Hovertext: Apparently this used to actually happen, according to the book The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren, which Tomer Ullman recommended to me.
A new Gallup poll found that fewer than half of Americans now say religion is important in their daily lives, a 17 point drop since 2015, reflecting a major cultural shift in the U.S. What do you think?
“Hey, God ditched us first.”
Brad Dumdei, Tin Supplier
“Time for the Pope to start cracking skulls.”
Patrick Koepp, Cheese Curdler
“Just think how low it would be without those Super Bowl ads.”
WASHINGTON D.C. – American Vice President JD Vance has posted online, slamming the country of Canada’s economic and immigration policies, which insiders reveal stems from hurt feelings over being sexually rebuffed by a Canadian chesterfield. “For weeks now Vance would not stop talking about this ‘super fuckable sidepiece’ he’d been DMing, though when we asked […]
The Story Reimagined: Photographs by Charles A. Fuhs from the Museum Permanent Collection, January 25 – December 20, 2025
An installation view of “The Story Reimagined- Photographs by Charles A. Fuhs from the Museum Permanent Collection” at the Wichita Falls Museum of Art
The Story Reimagined presents historical photographs by Charles A. Fuhs drawn from the Wichita Falls Museum of Art’s (WFMA) permanent collection, offering a window into the city’s early 20th-century boom years. Fuhs, a traveling photographer who often found inspiration in Wichita Falls, captured a city in the throes of radical transformation: a landscape shaped by the railroad, the oil industry, and a palpable sense of kinetic energy. The exhibition’s strength lies in its ability to excavate these moments of civic genesis, displaying images of a bustling Texas city.
The photographs themselves are remarkable, a testament to Fuhs’s eye for both the monumental and the intimate. Scenes of men posing in front of a locomotive train and a mother posing with her children offer a contrast to the deindustrialized realities that have since shaped many American towns. Even their clothing provides insights into the lives of Texans at the turn of the 20th century.
A work by Charles A. Fuhs included in “The Story Reimagined- Photographs by Charles A. Fuhs from the Museum Permanent Collection” at the Wichita Falls Museum of Art
Fuhs’ photographs document a historical moment, but they also provoke a critical inquiry into the present. What becomes of a city whose identity is so deeply entwined with a bygone era of oil and railroad supremacy? The exhibition raises a series of unspoken questions: How does Wichita Falls confront its historical trajectory? Has the city reconciled its past with its present? The sentiment is that a collective memory of the past has been subverted by the quiet attrition of deindustrialization, leaving behind a community that no longer sees itself in the energetic scenes Fuhs captured. Men and women build a new world, standing in quiet challenge to a contemporary reality defined by marketized knowledge work and a sense of stasis.
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Timothy Greenfield-Sanders: The Boomer List, May 22, 2025 – Jan 24, 2026
This series of large-format portraits offers a chronological journey through the lives of influential Baby Boomers, presenting a landmark cultural reflection on a generation that has profoundly shaped modern America.
Greenfield-Sanders vision for The Boomer List emerged as the youngest members of this significant demographic turned 50, marking an opportunity for cultural introspection. The exhibition presents one iconic figure per birth year from 1946 to 1964, creating an expansive chronicle of a generation. While many subjects are instantly recognizable cultural figures like Samuel L. Jackson, Kim Cattrall, Deepak Chopra, and Steve Wozniak, the appeal here is to humanize these public personas through their own words. Each striking portrait is accompanied by a poignant excerpt from an interview conducted during the sitting, offering a view into their experiences and perspectives.
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, “Amy Tan,” 2014
Samuel L. Jackson’s recollection of his grandfather preparing for unrest following John F. Kennedy’s assassination describes the turbulent social landscape of the era. Billy Joel’s vivid memory of The Beatles’ arrival in the U.S. captures a moment of immense cultural shift. Kim Cattrall offers a candid look at navigating industry challenges and the role Sex and the City played in re-integrating discussions about sex into public discourse following the AIDS epidemic. David LaChapelle’s artistic response to personal tragedy, channeling his experiences into explosive color as a means of escapism, highlights the transformative power of art.
Through these narratives, the exhibition invites viewers to consider the defining moments that shaped the Boomer generation, from the rise of consumer credit and political instability to the Civil Rights Movement. It’s a snapshot of the adaptability of a generation that navigated immense societal change.
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, “Kim Cattrall,” 2014
While both Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ The Boomer List and Richard Avedon’s In the American West utilize the medium of large-format portraiture to explore facets of American identity, their approaches diverge significantly. Avedon’s seminal 1985 exhibition, documented by Laura Wilson, focused on the often-unseen working-class individuals, presenting them against his iconic stark white backdrops to strip away context and emphasize raw human presence. His process aimed for a contemplative style that captured his subject’s essence.
By comparison, Greenfield-Sanders’ The Boomer List centers on well-known figures, leveraging their public recognition to explore the collective experience of a specific generation. Crucially, the narrative in The Boomer List is driven by the subjects’ own words, supplying personal insights that complement their visual representation. While Avedon’s work sought to reveal an unvarnished truth about a segment of America through the artist’s lens, Greenfield-Sanders provides a platform for a generation to articulate its own story, creating a tapestry of shared history and individual journeys. Both exhibitions, however, underscore the enduring power of portraiture to capture and reflect the multifaceted nature of the American experience.
1. I’m being asked to lead DEI training with no expertise in it
I’m very happy to work for a company that remains committed to DEI, even in this strange time. The direction coming down from many levels above me is that the company will be implementing DEI training for all employees. And because my colleague and I have experience conducting training, the powers-that-be have decided that we will present the DEI training, even though we have no expertise in DEI.
We’ve had a chance to preview the course they want to use, and it is A LOT. Maybe this is a model DEI course? I wouldn’t know, since this is not my field! On top of some pretty hard-hitting, in-your-face material, participants are asked to share personal experiences, which feels like a weird ask at work. Adding another layer of discomfort, during the course preview, people were drawing parallels between past practices referenced in the course and current events. The company has a staff of around 1,500 employees; surely it’s reasonable to expect that they vote all across the political spectrum. My colleague and I agree we that we do NOT have the skills and experience to present the material and facilitate the discussion this course is asking for, even if participants avoid politics.
Our supervisor agrees with us that this training should be conducted by a DEI expert, and he has recommended to his leadership that the company should hire a consultant. The decision makers are not listening to him and are doubling down on “anyone with training experience can lead this course.” My colleague and I are preparing to push back as a team. We agree that DEI is an important topic, especially now, and therefore it’s worth doing well. Even if the course material was less dramatic, I still believe we are unqualified to present it. I can’t tell if somebody up in the C-suite just wants to check off that DEI training is being done, or do they truly not understand that assigning this to amateurs does not bode well for a good outcome. Regardless, are we overreacting? Are there other factors we should be taking into consideration?
You are not overreacting; this is a looming disaster. These trainings are sensitive and challenging under the best of circumstances; having trainers without expertise risks it being a catastrophe. Is flatly refusing an option?
For what it’s worth: I’m not sure how committed to DEI your company really is, if they’re not willing to take the training seriously enough to hire trainers with actual expertise in the material. This reads like box-checking from people who aren’t convinced it’s really important.
2. My coworkers keep taking calls on speakerphone
Since returning to the office after the pandemic, I’ve noticed some people using speakerphone for calls in our open office plan. It’s bad enough that you have to hear one side of everyone’s meetings now, but hearing both sides is unbearable! We have phone rooms available that they could be using if they don’t want to use headphones.
Is there a polite and effective way to ask someone to use headphones? For context, my floor is full of “miscellaneous” employees who are all part of different teams and do not work directly together. I have no way of knowing who the person is or what team or manager they report to without asking. There is not a floor manager or other authority who is physically in the space. One person is particularly egregious about this and I have sat on the other side of the floor from her, but others will do it from time to time as well.
Ugh. If it’s pretty widespread, ideally your office would issue some guidance on it as a whole; any chance you could suggest it to someone with some authority to address that? They don’t need to be physically in the space to issue guidelines if you tell them there’s a problem.
But otherwise, it’s reasonable to say to any individual offender, “I’m sorry to ask, but I’m having trouble focusing when your calls are on speakerphone. Would you mind using headphones or just not using the speaker?”
3. What happened with this meeting invitation?
Part of my job is speaking to clients about how they want us to custom-design their products, whether it’s getting preliminary information or gathering actionable feedback to refine the product before shipment. I’ve got a good handle on how these conversations usually go, and it’s a point of pride that I’ve never once missed a meeting (thank you to two planners, several phone alarms and bundles of anxiety!).
After I recently provided a client with my availability to discuss their specs, we settled on a time that worked for all parties. I had about a 20-minute window between their call and a previously scheduled one, which is plenty of time even for my anxiety-fueled soul.
The first call did run a little long, but I still had a solid buffer of time to prepare for the next meeting. So imagine my horror when I got an email from that second client suggesting I no-showed, and that they cancelled our meeting 15 minutes before our mutually confirmed time! Sure enough, the meeting invite they sent was half an hour earlier than the time we agreed on: I had accepted it without even thinking to visually confirm the meeting time, and I’ll take the lumps for my failure to fact-check an invite’s details.
But I’ve also never had a client change meeting times on me without confirming it was okay first. After I apologized and provided a new window of availability, I tore through the digital paper trail between this client and me. They had said nothing about scheduling our conversation for a different time than the one we agreed upon.
Was it an error? Was it a bait and switch? Did I unknowingly agree to an end time for the conversation and not an actual call time? I don’t know, because they didn’t acknowledge their part in creating this confusion when we rescheduled the meeting, which I will admit that I’m kind of salty about.
Is this wholly my error since I should have been more diligent instead of blindly accepting their invite? Am I being unreasonable by expecting someone to signal a change in previously confirmed plans? Are there chaos gremlins out there who hear “Let’s schedule a call at 3:30” and interpret that as when the meeting should be ending?
You’re reading too much into it! This is probably just a mistake on their end. You agreed on 3:30 and somehow they wrote down 3:00. It happens.
It’s not a bait and switch, and it’s not an indication that people have started using ending times as start times. It’s just a mistake.
Should you need to double-check that the time on invitations matches the time you agreed to earlier? You shouldn’t need to, but it’s a good idea to do it, especially when you’re dealing with clients. Is it a disaster that you didn’t? No. But it’s a good thing to check for in the future (especially when you’re dealing with this client, since now you know it’s a risk with them.)
4. Can my performance evaluation mention my maternity leave?
My work will be doing annual performance evaluation shortly. My supervisor and I have already had conversation about it, and there aren’t any surprises ahead. They have asked me to draft some bullet points for their supervisor narrative and I was wondering if it’s appropriate to mention my maternity leave from the past year to provide context within the narrative. Simply, I accomplished a lot for a normal year, much less one where I was gone four months. For example, if my 150-person department normally makes 200 self-sealing stem bolts individually and collaboratively in a year, this year I made five all by myself.
I ask because I would normally consider it not something that goes in that narrative and introduces possibility for bias, but on the other hand, it shows how well I manage my time!
Yes, you can absolutely mention that to put your accomplishments in better context.
Your evaluation shouldn’t mention your maternity leave as something that gets held against you (like “Jane missed a crucial busy season”) but it can mention it to point out strengths (“despite working a compressed year because of medical leave, Jane was still able to have a record year”).
5. What is the purpose of this workplace stress check?
Every year, I get an email from the company that provides my employer’s EAP asking me to take the annual stress check-up. It’s an online test and, according to the email, it’s “a tool for measuring your stress levels.” I’ve worked at this employer for years and never taken it — I’ve never prioritized it before the deadline, those online tests kind of stress me out, and I wasn’t sure of the purpose.
But am I missing out on a workplace benefit? What kind of information can a stress check give you? Also, is my employer getting aggregate data they can use to improve working conditions, or does nothing go to the employer at all? The email says, “You may rest assured that your check results will never be disclosed to your company without your consent,” but I’m not sure if that includes anonymized data as well.
Most likely it’s used to provide you with personalized info on managing stress, as part of the EAP’s offerings. “Personalized” could mean anything from automated results assessing your stress level and recommendations for improving them to marketing emails throughout the year targeted to areas you identified as stressors. It’s unlikely to be more involved than that, although if you’re lucky I suppose it could be one step above the “meditate and have good sleep hygiene” pablum that a lot of workplace wellness programs provide.
It’s possible that your employer also receives aggregated data, but I wouldn’t assume they do — and if they do, it’s unlikely that it gets used in any real way to improve working conditions, although there may be rare exceptions to that.
If you want to know more about how your workplace’s program works specifically, you could also ask HR or whoever administers your EAP. But it’s almost certainly less involved than you’re envisioning.
Erin Malone, the user experience designer behind Kodak’s first website, looks back on the early web with the story of how she and a colleague built the company’s inaugural homepage in 1994, before most of marketing even knew what the web was.
Fresh out of grad school and self-taught in HTML (as everyone was at that time), Malone helped create a pioneering site that today lives on in the Wayback Machine. Her testimonial highlights just how radical those early experiments were, and why preserving them matters.
“Another person in the design group that I worked in…suggested, ‘Why don’t we build a website for Kodak?’ And since I had done a website, I was like, sure, let’s do it.
And we asked our boss if that was OK. And he said, ‘Yes,’ because I don’t think he really knew what we were talking about.”
Erin Malone, interaction designer
When I got out of grad school, I started working at Kodak. And in 1994, Mosaic came out. I had just taught myself HTML and another person in the design group that I worked in, his name was Frank Marino, suggested, “Why don't we build a website for Kodak?”
And since I had done a website, I was like, sure, let's do it.
And we asked our boss if that was OK. And he said, yes, because I don't think he really knew what we were talking about. And, you know, marketing wasn't really into the web yet. And they didn't have any objections.
So we built a website that was essentially a big image map with four images coming out of the center. And I think each one linked to, I don't know, a white paper or a page with just some text on it.
We built that in, I think,'94. I think what the Wayback Machine has is dated from 1996, but it's the same image, the same homepage. And it was pretty radical at the time.
WASHINGTON—In the wake of a controversial incident aboard Air Force One in which President Donald Trump insulted a female journalist, Vice President JD Vance is said to have wept in his office bathroom, furious that the commander-in-chief had used his special “piggy” nickname on someone else. “But I’m supposed to be his piggy—I’m supposed to be his only piggy,” a weeping Vance said this week as he collapsed against the locked bathroom door and slid down onto the tile. “Somebody’s in here! Just give me a second! God, it’s not fair. She didn’t even do the oinks. It was hard enough to have to hold it together after he called Marjorie Taylor Greene a ‘ranting lunatic’ last week, but this—this is a bridge too far. Who does that bitch reporter think she is? I’m his piggy. Me! You just need to pull yourself together, JD, and show him you’re still his best little piggy.” At press time, Vance had reportedly locked himself in his bedroom and refused to come out after hearing Trump refer to someone else as a “fat slob.”
SOUTH BEND, IN—Expressing horror at the sight of the health secretary’s bare torso emerging from the vat of grease, a local Steak ’n Shake employee reportedly screamed Friday after a nude Robert F. Kennedy Jr. climbed out of the restaurant’s beef tallow fryer. “My skin is perfectly crispy, and I’ve never felt healthier,” said Kennedy, who heaved up gallons of sizzling fat, rolled around in salt, and took a big crunchy bite out of his own arm after spending an indeterminate number of hours in the fryer. “Seed oils cause obesity, but beef tallow gets the skin nice and cracklin’ so the obesity can’t get in. And these third-degree burns covering my body cook out soft tissue cancers. No additives or preservatives, just pure golden brown Robby Kennedy Jr. at this Steak ’n Shake! Glug, glug, glug—I feel the tallow’s bovine powers eliminating the vaccines from my blood!” At press time, reports confirmed Kennedy had turned up the temperature even higher and crawled back into the fryer.
Alligator Alcatraz, a massive migrant detention center in Florida’s Everglades, has been plagued by reports of inhumane conditions and environmental concerns since its opening on July 3. The Onion breaks down the statistics of the facility at the center of Republicans’ crackdown on illegal immigration.
40,000
Truth Social profile pictures taken by sign
0
Applicants deemed unqualified for guard job
32
Times Stephen Miller has typed the name of the facility into Pornhub
7
Average age of detainee
100,000 V
Voltage of facility’s electric toilets
23
Times bloodthirsty ICE agents cheered an alligator on only to realize it was just a log
3
Average outfit changes per Kristi Noem photo op
40%
Reduction in activity of empathy-controlling orbitofrontal cortex necessary to stomach job as guard
2028
The year Democrats will claim they can’t shut it down
EDMONTON – Following the invocation of the Notwithstanding Clause to shield the Alberta government from legal challenges arising from bills targeting the province’s 2SLGTBQIA+ community, Premier Danielle Smith has again invoked the clause to prevent Albertans from watching Canada’s Drag Race. “For too long, Albertans have been subjected to these sassy drag queens on television. […]
GLOUCESTERSHIRE, ENGLAND—Audibly sighing as he “listlessly” undid a corset string by the light of a candle, a sulking, exhausted stable boy was reportedly going through the motions Thursday of tearing open Lady Marietta Ashcroft’s bodice. “At first I thought he was distracted by the nickering horses, or the passionate surging of the thunderstorm, but now it seems he’s simply not present at all,” said a sexually frustrated Lady Ashcroft, who observed that the strapping young stable hand had bent her over a hay bale to ravage her with complete disinterest, pausing frequently to relight the candle. “I know my countenance is pleasing, and my bosom is ample, so what the hell gives? Any chiseled lad in his right mind would jump at a chance to engage in a forbidden affair with me. It’s like he barely even cares that we’re of different classes!” At press time, the noblewoman’s husband, back early from business in London, was reportedly scolding the half-clothed pair before half-heartedly joining in on the action.
Pluribus, a new sci-fi drama starring Rhea Seehorn, is Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan’s first show since Better Call Saul concluded. The Onion shares everything you need to know about the series.
Q: What’s the premise?
A: An extraterrestrial virus causes everyone except those who were robbed at the Emmys to join a hive mind.
Q: How is Pluribus connected to the Breaking Bad universe?
A: Vince Gilligan has confirmed the series takes place entirely within Jesse Pinkman’s mind.
Q: What does “pluribus” mean?
A: It is French for “plums.”
Q: Is it true it has an anti-AI message?
A: Yes, the story is a veiled metaphor exploring the dangers of Nvidia’s market cap exceeding Apple’s.
Q: So, wait, did Walt really, actually, definitely die at the end of Breaking Bad?
A: Again, just to be clear, Pluribus is a different show.
Q: Where can I watch it?
A: At the home of any friend who didn’t realize their Apple TV subscription auto-renewed.
Q: Will Breaking Bad fans like it?
A: Considering that the main character is a woman, no.
SAN FRANCISCO—Shedding light on how consumers were most likely to interact with the popular software application, a new report published Thursday by OpenAI revealed that ChatGPT was primarily used to ask if hot dogs were too old to eat. “Our large-scale analysis found that 98% of our users are leveraging the computing power of AI to determine whether it’s okay to consume withered processed sausages that emit pungent odors,” said OpenAI research scientist Eric Bouvier, adding that speakers of every language in the world had asked the question, whether about bloated packages of unopened frankfurters or leftover chili cheese dogs that had been lingering in the refrigerator on crusty paper plates. “At any given point, the vast majority of users are employing our chatbot’s cutting-edge neural network to generate responses to the question ‘Are hot dogs supposed to be covered in slime?’ And thanks to the photos they’ve uploaded, our model has now been trained on over 1 billion unique images of pallid meat tubes. We estimate that delegating that task of assessing hot dog safety to ChatGPT has increased user productivity by 500%.” At press time, reports confirmed millions of users had contracted food poisoning after ChatGPT told them to scrape off the mold and “chow down.”
AUSTIN, TX – Radio show host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is once again reaching out to his listener base for help with a new GoFundMe campaign to make his face even more ruddy-looking. “So the radical left has clearly found a way to deflate my head, in hopes of making me appear to be […]
It’s a move that is sure to be celebrated by Kennedy’s fringe anti-vaccine followers, but will only sow more distrust, fear, and confusion among the public, further erode the country’s crumbling vaccination rates, and ultimately lead to more disease, suffering, and deaths from vaccine-preventable infections, particularly among children and the most vulnerable.
On the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website titled “Autism and Vaccines,” the previous top “key point” accurately reported that: “Studies have shown that there is no link between receiving vaccines and developing autism spectrum disorder (ASD).”
When a Cloudflare outage disrupted large numbers of websites and online services yesterday, the company initially thought it was hit by a “hyper-scale” DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack.
“I worry this is the big botnet flexing,” Cloudflare co-founder and CEO Matthew Prince wrote in an internal chat room yesterday, while he and others discussed whether Cloudflare was being hit by attacks from the prolific Aisuru botnet. But upon further investigation, Cloudflare staff realized the problem had an internal cause: an important file had unexpectedly doubled in size and propagated across the network.
This caused trouble for software that needs to read the file to maintain the Cloudflare bot management system that uses a machine learning model to protect against security threats. Cloudflare’s core CDN, security services, and several other services were affected.
