Cowboy Who?

In this installment, University of Houston political science professor and “Party Politics” co-host Brandon Rottinghaus explores the legality surrounding Bluebonnet picking.

In brief: We recap Sunday’s showers and highlight the potential for some isolated storms today. After that we’re warming up this week toward highs in the upper 80s. The weekend forecast is uncertain due to the likely arrival of a front to cool us down for a few days.

Big winners and losers with Sunday’s showers

It’s safe to say that, for areas northwest of central Houston, showers and thunderstorms on Sunday over-performed expectations. Matt correctly predicted on Friday that “the atmosphere will be pretty juiced up this weekend,” but we expected the heavier rainfall to occur a little further north of Houston on Sunday. Instead, a large swath of areas northwest of Houston, such as Sealy, Cypress, and Tomball, generally picked up 2 to 5 inches of rainfall, with some very intense bursts of rainfall. Most of the rest of the area picked up below 0.25 inch. We’ll have one more shot at some showers today before most of this week is rain-free. Our next (decent) chance will come next weekend, likely with a front.

Monday

The atmosphere remains fairly moist, and I think we could squeeze out some fairly isolated to scattered showers and thunderstorms. Probably only 20 or 30 percent of the area will see rainfall today, but for those that do there could be some briefly strong showers. Otherwise I expect a partly to mostly sunny day with high temperatures in the lower 80s for most locations. Our atmosphere remains plenty humid. This afternoon, and for pretty much all of this week, we can expect gusty southerly winds during the afternoon, perhaps up to 25 mph. Overnight lows remain very warm, around 70 degrees.

Tuesday through Friday

We’ll see a warming trend in daytime temperatures this week, with highs eventually pushing into the upper 80s (perhaps 90 degrees for a few inland locations). Each day will see a fair bit of sunshine, with Thursday perhaps the sunniest. Our air remains humid, and our nights warm. Rain chances each day are probably about 10 percent, or perhaps a bit higher for areas along and north of Highway 105, well north of the city of Houston.

Saturday and Sunday

I don’t have great confidence yet in the coming weekend, but generally it looks probable that some sort of cold front will move through on Saturday, Saturday night, or early Sunday. Accordingly I expect another fairly warm day on Saturday, with highs likely in the upper 80s. There will be a chance of rain (still too early to say how high) with the front’s passage, and then Sunday should see drier air (assuming the front pushes all the way off the coast) with highs in the 70s. Give us another day or two to fine-tune the weekend forecast, please.

Next week

We should see a couple of cooler nights in the wake of the front, and I’m hopeful that Sunday and Monday nights will both drop into the 50s, but we’ll have to see. Our highs will probably return to 80 degrees, or higher, by Tuesday or Wednesday of next week.

Eligible men in the United States will be registered into the military draft pool automatically by December, a measure slipped into last year’s annual defense policy bill that will replace the previous self-registration process. What do you think?

The post Automatic U.S. Military Draft Registration To Begin By December appeared first on The Onion.

A class of medications called GLP-1s have skyrocketed in popularity recently for their effectiveness in reducing body mass. The Onion examines the myths and facts surrounding these weight-loss drugs.

MYTH: GLP-1s are only prescribed for diabetes.

FACT: GLP-1s have many applications, from aiding in addiction recovery to making your stepsister jealous.

MYTH: The long-term effects of these drugs haven’t been thoroughly studied.

FACT: Tamara’s wedding is in two months.

MYTH: You only lose body fat, not muscle.

FACT: You also lose out on coveted “sassy fat lady” movie roles.

MYTH: To lose weight, you must also incorporate changes to your diet and lifestyle.

FACT: Just take more.

MYTH: Wegovy is better than Ozempic.

FACT: Wegovy is only good for losing weight on your top half while Ozempic slims down your bottom half.

MYTH: GLP-1s are for everyone.

FACT: Not sumo wrestlers.

The post GLP-1s: Myth Vs. Fact appeared first on The Onion.

This would’ve been a great place to raise a family, but instead a wealthy couple will collect egregious amounts of passive income from bachelorette parties.

Reference #32487

The post Never Mind, It’s An Airbnb Now appeared first on The Onion.

New comic!
Today's News:

It's fine. They like it, actually.

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

1. My manager and coworker are fighting and I’m stuck in the middle

My manager, Rose, is not good at her job. She routinely forgets things, does a terrible job advocating for the department, plays favorites, and isn’t proactive at solving problems. My coworker, Donna, is also not good at her job, but in a personal sense. She’s horrifically burnt out but isn’t taking steps to address it, holds grudges over slights that happened 5+ years ago, and goes from 0 to 100 in her moods. Adding fuel to the fire, Rose is conflict-averse, Donna is conflict-prone. As I’m the newest person in the office without the 10 years of beef these two have, both Rose and Donna have complained about the other to me before.

There have been multiple occasions where Rose and Donna got into a verbal fight. Recently, Rose gave Donna a poor performance review and all hell has broken loose. I only know about this secondhand, from Donna, so I have no idea what the review actually said — Donna feels that Rose is out to get her, though in my opinion parts of the poor review were probably justified. Donna’s been complaining about Rose at every opportunity, while Rose is actively avoiding Donna.

I’m sick and tired of this. Ideally, I’d like to tell both of them to stop bitching, nut up, and just do their damn jobs, but I can’t do that to Rose as she’s my manager and if I do that to Donna, she’ll view it as a personal slight. Donna and I work closely together and I won’t be able to do my job if she’s fighting with me the same way she’s fighting with Rose. How do I navigate this minefield of personal drama that I don’t want to be a part of?

To Donna when she complains about Rose: “I’m sorry you’re having a tough time. Please know I care but it’s affecting my focus so much that I just can’t be your sounding board for it anymore — I’m sorry.” If she views that as a personal slight … well, it sounds like she views a lot of things as a personal slight and that’s probably going to happen between the two of you at some point anyway (if not with this, then with something else). When someone is that volatile, you can never tiptoe around them so perfectly that you never set them off, so do yourself the favor of setting a reasonable boundary. If her reaction prevents you from doing your job, you’d need to take that to Rose — who, yes, sucks at solving problems, but it would still be hers to deal with. If she doesn’t and Donna is truly obstructing you from doing your job, you could escalate it. But if Donna is just visibly upset with you, let that be okay, as long as she’s not openly hostile.

If Rose complains about Donna: “I should stay out of this, since I have to work closely with her.”

Ultimately, Rose is the bigger problem because she should be managing this entire situation and isn’t — but the day-to-day quality of life stuff is coming from Donna and you have more control over that piece, so focus there.

Related:
my coworker complains all day long

2. I thought I was taking a leadership job — it turned out to be entry-level

I recently left a leadership position at a statewide nonprofit to join the national staff of a much larger nonprofit. I interviewed for this position believing it would be part of one of the major departments’ leadership teams. Titles are pretty standardized across our field, and the title and job description gave the impression that this would be a major internal consultant position, working with multiple chapters nationwide to help them develop metrics, assist with long- and short-term planning, and provide overall guidance. The pay was also commensurate with a leadership position and was far, far more than I was making in my then-position.

During the interview process, which was quite long, I was never interviewed by the same people twice, and in many instances, I was interviewed by people who were quite unfamiliar with the position. When I would inquire about job specifics, I was given the impression that the vagueness was due to the fluidity of the position; the main priority is what the chapters need, and it’s different for each state. I need to emphasize that throughout the process, they mentioned assisting “chapters,” always plural. I talked about broad national programs for the organization and how “strategies I used in X state might work in states Y and Z,” and no one corrected me.

When I started, however, it became clear that I was actually one of multiple “consultants” being hired, and I would be assigned to a single state. It also became clear that much of the “consulting” was grunt work, and that overall this position was an entry-level job for individual chapters embedded in the national organization. All doubts were cleared up when I was given access to some planning documents created last year, in which the original title of the position reflected its entry-level nature. I’m pretty sure they changed the title to attract more qualified candidates.

On the one hand, I am humiliated. I thought I was getting a huge promotion into an exciting and challenging new role on the national level that would launch my career to new heights and provide me with invaluable experience! On the other hand, the money and benefits are fantastic; I have almost doubled my past salary. And while the work is entry-level, the title on my resume would not give that impression. I also am not burdened by managerial responsibilities. When I talked to my wife about this, she was totally surprised that I was upset, because “you are getting paid way more to do far less,” and she does have a point.

What should I do, and how should I be feeling about all this? I feel like I’ve been lied to, and I am not getting the job I thought I was. On the other hand, this is a job I can do with my eyes closed, so should I just ride this out for a while?

Here’s what I’d think about and what I think your wife’s response overlooks: are you bored or likely to become bored in the near- to medium-term future? Are your skills going to stagnate? When you decide you do want to leave this job, will you have accomplishments for your resume that will help you get the job you’ll want after this one? Are you happy to have this break in responsibility or frustrated by the limitations of the role? What’s going on in the organization that caused them to so misrepresent the nature of the job, and is that symptomatic of other frustrations that will be heading your way?

I can’t answer those for you, but those are the questions I’d reflect on in your shoes. And regardless of your answers to them, it’s possible that given the state of the job market and the world right now, you might decide you’re happy to hunker down here for a while and make this work. Or you might decide that while it’s not so bad for right now, the longer you stay, the harder it will be to move on to the sort of job you do want once you’re looking again. There’s no easy answer — but “be happy you’re being paid more to do less” is an oversimplification.

Related:
should I stay in my well-paid job even though I have nothing to do?

3. How should I have handled a recommendation I didn’t want?

Something that happened to me some time ago that I didn’t know how to handle. I’d gone in for an interview for an internship that perfectly aligned with what I wanted to do with my degree. During the interview stage, I ran into a classmate, their current intern. About a week later, she told me she had recommended me for the internship and that she loved my work and how good of a job I’d do at this company.

This would have been great, if I didn’t know that the quality of her work was bad, and that she’d gotten drunk at that company’s Christmas party! (I knew that her work quality was bad due to having a TA-esque role in a class she took, where she did extraordinarily badly.)

I don’t know if that’s the reason I never heard back, but should I have followed up with the manager after finding out she’d recommended me saying that I’m not affiliated with her? Should I have handled the interaction during the interview differently?

Nope, there was nothing you needed to do. First, doing badly in one class doesn’t mean that someone will do badly in an internship. (If what you observed was something like that she had no grasp of foundational concepts, then it’s more likely — but even then, she could have gotten better later. And for all we know, she had other stuff going on that semester that got in her way, but that doesn’t mean she could never do well.)

But even if you knew for sure that her work quality was still bad, there wasn’t anything you needed to do here. Low performers don’t really impact someone else’s chances by recommending them; the employer might not give any weight to her opinion, but they’d be unlikely to hold it against you if you’d made your own good impression. (And really, there’s a good chance they wouldn’t have given much weight to a good intern’s opinion either.)

4. Can you ask to have a vacation day become a sick day if you get sick on your trip?

My family is having a disagreement about work norms, and I’m wondering if I was an overly permissive manager or if my sister-in-law works in a strict environment. (Or somewhere in between. It’s usually somewhere in between!)

My sister-in-law came to visit for a week, and got a really nasty cold the day after she arrived. I’m not talking just feeling icky, she had a fever of 102F, didn’t eat for two days because food didn’t stay down, and basically couldn’t leave her room from sheer exhaustion.

I asked if she was going to reclassify her vacation (or even just the worst couple days) as sick time, because if she had been at home she absolutely would have not been going in. Both she and my spouse looked at me like I was crazy, and I said it didn’t happen often, but I was happy to make the change for my reports if people got really unlucky. Sometimes it happens!

But their response (and she asked a coworker too) make me reconsider how obvious I find the situation. So what’s normal?

It’s a completely acceptable thing to ask about! Some companies will do it and some companies won’t, but there’s nothing outrageous about inquiring to find out. Among companies that do, the idea is that you need real downtime to fully recharge, with all the benefits that brings your employer, and if you’re sick you’re not really recharging.

5. Does my boss not think I can do work I did in a previous job?

I work for government with a boss who is typically very relaxed and flexible with the entire team. I previously worked in higher education doing very difficult stakeholder meeting facilitation for multiple groups every week. My boss knows this and has acknowledged that I have previous years of experience before he hired me.

We were all at a meeting to discuss if we wanted to hire a contractor to do stakeholder meeting facilitation or if we could do it ourselves (it’s way more difficult than just reading off a PowerPoint!). I said that I had done this in a previous job but that it was very hard. This startled everyone on the team (physical reactions) but most people quickly agreed. Then my boss said he’s sure some of us could handle it, while gesturing to my male coworker and looking at him, not me, then said he thinks the stakeholders would want a contractor.

Should I have kept my mouth shut and not said that I did this before? The gesturing at my coworker and looking at him instead of me after what I immediately just said seems like my boss doesn’t believe I could handle it, right?

It sounds more likely that your boss took what you said to indicate that you weren’t enthusiastic about doing it (unless you were explicit that that’s not what you meant). If you want to clear it up, you could follow up with your boss now to clarify (“If we do decide to facilitate the meetings ourselves, it’s something I have experience in and would be interested in doing”), which might be worth doing even if he’s leaning toward a contractor anyway.

The post my manager and coworker are fighting, a recommendation I didn’t want, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

BUDAPEST ― The Central European nation of Hungary celebrated the victory of Péter Magyar today, and specifically, the accompanying incredibly silly scowl it put on JD Vance’s already perpetually-silly and scowling face. “It’s not as if I was gonna vote for Orbán, the guy who spent the last decade-and-a-half turning our burgeoning liberal democracy into […]

The post Hungary admits it voted out Orbán just to see look on JD Vance’s face appeared first on The Beaverton.

#CowboyWho

The documents that were released about Hidalgo’s trip in October last year -- as part of an economic development delegation to Taiwan and Japan -- offer little detail about the outgoing county judge’s schedule, costs and partnerships secured from the trade mission.

In brief: Heavy rain has led to a number of flood watches, warnings, and advisories near Houston today. Rain is expected to slowly wind down after sunset.

Apologies for the later than hoped for post. Eric and I have both been engaged in other obligations today.

So far today, some areas west of Houston have seen nearly 5 inches of rain, with a Harris County Flood Control gauge north of Pattison registering over 4.5 inches so far. If you’re traveling north or west of Downtown, just be advised there may be street flooding in spots.

A look at radar this evening shows torrential rain north of Kingwood, tracking north of Liberty. A second area of absolutely torrential rainfall is centered from just south of Spring through Jersey Village down to near Memorial City. Additional moderate to heavy rain continues to the west.

Over the next few hours, this rain is only going to creep east slowly. This almost certainly will not make it to the coast. So, yes, you’re shut out again down there. But across southern Montgomery, central Harris, and areas west of Harris County and northeast into Liberty County, periods of heavy rainfall will continue. The heaviest rain should begin to calm down after 7-8 PM, with showers continuing for a little while longer.

Bottom line: Heavy rain will continue for a little while longer, and street flooding is a good possibility. Additional showers and thunderstorms are possible tomorrow, but they don’t currently look to be as robust as today. Eric will update more on that for you in the morning.

It’s going to start hurting soon.

mst3kgifs:

We can dig it!

I can prove beyond all doubt that it takes a mess of help to stand alone:

Is that the Captain from Captain and Tennille on piano? Please ask a teenager because this is one for the teenagers.

The post Rory McIlroy Struggling To Fit Big Check Into Mobile Deposit Photo appeared first on The Onion.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
The only offputting part is when the young burst out later.

Today's News:

#RoninWarriors

I was rewatching Jason Scott's BBS Documentary, as one does.

See, I was making a fake BBS:

The only purpose of this was to test out text render/entry in Kawa Scheme for Lisp Game Jam. It also does a modem squeal on "connection", so I know audio works, & this brings back all the emotions.

Back in the '80s, early '90s, there were four (ish) kinds of BBS's.

1. Corpo spaces like GEnie, Delphi, CashWe$erve. Pay per hour (pretty cheap on Delphi), but only place you could get some corpo information & celebrity chats, for me with real cyberpunk writers like Walter Jon Williams & Bruce Sterling; for normies, with, I dunno, Debbie Gibson?

2. Straight-laced BBS's for specific topics, official forums for game companies, etc. Boring, incredibly oppressive rules. Get in, get info, get out. A few had doorgames, but you had to avoid smack-talk, which was no fun.

3. FidoNet. I was on a couple of these but didn't engage much. Watched the doc up thru the Fidonet chapter, & jiminy I'm glad I avoided that nest of vipers. Yes, continent-wide communication, but also the people in charge of that were the worst kind of petty unelected tyrants. Smaller networks like CitNet & WWIVnet were more forgiving, & once Internet access was gained, it was a free for all on email & USENET. But local culture was still better on non-networked boards.

4. Insane local h4xx0r boards where we "stole" (without hurting anyone much), broke laws (that needed breaking), & had a good time. If the Sysop was your friend and/or you uploaded cool stuff, you could do anything. If not, you could hit the road to the next one. I learned an enormous amount both technically & otherwise on these boards.

My own boards were type 4. The Dungeon was a STarNet (Atari 520ST, floppy) board, mostly messages & files for my TTRPG games. I remember I typed in complete character creation for RoleMaster 2E + my setting stuff, so I wouldn't have to do what's now called "session zero" at the table. But we did all sorts of weird stuff on there! Turns out "role-play" isn't just rolling dice at the table!

The Caves of Steel was Fnordadel (Citadel on Mega 2 ST), some TTRPG chat but mostly doorgames I wrote or modified, & file share either from local warez or that I'd download from the Internet; full-time Interent access was hard. Users could pay for higher minutes (game turns & download time), so mostly it paid for the lines & then some. I ruled with an iron but exasperated fist; half the users were very non-technical, & I had to write long HOWTOs; the other half were l33t h4xx0rz who literally were trying to get shell.

And what's weird is 40 years later, these are STILL your choices, but on social media.

1. Is still corpo hell-site silos, f-c-b--k, shitbird, taktak, & insta-not-matic, if you know what I mean. If you stay there, you deserve what you get. At this point, you have to know there's alternatives, but to willingly say "but Britney Spears is there! I have to follow BREETNEE!", just ignore all the hate crimes going on there.

2. Masto soc, bluhski, threads (is that still up?), & other wannabe-open but not really sites. Dull. RSS feeds without the virtue of open protocols. Sometimes a "starter site" to reach the better levels.

3. Accidental hell-sites. Reddit, tumblr, slashdot (still exists!), like nobody reasonable would go there, the social graph is horrific, but sometimes amazing things get spewed out of them. Don't engage, unless you like living in toxic codependence with people you hate. I was hopeful the Digg reboot would pull out of this & into Wild, but it got overrun by spam.

4. Wild Fediverse. Instances outside masto soc tend towards small, focused communities. radical hacker, lgbtqia+, furry, specific local areas, or weird subcultures. I stay on an instance based on a past attempt to pay for a private garden community. Just enough barrier to entry that we rarely have Nazi bars, & actively hunt down & block advertisers & propagandists. Fedi LITERALLY posts cheering images of Mario (not the videogame) & guillotines & burning warehouses. Like sticking a bunch of corpo skulls & neckties on pikes outside your post-apocalyptic wasteland town.

mst3kgifs:

Alright, where’s the idiot?

MONTREAL – Attendees at the 2026 Liberal Party Convention have reported finding conspicuously-left pamphlets for a “Shock Away The Gay” conversion therapy camp, apparently distributed by newly-Liberal MP Marilyn Gladu. Days after arch-conservative shocked all of Ottawa by crossing the floor, Liberal MPs and staffers say the pamphlets raise questions about her commitment to their […]

The post Floor-crosser Marilyn Gladu “accidentally” leaves conversion therapy pamphlets around Liberal Convention appeared first on The Beaverton.

Got a headache? GOOD.

Specialty breads. Think about it, won’t you? Thank you.

A Travis County judge agreed with plaintiffs that the some of the rules that took effect March 31 were causing irreparable harm.

The error, which the administration admitted first to The Associated Press, prompted health analysts to question how many of the Republican administration's sweeping anti-fraud efforts around the country were based on faulty findings.

WASHINGTON—In an effort to refute what she described as utterly vile attacks on her character, Melania Trump slammed baseless reports this week that linked her to the wrong wealthy pedophile. “Let me clear: While I have deep ties to a certain affluent individual and secret societies involved in pedophilia, I never once sexually harmed children anywhere near Jeffrey Epstein,” said the outraged first lady, adding that it was nothing more than groundless rumormongering to suggest that she had ever violated a child with that specific rich child molester. “This once again shows the media’s complete ignorance about the pedophile community. These are just errant speculations by so-called reporters who were never in the the room during the molestation of minors. I would ask them to do their research before linking me to any depraved sexual deviants except for my husband.” Trump went on to state that she remained focused on healing and justice for Epstein’s victims but no one else’s.

The post Melania Trump Slams Baseless Reports Linking Her To Wrong Wealthy Pedophile appeared first on The Onion.

The post Melania Trump: ‘Never Once In My 4,000 Years Have I Been To Epstein Island’ appeared first on The Onion.

A new study revealed that sharks in the Bahamas tested positive for cocaine, caffeine, painkillers, and other substances, with such contaminants increasingly found in tourism-driven marine environments. What do you think?

The post Cocaine, Caffeine Detected In Sharks appeared first on The Onion.