SEOUL—In a historic trade agreement that President Donald Trump touted as a major win for an American farmer, China reportedly agreed Thursday to purchase 11 U.S. soybeans. “I am extremely honored that President Xi has authorized China to begin the purchase of this unprecedented amount of American-grown soybeans—not merely nine or 10 beans, but 11 whole, intact beans,” Trump said at a highly anticipated summit in South Korea with his Chinese counterpart, moments after handing President Xi Jinping a small handful of dry soybeans from his pants pocket in exchange for 2 cents worth of aluminum. “I counted these beans myself, and frankly, it’s a massive quantity. President Xi is a great friend of mine, and even he has to admit that, together, we have finally delivered a fantastic deal for the American people. Wait, hold on, I think I handed you 12 beans there, Xi. Can you give me one back?” At press time, Trump confirmed he had started negotiations for a Chinese trade deal involving an entire corncob.
• Ours once transcribed a side conversation about my water bottle we had while waiting for someone to arrive, and then assumed the entire meeting, which was actually about software design, was about the water bottle.
• I would like to shout-out the AI transcription tool at my old job that took notes at a meeting evaluating applicants for a job…and then automatically emailed said notes to the entire company AND to the candidates under discussion.
• I once read an AI transcript – made using an approved tool at my then-workplace – that seemed like it needed to go to HR ASAP. All this stuff about kissing and crying for mercy and whatnot. But I also listened to the audio. The problem was, the AI was transcribing in English – and the people were speaking in French. It was just making whatever it could out of sounds that had nothing to do with the language it expected. *facepalm* (“Mercy” was someone thanking someone else for some info…)
• My city council was recently busted talking trash about a resident all because there was a substitute clerk taking minutes in a closed session. Since the clerk was new, they decided to use AI to help take notes. No one would’ve known what was said had it not been discovered in a random FOIA.
• One recently recorded an informal meeting in such a way that it made it sound like one colleague said another’s dress sense was trash. It was entertaining, but there’s no way I’d trust it as a replacement for meeting minutes.
Let’s discuss times you’ve seen AI get it really wrong. Please share in the comments!
The Department of Homeland Security has been carrying out “Operation Midway Blitz” since early September. The Onion examines the key facts and figures behind the Chicago immigration raids.
$50,000:
Sufficient incentive to treat fellow human beings this way
260:
Agents with Celtic knot tattoos
8:
Pitch sessions before they finally landed on “Operation Midway Blitz”
1,759:
Yards of zip ties used on tamale vendors
6:
Agents it takes to handcuff an unarmed journalist who’s already on the ground
$1,500:
Bonus for every pregnant woman detained
16:
Mexican supervillains stopped from blowing up city at very last second
In brief: Hurricane Melissa is en route to Bermuda tonight with hurricane conditions expected before it begins to turn extratropical while passing just southeast of Newfoundland on Saturday morning. We have updates below on the damage in Jamaica and how you can help storm victims. Also, join me today at 1P ET/12P CT for a Substack Live with Dr. Kristen Panthagani.
Substack Live today
Before we get into things today, I wanted to share that I’m going to be joining my first Substack live today! Today at 1 PM ET/12 PM CT, I’m excited to talk about weather, climate, and health with Dr. Kristen Panthagani, the author of “You Can Know Things,” as well as a frequent contributor to Your Local Epidemiologist. Both of those are must-read blogs in my opinion. Kristen is passionate about science communication like me, and we both believe that there needs to be a lot of interdisciplinary cross-collaboration in the sciences to learn from one another.
With Hurricane Melissa dominating the news, I am sure we will have no shortage of things to discuss.
Latest on Melissa
Speaking of, Melissa is en route to Bermuda this morning.
Hurricane Melissa is exiting the southeast Bahamas and going to accelerate toward Bermuda today. (Cyclonicwx.com)
Melissa’s durability despite land interactions and moving into 30 to 60 kts. of wind shear is kind of impressive. This should eventually succumb to the shear to some extent. In the meantime, Melissa will likely hold serve today, potentially gaining a smidge more intensity before the shear just becomes overwhelming, cooler waters await, and the storm turns extratropical.
(NOAA/NHC)
As Melissa passes Bermuda tonight, hurricane conditions are likely. With the storm picking up speed, don’t expect the hurricane impacts to last too terribly long there though. Thankfully, a direct hit on Bermuda is unlikely. Melissa will continue northeast, passing the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland on Saturday morning as an extratropical hurricane-strength storm. On the current track, forecast impacts would be mostly minor to moderate in southeast Newfoundland and the Avalon Peninsula, with the worst of the storm remaining offshore. If for some reason the storm tracks closer to Atlantic Canada, impacts would worsen in Newfoundland. As of now, this looks like a manageable storm, albeit one with the usual hazards from gusty winds to heavy rain to rough seas and high tides in Newfoundland.
Meanwhile, in Jamaica, we’re starting to get a fuller picture of the damage. These aerial views below are from St. Elizabeth, which is very near where Melissa came ashore. The damage looks equivalent to a massive tornado.
Oddly, some of the structures actually held up remarkably well too. So there is something to be said about how Jamaica handles hurricanes, considering this was as close to the worst possible storm you could have anywhere. That said, this damage is pretty terrible, and the recovery from Melissa is going to be lengthy and difficult. Black River seems to have been hit especially hard. The death toll is around 32 in the Caribbean overall right now. I’m sure that number will rise, sadly. Remember, in the immediate aftermath of a storm like this, you are only seeing a fraction of what actually occurred.
How to help the Caribbean
Here are a number of ways you can directly help out relief efforts, pulled in part from an Associated Press article on the topic.
I want to end today on a more positive note. Here are a couple more interesting news stories I’ve bookmarked lately about animals and storms. Hurricanes are tremendously devastating events, but sometimes they can highlight the remarkable abilities and resiliency of nature.
Florida Flamingos: After Hurricane Idalia in 2023, it was discovered that a flock of about 300 to 400 flamingos likely migrating between the Yucatan and Cuba had been blown off course and ended up in Florida. Some decided to stay permanently. The result? Hope that flamingos are going to become more established in Florida again thanks to some luck and a lot of conservation efforts. This also is a great example of how birds can get trapped in the eye of a strong hurricane and be displaced hundreds or thousands of miles. It happens often. (The Conversation)
Fly like the wind: A young whimbrel that had a tracking device was clocked in at a flight speed of 80 mph for 24 hours as it flew from Cape Cod to Venezuela. The reason? It navigated a tailwind around Hurricanes Humberto and Imelda and got a serious boost. Interestingly, a whimbrel last summer got trapped inside the vortex of Hurricane Milton, unable to fly out of it and likely died of exhaustion. It’s a perilous journey south in migration season. (Weather Underground)
1. My boss is dating his former assistant, who still works here
I have been an assistant for over a decade. I love the work I do. In January, I started a new role supporting the CEO of a mid-size company — definitely not a small family business, but not a Fortune 100 corporation either. I was told the position was open due to a promotion the previous assistant received, which was a great thing to hear!
Upon getting here, I noticed the vibe between the CEO and his former assistant to be … different. They constantly talked during the work day about personal things, spent lunch together, and when one of them would leave for an errand or for the day, they would talk on the phone. At first, I chalked it up to a close personal relationship between an exec and his former assistant, but after seeing something private happen between them one day, I quickly accepted that they were in fact in a relationship.
My question is, how weird is this? I told myself I wouldn’t make it a “thing” unless it impacts my work. In general, it doesn’t, but I find myself holding back on asking him or telling him things because I don’t want to interrupt what is clearly a boyfriend and girlfriend in a deep personal discussion. It feels weird to me, but I don’t know if I’m being sensitive. They clearly started the relationship before her promotion and her assignment to a different manager, but does that matter?
I don’t want to go to HR about my concerns because our HR person has seemed to turn a blind eye to it. The office does not acknowledge it publicly, but at least eight coworkers have brought it up to me to share how inappropriate they find it. I guess it’s top of mind to ask you now because of the recent dismissal of the Nestle CEO due to an undisclosed romance with a subordinate!
Man, the Coldplay guy must be relieved that the Nestle CEO has already displaced him as the first example people think of when they think of inappropriate work relationships.
And this is inappropriate. I mean, it’s good that she was assigned to a different manager, but he’s the CEO which means he still has plenty of professional power and influence over her, which means that there is still a legal liability for the company, as well as major practical concerns (will people be hesitant to report issues with her because she’s dating the CEO? will her new manager feel comfortable holding her accountable if there are problems with her work?) and perception concerns (will colleagues wonder if the promotion was a result of the personal relationship?). None of it is good for either of them, none of it is good for other employees, and none of it is good for the company.
If the HR person is deliberately turning a blind eye to it, that’s a problem. The power dynamics limit what she can do (he’s her boss) but she has an obligation to inform the board (which is his boss). Who knows, maybe she has. Maybe their “solution” was the job change. It’s not enough, if so.
All this said, you shouldn’t let it prevent you from interrupting their conversations when you need your boss’s attention. Be matter-of-fact about it — “Hi Jack, can you grab me when you’re done so we can go over this week’s schedule,” “Sorry to interrupt, I need to get your sign-off on this before 3 pm,” etc.
2. My coworker is openly rude to me
What do you do when your coworker acts like a teenager for a while and says “whatever” to your statements and/or actions at work after you apologized for your mistake? How long and how much space should you allow for her rude attitude towards you?
I acknowledged my error/misbehavior that had upset her, so I owned the fault and sincerely apologized for it. While giving her some space, I also tried showing in actions (doing extra hard work to help her workload).
Although her unprofessional attitude persists, the work productivity stays relatively steady/manageable. If she doesn’t disrupt my work, do I let it go and let her keep giving me the attitude/continue with the unprofessional behavior? Or do you have any suggestions to cope with her?
This is interesting because normally I’d want to know what the mistake was and how it impacted your coworker in order to put her reaction in context — but it sounds like she’s being so openly rude that it doesn’t really matter. It would be different if she were simply being less warm than she used to be, but responding with “whatever” is rude and unprofessional, and it’s not okay regardless of what led to it (particularly if it’s become her go-to response to you now). Part of having a job is that people need to maintain a baseline level of civility with their colleagues, regardless of what one’s personal feelings about them might be.
Depending on exactly what the rest of the rudeness looks like, one option is to calmly and matter-of-factly name it and ask her to stop. For example: “I understand that you’re upset with me, but we do need to work together civilly so I’m asking that you not speak to me that way.”
But if that doesn’t work or if she’s routinely hostile or goes beyond just a little snippy, loop in your manager since at that point it’s a work problem that she should be aware of and addressing.
3. My coworker and I are applying for the same job, and she’s really bad at part of it
My team is going through a restructure. Two of us will be applying for the same role, as currently we split the role half and half. However, I’m noticing that this other person, Billie, is missing things.
There’s a legal aspect where we have to make sure we have certificates online and she’s historically struggled with this. I’ve also been noticing things like:
• She ignores emails about data requests.
• She doesn’t send over material and misses deadlines.
• She forgets meetings and has said “forgive me, I forgot to do my homework!” when I asked why she didn’t show.
• She didn’t clear a report that went to a big standards board, which was a big enough deal we got a departmental email about how to avoid it happening in the future.
However … she takes on things like putting us in a regional celebration, which isn’t a legal responsibility but is very glittery and plays well with the standards board, and she set up a work-related discussion club. I’m worried that when the time comes to interview, her experience and her flashier stuff will trump my quieter wins of getting the legal stuff done. She did a qualification a few years ago so I think that also shields her.
We currently have different bosses so I don’t feel like I can go to her manager and let them know about all the stuff she’s not doing. Our management is pretty ineffectual and she’s also pretty good at sucking up to our (male) bosses. I’m not. I’m quiet and just get on with things.
Talk to your own manager! Say these issues have been ongoing and you feel like it’s relevant to the hiring decision but you’re wary of looking like you’re just trying to boost your own chances for the job, and ask for his advice on the best way to handle it. If he hears enough of the details about the problems with your coworker, he’s well-positioned to raise the issues himself with your coworker’s boss and/or with whoever is hiring for the combined job.
Separately from that, make sure that you go into the interview really well-prepared with concrete examples of how you’ve been excelling at the work, including your responsiveness, consistency, and reliability at meeting deadlines. Don’t assume anyone who’s interviewing you knows much about your work (even if they do or should); make the case for why you’d be great at the job, regardless of what you think they might already know or have seen. And you should also think about who might be well-positioned to champion your candidacy, too. For example, if you have colleagues who clearly appreciate working with you over your coworker because they know you won’t ignore their emails or miss their deadlines, ask them if they’d share their feedback about working with you with the hiring manager. (You don’t need to frame it as “talk about why Billie sucks”; frame it as “share how I’ve been good at the job.” If that spurs them to also share with the hiring manager that their experience with Billie has been less positive, so be it! I know if I heard two coworkers were going for the same position that affected my own work and one of them was easy to work with and one wasn’t, I’d jump at the opportunity to share my input.)
4. Do I have to be on LinkedIn?
I am job hunting for the first time since pre-Covid. As a senior manager looking for a lateral role, do I really need to have LinkedIn? And if so, does it hurt me to take down my profile picture?
I graduated college when LinkedIn was relatively new and we were all urged to make accounts, and I’ve had mine ever since. I’m connected to a few people from my past jobs, but don’t use it to keep in touch with anyone. I absolutely hate it and I have had concerns about data privacy for a long time, which are being compounded by AI, but I have always thought (and been told) that I had to have it in order to be taken seriously as a job applicant. I recently deleted all of my other social media, and I am wondering if LinkedIn is really necessary in 2025? If it is, what are some good data protective measures to take?
There are some fields where it will look at little odd not to have any LinkedIn presence (for example, recruiting), but they’re more the exception than the rule. There are a ton of people with no LinkedIn profile who are successfully employed. You’d probably know if you were in a field where it really mattered.
That said, if you’re open to keeping it, it can be a good idea to. It’s an incredibly useful way to track down former managers and other colleagues in the future, and you might want them for a reference or networking lead at some point even if you haven’t wanted to keep in touch with them previously. That also goes both ways; it lets people find you if they want to ask you for a reference or about a job at your company. But if you feel strongly about it, in most fields you don’t need to have one.
If you do keep it, you can go into the privacy settings and turn off all kinds of things.
5. My new job made me take a medical exam
I finally got a job offer and its from a large university/hospital. I have signed the offer letter and was given almost every test today except for a pap smear! They took fingerprints and urine, did an eye test, weighed me, and asked me all my medical stuff and medications I take. I get this is a hospital, but the job I applied for is a switchboard operator.
Is this legal in the U.S.? I did kinda ask about it and she said they need to make sure I am healthy enough to do the job. When I told them I have epilepsy, they are making my doctor give me a release to work.
It feels very much like a relic from another time, but it’s legal.
Employers can’t require job candidates to take medical exams (or answer medical questions), but once they make you an offer, they can condition it on you passing a medical exam. If they do that, legally they have to do it for all employees in your job category (they can’t pick and choose who they ask it of). They also can’t pull the job offer because of information about a disability revealed by the exam, unless the reasons for the rejection are “job-related and consistent with business necessity.” Weirdly, though, the exam itself doesn’t have to be job-related and consistent with business necessity! For most jobs, it’s extremely strange.
After you begin work, they can’t ask you medical questions or require an exam unless they need medical documentation to support your request for an accommodation or they have a bona fide concern that you’re not able to perform the job safely for medical reasons.
Cameroon elected 92-year-old Paul Biya as its president, making him the world’s oldest, amid deadly street protests and claims of widespread election fraud. What do you think?
“Those protestors are just begging for an age discrimination lawsuit.”
Duncan Ashby, Unemployed
“God, I hope I’m not still the president of a troubled nation at that age.”
Natasha Barros, Headache Researcher
“Now the only check on power is his incontinence.”
DES MOINES, IOWA—Revealing that his fascination began practically as soon as he could crawl behind the television, local IT specialist Josh Tannenbaum told reporters Thursday that he’s had an affinity for cords from a very young age. “For as long as I can remember, I always knew I wanted to plug and unplug a variety of cords,” said Tannenbaum, adding that while other kids dreamed of being astronauts or firefighters, he aspired to be the guy who untangles a big mess of cables and wires and then organizes them so it’ll be easier for the next person who has to poke around in the electrical room. “My parents often tell me the story of when I saw my first cord at the age of five. I asked my father what it was, and my eyes filled with wonder as he told me it was called a cord and that it made the refrigerator work. After that, every birthday I would tear open the wrapping paper as fast as I could to get to those cords. All I hope is that before I get too old, I’ll be lucky enough to fulfill my childhood dream of traveling to Europe and seeing the different plugs their cords have over there.” At press time, Tannenbaum had reportedly been laid off from his IT job.
OROMOCTO, NB – A local man almost lost his home yesterday after his Amazon Alexa smart home device burst into flames. Lloyd Wentworth, 38, says the fire started as he was preparing dinner in his bungalow on Waasis Road. “I wanted to make some gumbo so I asked Alexa to give me a recipe,” he […]
I wanted to take a moment, between shoveling snow and apologizing for existing, to thank you for something truly remarkable: You have united Canada. Not politically, not economically, not even spiritually—but in a deep, existential, Tim Hortons double-double-fueled way that transcends provinces, poutine recipes, and hockey rivalries. So from the 49th parallel north, I say: Merci beaucoup!
Because you have, in your own uniquely spectacular fashion, created a unified country. Not by treaty or referendum, but by a shared ripple of disbelief, bemusement, and defensive patriotism. From Nova Scotia’s lobster fishers to Saskatchewan’s wheat growers, from Ontario’s suburban bakers to British Columbia’s kelp-designed charcuterie board makers, we find ourselves speaking in one collective tongue, harnessing a singular voice that says: “Did that just happen?”
Before you, our family gatherings were gently uproarious. A cousin in Calgary lecturing about oil-sands economics, an aunt in Montreal expounding in elegant French-English hybrid—a few tabarnaks sprinkled in for good measure—about culture and identity, a grandfather in Newfoundland muttering about how things were simpler back in his day. We disagreed on bagged milk, the proper pronunciation of “about,” and whether the Leafs would ever win the Cup again. And, you know, that whole Quebec secession thing. Then you came along and suddenly all of that ended. We became united by spectacle. By your speeches and posts that became our campfire readings. By your antics that became our Sunday morning brunch topic.
Even more wondrous, we found ourselves rallying around a common theme: “Okay, perhaps we really are Canadian in the best way.” Friendly. Apologetic. Slightly baffled. And above all, subtly smug: “Look at us, staying respectful while watching those American political fireworks explode all over the world. Pretty crazy, eh?”
In fact—and here’s where it gets delightfully ironic—your recent decision to refuse to continue trade talks with Canada only tightened our bonds. Recently, you wrote on Truth Social that “ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED” with all the bluster of a child in grade 1 getting their Smarties taken away. This, after our great Ontario province played an ad featuring OG MAGA President Ronald Reagan criticizing US tariffs. Earlier this year, you also halted further talks over Canada’s planned digital services tax on US tech firms. So, what happened to our country in the wake of all this? Canadians who once wondered, “Should we buy milk in a bag or a carton?” began to speak in harmony. “Whatever happens south of the border, we’ll talk amongst ourselves later,” we said in a collective hum.
My family, once divided by provincial pride and accent subtlety, now texts each other daily. “Did you hear what he said?” “Have you seen the tariffs?” “Hey—the Maple Leafs still suck, but at least we can watch them together.” At dinner in Montreal, my aunt and Calgary cousin paused their friendly jabs about second-rate poutine restaurants and oil-patch economics and agreed: “He certainly… does things.”
That’s unity. That’s us. The True North/Land of Maple.
And so, Mr. Trump, merci. Thank you for being the accidental glue. Thank you for reminding us who we are: a country that might courteously nod at your pronouncements, raise an eyebrow, then calmly go back to being Canadian. All while watching everything unfold. Thank you for giving our families something to orbit around during holidays besides “Who’s making the tourtière this year?” or “Why was Quebec City the first recognized UNESCO World Heritage Site in our great land?” (This topic still baffles us, to be fair.)
If you ever find your way north of the border, rest assured you will be welcomed with open arms and a queue de castor, followed immediately by a Canadian-style apology and a side of maple-syrup-drenched kindness. We’ll offer you a warm greeting, a mild discussion about climate, and a gentle suggestion: Maybe, just maybe, you could reconsider those trade negotiations. But politely.
With gratitude, respect, and a Caesar, Your Amicable and Unified Neighbor Up North, Henrick
I’ve finally arrived. That’s right, it’s me, your bloodwork results, in your inbox three days after that chatty nurse couldn’t find your vein and left you with a tricolor bruise. I think it’s time you open me up, for inside, I have all the health-related answers you’re seeking.
First and foremost, you’ll have to log on with a password that you have long forgotten. I’ll wait as you do your two-step authentication. I promise I am worth the wait. This is serious business after all. This is life or death.
When you open me, you might be looking for a spot where someone, anyone, ideally the doctor, explains me to you. It gives me more pleasure than I care to admit that there will be none of that here. There is no one here to handhold you. You’re on your own, and I don’t owe you shit. You probably should have gone to med school like your parents wanted.
I will, however, throw you a bone and color-code myself for you. Anything in bright red will seem concerning to you, and perhaps it is, perhaps it isn’t. Who am I to say? And who are you to say? I will explicitly state that some of your blood levels fall under the “normal” values, and others above the “normal” values, and either that means you are dying or that you just need to eat some spinach. Oh, you want me to tell you which it is? Ha. That’s funny. Why would I do that? Why would I ever want to dumb myself down for you?
As you can see, I also threw in some confusing words, such as “unremarkable” or “abnormal,” to give you a little extra shock and fear. Fun, right? I want this to be a maze for you, a challenge. I want you to work for the answers about your own body. And quite frankly, I want you to live in fear.
What you can and will undoubtedly do is google the specific blood tests and what your results possibly mean, and please, go at it. It will leave you with more questions than answers. It will likely make you draw conclusions that feed your anxiety. Perhaps it will leave you with images of illnesses that will forever be burned into your memory. I could only hope that is the case.
You’re probably thinking, Screw you, my doctor would tell me if something was really wrong, or else they wouldn’t have sent these. But do you know that for sure? Did you also google that? Because there sure are a lot of numbers here and a lot of arrows up and down and big words that I know you will never be able to pronounce or even grasp, so you might want to rethink that thought process. But hey, what do I know?
Oh right. Everything. I know it all.
Well, now that you’ve pored over me and have convinced yourself you have six months left to live, my work here as an agent of chaos is over. And soon your time on earth will be too. Or it won’t. Again: I will never tell.
A platform better known for paid podcasts is poaching top newsletter talent. Patreon has successfully lured some top Substack newsletter writers — including Anne Helen Petersen, Lyz Lenz, and Virginia Sole-Smith — in recent days.
These are hardly the first writers and journalists to leave Substack. The “Why I’m Leaving Substack” post is the new “Goodbye to All That.” Previous departing writers often cited moderation issues — especially Nazis on the platform — and the implications of Substack’s 10% cut for the most successful subscription businesses. This most recent wave is also citing email delivery issues, a lack of customer and tech support, and overemphasis on social media features like Substack Notes.
“No one was getting my newsletter,” Lenz wrote on Bluesky. “There was no tech support. The people who couldn’t get the newsletter were forced to read it on the app. And beyond the moral arguments of the platform. It’s just not good business. It’s actually bad business.”
“With their hard pivot to Notes and the Substack App, the brand has decided to focus on turning readers into social media consumers,” Sole-Smith wrote. “That is a very different goal from turning readers into subscribers/people who care about supporting writers.”
Petersen, in turn, said a new “trending topics” box on Substack Notes that included headlines like “Swastika flag in GOP office triggers investigation,” “SCOTUS nears VRA gutting,” and “Young Republicans leak exposes racist group chats roiling GOP” helped push her to leave.
“I don’t want to be deeply invested in a platform whose business model is rooted in snagging readers through algorithmic manipulation. I don’t want to make money for founders who refuse to draw a line about platforming hate speech,” Petersen wrote. “I don’t want to serve as a one-person IT department for my readers and listeners who can’t resolve their account problems because Substack’s ‘support’ has been reduced to a bot. I don’t want to constantly fight Substack’s inclination to turn ‘readers’ into ‘followers’ who live on their app.
None of this would necessarily have been enough to convince the writers to jump ship if there weren’t a better option.
For years, Petersen wrote, she didn’t feel as if there was. But folks at Patreon reached out and convinced her the platform was a soft spot to land. (Other Substack expats have chosen Ghost or Beehiiv.) Patreon is developing a newsletter product for early adopters, Petersen said, and has promised to make adjustments as they grow.
She also appreciated that when readers have subscriptions issues, they can talk to an “actual support person — not a bot.” Her Culture Study newsletter often draws on reader contributions and Petersen felt that Patreon’s community, comments, and threads features were robust and easy-to-use.
One person who is not as enthusiastic about the newest Patreon joiners? Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie. He pushed back on some of the criticism on (where else?) Substack Notes.
“Patreon is spending big bucks to lure some Substack writers over to its platform, and some are taking the deal to escape the social features that drive their growth here. (They stay on Instagram, though.)” McKenzie wrote. “Meanwhile, Patreon is spending that money because it’s trying to spin up the network effects that Substack has by… building social features.”
Lenz called the post “a tantrum” and pointed out the economics simply weren’t working for her newsletter business.
“The ‘social media’ aspect only worked to a point. When I left Substack a few thousand of my subscribers were bots and junk. Many more weren’t qualified subscribers (people who never open), and it was bad for business,” she wrote.
She added, “If those growth features were working I wouldn’t have left. I was getting tons of new free subscribers but my open rates were tanking, my paid conversions were flat, it looked okay on paper but it wasn’t good for business.”
Getting a paid subscriber to open up their wallet once is hard enough. Those making the transition to a new platform are hoping they can convince their paid subscribers to do it again. All three writers are offering free trial subscriptions on Patreon. Lenz said she is already about 70% of the way to what her paid subscriber rate had been at Substack within two weeks on the new platform. Sole-Smith said almost 50% of her subscribers had made the transition.
Getting off Substack is the right move. I would compare it to moving from an app like Garageband to Ableton or Logic. Or switching from clip art to creative stock images. My business has grown. My readership has grown. Substack fills your list with junk signups, takes your money, and holds you back.
Anne Helen Petersen’s Culture Study is moving to Patreon from Substack. It’s one of the platform’s most successful publications & a beneficiary of its six-figure development program.
I’m going on extended leave in six weeks and there is zero — I mean zero 00 — coverage lined up.
I lead a team responsible for delivering a major client contract. Management has been aware of my plans for months but interviews start this week so it’s really unlikely the new person will start before my leave. There is nobody internally I can transition my tasks to in the interim — I’ve asked and made a few suggestions, but nothing. Leadership fired the project manager and haven’t renewed the contract for my only peer, so it’s also likely there will be no client-facing leadership or anyone to manage the team once I go on leave.
When I first started following up about transition plans a few months ago, both my C-suite boss and the CEO said they planned to hire an external replacement rather than move someone internally. After a few weeks of no progress, I offered to work on a job description and reached out to HR directly. They responded promptly and noted this was a priority, but then made no tangible progress for two months. I asked every week or so for updates, and they would deflect or send generic “sorry for the delay, it’s in progress” kind of responses.
Last week, after the project manager got fired as aftermath of a completely separate project, I met with the CEO and asked how we would manage the risk, given it was so close to my own departure. The CEO brushed off the impact of losing the project manager, saying that role would be easy to replace (despite no planning for this before the firing) and then called it a management failure (i.e., blaming my boss) that there was no replacement for me in place yet. I also asked if the CEO could help accelerate renewal of my co-lead’s contract, which has been languishing for months. He was surprised and unaware that had not been finalized yet, as it is being managed by a different C-suite person.
As context, there is a lot of organizational turnover (including in the HR team) and my C-suite is infamously bad at decision-making. My view is that they intend to keep the project going, but the execution got embroiled in internal politics and bad timing.
I’m trying to document and empower my team as much as possible, but do I just let this entire project and client relationship fall apart? Is there a middle option that doesn’t involve me working during my leave?
I know this sounds flip but: it’s not your problem.
You will be on extended leave. You will not be available. You gave them months of notice, you followed up and reminded and pushed, and you nudged multiple people.
This is not on you. They will have to figure it out.
And frankly, they will figure it out. It might be messy and chaotic and there will almost certainly be lost opportunities and more stress for your team than there should have been, but they will eventually figure something out, because that’s what happens in situations like these. Do not make it your problem to manage how that happens.
You’re right to document as much as you can and to empower your team as much as you can, and it’s worth one final, very clear statement to both your boss and the CEO that you will be fully unavailable during your leave so if they need any information from you, now is the time to get it … but then you should go on leave and not think about this.
And no, a solution should not be you working during your leave! You didn’t create this situation, you’re not responsible for it, and they will need to figure it out without you. Which, again, they will.
I know it’s rough to watch this kind of chaos when you’re invested in the work and the client relationship and you care about your team, and you’re presumably going to be coming back to all of those things at some point, and you’re a conscientious person. But this job is not your child; it is a business relationship where they pay you for your labor. Stay clear on the boundaries of that relationship!
You get to take your long-planned leave and not think about this, and that’s what you should do.
I am a manager of a small team at a midsize company.
Recently, one of my best performers (Jan) had a dip in morale. During Q4, we had an opening come up that would be a small promotion for her, but we were told we couldn’t fill it until the new fiscal year. She was told by me and other managers to continue performing at a high level and was given additional responsibilities to prove herself. We all felt she was a shoo-in and even told her this during her annual review.
Unfortunately, the new fiscal year came around and we could not promote her. Senior management wanted to bring in an external hire. The senior manager wants to move Jan to a new team where she would be on the same level with the same pay.
When I told Jan, she was upset. She said she felt confused because she was told by me and the other managers (including multiple senior managers) that she was a good fit for the promotion. She didn’t see the new team as an opportunity to grow and has even dropped the ball on a few projects she was working on for her current role. She is responsible for training the new hire on the projects she’s taken on and she hasn’t even made any training materials for it. Her level of engagement has gone down to zero and senior management has noticed the decline.
How do I convince Jan to change her attitude? She is hurting her image with senior management at this point. I can’t promote her even if I wanted to, my hands are tied by what senior management will allow. When I try to talk to her, she seems very disinterested in the conversations. Please help me get a previously highly engaged employee back to this level.
You probably can’t! She took on extra work to prove herself for a promotion she was told she was a shoo-in for, which was then yanked away. Not only is she not getting the promotion multiple people told her to expect, but now she’s being asked to train the person who did? Of course she’s demoralized and doing less.
It would be a mistake to frame this to her as, “You’re hurting your image with senior management.” Given what’s happened, that’s highly likely to make her more bitter and cynical, and rightly so! No one seems concerned that they hurt their image with her.
It’s also likely that Jan is job-hunting, or at least thinking about it.
You should talk with the senior managers who are “noticing” Jan’s lack of engagement and explain why! Say you’re working to rebuild her trust in the organization, which has understandably been damaged.
Meanwhile, if Jan isn’t currently meeting the requirements of her job, you do need to talk to her about that — but that means truly not meeting them, not just that she isn’t going above and beyond like she used to. If she’s working at the same level as someone average on your team and it’s just different from the top performance she used to turn in … that’s a pretty natural consequence in a situation like this. People won’t continue performing at a higher-than-average level when they haven’t been treated well.
But if she’s actually performing at a lower-than-acceptable level (and she might be — you mentioned that she’s dropped the ball on a few projects), you do need to talk about that. You just need to be sensitive to the history when you do it. So the conversation isn’t, “You’ve been dropping the ball and that can ’t continue.” It’s something more like, “I fully understand why you’re upset. We shouldn’t have told you that you were a shoo-in for the promotion and had you take on additional duties without ensuring that upper management was on the same page. What happened isn’t fair to you, and I’m partly responsible for that. I understand why you might feel less invested in your job after that. But it’s starting to show up in your work in ways that it can’t— you’ve missed recent deadlines and (fill in with details). What can we do to get things back on track?”
Note that this isn’t about changing her attitude; it’s about getting her work back up to an acceptable level.
Alternately, you could frame it as, “I know it’s not realistic to expect you not to be upset by what happened. I would be too. But I also need you to meet the minimum requirements of your job. If you no longer want to be here, I would understand — although I hope you won’t decide that. But I do need you to decide if you’re up for continuing to do this job or not.”
If talking with Jan and laying out the specific things that need to change — again, focusing on lower-than-acceptable work, not the absence of above-and-beyond work — then at that point you need to have a more serious conversation about whether she still wants to stay in the position or not, and what you need from her if she does.
You should also think about whether there’s another path to promotion for her. Obviously, be very, very sure before presenting anything like that this time, and don’t ask her to take on extra responsibilities ahead of time.
Throughout this all, though, the key is to acknowledge what happened, acknowledge that you and others in the organization messed up and it was at her expense, and keep any conversation focused on whether she’s meeting the requirements of her job, not on whether she’s not as deeply invested as she used to be.
At President Trump’s direction, Gov. Greg Abbott authorized the deployment of hundreds of troops to Illinois to “safeguard” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
Open Future has signed a public letter with OpenForum Europe and dozens of industry leaders, open source companies, and civil society organizations calling for the creation of an EU Sovereign Tech Fund (EU-STF) to address chronic under-investment in open source software maintenance.
The letter urges the EU to invest at least €350 million over seven years to maintain the critical open source software that underpins Europe’s digital infrastructure. Without this investment, Europe risks exposing governments, businesses, and citizens to security threats, supply chain vulnerabilities, and vendor lock-in.
Open source software forms the backbone of Europe’s digital economy and public institutions. It powers everything from digital identity systems to energy grids, healthcare platforms, financial services, and mobility networks. Yet these foundational technologies remain chronically underfunded, creating systemic risks.
The proposed EU-STF would build on the proven success of Germany’s Sovereign Tech Agency, providing pan-European, mission-driven investment to secure, maintain, and strengthen open digital infrastructure. As signatories, we call on EU Co-Legislators to make the EU-STF a priority in the 2028–2034 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) and on Member States to commit to pooled financing to scale investment in open source maintenance beyond fragmented national efforts.
This initiative aligns closely with Open Future’s work on advancing Europe’s digital sovereignty through investment in public digital infrastructure. In our recent policy brief, we recommend bridging the gap between research, innovation, deployment, and maintenance so that technologies that serve public interest can scale instead of withering or being forced into extractive models.
By supporting commons-based resources, including open source software, the EU can reduce strategic dependencies and ensure its digital transformation reflects the values of openness and collaboration.
TORONTO – With the Sportsnet+ app failing for many viewers during the Blue Jays victory in Game 4 of the World Series, Rogers execs have come forward to say that “honestly, this is kinda your guys fault.” “Our app was built for a few thousand people to use to watch the Leafs lose to the […]
Amazon made $35 billion in profit last year, so they're celebrating by laying off 14,000 workers (a number they say will rise to 30,000). This is the kind of thing that Wall Street loves, and this layoff comes after a string of pronouncements from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy about how AI is going to let them fire tons of workers.
That's the AI story, after all. It's not about making workers more productive or creative. The only way to recoup the $700 billion in capital expenditure to date (to say nothing of AI companies' rather fanciful coming capex commitments) is by displacing workers – a lot of workers. Bain & Co say the sector needs to be grossing $2 trillion by 2030 in order to break even, which is more than the combined grosses of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple Nvidia and Meta:
Every investor who has put a nickel into that $700b capex is counting on bosses firing a lot of workers and replacing them with AI. Amazon is also counting on people buying a lot of AI from it after firing those workers. The company has sunk $120b into AI this year alone.
There's just one problem: AI can't do our jobs. Oh, sure, an AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job, but that's the world's easiest sales-call. Your boss is relentlessly horny for firing you:
What's Amazon to do? How do they convince you to buy enough AI to justify that $180b in capital expenditure? Somehow, they have to convince you that an AI can do your workers' jobs. One way to sell that pitch is to fire a ton of Amazon workers and announce that their jobs have been given to a chatbot. This isn't a production strategy, it's a marketing strategy – it's Amazon deliberately taking an efficiency loss by firing workers in a desperate bid to convince you that you can fire your workers:
Amazon does use a lot of AI in its production, of course. AI is the "digital whip" that Amazon uses to allow itself to control drivers who (nominally) work for subcontractors. This lets Amazon force workers into unsafe labor practices that endanger them and the people they share the roads with, while offloading responsibility onto "independent delivery service" operators and the drivers themselves:
Amazon leadership has announced that AI has replaced or will shortly replace its coders as well. But chatbots can't do software engineering – sure, they can write code, but writing code is only a small part of software engineering. An engineer's job is to maintain a very deep and wide context window, one that considers how each piece of code interacts with the software that executes before it and after it, and with the systems that feed into it and accept its output.
There's one thing AI struggles with beyond all else: maintaining context. Each linear increase in context that you demand from AI results in an exponential increase in computational expense. AI has no object permanence. It doesn't know where it's been and it doesn't know where it's going. It can't remember how many fingers it's drawn, so it doesn't know when to stop. It can write a routine, but it can't engineer a system.
When tech bosses dream of firing coders and replacing them with AI, they're fantasizing about getting rid of their highest-paid, most self-assured workers and transforming the insecure junior programmers leftover into AI babysitters whose job it is to evaluate and integrate that code at a speed that no one – much less a junior programmer – can meet if they are to do a careful and competent job:
The jobs that can be replaced with AI are the jobs that companies already gave up on doing well. If you've already outsourced your customer service to an overseas call-center whose workers are not empowered to solve any of your customers' problems, why not fire those workers and replace them with chatbots? The chatbots also can't solve anyone's problems, and they're even cheaper than overseas call-center workers:
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wrote that he "is convinced" that firing workers will make the company "AI ready," but it's not clear what he means by that. Does he mean that the mass firings will save money while maintaining quality, or that mass firings will help Amazon recoup the $180,000,000,000 it spent on AI this year?
Bosses really want AI to work, because they really, really want to fire you. As Allison Morrow writes for CNN bosses are firing workers in anticipation of the savings AI will produce…someday:
All this can feel improbable. Would bosses really fire workers on the promise of eventual AI replacements, leaving themselves with big bills for AI and falling revenues as the absence of those workers is felt?
The answer is a resounding yes. The AI industry has done such a good job of convincing bosses that AI can do their workers' jobs that each boss for whom AI fails assumes that they've done something wrong. This is a familiar dynamic in con-jobs.
The people who get sucked into pyramid schemes all think that they are the only ones failing to sell any of the "merchandise" they shell out every month to buy, and that no one else has a garage full of unsold leggings or essential oils. They don't know that, to a first approximation, the MLM industry has no sales, and relies entirely on "entrepreneurs" lying to themselves and one another about the demand for their wares, paying out of their own pocket for goods that no one wants.
The MLM industry doesn't just rely on this deception – they capitalize on it, by selling those self-flagellating "entrepreneurs" all kinds of expensive training courses that promise to help them overcome the personal defects that stop them from doing as well as all those desperate liars boasting about their incredible MLM sales success:
The AI industry has its own version of those sales coaching courses – there's a whole secondary industry of management consultancies and business schools offering high-ticket "continuing education" courses to bosses who think that the only reason the AI they've purchased isn't saving them money is that they're doing AI wrong.
Amazon really needs AI to work. Last week, Ed Zitron published an extensive analysis of leaked documents showing how much Amazon is making from AI companies who are buying cloud services from it. His conclusion? Take away AI and Amazon's cloud division is in steep decline:
What's more, those big-money AI customers – like Anthropic – are losing tens of billions of dollars per year, relying on investors to keep handing them money to incinerate. Amazon needs bosses to believe they can fire workers and replace them with AI, because that way, investors will keep giving Anthropic the money it needs to keep Amazon in the black.
Amazon firing 30,000 workers in the run-up to Christmas is a great milestone in enshittification. America's K-shaped recovery means that nearly all of the consumption is coming from the wealthiest American households, and these households overwhelmingly subscribe to Prime. Prime-subscribing households do not comparison shop. After all, they've already prepaid for a year's shipping in advance. These households start and end nearly every shopping trip in the Amazon app.
If Amazon fires 30,000 workers and tanks its logistics network and e-commerce systems, if it allows itself to drown in spam and scam reviews, if it misses its delivery windows and messes up its returns, that will be our problem, not Amazon's. In a world of commerce where Amazon's predatory pricing, lock-in, and serial acquisitions has left us with few alternatives, Amazon can truly be "too big to care":
From that enviable position, Amazon can afford to enshittify its services in order to sell the big AI lie. Killing 30,000 jobs is a small price to pay if it buys them a few months before a reckoning for its wild AI overspending, keeping the AI grift alive for just a little longer.
"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
"The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE AND SUBMITTED.
A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
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The legislation would terminate the national emergencies that Trump has declared to justify the tariffs. Kaine is planning similar resolutions applying to Trump's tariffs on Canada and other nations.
Bari Weiss walked into 60 Minutes and asked the staff: “Why does the country think you’re biased?”
The question stunned them into awkward silence. And it should have—not because it caught them off guard, but because it reveals everything wrong with what passes for journalistic sophistication in our moment.
Let’s be precise about what Weiss is doing. She’s not asking whether 60 Minutes is actually biased. She’s not evaluating their coverage against standards of accuracy, fairness, or adherence to facts. She’s asking why “the country” perceives bias—which treats that perception as fact requiring accommodation regardless of whether the perception corresponds to reality.
This is false balance perfected. The sophisticated move that treats “Trump and his allies say you’re biased” as equivalent evidence to actual journalistic practice. The epistemic surrender that makes public opinion—shaped by coordinated disinformation campaigns, algorithmic manipulation, and deliberate attacks on legitimate journalism—into the arbiter of what counts as fair coverage.
When the President calls judicial review “insurrection,” when his advisers threaten to ignore court rulings, when federal agents conduct warrantless mass detentions—60 Minutes covering these facts isn’t bias. It’s journalism. And when Trump and his allies attack that coverage as partisan, the proper response isn’t “how do we address these perceptions?” It’s “we report what’s happening.”
But Weiss has built a career on reframing accommodation as courage. Her brand rests on the premise that mainstream journalism, academia, and cultural institutions have been captured by the left and need correction toward “balance.” This framework treats asymmetric reality as if it were symmetric controversy—and what the New York Timesreports about her first weeks at CBS reveals how this plays out in practice.
She’s reportedly personally booking Netanyahu, Jared Kushner, and Steve Witkoff—architects of Trump’s Middle East policy—while urging executives to identify newsroom leakers. And she’s asking a newsroom that views itself as nonpartisan to justify why coordinated attacks on them have gained traction. She’s not asking whether Netanyahu’s government has committed actions worthy of critical coverage or whether Trump’s peace plan deserves scrutiny beyond its architects’ preferred framing—she’s ensuring powerful right-wing figures get platforms while shifting the burden from those making false claims to those reporting facts.
This matters because even journalists who genuinely believe they’re defending fairness can fall into this trap. The frame is seductive: “Both sides claim bias, therefore the truth must be somewhere in the middle.” But this only works when both sides operate in good faith. When one side systematically attacks any accountability journalism as partisan while the other tries to report accurately, splitting the difference doesn’t produce balance—it produces capitulation.
The question “why does the country think you’re biased?” does something structurally insidious regardless of Weiss’s intentions. It treats coordinated attacks on legitimate journalism as evidence requiring response rather than as bad-faith manipulation requiring exposure. It makes perceived bias—manufactured through deliberate campaigns—into a problem journalism must solve by changing coverage rather than a weapon journalism must resist by maintaining standards.
The danger isn’t that journalists become propagandists overnight—it’s that they internalize propaganda’s logic while believing they’re protecting neutrality.
This is precisely how authoritarian movements capture journalism without needing to shut it down. You don’t need to close newspapers when you can convince editors that “balance” means giving equal weight to demonstrable lies and documented facts. You don’t need to jail journalists when you can make them internalize the frame that reporting what’s actually happening is “partisan” if it makes one side look bad.
The 60 Minutes staff should have answered her question directly: “The country thinks we’re biased because a coordinated disinformation infrastructure has spent decades attacking any journalism that holds Republican power accountable as ‘liberal media bias,’ and you’re now amplifying that frame by treating their attacks as legitimate concerns requiring our accommodation rather than as bad-faith manipulation requiring our resistance.”
But they sat in stunned silence instead. Because Weiss is now their boss. And her early choices clarify what she values: access to powerful right-wing newsmakers, concern about perceptions shaped by those attacking journalism, and the sophisticated frame that treats “both sides say the other is biased” as evidence requiring split-the-difference coverage.
This is how journalism dies. Not through crude censorship but through sophisticated editors who convince themselves that accommodation of authoritarian narratives is “balance,” that platforming power without sufficient scrutiny is “access,” that treating coordinated attacks as legitimate criticism is “taking concerns seriously.”
Two plus two equals four. Federal agents conducting warrantless mass detentions violates the Fourth Amendment. Stephen Miller calling judicial review “insurrection” is authoritarian rejection of constitutional governance. Covering these facts is journalism. Treating coverage of these facts as evidence of bias is surrender.
Bari Weiss is editor-in-chief of CBS News. And her first major act was asking the network’s flagship program to justify why they’re perceived as biased for doing their jobs. That tells you everything about what she’ll demand they stop doing—and why her version of “balance” is just authoritarianism with better branding.
Mike Brock is a former tech exec who was on the leadership team at Block. Originally published at his Notes From the Circus.
Thank you for your interest in CHICKEN FINGERS, an available cat with Furrever Rescue. Furrever Rescue currently has over a hundred cats that desperately need forever homes. But it’s important to us that CHICKEN FINGERS gets adopted into the purr-fect family, so please fill out this questionnaire to make sure you two are the purr-fect match.
1. List your name, your age, your occupation, and your Social Security number.
2. Who else lives in your home? Provide their names, ages, occupations, and Social Security numbers.
3. Do you have friends or family who come to your house regularly and may interact with CHICKEN FINGERS? Provide their names, ages, occupations, and Social Security numbers.
4. Would CHICKEN FINGERS be an indoor-only or indoor-outdoor cat? If indoor-only, are you willing to cater every room in your home to CHICKEN FINGERS’s specific needs? If indoor-outdoor, go to hell.
5. Please explain why you’re interested in adopting CHICKEN FINGERS over one of our other cats. Is it for superficial reasons, such as CHICKEN FINGERS’s perceived cuteness?
6. Do you have other pets in the home? Please list the type of pet, their age, temperament, and their Social Security numbers.
7. If CHICKEN FINGERS did not get along with your existing pets, would you be willing to rehome your other pets?
8. What pets have you had in the past, and what happened to them? Write at least five hundred words about the traumatic death of your childhood pet.
9. If CHICKEN FINGERS were to fall ill, do you have sufficient equity in your home to take out a second mortgage to pay vet bills? Furrever Rescue reserves the right to order a home appraisal at your expense. (Note: Renters, you are not the right fit for CHICKEN FINGERS.)
10. How many hours per week would CHICKEN FINGERS be left unsupervised?
11. On a scale of 1–10, how guilty would you feel leaving CHICKEN FINGERS alone, with “1” being no guilt because you are a sadistic jerk who hates CHICKEN FINGERS and wants him to be sad, and “10” being so guilty that you could barely stand to live with yourself except that CHICKEN FINGERS is your only purpose for living.
12. If CHICKEN FINGERS decided that he wanted to go to college, would you support that decision emotionally and financially? (Note: If you don’t believe cats deserve a liberal arts education, you are not the right fit for CHICKEN FINGERS.)
13. Would you pressure CHICKEN FINGERS to go to a state school, even if an out-of-state school had a stronger program in his selected discipline?
14. CHICKEN FINGERS is a four on the Enneagram. What is your Enneagram type? Address how compatible you believe it is with CHICKEN FINGERS in at least five hundred words.
15. Do you have a regular veterinarian?
16. Would you be willing, if you had exhausted your new home equity line of credit, to perform sexual favors for your veterinarian in exchange for CHICKEN FINGERS’s well-being?
17. Are you willing to house, clothe, and feed a volunteer from Furrrever Rescue for thirty days while we conduct a home study to ensure your home is the best fit for CHICKEN FINGERS? (Note: Our volunteer will dress and behave as a cat during the process.)
18. CHICKEN FINGERS is bonded with another cat, CAPTAIN STINKY PANTS. CAPTAIN STINKY PANTS is a charming twenty-pound Maine Coon mix who hates children and adults, has moderate-to-severe bowel incontinence, and only eats sushi-grade tuna. CAPTAIN STINKY PANTS and CHICKEN FINGERS must be adopted together, no exceptions. There is an additional $200 adoption fee for CAPTAIN STINKY PANTS.
19. Would you be willing to kill for CHICKEN FINGERS and CAPTAIN STINKY PANTS?
20. List the names, ages, occupations, and Social Security numbers of the people you would be willing to murder in cold blood for CHICKEN FINGERS and CAPTAIN STINKY PANTS.
Thank you again for your interest in CHICKEN FINGERS. If we determine that you may be a good fit, we will contact you within six months to schedule an all-day, in-person panel interview. Please prepare an interactive PowerPoint presentation explaining why we should select you. And bring a laser pointer; it’s CAPTAIN STINKY PANTS’s favorite toy and, trust us, you do not want to disappoint him.
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