Today's links

• Demand destruction vs fuel-superceding infrastructure: Will Trump hormuz us into the full Gretacene?
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Beck, Scientologist; Citizen journalism; Podcast-killing treaty; US x Kiwi copyright; Apple did a crime; DeCSS v civilian aviation; Navy x SF's queering; Micosoft v FLOSS; Sony-BMG needs a new DRM czar; Lossy copying sculpture; AI and the fatfinger economy.
• Upcoming appearances: Guelph, Barcelona, Berlin, Hay-on-Wye, London, NYC, Edinburgh.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

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Demand destruction vs fuel-superceding infrastructure (permalink)

No one is better at keeping hope alive than Rebecca Solnit, the historian and essayist whose Hope in the Dark got me through the first Trump administration and whose A Paradise Built In Hell inspired my novel Walkaway:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/301070/a-paradise-built-in-hell-by-rebecca-solnit/

In her latest, "Truth, Consequences, Climate, and Demand Destruction," Solnit is nothing short of inspirational – not because she downplays the horror and misery of Trump and his war of choice in Iran, but because she tells us what we stand to salvage from the wreckage:

https://www.meditationsinanemergency.com/truth-consequences-climate-and-demand-destruction/

Solnit starts by explaining some of the (many, many) things that Trump doesn't understand. Principally, Trump doesn't understand the concept of "demand destruction," which is what happens when shortages prompt people to make durable, one-way changes in their behavior that permanently reduce the demand for fossil fuels.

High prices sometimes create demand destruction: for example, if a transient shortage in eggs pushes prices up, people might discover that they prefer tofu scrambles in the morning, so even when the price of eggs comes back down, they buy two dozen fewer eggs every month, forever.

Beyond high prices, shortages and rationing are far more likely to lead to demand destruction. In the 10 years following the 1970s oil crisis, US cars doubled in fuel efficiency, and the gas-guzzler didn't return until car manufacturers exploited the American "light truck" loophole to fill the streets with deadly SUVs:

https://medium.com/vision-zero-cities-journal/the-chicken-tax-and-other-ways-the-u-s-government-subsidizes-your-ford-f-150-444a5164c627

But to really max out on demand destruction, you need both rationing and a cheap, easily installed substitute, and that's what the Strait of Epstein crisis, along with solar and batteries, offers the world today. Solar is incredibly cheap, and getting cheaper every day. Batteries are also incredibly cheap, and they're getting cheaper too. For decades, fossil fuel apologists have insisted that we'll never stop setting old dead shit on fire because "the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow," but thanks to battery deployment in China and California (and more places very soon), the sun shines all night long:

https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2026/04/Global-Electricity-Review-2026.pdf?ref=meditationsinanemergency.com

In starting this stupid, unforgivable war, Trump has vastly accelerated the process of demand destruction. Rather than buying American oil, the whole world has undertaken a simultaneous, rapid, irreversible shift to electrical substitutes for fossil fuel applications, from induction tops to balcony solar to ebikes and EVs:

https://thepolycrisis.org/01-demand-destruction-us-oil-is-not-winning-the-iran-war/

As Solnit writes, Trump's stupid war follows on the heels of another unforgivable and cruel blunder: Putin's quagmire in Ukraine, which catapulted Europe into the Gretacene, with a wholesale, continent-wide shift away from fossil fuels to renewables and the devices they power. Now, the rest of the world is following suit. In South Korea, President Lee Jae Myung is leading the charge to transition the country to renewables, framing fossil fuels as an existential geopolitical risk.

Trump's demand destruction accelerates Putin's demand destruction: China and India both increased their energy consumption in 2025 – but reduced their fossil fuel consumption over the same period. In 2025, coal accounted for less than a third of the world's energy for the first time in modern history. 2025 was the year that solar and wind overtook coal globally.

Meanwhile, Trump and his oil baron buddies keep trying to make fetch happen. On the campaign trail, Trump told the oil industry that if they slipped him a $1b bribe, he would give them anything they wanted, and he's kept his promise. Trump will let Big Oil drill anywhere they like, from sacred sites like New Mexico's Chaco Canyon to the Arctic. He'll even let them take all of Venezuela's oil. The problem is that banks can see the demand destruction writing on the wall, and they are conspicuously declining to loan the oil companies the money they'd need to get that oil.

Truly, Trump's a machine for creating stranded assets at scale. As Solnit writes, that's because Trump has no strategic foresight; strategy being "the ability to plan for things to arise that may counter your agenda, so you can continue to pursue your agenda." Trump's a bully, and he's accustomed to intimidating his adversaries into capitulating. That's why Trump keeps making moves without ever thinking about the countermove he might provoke. He can't metabolize the strategic maxim that "the enemy gets a vote."

This is the GOP's whole vibe these days: "how dare you do unto me as I have done unto you?" Solnit points to GOP outrage in response to Democratic gerrymandering in blue states, which Democrats undertook in direct, explicit response to shameless gerrymandering in Texas and other red states. Solnit says that the GOP has "confused having a lot of power with having all the power" and is perennially surprised when their attacks on Iran and Minneapolis elicit a reaction from the people in Iran and Minneapolis.

This is the defective reasoning that caused Comrade Trump to hormuz the world into the full Gretacene. Whereas once the case for the energy transition was driven by activists who warned people about the future consequences of inaction, Trump has summoned up a new army of people who are worried about the present consequences of inaction: such as not being able to drive your car, use your gas stove, or fertilize your crops. Trump has summoned up another army of people, who are worried about the politics of oil, the fact that oil leads to wars and can be mobilized as a weapon when it is withheld from your country.

Activists couldn't deliver the energy transition on their own – but now there's a coalition that's driving rapid, irreversible change: activists concerned about the future of the planet, in coalition with economic actors concerned about the consequences of not being able to cook, heat your home, or keep the lights on; in coalition with national security hawks worried about the geopolitics of oil. That's Comrade Trump's three-part mobilization: human rights, finance, and national security, all insisting that the enemy gets a vote, and voting unanimously for a post-American world.

Last week marked the first Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels conference, attended by representatives from 54 countries who sidestepped the US- and China-dominated UN to ratify the Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty Initiative, whose 18 signatories include Colombia, a major oil producer.

The world is moving on, and Trump continues to insist that he can roll back history to some imaginary era of a Great America. Every time this fails, he doubles down on his failures and sets the stage for more failure to come. Take Trump's decision to have the US blockade the Strait of Hormuz. Not only is this a powerful force for demand destruction – but, as Trita Parsi writes, it's also poison for Trump's own electoral fortunes in America:

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/trump-iran-blockade/

Trump won in 2024 by campaigning to improve Americans' cost of living. This is a powerful campaign strategy, and it's not limited to fascists, as Zohran Mamdani can attest. But for this to work, you actually have to reduce the cost of living once you take office, otherwise you will be hated and rejected and hampered in everything you do. The problem (for Trump – but not for Mamdani!) is that America's high cost of living is driven by corporate profiteering, and the only way to fix it is to make the rich poorer so as to make the poor richer:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/24/mamdani-thought/#public-excellence

If Trump had chosen to bullshit his way through the Iranian blockade of the strait, allowing the Iranians to collect a $2m toll per tanker (payable in Chinese renminbi!), well, oil would have gone up in price some, but the coming runaway inflation on food and fuel would have been substantially blunted. Instead, he decided to "snatch defeat from the jaws of victory" by adding a US blockade, which means that prices in the US are going to skyrocket, making his base furious and driving turnout for Democrats, along with support for more renewables, even among blood-red Republican rural Texas ranchers, who have had enough of "DEI for fossil fuels":

https://austinfreepress.org/renewables-are-now-the-costco-of-energy-production-bill-mckibben-says/

The renewables transition is now a self-licking ice-cream cone, a flywheel that only spins faster and faster. As Solnit writes, this is true notwithstanding the concerns by some climate advocates about the materials needed for the transition. Sure, there will be some extraction involved in mass electrification, and if that's done badly, it will involve stealing and destroying more land from poor and indigenous people. But we don't have to do it badly!

Meanwhile, not transitioning to renewables absolutely requires an endless cycle of incredibly destructive and genocidal extraction. Remember, fossil fuels are fuels, while renewables are infrastructure. Fuels need to be dug up and destroyed every year for so long as we insist on setting old dead shit on fire to survive. We dig up a lot of fossil fuels. The world consumes seventeen times more fossil fuels in a year than we will require to electrify the planet forever:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/06/with-great-power/#comes-great-responsibility

The infrastructure of renewables – panels, batteries, transmission lines – requires materials that are often scarce and whose processing involves extremely harmful and polluting processes. But those materials are all recyclable: we don't recycle them today because we haven't prioritized doing so, not because it it technologically beyond our reach. In 2024, America saw its first all-solar powered solar panel recycling factory, which reclaimed 99% of the materials in a panel that was 20% efficient, and then used those materials to make two panels that were each 40% efficient:

https://interestingengineering.com/energy/solarcycle-to-recycle-10-million-solar-panels-yearly

Trump shut that plant down, which means that other countries will get to recycle America's superannuated panels into modern, efficient ones and sell them back to America. America may have blocked any climate reparations for the poor world, but thanks to Comrade Trump, America's still going to end up paying them, in the form of windfall profits for countries whose cleantech economy is racing ahead of America's.

Unlike a fossil fuel economy, a cleantech sector does not require that your country have access to some difficult to find, unevenly distributed reservoir of old dead shit or even rare minerals. Not only is lithium far more common than once believed, it's also being phased out for use in batteries and replaced by sodium, the world's sixth-most abundant element:

https://cen.acs.org/energy/energy-storage-/Sodium-ion-batteries-Should-believe/103/web/2025/11

Lithium is set to join cobalt, a notorious conflict mineral, in the cleantech revolution's rear-view mirror as a transitional material used in early, primitive batteries and no longer required.

A post-carbon future is a post-petrostate future is a post-American future. It will run on solar and wind and batteries, which can be brought online cheaply and quickly, every time demand-destruction surges, using materials that are widely distributed around the world. It won't be a nuclear future, and not just because nuclear materials are (like oil) concentrated according to accidents of geography, nor merely because fissiles are geopolitically catastrophic (like oil). Nuclear plants take at least a decade to bring online, which means that they will always arrive ten years after some future Comrade Trump-type kicks off another orgy of demand destruction, and by the time we turn them on, the world will have already bought, improved and recycled two generations of batteries and panels.

(Image: Stefan Müller (climate stuff), CC BY 2.0)

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• A Long and Probably Boring Process Post https://dreamcafe.com/2026/05/01/a-long-and-probably-boring-process-post/

• The Supreme Court is Corrupt. This is What We Can Do About It. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRzS61buXkQ

• NHS Goes To War Against Open Source https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/05/nhs-goes-to-war-against-open-source/

• An open letter asking NHS England to keep its code open https://keepthingsopen.com/

• Top 20 Fiction to Inspire Climate Action https://thebookslist.com/20-fiction-books-to-inspire-climate-action/

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Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago Beck dumps Winona and becomes a Scientologist https://web.archive.org/web/20010502151355/http://www.suntimes.com/output/zwecker/zp30.html

#25yrsago Fuck San Francisco https://craphound.com/fucksf.html

#25yrsago Desktop Linux rant https://web.archive.org/web/20021204051712/http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/opinions/3297/1/

#25yrsago History of ASCAP and BMI https://www.woodpecker.com/writing/essays/royalty-politics.html

#25yrsago AUSA: If we let you decrypt DVDs, airplanes will start falling out of the sky https://web.archive.org/web/20010504221956/https://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,43485,00.html

#25yrsago Microsoft shits on open source https://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/03/business/technology-microsoft-is-set-to-be-top-foe-of-free-code.html

#20yrsago Dan Gillmor explains “citizen journalism” https://web.archive.org/web/20060512043722/https://sf.backfence.com/bayarea/showPost.cfm?myComm=BA&bid=2271

#20yrsago UN plans a treaty to kill podcasts https://web.archive.org/web/20060512141428/https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004619.php

#20yrsago Sen Stevens tries to sneak the Broadcast Flag into law https://web.archive.org/web/20060505054724/http://ipaction.org/blog/2006/05/breaking-news-broadcast-flag-is-back.html

#20yrago How the US Navy queered San Francisco https://web.archive.org/web/20060504024636/http://ask.yahoo.com/20060502.html

#20yrago Help wanted: new DRM czar for Sony-BMG https://web.archive.org/web/20060512063724/http://www.paidcontent.org/sonybmg-director-new-technology-content-protection-nyc

#20yrsago Rich Americans as sick as poor Brits https://web.archive.org/web/20060516225807/http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn9098&feedId=online-news_rss20

#15yrsago Sculpture embodies lossy copying using much-copied house-key https://web.archive.org/web/20110316215804/http://www.danielbejar.com/Visual_Topography_of_a_Generation_Gap.html

#15yrsago Piracy and poor countries: Big Content wants to have its cake and eat it too https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/may/03/why-poor-countries-lead-world-piracy

#15yrsago Brust’s Tiassa: versatile fantasy in three modes https://memex.craphound.com/2011/05/02/brusts-tiassa-versatile-fantasy-in-three-modes/

#15yrsago Why New Zealand was dumb to let the USA write its copyright laws https://web.archive.org/web/20110601173727/http://www.geekzone.co.nz/juha/7615

#15yrsago Canadian neocon Tories take a slim majority in election, pro-Internet New Democrats form the opposition https://web.archive.org/web/20110503041720/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/new-political-era-begins-as-tories-win-majority-ndp-grabs-opposition/article2006635/

#15yrsago Will technology make us freer, and if so, how? https://locusmag.com/feature/cory-doctorow-techno-optimism/

#15yrsago Wikileaks: America will foot the bill for record company enforcement in NZ if NZ will let America write its laws
https://web.archive.org/web/20110502135002/http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5769/125/

#15yrsago Horology considered hazardous: the “German Time Bomb” clock with its deadly mainspring https://web.archive.org/web/20110516102538/https://www.anniversaryclocks.org/aci/haller-gtb.pdf

#5yrsago Political economy vs inflation https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/01/mayday/#inflationary-political-economy

#1yrago Apple faces criminal sanctions for defying App Store antitrust order https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/01/its-not-the-crime/#its-the-coverup

#1yrago AI and the fatfinger economy https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/02/kpis-off/#principal-agentic-ai-problem

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Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Guelph: Musagetes Lecture, May 8
  https://riverrun.ca/whats-on/guelph-lecture-on-being-2026/

• Barcelona: Internet no tiene que ser un vertedero (Global Digital Rights Forum), May 13
  https://encuentroderechosdigitales.com/en/speakers/

• Virtual: How to Disenshittify the Internet with Wendy Liu (EFF), May 14
  https://www.eff.org/event/effecting-change-enshittification

• Berlin: Re:publica, May 18-20
  https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp26-sprecher-cory-doctorow

• Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 19
  https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow.html

• Hay-on-Wye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
  https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2

• SXSW London, Jun 2
  https://www.sxswlondon.com/session/how-big-tech-broke-the-internet-b3c4a901

• NYC: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Jonathan Coulton (The Strand), Jun 24
  https://www.strandbooks.com/cory-doctorow-the-reverse-centaur-s-guide-to-life-after-ai.html

• Edinburgh International Book Festival with Jimmy Wales, Aug 17
  https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/events/the-front-list-cory-doctorow-and-jimmy-wales

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Recent appearances (permalink)

• Artificial Intelligence: The Ultimate Disruptor, with Astra Taylor and Yoshua Bengio (CBC Ideas)
  https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-23-ideas/clip/16210039-artificial-intelligence-the-ultimate-disruptor

• When Do Platforms Stop Innovating and Start Extracting? (InnovEU)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cccDR0YaMt8

• Pete "Mayor" Buttigieg (No Gods No Mayors)
  https://www.patreon.com/posts/pete-mayor-with-155614612

• The internet is getting worse (CBC The National)
  https://youtu.be/dCVUCdg3Uqc?si=FMcA0EI_Mi13Lw-P

• Do you feel screwed over by big tech? (Ontario Today)
  https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-45-ontario-today/clip/16203024-do-feel-screwed-big-tech

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Latest books (permalink)

• "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce

• "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).

• "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "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

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Upcoming books (permalink)

• "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/)

• "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

• "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

• "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027

• "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027

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Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Third draft completed. Submitted to editor.

• "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.

• "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

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Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

ISSN: 3066-764X

The Supreme Court weakened Section 2, the linchpin of the 1965 civil rights legislation that prohibits diluting the electoral power of voters of color. But the statute’s fingerprints can be seen all over Texas’ maps.

Josh Orta was the sole witness of Ruben Martinez’s death to dispute the government’s account. Months later, he died in a crash after learning an ICE agent killed his friend. Their mothers blame the government for their loss.

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. How can I politely dodge a coworker’s MLM product party?

How do you politely dodge coworkers’ MLM “parties”? I despise multi-level marketing schemes (MLMs). They’re predatory, cult-like organizations, and I refuse to support them in any way.

A coworker recently invited me to her cookware-hawking “party.” Putting aside the fact that I rarely cook anything more elaborate than spaghetti, I really just can’t bring myself to support this. The problem is, this is a colleague who I like a lot and collaborate with regularly. I don’t want to lecture her about the toxic nature of these companies but it feels rude to just blow it off. I’d claim to be busy, but it’s an online event. How do I politely turn it down?

“I don’t really buy cookware, but thank you!”

If she responds that you don’t need to buy anything and it’ll be fun just to attend: “They’re not really my thing, but thanks anyway.” (Or you could just say that from the start.)

If you were someone she knew to be an avid cook, you could also say, “I’m super picky about cookware and only have a couple of brands I buy” or “I’m trying to be disciplined about not buying any new kitchen things.” And if she pushed after that: “It’s not really my thing, but thank you.”

MLMs often train their salespeople in how to overcome objections so any of these answers could spur her to try to change your mind (which would be especially inappropriate to do with a coworker, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen) but falling back on “it’s not really my thing” will work as long as you’re firm about sticking to it. (In fact, that’s often the case with boundaries — it almost doesn’t matter what specific you land on, as long as you are willing to stick to it.)

2. Manager is fixated on very old mistakes

I’ve been working at my current job in mechanical design for a little over a year and a half. An inherent part of the design process in my industry is very long lead times for client feedback and other departments doing their portion of the design, which means it can be months before a design I have finished actually starts being built.

My boss frequently calls me in to lecture me about errors in projects I worked on a year or more ago, when I was still brand new and had very little experience with how the company did things, but weren’t noticed until production began more recently. I know I’ve improved significantly since those early days, and would never make the obvious mistakes I did early on, but my boss talks about these errors in the present tense as if they are happening now, and dismisses any explanation I offer about how long its been and how much I have improved. My coworker who started the same day I did gets treated the same way, and the two of us have already gotten one email from our boss’s boss about the errors we “are” making and how it costs the company money to fix.

For the most part my job is very satisfying. I enjoy the work, the hours are very flexible and open to WFH if needed, and aside from this issue my boss isn’t bad; they answer questions and explain things when I ask, leaving me alone to work at my own pace otherwise. But it’s frustrating and demoralizing to feel like I’m being judged and evaluated based on an image that is very much not reflective of my current work and I’m constantly concerned about being warned or even fired because of those past errors. Aside from privately tracking my corrected errors, which suffers from the same long delay between design and production, how can I prepare myself in case the department manager continues to get an outdated impression of my performance?

Can you name it for your manager? For example: “You’ve pointed out a few errors to me recently that were from back when I first started, like X and Y, and I want to make sure you know that that’s not something I’m still doing currently — it was back from when I was learning the job and still figuring things out. I’m always grateful to get feedback, but I also don’t want you to worry that those are errors I’m still making.”

Depending on how that goes, you could also say, “Is there a good way for me to communicate than an error was from a year or more ago when I was still learning? I don’t want to sound defensive when you’re giving me feedback — I definitely want any feedback you have for me — but ideally I’d like you to know if it’s something from a while back that is no longer happening.” She may not have a good answer to that, but the act of asking it should help get it on her radar as a thing that’s happening.

3. Child care and hotel rooms when two spouses are attending the same work conference

I wrote in last year about my spouse’s company suddenly competing with mine (update here). My spouse and I still aren’t bidding on the same work (thank goodness!), but we do still work in similar roles for separate clients in different industries. Turns out, both of those clients use the same vendor who hosts an important annual conference. We now may both be asked to attend the same conference!

In our previous, child-free life, that would be no problem. But per my previous update, we now have a baby to consider! We can’t both travel to the same conference without a childcare option. Our options would be flying a relative out to take care of the baby while we are traveling or bringing the baby with us and seeking a childcare option during the day (and likely evening with busy conference schedules!). Do you think we would have any grounds to ask for our companies to pay for childcare during the travel days? I doubt it, but curious about your opinion of what’s normal in cases like this. I have nightmares of us bringing the baby to the conference and switching off care between sessions. I’m not serious about that one, but could you imagine how awful it would be to attempt nap time behind a booth or in some random conference room?

Separately, what would we do about a hotel? It would be weird for us to travel and get two separate hotel rooms, but I couldn’t ask my company to pay for half of a hotel room, right? Does anyone else attend the same conference with their spouse for different companies and run into issues like this?

You can’t really ask your company to pay for child care in a case like this; in all but the most unusual situations (where you have an extremely hard-to-find skill set and are wildly in demand) that would come across as out of touch. You’re generally expected to figure out child care or explain you can’t go. Is the latter an option for one of you?

But if you do both go, for the hotel one of you would just tell your company that you don’t need them to book a hotel room because your spouse will also be there and you’ll be sharing a room.

4. Backing out of a summer job if I get a better offer

I’m a college student who recently applied to several summer internships in my dream industry. I’m pretty confident in how I presented myself, but I also want to be realistic about this pretty competitive industry, so I also applied to some local businesses as back-up summer jobs. The problem is, many of these local places have responded to me expressing interest much faster than the internships. If I get into an internship, I’ll definitely take it, but I don’t want to turn down any of my back-ups before I know that for sure.

What do I say if I get a hiring offer from a back-up job while I still have a chance at the internships? If I accept and then get a better opportunity, is there a tactful way to back out of that job, without seeming disrespectful or damaging my credibility with the business?

This is a thing that happens with summer jobs. They won’t be thrilled, but they’re unlikely to be shocked or outraged either. You’d simply say something like, “Unfortunately I’ve had a conflict come up and I won’t be able to work with you for the summer. I really appreciate you offering me the opportunity, and I wanted to let you know as soon as possible. I apologize for any inconvenience this causes, and I wish you and the team all the best for the summer.” They might be loath to hire you in the future, but that’s just how this stuff goes.

5. Is networking required to get a job now?

I’m seeing a lot of stuff online saying that because the job market is so bad right now, the best way to get a job is through networking. On some posts you say networking is nice but not a requirement; you can still get jobs without it. Is that still true, or is networking now a must-have?

And if it is a must, what are some good ways to start networking with strangers? I’m job searching now but I’m not sure if I can rely on my current/former coworker network for jobs.

Networking is helpful but not a must-have. People get hired without networking all the time!

That said, it can make your job search easier, so it’s a good thing to do to whatever extent you can, because it can get your application an additional look that will help you stand out among a slew of qualified candidates.

Here’s some past advice on how to do it.

how to tell your network you’re looking for a job
how to send a networking email that won’t be ignored
how do I use alumni contacts in my job search?
I hate the idea of networking — it feels slimy
what does good networking actually look like?

The post how to dodge a coworker’s MLM party, my manager is fixated on old mistakes, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

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Yeah, I can rip a hologram in half. That's what they teach you at Good At Pokemon school.

It’s not unusual to be greeted by an older male associate asking not how you are, but which roads you took to arrive at their home. Do not ask me to explain this. It is not in my make-up. Well, genetically it is 50% of my makeup based on all data I have to hand.

:C

...and almost instantaneously you'll find your hand in .. of ... uh ... very deep ... sleep ... #CowboyWho

Next week, on Space Woman Stella Star…

Most of the wild sloths imported by a planned tourist attraction in Orlando did not survive.

By Katie Surma, Kiley Price

The Florida Attorney General’s office announced a criminal investigation into the deaths of dozens of sloths at a now-shuttered Orlando business, a development that signals a new level of animal-welfare accountability in the commercial wildlife trade. 

If you've been snagged in Spirit Airlines' now-defunct flight schedule, here are some things to know on how to get home, and get whole.

The April 27^th issue of Jinja Shinpō carried the annual article about newly graduated priests on its front page. This article is about priests who have completed full-time courses, mostly at Kōgakkan and Kokugakuin Universities. (There are half-a-dozen much smaller institutions around the country, but they had a total of only thirteen graduates this year.) It does not include people who train part-time, or through the short (eight weeks or so) courses held by prefectural Jinjachō. I do not know exact numbers for priests trained through these two routes, but my impression is that, taken together, they are on about the same scale as the universities. Influential priests, on the other hand, have almost all graduated from one of the two universities.

This year, Kōgakkan had 59 graduates, seven fewer than last year, of whom 52 (one fewer than last year) went to serve at jinja. There were another five people who were at the university but qualified as priests through other routes (the article does not go into detail), and who went to serve at jinja. Eighteen of the graduates were women, and fifteen went to serve at jinja. Nine of them became priests, two miko, and six went to work in jinja offices. (Those numbers appear to include two of the non-graduate priests, but the article does not say where they went.)

Kokugakuin had 135 graduates, one fewer than last year, of whom 92 went to serve at jinja. Forty six of the graduates were female, and 24 women went to serve at jinja. Fourteen women went to serve as full-time priests, seven as part-time priests, and three as miko or administrative staff. Of the five graduates who went on to graduate school, three were women.

Only 68.1% of Kokugakuin graduates went to serve at jinja, as compared to 88.1% at Kōgakkan, and the Kokugakuin proportion is down 6.1 percentage points on last year. This is directly addressed in the article, and the university raises two points. First, they have a high proportion of students who are not from hereditary priestly families, and they have a tendency to go into other lines of work. Second, young people today do not expect to spend their entire career working in the company they first join (which was the expectation in Japan not so long ago), and the university does get enquiries from qualified individuals who have worked in another field and want to shift into the priesthood.

Both universities commented that the new priests were looking at serving all across Japan, and that jinja in or near their hometowns were a popular choice — even for people who were not going to serve at their family jinja. This is a positive change from a few years ago, when new priests were focused on big cities.

At Kōgakkan, 31% of the graduates were women, and 83% of them went to serve at jinja, as compared to 90% of the men. Given the small numbers involved, I’m not sure that the difference in the latter numbers is significant. At Kokugakuin, on the other hand, 34% of the graduates were women, and 52% of them went to serve at jinja, as opposed to 76% of the men. That difference does look significant. I am not sure how to interpret it, though, given the much smaller difference at Kōgakkan.

I have saved the most worrying statistics for last, however. Kōgakkan was informed of 359 vacancies at 175 jinja, and was able to fill 44 of them. Kokugakuin was informed of 372 vacancies at 204 jinja, and managed to fill 37 of them. If we assume that every jinja that approached Kōgakkan also approached Kokugakuin (which is almost certainly not true), then about 22% of the vacancies were filled. If all the jinja only approached one university then about 11% of the vacancies were filled. I am sure that some of these vacancies are repeated over multiple years, so the universities could not consistently place five times their current numbers, but even so the crisis of recruitment in Shinto is plain.

This is a problem that the Shinto community does not seem to be taking any concrete steps to address, although it is one that they are well aware of. I do not know why.

OTTAWA – Prime Minister Carney has announced a plan to sell off Canadian airports, thus generating revenue for his new sovereign wealth fund, and assures Canadians they will surely pay less in airports owned by Canada’s most-rapacious corporate monopolies. “If there’s one thing Canadians know, it’s that they will never be gouged by companies like […]

The post Privatized airports means Canadians will pay less flying Air Canada out of Rogers Airport sponsored by Draft Kings appeared first on The Beaverton.

EDMONTON — The Centurion Project, an Alberta separatist organization, has been accused of illegally accessing the personal information of nearly three million voters, in a patriotic display of separating Albertans from their privacy. “Whether it’s Alberta and Canada or the barriers keeping your address from the conspiracy theorists who make up our membership, we’re all […]

The post Alberta separatists separate Albertans from their privacy appeared first on The Beaverton.

Turn this thing off! Turn this thing off, you hear me! #CowboyWho

Hey, we're not arm wrestling anymore Cowboy Slim. #CowboyWho

#Ryo #RoninWarriors

Instant heart attack!

And there’s so much more!

Her copilot is some sort of loofa/human hybrid.

The post Casey Means Sucked Back Into Magical Neti Pot appeared first on The Onion.

MURCIA, SPAIN—Sending shock waves through the tennis world, world No. 2 Carlos Alcaraz officially withdrew from the French Open on Monday over a career-threatening haircut. “After careful consideration, we have decided that the most prudent decision is not to participate in Rome or Roland-Garros while we wait to assess the severity of this tragic styling choice,” said a representative for the two-time defending champion, who was also forced to miss a portion of last year’s clay season due to an uneven fade on the right side of his head. “At this point, there are concerns that pushing himself to play in the tournament with this baffling look would only do further damage to the follicles and potentially even leave his hairline permanently mangled. The best move is to take some time off to see how this cut grows out as experts determine what, if anything, can be done to find a shape better suited for his face by the start of grass season.” When reached for comment, rival Jannik Sinner publicly wished Alcaraz a speedy lengthening process.

The post Carlos Alcaraz Withdraws From French Open Over Career-Threatening Haircut appeared first on The Onion.

“This can’t be good.” Luke and the Panel (Megan MacKay and Nile Seguin) try to understand how a Sovereign Wealth Fund works in a country with a massive deficit, discuss the fallout from the White House Correspondent’s Dinner shooting being used to give Trump a ballroom, and break down the impact of massive Rogers’ layoffs. […]

The post Rogers puts statues of Ted Rogers in front of nation’s unemployment offices appeared first on The Beaverton.

#Ryo #RoninWarriors

The $5 fee would ramp up over time, eventually reaching $25 each month.

♫ Idiot control now! ♫
♫ Hideous control now! ♫

QUEEN’S PARK — After a poll announced yesterday that Doug Ford’s Conservative government was trailing behind the Liberals for the first time in almost a decade, a visibly sweating Ford held a press conference to announce that he will be filling the entirety of Lake Ontario with Ontarians’ beer of choice. “Folks, me and my […]

The post Sweating Doug Ford announces plan to fill Lake Ontario with beer appeared first on The Beaverton.

A nonprofit in Rwanda gave gorillas bank accounts as a way to provide compensation to those who render assistance to them, with both the government and donors funding the project. What do you think?

The post Conservationists Give Gorillas Bank Accounts appeared first on The Onion.