roosevelt’s statement. In addition, companies have become altogether too dependent on abusing workers who are exempt from overtime: hey Cortana show me "toxic work environment" pic.twitter.com/G5o1oujW5z — Aditya Mukerjee, the Otterrific 🦦 🏳️‍🌈 (@chimeracoder) August 15, 2021 Fun fact: It is illegal to do volunteer work for your employer. Working extended hours for no additional pay isn’t illegal, even though it’s the same thing. This needs to stop. That brings us to “living wage, 40 hour work week.” That’s a “job.” Now, it may shock you to discover that there are many, many “jobs” that do not meet either-or, in many cases, both of these two standards. The minimum wage is nowhere near a living wage and, speaking from experience, getting into triple-digit hours during a crunch isn’t unheard of. Not only do people pay a massive physical toll for doing this, but it is, in essence, volunteering free labor to your company and keeping them from having to hire two more people, depressing wages, and taking away jobs. You might ask yourself “Well if these people are not receiving a living wage, how come they are, you know, living?” That’s an excellent question! There’s no one answer for it. In some cases, it really is a case of teenagers working nights and weekends for spending money. In others, they’re working multiple, full-time jobs, which is deeply problematic. Most people who live on sub-living wages receive assistance. That means that government money (“muh tax dollars!”) is keeping these folks afloat. Or, to put a finer point on it, the government is subsidizing company profits by allowing them to pay a sub-living wage to their employees. Let me restate it for emphasis: Any company paying less than a living wage making its profits off of government subsidies. This brings me to another point: Your employer is your employer, not your family or your friend. You and your co-workers are a cost to the company. Companies try to minimize costs because, you know, capitalism. There’s nothing uniquely sinister about a company trying to pay you as little as possible, trying to get as many free hours from you as they can, or replacing you when it’s cost-effective to do so. The whole system is set up that way. In fact, each company should do all those things in order to remain a company. Laura Ingraham: "What if we just cut off the unemployment? Hunger is a pretty powerful thing." Bar Rescue guy: "They only feed a military dog at night, because a hungry dog is an obedient dog. Well, if we are not causing people to be hungry to work…" pic.twitter.com/Pw5C6n6l02 — Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) August 13, 2021 They probably shouldn’t be so open about how much they enjoy it as this guy, though. This guy is an idiot and he’s wrong about how they treat dogs in the military, too. So what was my point? My point was that, with assistance actually going to people and not just businesses during this pandemic, workers are able to eschew low-wage, dangerous jobs (look up the COVID rates for restaurant cooks when you have a sec; it’s too depressing for me to link) and hold out for jobs that pay a living wage. I don’t blame anyone who does this. No business has a right to cheap, sub-living-wage labor. Now, it’s been pointed out to me that there is no actual need for as many workers as currently exist. This is true. It’s also been mentioned that this model of sustenance being based on work is a crappy way to organize society and this is also true. But, I’m just trying to color within the lines for once. There’s really no way to make capitalism “work.” I’m just trying to highlight the fact that it has been badly corrupted over the last forty years and suggest that going back to the original concept behind minimum wage would make a bad thing better. So, happy Labor Day, y’all.

So, what have I been up to while this place was collecting cobwebs? Mostly house things, a lot of medical stuff, no small amount of avoiding doing stuff I’m supposed to do, and, when there was time, I watched a lot of YouTube, which is something I’ve never done before. I’ve been missing out. I’ve been complaining for years about the lack of a la carte television and I’ve known the whole time that you can find pretty much anything you want on YouTube, but I never it together. Nicole, on the other hand, has been on this forever and I suspect she thinks it’s cute that I’m just now coming around. Not for the first time, if I’m being honest. Anyway, I wanted to share some of the channels that I’ve found to be the most fun. Music and, most importantly, bass:Adam Neely: Adam’s channel was my gateway to music YouTube. He’s a pretty theory heavy dude, but I find him informative and funny and he’s a heck of a communicator. He’s one of the proponents of bass guitar as the greatest instrument and that’s a bit I can’t help but respect. As much as I enjoyed the chugga chugga choo choo episode, I’d start with The Worst Jazz Solo of All Time. Davie504: With almost 10m subscribers, Davie504 isn’t terribly obscure, but if you’re not familiar with him, this is your wake-up call. He’s an incredibly silly Italian bassist who is aces at creating a character, staying in character, and making terrific videos. You’d think the joke would wear thin, but it hasn’t yet for me. Oh, and kind of surprisingly, he can really play, too. I’d start with Can I Play the Top Basslines of All Times? Samuraiguitarist: Easily my favorite Canadian country guitarist. Sammy G is at his best when talking about gear and technique, which is a nice break from some of the more theory-heavy channels I watch. He’s near the top of the list of “YouTube personalities I think I’d enjoy in real life.” Start with Testing Gimmicky Guitar Gadgets. 12Tone: Speaking of theory-heavy, this is one of the best channels out there for making music theory interesting and fun. His deal is making doodles that go along with what he’s talking about and there are all kinds of neat Easter eggs in them. He gets a little salty sometimes too, which is a lot of fun. If you’re into that sort of thing, go check out: Why Ben Shapiro Is Wrong About Rap. Espen Kraft: Espen Kraft IS the 80s. He’ll tell you as much, too. He’s a musician/producer/gearhead after my own heart and he lives for making 80s style music with 80s gear. It’s great fun if you remember the 80s, which is something I most definitely do. While if it were me, I’d go straight to him talking about my beloved DW-8000, maybe start with 10 Iconic Synth Sounds. Bad Gear: This channel is by far the most formulaic, but it’s a great formula: He reviews the most hated audio gear of the past. It ticks all the boxes: A discussion of why the gear is reviled, a demo of it, a couple of song featuring it, pros, cons, and, as always, a conclusion. The Bad Gear- Akai Tom Cat – The Better Rhythm Wolf??? episode is one of my favorites. Blanc et Noir vie: Mostly gear talk, but with some jazz and electronica and just a very pleasant vibe. His production is fab and there are some great stories about mysterious, almost mythical gear that never came out. The Great Synth Mysteries Ep. 4: Whatever Happened to the Linndrum II is a great place to start. My favorite thing about music YouTube is watching these folks interact and reference each other. I watch a lot of music YouTube. Other good ones; Simon The Magpie: Gear hacker who has more imagination than is good for him.Look Mum No Computer: You do NOT want to see the Furby organ…ixi music: Local artist’s deep dive into Nine Inch Nails. Very, very deep dive into it.The 8-Bit Guy: Texas guy who works with old home keyboards and computers.Sonicstate: Good channel. Needs more PWM.Jorb: Another gear guy. Kindred spirit.Syntaur: Local synth parts/sales place. Carlos is a great guy.Alamo Music Audio Lab: Local music store’s channel. Educational and Related Channels: Insider: There’s a lot to love here. What I’m binging right now are the “How Real Is It?” videos, where experts go over how well movies and TV shows portray their specialist subject. I started with the Master Pickpocket Breaks Down 12 Pocketing Tricks In Movies and found myself just watching everything that came after. The LockPickingLawyer: This channel is, if you hadn’t guessed, more about the lock picking than the lawyering. Mostly, he demonstrates how shockingly easy it is for him to pick most popular, well-reviewed locks. There are some bad locks out there, folks. This one’s my favorite: Locksmith Says My Videos Are BS… Loses $75 (Maybe). Vox: OK, so, I have a distant relationship to Vox media but no money changes hands so that’s all the disclosure I’m up for. Anyway, it’s Vox. They overproduce the crap out of their videos, but there’s some good stuff in there. Start with How a recording-studio mishap shaped ‘80s music. P.S. Prince totally stole from Phil Collins, much more so than the other way around. Other Fun, Mostly Wholesome Stuff: The Fish Whisperer: A guy with a fish tank on his farm befriends the animals. That’s about it. But, honestly, what more do you need? Here’s Turtles Love Pizza. Capybara Donguri: Capybaras are perfect. You cannot have too many of them in your life. There are no bad capybara vidoes. Wait…there is one. Don’t watch that one. Watch Capybaras Are Natural Actors; They Have Such Expressive Faces and Body Language instead. Timotainment: Do you like surrealism? Sure you do. You’ve seen memes based on this ‘un. Stonks. Pile. Angery. All classics. Screen Rant: Just go there for the Pitch Meetings. Ryan has it down to an art and they are both a lot of fun and very insightful criticism. I’ve had friends tell me how bad certain movies were, sent them the Pitch Meeting for the film, and their response is “Yes, exactly! That’s what I was trying to say!” This…

I give up. I’m just coming back to Squarespace. It finally occurred to me that WordPress would never import my backlog in a format I was happy with and that retained some of the weird stuff that was integral to a few of my posts. It was going to take a ton of work to get something close, there would still be problems, and I was going to spend more time maintaining it than I lost re-writing posts I lost due to Squarespace not having an undo, autosave, or save and continue. Really, all that was driving me at that point was spite. Spite is a poor motivation for doing something, so I think I’d rather just write here and deal with it. So, what’s been going on? It’s very “Facts of Life” around here, in that we are taking both the good and the bad and now I hope that song is stuck in your head. We have a leak in our roof that is going to set us back a bit. The weather has been, for want of a better word, stupid. Does it normally rain every week (or day!) from May to the end of July in Texas? No. Not it does not. On the plus side of the ledger, Nicole fell in love with a kitten. Meet baby Ramza: This cat tree has seen some things. She saw his photo at the shelter’s site and couldn’t sleep until she met him. He jumped into her arms almost immediately (in part perhaps because the shelter staff were determining whether or not he was ready for the required surgery and the way they tested him was not gentle). She had to wait until he recovered from the surgery and she was on pins and needles waiting to until he’d recovered enough to adopt. Shelters, for obvious reasons, tend to be “first come/first serve.” So, she went a day earlier than she’d been told and that proved wise as she returned home with a tiny orange ball of fur she named Ramza Charles Soyuncu. It’s been a tough few months for these dusty old bones. We had a lovely date night in New Braunfels that ended badly. Crossing the street between crosswalks, the heel came unglued from my boots and my feet went out from under me in almost cartoonish fashion. I tried to scramble upright without realizing the cause of my fall and fell a couple more times in front of (slowly) oncoming traffic. I finally got across, crawling, scrambling, I don’t remember. I broke a bone in my wrist trying to catch the fall and my muscles, such as they are, were aching. In addition, I later tripped over the lid of a trash bin I was about to wash (pushing it at a low angle with the lid open, in case you’re interested in the mechanics) and fell head-first into the bin. I managed to catch a previously-broken toe on the corner of a storage bin and that sucker is in bad shape. The worst, though, is that my skin symptoms came back. Awful red dots started spreading on my elbows, shoulder, forearms, and shins, just like they did before I started injecting mouse proteins (and that is as strange to write as it sounds). It was very a very “Flowers for Algernon” mood around here. So, I called my dermo and I’m seeing her on Friday. The good news is that the topical treatments seem to have it under control and receding, but I still need to find out if the drugs are just not going to be as effective or if this was a one-off. A one-off is a reasonable possibility. Adopting a kitten has led to countless small (and several more-than-small) wounds appearing all over me. Turns out kittens are sharp. Who knew? There are other new environmental factors that could be contributing as well, and, to be honest, I’ve been less diligent about wearing only the most hippie-approved clothing on the planet. There’s a real chance that the mouse proteins still work just as well, but I’ve just been asking to much of ‘em. Other than that, I’m doing great. I’ve missed this. Sorry for the “old guy talks about his health” post, but I wanted to warm up the fingers a little before I talked about the stuff that’s filling me with joy these days. I’d rather write poorly about my complaints. Overall, things are good, but this week has been full of panic and foreboding because if the drugs stop working, then it could be pretty bad. I hope y’all are holding up and doing well. More soon. I promise. -RK

I watched CGP Grey’s “Humans Need Not Apply” again the other night and I was struck by how on-the-nose it was and, worryingly, remains. Haven’t seen it or just want to remind yourself of the anxiety? Here ya go: The gist, for those of you who haven’t seen it and don’t want to, is that your job is going to be automated out of existence. Yes, yours, and that job is not going to be replaced by a new, better job because that would defeat the whole purpose of automation. The fail state of capitalism is here. As an aside, I continue to find it amusing that this fail state was anticipated almost comically early in the cycle. Adam Smith published An Inquiry no the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations in 1776. This book is, rightly or wrongly, regarded as the cornerstone of capitalism (it’s also the second-most cited book in the social sciences, behind only Marx’s Das Kapital, which is also amusing, but I double-digress). Anyway, the counter argument was made most strikingly in 1779 when Ned Ludd supposedly smashed two knitting frames and inspiring the Luddites to rage against the machines that were taking their jobs. Three whole year separated the events. Where was I? Ah, yes, the jobs are going to be gone. People will be unemployable. In theory, this would leave us with a society where there is abundance for all, people would be free to pursue whatever interests them, and…oh, who am I kidding? I assume everyone (anyone?) reading this recognizes that this won’t happen. Since 1973, increases in productivity (in the United States, at least) have not “trickled down” to the people doing the work. This is by design. The owner of a company invests in automation to cut their costs, and there’s no reason to expect them to share the gains from automation with their reduced workforce. In fact, on a macro scale, you would expect the opposite. As an example, imagine the typing pool in movie 9 To 5. There are forty or so dedicated typists in the room in the film, and that was an accurate reflection of offices in that era. Now, there might be, at most, one person handling handling the administrative tasks that used to take an entire room of typists. So, your payroll is now 1/40th of what it was, right? Not so fast: You now have 40 people competing for that one job which is the sort of thing that drives wages even lower. There are plenty of other examples but the point is that, under the current economic system, we are not moving in a direction that will prepare us for when the job loss due to automation hits reaches critical levels (assuming it hasn’t already). There simply isn’t enough need for human labor to provide a living wage for everyone. There are not going to be new jobs created to change that fact. So what do we do? The bottom line is that sustenance based on work is no longer a viable model. Well, it could be made to work, but that’s a monstrous scenario and we’re not going to spend any time on it. Higher wages won’t fix it since you have to have a job to receive a wage. This is going to require a bigger change in our economic system than we’ve ever seen. Is any country prepared? I don’t think so. Some are have made more progress than others. A robust social safety net is a start, but it’s only just that. It’s going to require a willingness to shackle capitalism and an openness to global frameworks. Which is to say, the United States is almost uniquely positioned not to be able to react to this crisis. The social safety net is weak, there’s an almost religious adherence to the idea of capitalism, and “American exceptionalism” is going to mix poorly with globalism. Or maybe it just isn’t fixable. I’m not an economist as you may have already gleaned from my facile explanation, so it may be there’s nothing that will rescue us from the worst-case scenarios. That’s not a comforting thought, but in some ways it’s better than the crash being avoidable had we only heeded a warning raised in 1779.

Here’s a content warning: This is about the loss of a pet. It isn’t graphic, but it’s still what it is. This is Win: His full name is “Winjamin Failclaw,” but we called him “Win” most of the time, or “Mr. Failclaw” if we were cross with him. We got him at the “Austin Kitty Limits” adoption event something like 11-12 years ago, so we don’t know the age exactly. Probably somewhere between 17-20.. His ears suggested that he had not led the easiest of lives, and we adopted him he was recovering from a wound in his leg. Speaking of ears, when we met him at the event, he was giving me a really evil stare. I decided I wanted to get to know him, so I asked to have his cage unlocked. I presented my hand and he rubbed up against it and insisted that I scratch one of his ears. For forty-five minutes. So, obviously, he chose me rather than the other way around. Mr. Failclaw was quite the defiant fellow in the early days of living with us. His favorite place to be was wherever we did not want him to be. We rented a condo that had a balcony adjoining our neighbors’. Bum leg and all, he managed to jump over the wall and plop down on the opposite side of their balcony. When we called him, he just stared defiantly. We were at a loss until Nicole remembered his weakness: The laser. The laser was his favorite thing and just the sound of the chain on it jingling would bringing him running. So, Nicole grabbed it and jingled it in front of him. His ears perked up immediately and he dashed over to be with us. And, by “be with us”,” I mean “chase the red dot.” One of Win’s greatest virtues was his ability to stay between Nicole’s cats, the beautiful Tricksie (on the ground) and the naughty Red Velvet (on the bench). We were concerned when we combined our households as cats don’t always get on well. This was certainly the case with Tricksie and Red Velvet. Win, however, was the missing ingredient. He would play with Red Velvet to keep her occupied and he would leave Tricksie alone, so everyone was happy. He was also a fierce defender of his people. Any disturbance outside would bring him running to get between us and the evil garbage truck or kids on skateboards or whatever was making the noise. This continued even as he got older and after his vision went. I knew he was getting old when I got his laser out and he came running because of the sound, but he couldn’t see the light at all. He got more affectionate as he got older, too. He took to sleeping on my chest during the day, which was a bit awkward for work, but still sweet. He slept between my pillow and Nicole’s He spent more time with her than I’d ever known him to. Maybe it was the secret song she’d sing to him. I don’t know, as I never got to hear it. He was, however, still as adventurous as ever. He developed a fine caterwaul for letting us know he wanted to go outside. He couldn’t see a thing, mind you, but he was not about to let that slow him down as he explored our back yard in what I presume was great detail. My boy was old, though, and he struggled with issues related to his heart and his kidneys. A special diet and daily medicines kept him spry up until just a few days ago. When it happened, it happened fast as is usually the case when these organs are involved. We tried everything the vet offered up and we would have kept going, but he was ready to go. He was at home and comfortable. He was the best cat. So gentle, so affectionate, so…just good. I hope he felt safe and happy and loved and I hope the life we gave him was worthy of what he gave back to us. Here’s my boy just last week. Believe it or not, he has bones. One of the early photos, and still one of my favorites. He loved getting between the window and the slatted blinds. Also, I really dislike slatted blinds. He’d come in and sleep in my office next to me for hours at a time. The closer to a perfect circle, the more relaxed. This was my boy. I loved him very much.

Let’s start the birthday post by talking about Nicole. Nicole is a big believer that, if you’re not doing something to make memories, you’re just wasting time. She’s pretty awesome that way. So, she booked us a room at the Hotel Havana last weekend and that is absolutely the best way to lower my emotional temperature. Of all the places I’ve spent the night, that one’s probably my favorite. We almost never stay in the same room twice and it’s still magical. Not our room this time, but it’s probably my favorite of the ones where we’ve stayed. Yesterday, we had real restaurant food for the first time in ages. Went up to San Marcos, got some curbside from Torchy’s, and ate in a park and oh my stars and garters it was good. It’s been over a year since I’ve had their tacos and it was nearly tear-inducing. She also got me a journal to destroy (yes, really) and a blueberry bush which I planted outside my office. I truly, madly, deeply, love blueberries. This weekend, we’re going to do a day trip out to Castroville to check out the “Little Alsace of Texas” which I’m sure will be fun no matter what it turns out to be. Is there a “Little Lorraine of Texas” nearby? Do they refer to their courthouse as “Little Strossburig?” OK, I’ll stop now. Anyway, to say I’ve been pampered would be an understatement. And she’s says, ominously, “That’s not all.” At the risk of being vague (rather, “being quite explicitly vague”), there was some work news yesterday as well. It was the sort of news that sounds really bad but isn’t. My understanding is that I’m OK and will continue to be so for the time being. That’s good, because I’m in a situation where I’m working from home and have enough autonomy that, even with a heavy workload, I’m not compelled to look elsewhere. To make it even more vague, I have an analogy I like to use in cases like this. Demand for a product or service is like a body of water. It must be truly vast to support the really big fish, but once the puddle become an ocean, the big fish will dominate and the smaller ones will struggle to survive. But, should the waters recede, the big fish will be the ones to die out while the smaller ones will be able to thrive. Book and record stores are a perfect example of this. While there was a huge demand for in-person purchases of books and music, the big chains took over. Local stores struggled and most failed. But, as soon as the demand diminished (or, really, moved online), the big chains no longer had enough water to survive while the local joint that made it through the tougher times did well. Borders and Sound Warehouse are gone; Book People and Waterloo are still there. I’ve been playing with the musical toys a good deal lately and I’ve made quite a few breakthroughs.. They’ve all come on the “production” side as opposed to the “composition” side, but it’s always exciting to learn some new trick. Recording MIDI data into the DAW was a big one, mapping the drum sounds from an 80s drum machine to a newer sequencer was fun and shockingly easy. I just found that there’s a firmware upgrade from the Volca Sample that increases its capabilities and loaded it up last nigh. Wow…huge difference. Just all kinds of neat little things that get me excited to go play in that sandbox again. I know I’m going to sound crazy saying this because I’m me, but…I have enough goodies? I really can’t think of anything else I need or even want. I do this when I’m writing too. I’ll say “I’ll sit down and do it when I have X, or when Y is done,.” Heck, I’m pretty sure I do it with my job, too. At some point, I just have to make myself do it. I’m not even dreading it, I’m just easily distracted. On the other hand, I could probably do a gear list. That’d be fun, right? I reckon 55 is a milestone age of some sort, so that seems a good a reason as any for a bit of a reset. Maybe not “reset,” but a little spring cleaning maybe? I culled a lot of angry accounts from my Twitter feed. You know the kind, I bet: The kind of accounts that just invite outrage in one direction or the other. I’m an absolute sucker for a heated argument so removing the temptation has been a very good thing indeed. I’m just trying not to get into arguments. It’s not like I’m going to convince anyone, anyway. But…when someone is spreading disinformation about, say, COVID, leaving that stuff unchallenged feels wrong. So, the goal is to find the balance where I’m challenging the information without it turning into a war. I bring this up because, the day before my birthday, I came across a dude doing exactly that, spreading falsehoods about the efficacy of masks. It was standard troll stuff, just a lot of dumb statements worded in a way to try to draw a reaction. Nothing new or clever and certainly nothing accurate. My first temptation was to go in guns blazing. I wanted to do that, but I held off, countered his info, and muted him. There’s no adrenaline rush that comes from that, but I think it does make the quality of my life fractionally better, so yay? I’ve also resurrected my RSS list and I’m pleased to find that most of the folks I was reading before are still going. I’m going to do a bit of pruning and add some new ones, but I feel like this will be a much better experience than doomscrolling Twitter for hours. Not an especially high bar, huh? So, say “Hello” to 55. Thanks for sticking with me. -RK

It has been called to my attention that I do not adequately inform the reader that there will be spoilers in the following text, so please, let there be no mistake: I will absolutely spoil this episode starting with the next paragraph. As if to make up for last week’s debacle, this turned out to be one of the most entertaining fight cards in the history of the show. Yeah, it was that good. There were a couple of duds, but even those had their moments. Let’s get down to it, boppers! Fight 1: Rotator v. Valkyrie This one promised to be wild, as both bots opted for similar configurations. Rotator went with a low bar spinner on the front and a big armored wedge on the back. It was slightly different than the one they used to beat Tombstone, as they needed to save a little weight to use the 30 lb. bar instead of the 20 lb. version. Valkyrie, as always, went with a low-mounted spinner, although they unveiled a new weapon, a three-pronged almost star-shaped affair. Victor Soto kept Rotator’s armored backside aimed at Valkyrie as much as possible, working on the theory that Valkyrie would eventually run out of steam or injure itself. That was a pretty reasonable bet, but it didn’t happen this time. Both bots’ weapons kept going for almost the entire three minutes, meaning that there was an unprecedented number of hits and there was a constant stream of sparks in the battlebox. Rotator had the early edge, getting under Valkyrie and causing it’s weapon to strike the box, but as the fight wore on, Valkyrie got cagier and managed to keep its wheels on the floor and started landing even bigger hits than it was taking. Eventually, the entire back wedge and right side of Rotator were torn off, while Valkyrie’s left armor plate was badly beaten. It was three full minutes of hit after hit after hit and it was exactly the kind of fight everyone hoped for but no one expected. The judges unanimously called it for Valkyrie, leaving Leanne Cushing’s bot at 2-0 while Rotator fell to 1-2 with its only win coming against Tombstone. Winner: Valkyrie (Unanimous decision) Fight 2: Extinguisher v. Gigabyte This fight featured two bots that just didn’t work at all in their first bout. The big question here was: Would Extinguisher be able to absorb a few blows to send Gigabyte’s full-body spinner flying into the wall and let it knock itself out? The answer was a resounding “no.” Extinguisher’s drive didn’t seem quite right, and the lack of mobility allowed Gigabyte to get to the center of the arena and pick its spots. The first couple of hits didn’t seem to do much, but the third bent Extinguisher’s hammer into an unrecognizable shape, ending any hope the fire engine-themed bot had of using its weapon. It didn’t matter, though, as it something had been knocked loose inside it and it just sort of stopped moving while Gigabyte was hovering menacingly on the off chance Extinguisher got it back together. Winner: Gigabyte (Knockout) Fight 3: Slap Box v. Sharko Another battle of 0-1 bots, this turned out to be a hell of a fight. Slap Box came in 0-1, but losing to Tombstone in your debut fight is nothing to be ashamed of and it held up better than anyone expected. Sharko lost a decision to Smee(etc.) in a really lousy fight between two bots that didn’t really have any way to hurt each other. I’m not 100% sure what Sharko’s weapon can do. It’s a “biter,” a control bot, with the nose raised, but I think it’s also meant to flip the other bot by raising its nose. It can also spin tremendously fast and whip its tail, which isn’t terribly effective, but it looks cool. Anyway, we got see Sharko get an early “bite” on Slap Box and drive it around the arena a little without doing any real damage. Sharko clamped down for a second time, this time grabbing Slap Box’s flipping arm, and Slap Box just lifted the arm and carried Sharko around before delivering a suplex. Again, it wasn’t tremendously damaging, but it was really cool to watch. Sharko’s motor gave out and Slap Box got the well-deserved win by KO. Sharko captain and driver Ed Robinson immediately came over to congratulate team Slap Box on their first win and the suplex, demonstrating the kind of “love of the sport over just winning and losing” that you love to see. Winner: Slap Box (Knockout) Fight 4: Madcatter v. Malice This was the fight I was looking forward to the most, as both bots came in at 2-0 and both, particularly Madcatter, had moments of looking like real contenders against all my expectations. Malice was still more about potential as its terrifying weapon hadn’t really been brought to bear. Madcatter went with their flipper configuration instead of the vertical spinner, which was probably a good idea as I don’t think it would have survived contact with Malice’s horizontal drum. They set up as a flipper for this one, and it turned out to a better call than they could have anticipated. The opening exchanges were all Madcatter as its superior mobility allowed it to get to the side of Malice and send Malice flying. Then, just like with Red Devil a few years back, Malice got knocked up into the air and it landed on it’s backside with no wheels touching the ground. Madcatter was content to let its opponent struggle to right itself and the judge counted Malice out. It was a little disappointing to see the fight end this way, but you couldn’t really argue with Madcatter taking advantage of the fact that their foe couldn’t right itself. Winner: Maddcatter (Knockout) Fight 5: Atom #94 v. Tantrum Yet another matchup of 0-1 bots, both of whom were the architects of their own demise in the first fight. Atom #94 couldn’t drive at all against Big Dill, and Tantrum’s batteries ran out too early in their first fight. The Atom #94 team felt they’d solved their drive problem, and Tantrum showed up without its signature fists but with more batteries, which was a good tradeoff. Atom #94 still looked sluggish, but it got the…

Spoilers follow. If you don’t wanna know what happened, you don’t wanna read this . I mean, you may not want me to read this anyway, but I thought I should let you know about the spoilers just in case. So, about last week…I wrote a pretty mediocre recap of the action and then my cat jumped on my keyboard. Thanks to Squarespace’s baffling decision not to implement an autosave feature, the whole post was lost and, frankly, wasn’t worth re-writing. Let’s move on. Fight 1: Black Dragon v. Claw Viper A couple of 1-0 bots squared off in the opening fight. Claw Viper had the more impressive win, showing tremendous mobility against HiJinx. Black Dragon’s win was a little more controversial, a split decision over Kraken that wasn’t especially convincing. Claw Viper performed their customary box rush which was rendered ineffective by Black Dragon lining up at a diagonal and immediately moving out of the way. Claw Viper bumped into the wall, but unfortunately for them, Black Dragon’s drive and weapon were actually working this time around and the Brazillian spinner got a couple of good hits. The hits didn’t do anything flashy, but Claw Viper just sort of stopped working. “Not working” is enough to start a countdown and that’s what happened. Pretty impressive win for Black Dragon, which is good, because it wouldn’t be Battlebots without a bot from Brazil in the tournament. Winner: Black Dragon (Knockout) Fight 2: JackPot v. Ghost Raptor The low-budget rookie JackPot came in on the back of a win over SubZero, while Ghost Raptor was 0-1 after getting knocked out by Shatter. I didn’t really want to see either of this bots lose, what with JackPot having a compelling backstory and Ghost Raptor coming back after a four year layoff looking like Cherno Alpha in Pacific Rim. The bots went weapon to weapon right off the bat and this didn’t go well for Ghost Raptor. JackPot’s giant spinning disc knocked Ghost Raptor’s spinning bar clean off the top of the bot. Ghost Raptor gamely attempted to do some shoving and lifting, but every time it got int he way of JackPot’s weapon, the floor got littered with bits of Ghost Raptor. One hit split Ghost Raptor in half, and that, as they say, was that. I don’t know how JackPot will fare against a top-tier bot, but this was a very impressive win. Winner: JackPot (Knockout) Fight 3: Grabot v. SubZero This was the maiden fight for Ben Davidson’s Grabot, a grappler of some sort, featuring a couple of “hands” and some chain thingies. It looked complicated. SubZero was coming off a lost to JackPot and, honestly, years and years of losses. Grabot sort of limped out of the gate and SubZero, possibly not able to believe it’s luck, dove in and flipped Grabot on its back. Grabot does not have a self-righting mechanism. So, SubZero spent the next few minutes tossing Grabot around until the flipper rang out of gas but by then, Grabot was done. The cool looking grapple things never came into play, which was disappointing, but it was nice to see SubZero finally get a win. Winner: SubZero (Knockout I think, maybe it was a unanimous decision, I can’t remember) Fight 4: HUGE! v. Hydra This is the fight everyone is talking about and for all the wrong reasons. This was probably the worst fight I’ve ever seen in Battlebots and I’m a little surprised they aired it. HUGE! came in at 0-1 having lost an epic battle against Mammoth. Hydra was 1-0 after taking a split-decision against Witch Doctor. If you’ve been around Battlebots for a while, you probably remember the famous Ghost Raptor/Icewave fight where underdog Ghost Raptor mounted a pole with a V on the front in place of their spinning bar. They used it to keep Icewave at bay, eventually flipping the horizontal spinner bot and knocking it out. Hydra’s Jake Ewert, having seen HUGE! dismantle Bronco last year, decided to take this to an extreme and mounted a giant C-shaped bar to the front of his bot. His strategy was to negate both robots’ weapons, force HUGE! into a corner, and just collect the win. If that sounds like a boring, chickenshit strategy, you got it exactly right. HUGE! kept trying to get around or through the safety bar but could only make a little minor contact with Hydra. Hydra just patiently corralled HUGE! into the corner and sat there. The referee told him to back off and he refused until he was threatened with…whatever action a referee can take. That was the whole fight. What total garbage. The judges gave the fight to Hydra. I’m not sure what the thinking was. Neither bot did any damage. Hydra had total control but precisely zero aggression (actually, you could argue negative aggression). How do you judge a fight like that? To make it worse, Ewert was a complete dick about the whole thing. I’m team whoever-is-fighting-Hydra from here on out. It’s an amazing bot, easily the best flipper I’ve ever seen, but if he’s too scared to fight? Screw him. The folks at Battlebots weren’t amused, either: Second fight this season where there was willful nonuse of an active weapon. There WILL be a penalty for this next season. #BattleBots — BattleBots (@BattleBots) January 8, 2021 Winner: Hydra (unanimous decision) Fight 5: Aegis v. Fusion This marked the first fight for Chris Sparzo’s Aegis, a Kevlar-armored, shield-shaped flipper. Fusion came in at 0-1 after having failed to do much of anything in it’s first fight. Still, Fusion is a Team Whyachi bot, so you’d have to think it was a heavy favorite, especially as Kevlar seemed an extremely curious choice for armor. Literally nothing happened for the first 15 seconds of the fight. Both bots came out of their square and…did nothing. Finally, Fusion’s weapons came online and Aegis was left to wonder what might have been had they attacked when their foe was helpless. As it happened, Aegis actually got a good run at Fusion, but they fired their flipper too early, leaving them utterly helpless. Fusion ripped open the sides of the defenseless bot and kept attacking even as the count was going because they could, I guess. Winner: Aegis (Knockout) Fight 6: Big Dill v….