Cowboy Who?

For the first time in more than 50 years, the United States is sending astronauts back toward the moon. NASA launched Artemis II from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, sending a crew of four astronauts on a 10-day voyage. If all goes as planned, they will travel farther into space than any humans before them. Miles O'Brien was there for the launch and joined Amna Nawaz to discuss the mission.

In brief: Houston has a mixed bag of rain chances for the next few days, with Saturday still looking like the most bullish chance at rainfall. Despite warm, humid conditions in the near term, much cooler weather is expected to arrive on Sunday.

Quick notes

First off, I want to thank Eric for his kind post on Tuesday regarding my news of departure from Houston this summer. I am thankful for the opportunity to stay involved with Space City Weather as much as I have always been though.

Second, I left off one additional word of thanks in my post Monday, and that was to Reliant for being such an amazing supporter and sponsor for Space City Weather. Really, they just let us do our thing, hands off, and in return we periodically throw some useful messaging and information on what they provide to our audience. It feels like it’s been win-win, and I just want to make sure to share my appreciation and gratitude for their support.

Last, I want to congratulate everyone in the Houston area (and beyond) that has been involved in the Artemis mission. I mean…wow. The mission is of course nowhere near completed yet, but to be able to share that moment with my kids, a moment that those of us born after the early 70s have never experienced was truly special. And it’s not like we just watched the launch and then went about the evening. No, we fired back up NASA’s mission stream before bed to check on them. And we will be doing that many more times for this and future launches. I am hopeful this spurs new interest in space and support of science. Time and again it’s been proven that with human ingenuity and science, great achievements are possible. To the many folks that have brought us back to this point, thank you.

Onward…

Thursday and Friday

If you were lucky yesterday, you saw some rain. I literally looked outside, said “it’s raining,” and in the time it took me to comprehend that it was raining, it stopped. I’m not exaggerating whatsoever. “Blink and you might miss it” applied. Some folks did do okay though. The Sealy area saw over 0.75″ of rain in spots, including a 1.12″ from a Harris County Flood Control District gauge north of San Felipe. There was also a corridor of heavier rainfall north of Downtown with 1.25″ at a CenterPoint gauge along Tidwell Road and 1.16″ at 59 & 610.

Yesterday’s rainfall came from south to north moving showers as gusty winds and Gulf moisture piled in. Yesterday was also one of the most uncomfortable days of this spring with the humidity. Today’s rain chances will be slightly different. The setup features showers and storms that are approaching Aggieland from the north and west as a boundary nudges toward the region. It’s unlikely that those storms are going to make it into the Houston Metro in an organized fashion. But some disorganized showers are already occurring across the area and a few storms are possible later this morning in places like Navasota or Magnolia or The Woodlands.

Friday will probably just feature a smattering of some light to moderate showers and nothing worse. Good news if, you’ll be attending the Dash game! Highs will be in the low to mid-80s both today and tomorrow with lows stuck in the 70s.

Saturday

It appears that the first half of this weekend will feature our best chance for more widespread rain. That said, there continues to be some model disagreement on how resilient the coverage of that rain will be. In general, expect a solid line of showers and thunderstorms, including some that could be on the stronger side moving into the Brazos Valley early on Saturday afternoon. Those should begin to move into northwestern parts of the Houston Metro (Katy, Cypress, Magnolia north to Conroe) by late afternoon. The line of storms may peak as it enters the northwest fringe of the Houston area but then begin to fracture or fizzle during the evening hours as it moves south and east from there.

As of right now I would expect the best chances of a half inch or more of rainfall on Saturday to be north of I-10 and west of I-45, with the lowest chances south of I-10 and west of Highway 288. Rain totals may end up ranging from a quarter inch in the Wharton area to a half inch or so at the coast to 1.5 or 2 inches northwest of Houston. We’ll fine tune this again tomorrow.

Sunday

Clouds and light showers may linger on Sunday, especially south and east of Houston. It will also turn sharply cooler on Sunday. Expect highs near 70 degrees north and west to low or mid-70s south and east. An additional disturbance may pass to the south of our area Sunday evening providing a slight uptick in rain chances for the Matagorda Bay region into Galveston.

Next week

Cloud cover may linger into Monday morning, along with shower chances near the coast before things clear out a bit. This should lead to a decent Monday afternoon and Tuesday, with highs in the 70s. Morning lows will be in the 50s or even some 40s!

Rain chances may begin to slowly return after Tuesday with gradual warming.

#Rowen #RoninWarriors

Let's Make It with Norma the Crafts Lady ... #CowboyWho

My colleagues over in enterprise product support often get corporate customers who report that “Your latest update broke our system.” After studying the problem (which is usually quite laborious because they have to go back and forth with the customer to capture logs and dumps and traces), they eventually conclude that, actually, the system was broken even before the upgrade! Their prediction is that if the customer takes an affected system and rolls back the update, it will still be broken. And if they take a system that hasn’t yet taken the update, and reboot it, it will also be broken in the same way.

And the prediction is true.

What is going on is that three weeks ago, the company’s IT department updated some software or installed a new driver or deployed some new group policy that they saw in a TikTok video or something, and the new policy does some really sketchy things like changing security on registry keys or reconfiguring services or changing some undocumented configuration settings. The software updates or the new driver or the new group policy renders the machine unbootable, but they don’t notice it because they don’t reboot until Patch Tuesday.

And then Patch Tuesday comes around, the update installs, and the system reboots, and now the new software or the new driver or the sketchy configuration settings kick in to make their lives miserable.

It wasn’t the update that broke their system. It was the fact that the system rebooted.

The post Before you check if an update caused your problem, check that it wasn’t a problem before the update appeared first on The Old New Thing.

The book C++: The Programming Language¹ (Waylon Warren, editor) claims to present “the complex subject of C++ in the most comprehensible and easy to understand language.” A rather overdone book blurb, in my opinion.

Anyway, the book does have an attractive cover, or at least an inoffensive one.

But wait, let’s zoom in on the code shown on the computer monitor.

function updatePhotoDescription() {
    if (descriptions.length > (page * 9) + (currentImage.substring(⟦ blurry ⟧')) {
        document.getElementById("bigImageDesc").innerHTML + ⟦ blurry ⟧
    }
}

function updateAllImages() {
    var i = 1;
    while (i < 10) {
        var elementId = 'foto' + i;
        var elementIdBig = 'bigImage' + i;
        if (page * 9 + i - 1 < photos.length) {
            document.getElementById( elementId ).src = 'images/⟦ blurry ⟧
            document.getElementById( elementIdBig ).src = 'images/⟦ blurry ⟧
        } else {
            document.getElementById( elementId ).src = '';

This isn’t even C++. It’s JavaScript!

¹ Note that this is not the book The C++ Programming Language by the language inventor Bjarne Stroustrup.

The post The cover of <I>C++: The Programming Language</I> raises questions not answered by the cover appeared first on The Old New Thing.

Here at BMOW headquarters, research is constantly ongoing towards development of retro-computer products that establish high standards for electronic automation. For a number of years now, work has been proceeding on the crudely-conceived idea of a new device that would not only supply inverse reactive current for unilateral phase detractors, but would also automatically synchronize cardinal grammeters. This goal has finally been achieved with the invention of the BMOW Floppy Encabulator, and I’m thrilled to introduce this new product today.

Conceptual Overview of Encabulation

Interest in encabulation technology has been growing steadily, but the underlying concepts may be unfamiliar to some readers. Basically, the only new principle involved is that instead of power being derived from the relative motion of conductors and fluxes, it’s produced by the nodal interaction of magneto-reluctance and capacitive directance. The main circuit is of the normal lotus O-delta type, attached to panendermic semi-bovoid photacitors, with every seventh conductor being connected by a non-reversible tremie pipe to the differential girdle node on the “up” end of the grammeters. 

The operating point is maintained as near as possible to the H.F. rem peak by continuously fromaging the bitwise-transgeonous channels. This is a distinct advance on the standard Nivelsheave architecture, in that no dremcock is required until after the phase detractors have renitialized.

New Case Design Improves Stability

The device has a baseplate of pre-fabulated amulite, surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing in such a way that the two main spurving regulators are in a direct line with the pentametric fan. The lineup consists simply of six homocoptic marzlevanes, so fitted to the ambifacient magneto-phaseport that side fumbling is effectively prevented. 

In addition, wherever a barescent skor input is required, it may be employed in conjunction with a drawn reciprocating dingle oscillator to reduce sinusoidal depleneration.

Performance Analysis and Relative Periodicosity

The 41 manestically-spaced grouting circuits are arranged to feed into the semioctal data stream with a superposition of high S-value elliptarithmic sequences and 5% ruminative impulsatrons. Both of these signals have specific periodicosities given by 

        P = 2*5 Cn(6*7) 

where n is the diahelical eigenphase of retrograde dislocation and C is Cholmondeley’s fundamental grillage coefficient. Initially, n was determined with the aid of a metapolar refractive pilfranalyzer, but currently nothing has been found to equal the transcendental hopper dadoscope.

Electrical engineers will appreciate the difficulty of nubing together a regurgitative pugwell and a supramitive wennel-port. Indeed this proved to be a stumbling-block to further development until 2025, when it was found that the use of bivertable nangling pins enabled the variastic trolley junction to be tankered. 

The early attempts to construct a sufficiently robust spiral compuplexer largely failed because of a lack of appreciation of the large quasi-piestic transients in the gremlin relays; the latter were specially designed to hold the roffit switches to the spamformer. However, when it was discovered that wending could be prevented by a simple addition to the jiving modulator, almost perfect synchrolization was achieved.

Coming Soon

The BMOW Floppy Encabulator has now reached a high level of technical development, and has already been successfully used for operating milford trenions. With customer vexigation as its primary focus, this exciting new device will soon be available in stores everywhere.

This week on Lost Terminal: Lyosha makes some friends, Arctica hears a signal, and Mirror explains what he saw.
Lost Terminal will return next week!
📓 Free transcript: https://www.patreon.com/posts/154506902
🎵 Today's SIGNAL is: https://namtao.bandcamp.com/track/insider-threat
🦣 Mastodon https://namtao.com/@lostterminal
📝 Tumblr https://lostterminalpod.tumblr.com
🎙️ Recorded using a RODE NT-1 v5 USB in 32-bit float, edited with REAPER on Linux
🙏 CREDITS
Credits narrated by Lucy Stringer
❤️ Thank you so much to everyone who supports me, but especially my Patreon Producers:
Ada Phillips
Kit
Mike McCaffrey
Jade Felicity Bilkey
Stephen McCandless
Mike Schneider
Catoxis

The post Sam Altman: ‘If I Don’t End The World, Someone Far More Dangerous Will’ appeared first on The Onion.

“This and That” is an occasional series of paired observations. See past “This and That” posts here.

Today: Kinetic sculptures resembling suspended orange nets

*************

No matter how original, innovative or crazy your idea, someone else is also working on that idea. Furthermore, they are using notation very similar to yours. – Bruce J. MacLennan

The post This and That: Janet Echelman & Reuben Margolin appeared first on Glasstire.

A reader writes:

My manager, Athena, has pretty poor soft skills and often comes across as aggressive, interrogating, micromanaging, and dismissive. This happens both in person and over email and instant message. In writing, her spelling and grammar are also inconsistent and her phrasing is often curt or abrupt.

Lately, my coworkers and I have noticed a huge improvement in some of her emails and chat messages. Emails and messages that previously would have been curt and aggressive are now warmer and softer, with perfect spelling and grammar. It’s theoretically the exact change her direct reports have all been desperately wishing for, except that her in-person communication has not changed. Her tone is still angry, her approach is still aggressive, and feedback discussions still feel like an interrogation.

We’re pretty sure she’s using AI to rephrase her written communication, because she’s talked openly about using Claude to help with writing emails and project reports. It’s also not consistent — most of her text communication is the same as before, with maybe 30-40% being the new and improved version.

Even though it’s technically better to be getting at least some non-aggressive emails from our boss, it feels weird and disingenuous. On one hand, it’s good that she recognizes a need for improvement, and it’s a relief that some of her emails sound like they come from the pleasant, patient manager we wish we had. On the other hand, the contrast is so obvious that it feels like putting a false veneer over the deeper problem of what she’s really like. As one coworker said, “I get email from Athena or I get email from Claude.”

I know there’s not much we can do either way, but are my coworkers and I justified in feeling creeped out and vaguely insulted by the clearly AI-generated emails and texts we’ve been getting? Would love to hear your take on the ethics and optics of this sort of AI use.

I don’t know, this feels like at least a partial win to me. You used to get emails from negative, dismissive Athena but now you (at least sometimes) get emails from kinder, more socially appropriate Claude.

The problem is that negative, dismissive Athena is still manages you the rest of the time.

I’m actually really interested to know if people like Athena who use AI this way will over time start to learn how to adopt a warmer tone themselves. I have long been convinced that people who default to Athena-like communication genuinely don’t know how to envision what different language or a different tone would sound like. They think being warmer means making lots of disingenuous chit-chat (when that’s not at all what it needs to mean) or that they’d have to sugarcoat everything to the point of it becoming meaningless (also not what it means). And so over time, there might be significant learning advantages to her seeing what Claude does to her communications. Or not, who knows. But I’d be really interested to watch how that plays out.

You see the opposite of this, too: people who are very passive and indirect in their communications can’t picture a healthy, assertive version of their communications; instead, what they picture in their heads feels confrontational (often because the models they had for conflict growing up were very bad ones). It’s one reason why I try so much to give sample language here, because I think there’s real value in saying, no, it could just sound like this. I have many, many ethical issues with generative AI, but since it’s here, I am very interested to see if using it in this way over time can help people envision better language on their own at some point.

Anyway … is it disingenuous of Athena to be using AI to revise her emails? I don’t know that it is! I’d call it that if she were rolling her eyes while sending them and thinking, “These delicate flowers require such careful handling.” But if she’s running her language through AI and thinking, “Okay, that sounds good, I’ll send that,” I don’t think it is disingenuous.

But I can also understand why it feels that way to you, especially since the rest of her communications have remained the same old dismissive Athena.

Ultimately, your problem is that you have a manager who’s angry, interrogating, micromanaging, and dismissive, not that she sometimes uses a tool to improve her tone. Is there anything you can do about that, like having a discreet word with someone above her? If not, I’d try to embrace the times where she’s at least letting Claude help her — or, if that’s not possible, at least see the humor in the extreme contrast between her and her robot assistant.

The post my angry boss uses AI to write kinder emails … and it feels weird appeared first on Ask a Manager.

mst3kgifs:

It was, y’know, hard to resist doing, y’know, a little practical joke there and rushing the, uh… rushing the Halloween season and all… I mean, I didn’t expect such a huge reaction!

The post MLB Umpires Replaced By Lawn Chair Representing Strike Zone appeared first on The Onion.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is urging the White House to ditch traditional Easter eggs in favor of decorated potatoes at its annual egg-rolling event, arguing it would benefit both chickens and constituents’ wallets. What do you think?

The post PETA Urges White House To Use Potatoes For Easter Egg Roll appeared first on The Onion.

BURBANK, CA—Citing nearly a billion dollars of pent-up consumer demand for entertainment featuring an infant version of an already beloved character, a new report released Wednesday by Gower Street Analytics concluded that Disney’s decision not to call its upcoming Star Wars film The Baby Yoda Movie would cost the studio roughly $900 million. “By naming the film The Mandalorian And Grogu, Disney is leaving money on the table from consumers who have no idea who Grogu is but would immediately take out their phones and buy a ticket for any movie of any genre with ‘Baby Yoda’ in its title,” said report author Heather Flynn, who cited a poll in which 81% of potential moviegoers responded “Who the hell are they? Is this a Lord Of The Rings thing?” when presented with marketing materials for the upcoming film. “We found that while Disney will likely recoup its budget, a film titled either The Baby Yoda Movie or Baby Yoda: The Movie would have broken multiple box-office records both domestically and overseas. This catastrophic mistake could upend Disney’s market position if the studio doesn’t at least add the words ‘Baby Yoda’ to the poster somewhere.” At press time, Disney had changed the title of its 2027 Star Wars film from Starfighter to Chewbacca’s Big Day Out.

The post Report: Decision Not To Call Film ‘The Baby Yoda Movie’ To Cost Disney $900 Million appeared first on The Onion.

LOS ANGELES—Insisting that such queer stories were too often excluded from period dramas, Bridgerton showrunner Jess Brownell confirmed Wednesday that the show’s next season would feature two women falling in love, breaking up, and then forming a punk band. “Queer people have always existed, but until recently we didn’t highlight their stories on screen in a realistic manner,” said Brownell, who hinted that the upcoming season would follow characters Francesca and Michaela’s first sparks of attraction, their romantic fizzling, and the pair’s subsequent discovery that they really mesh better as creative collaborators. “Fans have been asking to see a love story between two women that results in the formation of an experimental Regency-era punk band called Femme Bash for a long time. In season five, we deliver. We worked hard to make sure the show’s first same-gender love story represents real sapphic relationships, with all the yearning, breakups, late-night band practices, and squabbles about whether 11 minutes is too long for a track that come with them.” So far, fans have reacted with overwhelming positivity to a teaser released by Netflix that shows Lady Francesca Stirling and Michaela Stirling respectfully disagreeing about when the drums should come in on their lead single.

The post New Season Of ‘Bridgerton’ To Feature 2 Women Falling In Love, Breaking Up, Forming Punk Band appeared first on The Onion.

The post Fucker Has Nerve To Be 22 Years Old appeared first on The Onion.

Texas says new rules banning sales of smokable hemp also apply to out-of-state companies. But cannabis lawyers question the rules and Austin police won't confiscate hemp if you have the packaging.

Today, we are unveiling our most ambitious update yet to The Texas Tribune’s schools explorer, with more information and added context to help Texans interpret information about our schools.

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

1. My coworker was upset that she wasn’t told to go home early after getting bad news

I have a coworker who recently found out she’d likely have to put her dog to sleep. She was crying at work, understandably so, and it was quite upsetting to see. I went through something similar about three years ago and losing a pet is devastating.

For the rest of the day after finding out, she was berating management for not offering her the opportunity to go home early. The thing is, it’s common knowledge at my job that if you need, or even just want, to go home early, management always says yes. All she had to do was ask, but she thought they should have offered without her asking. She’s an adult (34 years old) and I think she should just ask for what she needs. She’s not a new employee, has asked to leave early several times before, and she has never been told no. That leads me to believe it was not a case of her thinking she’d be denied leaving early if she asked. Do you think management was wrong for not offering to send her home early?

Not particularly. I mean, yes, if her manager knew what was going on or how upset she was, it would have been kind to say, “Would you rather go home early for the day?” But it’s not a huge deal that they didn’t offer it proactively. If she wanted to leave, she needed to say that herself.

Is she often irrational? If not, I’d write this off to her just being in an upsetting moment; grief sometimes grabs on to unrelated things.

2. My coworker asked if I have a “side piece”

Is it okay to ask a coworker if they have a “side piece”?

Background: I’ve only been working at this company for a short time. I keep my personal life almost totally separate from work. The coworker who asked me this, Lesley, doesn’t know me well at all. We’ve worked together a few days total. I was told secondhand that Lesley has a romantic interest in me, and I let the wingman know the feelings weren’t mutual.

We were working together one day when Lesley asked if I had a side piece. I was already annoyed and walked away without replying. Should I have said something?

I’m just curious if this is okay, but I don’t want to ask HR and make it a big deal. On one hand, it seems too personal of a question for work, and a quick google makes it seem like “side piece” is kind of offensive and refers to cheating. On the other hand, maybe it’s not really more offensive than asking about a boyfriend or girlfriend (I’m not trying to be judgmental).

No, that’s a rude and inappropriate question to ask someone in most circumstances — and particularly at work and particularly someone who you barely know. What the hell, Lesley?!

3. Should I let my boss know this mistake was my coworker’s, not mine?

I work on a team of two. Technically three, but our manager leads another team as well and leaves most of the day-to-day work to me and my colleague. I am the newest member of the team and joined less than a year ago. My colleague has been on the team for close to five years and has a more established relationship with our manager.

We are responsible for launching compliance courses to the company and we take turns creating and assigning the courses. The last course launched by my colleague was missing some of the people who should have been assigned to it. The stakeholder reached out to us when she noticed people missing on the course completion report. I happened to be the one to see the email first and did the research to find out what happened. After identifying and fixing the error, I replied-all to the email, which included my manager.

My manager then responded directly to me asking what happened. I confirmed it was a mistake on our end, as opposed to a system glitch. I included a screenshot to show the error, but it also displayed the name of the person who created the course (not me). My manager thanked me for doing the research but also mentioned, very seriously, that we can’t allow these mistakes to happen in the future. I agreed.

My colleague was not given the same reminder, as far as I’m aware. Coincidentally, she left the office later that same day to go on a week-long vacation. She did not see the email about the error before she left, so I can’t just wait for her to take ownership of the mistake.

My manager does not seem to be aware that the error did not originate with me, although it should have been clear from the screenshot. I am a firm believer in letting my work speak for itself and not bringing anyone else down to elevate my own reputation. However, I’m afraid this could affect my performance review if I don’t set the record straight. Should I speak up or will doing so make me look like a tattletale?

How big of a deal is the mistake? If it’s a big deal, then you can say something like, “I’m taking seriously what you said about what happened with the course assignment, and I’ll make sure Jane knows this happened when she’s back.” Otherwise, though, if it’s not a huge issue and is more the kind of thing that your boss is unlikely to be thinking about a week from now, just let it go (although you also could have said, “I’ll make sure Jane knows this happened when she’s back” in the moment; there’s just less need to go back and say it now).

4. Pregnancy when you’re remote and no one sees you

I work for a matrixed multinational company that has a strong WFH culture and very limited travel budgets. In my core role, I manage a global team and work with other global teams who I almost never meet in person. I am also affiliated with a local office where I am active in a secondary role and see colleagues in person whenever I choose to go into the office. I work much more closely with the colleagues in my primary role than with the colleagues in my secondary role.

I give birth in a couple months. I shared the news with my manager and direct reports at the three-month mark, but did not bring it up in most other work meetings unless someone directly asked me, “What’s new with you?” At this point, colleagues at the local office have put two plus two together because I have morphed into an anthropomorphic beachball, but virtual colleagues often remain unaware.

How you would approach pregnancy awareness in offices when so many people work from home and have cross-functional projects that are intense but kept on relatively short timelines, with limited-to-no interaction on a personal level? My primary motivation in having others know is to check/set their expectations on my current and future project capacity and energy levels. I have now added an email signature that shares my parental leave dates (waited until one month out from the start date) but I am curious if there are any other suggestions.

Just with a matter-of-fact email about your leave, sent to anyone who might be impacted from it. For example: “I want to let you know that I expect to be out from X to X on maternity leave. You can contact ___ in my absence.” That’s it!

5. How should my resume handle a year where I had nothing to do at work?

For about a year, I was on an “experimental” team that sounded right up my alley when I transferred into it … but then we had no direction and almost no work to do, and spent most of the time “training” on skills that we never used (which have been useless to me in my current role). In the whole time I was on that team, we had, generously, maybe 2-4 weeks’ worth of work.

And now I’m updating my resume for the first time in years, and I’m unsure what to do. Part of me wants to pretend I was still in my previous role that year, or in my current one, but I worry that adding in that extra year to either without anything to show for it would look bad, too. (I’m not worried about titles; mine was never changed from one role to the other.) So is that what I should do? Or should I leave it in my resume and just address it as it comes up in interviews?

If your title didn’t change, that is a complete non-issue! You don’t need to specify that you were on a different team for that year; since your title remained the same, you can just not mention it. It’s just your title and the dates you held that title, followed by bulleted accomplishments from your time with that title. They don’t need to know that none of those accomplishments happened during a particular 12 months in that overall period.

The post coworker was upset that she wasn’t told to go home early, colleague asked if I have a “side piece,” and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

S I L E N C I O

#Kento #RoninWarriors

Oh, so the Beast pilots in in his own Piper Cub.

Hey, it’s Mark—your therapist’s therapist. I’m sure you’re really looking forward to your appointment with Joan this week, and I wouldn’t normally do this… but I think you should probably start considering other providers.

I’m not telling you to abandon ship. Just, you know, maybe keep your options open. Because—and I hate to be the one to tell you this—Joan is not Doing Well.

I know she seems composed—the very picture of emotional stability and grace. But trust me, thirty seconds before your session, she was lying face down on the floor after DM’ing her high school boyfriend’s mom on Instagram to ask if he’d cheated on her in the eleventh grade.

Homegirl is going through it.

Look, most of us get into therapy because we want to help people. What we don’t put on the brochure is the subconscious motivation: If I learn enough about other people’s feelings, surely MINE will sort themselves out, right? It’s a bold strategy. We are still workshopping it. Joan is not helping.

I’d love to say that she’s just had a rough week.

It has not been just a rough week.

Buddy, she’s been dumped three times in the last four months—twice by amateur magicians. She got two hours of sleep last night and asked ChatGPT for “grounding techniques” when you got up to go to the bathroom. That Zoom session you had? She hit a new high score on Candy Crush. It was the highlight of her week, which should give you a sense of where the bar currently is.

To be clear: I’m sure Joan cares about you very much. She wants to help with everything you’ve got going on right now. But she’s also just a person. An earnest, sincerely empathetic, emotional dumpster fire of a person.

She has assured me multiple times that she’s fine. Not, like, fine fine. But like… she can locate her shoes most days, and you’ve got to celebrate the little things.

And honestly, who are we to judge? Who is doing well these days? I know you’re certainly not (she’s told me all about that stuff with your mom…which is another reason you might want to consider other options). Then again, do you have any idea how many professional guidelines I’m violating just by telling you this? You think I’m doing okay? Last week I asked my therapist point-blank if he was mad at me. Over email. Twice.

I’m starting to think that deciding to become a therapist should be viewed as a cry for help.

Anyway, no need to panic. Just consider this a friendly nudge to maybe have a backup therapist on file. Like a spare tire. Or an extra phone charger. Something you don’t need to think about until things get spicy.

That being said, she’s got a date with another magician this Friday, so sooner might be better than later…

WINNIPEG – Sources have confirmed that despite numerous reminders, texts, and assurances that she would be on time, local late friend Farra Vawn is, once again, late. “It’s no big deal, we knew she was going to be late,” said Vawn’s friend Brena Mcklin, as she and five other friends ordered their second round of […]

The post Report: Late friend late again appeared first on The Beaverton.

BetterHelp, ON – Dr. Shelley Roberts was shocked when her therapy client started talking about intimate details of her life when all she wanted was a light catch up.  “I just didn’t think it was that kind of hang,” said Dr. Roberts about the $300 appointment her client had made. “I feel recently I keep […]

The post Grieving woman trauma dumps to therapist who just wanted to catch up appeared first on The Beaverton.

A family looking for seashells in California discovered the partial remains of what has now been identified as a former banker who went missing in 1999, notifying authorities when they came across a long bone that contained surgical hardware. What do you think?

The post Family Looking For Seashells Finds Remains Of Missing Man appeared first on The Onion.

Someone is celebrating a birthday tomorrow—it's Gmail. The iconic email service debuted 22 years ago on April 1, forever altering what people expected from free email. But 22 years is a long time, and the username you chose when you finally got your hands on an invite in 2004 may not have stood the test of time. Starting today, Google will let US-based users ditch an old username without creating a new account.

Google started testing this option some months ago, both in the US and internationally. Today, the name change feature is rolling out widely in the US. You can check for the option on this account page to get started (you'll have to log in). Some of the accounts we've checked already have the option, but it could take a while for it to appear for everyone.

Over the years, many users have abandoned old Gmail addresses because the handle is too personal or their names have changed. Now, you don't have to abandon anything. When the option appears, you'll be able to change the username portion of your email (the part before @gmail) to anything you desire. However, Google says you can only change your address once every 12 months. The company hasn't explained why you're limited to one change per year, but it may be a measure to combat spam.

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