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The good news is that it's the default setting for all universes that come after this one.

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It's the day before the big freeze and this thing decides to bloom

Today's links

• Tech workers and gig workers need each other: Each disenshittifies the other.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• This day in history: 2004, 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023
• Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading

Tech workers and gig workers need each other (permalink)

We're living in the enshittocene, in which the forces of enshittification are turning everything from our cars to our streaming services to our dishwashers into thoroughly enshittifified piles of shit. Call it the Great Enshittening:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

How did we arrive at this juncture? Is it the end of the zero rate interest policy? Was it that the companies that formerly made useful things that we valued underwent a change in leadership that drove them to make things worse? Is Mercury in retrograde?

None of the above. There have been many junctures in which investors demanded higher returns from firms but were not able to force them to dramatically worsen their products. Moreover, the leaders now presiding over the rapid unscheduled disassembly of once-useful products are the same people who oversaw their golden age. As to Mercury? Well, I'm a Cancer, and as everyone knows, Cancers don't believe in astrology.

The Great Enshittening isn't precipitated by a change in how greedy and callous corporate leaders are. Rather, the change is in what those greedy, callous corporate leaders can get away with.

Capitalists hate capitalism. For a corporate executive, the fact that you have to make good things, please your customers, pay your workers, and beat the competition are all bugs, not features. The best business is one in which people simply pay you money without your having to do anything or worry that someday they'll stop. UBI for the investor class, in other words.

Douglas Rushkoff calls this "going meta." Don't sell things, provide a platform where people sell things. Don't provide a platform, invest in the platform. Don't invest in the platform, buy options on the platform. Don't buy options, buy derivatives of options.

A more precise analysis comes from economist Yanis Varoufakis, who calls this technofeudalism. Varoufakis draws our attention to the distinction between profits and rents. Profit is the income a capitalist receives from mobilizing workers to do something productive and then skimming off the surplus created by their labor.

By contrast, rent is income a feudalist derives from simply owning something that a capitalist or a worker needs in order to be productive. The entrepreneur who opens a coffee shop earns profits by creaming off the surplus value created by the baristas. The rentier who owns the building the coffee shop rents gets money simply for owning the building.

The coffee shop owner can never rest. At any moment, another coffee shop can open down the street and lure away their customers and their baristas. When that happens, the coffee shop goes bust and the owner is ruined. But not the landlord! After the coffee shop goes bust, the landlord's asset is more valuable – an empty storefront just down the street from the hottest coffee shop in town.

Capitalists hate capitalism. Faced with a choice of retaining their workers by paying them a fair wage and treating them well, or by saddling them with noncompetes that make it impossible to work for anyone else in the same field, and obligations to repay tens of thousands of dollars for "training" if they quit, bosses will take the latter every time. Go meta, baby.

Same for competition. Faced with the choice of competing to win the most customers with the best products, or merging so that customers have nowhere else to go, even the bitterest of rivals find it remarkably easy to intermarry until our corporations landscape is so interbred the dominant firms all have Habsburg jaws. Think: Facebook-Instagram. Disney-Fox. Microsoft-Activision:

https://locusmag.com/2021/07/cory-doctorow-tech-monopolies-and-the-insufficient-necessity-of-interoperability/

Enshittification has complex underlying dynamics and a reliable procession of stages, but the effect is quite straightforward: things are enshittified when they become worse for the people who use them and the suppliers who makes them, but nevertheless, the users keep using and the suppliers keep supplying.

There are four forces that stand in the way of enshittification, and as each of these forces grows weaker, enshittification proliferates.

The first and most important of these constraints is competition. Capitalists claim to love competition because it keeps firms sharp: they must constantly find ways to improve products and cut costs or be swept away by a superior alternative. There's a degree of truth here, but that's not the whole story.

For one thing, competition can "improve" things that we would rather see abolished. Critics of the GDPR, the EU's landmark privacy law, often point to the devastation that enforcing privacy law had on the European ad-tech industry, driving small firms out of business. But these firms were the most egregious privacy offenders, because they had the least to lose, lacking the dominant position of US-based Big Tech surveillance companies.

Having the least to lose, they were the most reckless with their privacy invasions – but they were also the least equipped to pay expensive enablers from giant corporate law firms to hold off European enforcers, and so they were obliterated. The resulting lack of competition is fine, as far as privacy goes: we don't want competition in the field of "who is most efficient at violating our human rights":

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/04/fighting-floc-and-fighting-monopoly-are-fully-compatible

But there's another benefit to competition: disorganization. A sector with hundreds of medium-sized, competing companies is a squabbling mob, incapable of agreeing on the site for an annual meeting. An industry dominated by a handful of firms is a cartel, handily capable of presenting a unified front to policy makers, and their commercial coziness provides them with vast war-chests they can use to suborn governments and capture their regulators:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

Competition is the first constraint. When there's competition, corporate managers fear that you will respond to enshittification by defecting to a rival, costing them money. They don't care about your satisfaction, but they do care about your money, and competition hitches their ability to satisfy you to their ability to get paid by you.

Competition has been circling the drain for 40 years, as the "consumer welfare" theory of antitrust, hatched by Reagan's court sorcerers at the University of Chicago School of Economics, took hold. This theory insists that monopolies are evidence of "efficiency" – if everyone shops at one store, that's evidence that it's the best store, not evidence that they're cheating.

For 40 years, we've allowed companies to violate antitrust law by merging with major competitors, acquiring fledgling rivals, and using investor cash to sell below cost so that no one else can enter the market. This has produced the inbred industrial hulks of today, with five or fewer firms dominating everything from eyeglasses to banking, sea freight to professional wrestling:

https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/learn/monopoly-by-the-numbers

The endless and continuous weakening of competition has emboldened corporate enshittifiers, who operate on the logic of Lily Tomlin in her role as an AT&T spokeswoman: "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company":

https://vimeo.com/355556831

But the drawdown of competition has also enabled regulatory capture, by converting cutthroat adversaries to kissing cousins. These companies have convinced their regulators not to enforce privacy, consumer protection or labor laws, provided that the gross violations of these laws are accomplished via apps.

This is where tech exceptionalism is warranted: while the bosses that run these companies aren't any nobler – or more wicked – than the Robber Barons of yore, they are equipped with a digital back-end for their businesses that let them change the rules of the game from moment to moment.

Think of labor law: as Veena Dubal writes, gig-work companies practice algorithmic wage discrimination, turning your paycheck into a slot machine that pays out more when you are more selective about which jobs you take, and which then docks your pay by tiny increments as you become less discriminating about answering the app's call:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

This is a plain violation of labor law, but the fiction that gig workers are contractors, combined with the opacity and speed of the wage discrimination back-end, lets the companies get away with it.

But the monsters who hatched this scam are no worse than their forebears, nor are they any smarter. Any black-hearted coal-boss memorialized in a Tennessee Ernie Ford song would have gladly practiced algorithmic wage discrimination – but there just weren't enough green-eyeshade accountants in the back office to change the payout from second to second.

I call this "twiddling" – turning the knobs on the back end to continuously adjust the business logic that the firm operates on:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

Twiddling is everywhere, and it is only possible because "it's not a crime if we use an app" has been accepted by (captured) regulators. Think of Amazon's "pricing paradox," where deceptive search results – which Amazon makes $38b/year on – allow the company to offer lower prices, but charge higher ones:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

The first constraint on enshittification is competition – the fear that you'll lose money when a disgusted customer take their business elsewhere. The second constraint is regulation – the fear that a regulator's punishment will eat up all the expected gains from an enshittificatory move, or even exceed those gains, leading to a net loss.

But the less competition there is in a sector, the easier it is for the remaining companies to capture their regulators. Say goodbye to that second constraint.

But there's another constraint – another one that's unique to technology, and genuinely exceptional. That's self-help. Digital technology is infinitely flexible, which is why managers can twiddle the business logic and change the rules on a dime.

But it's a double-edged sword. Users can twiddle back. The universal nature of digital products means it's always technically possible to disenshittify the enshittified products in your world. Mercedes wants to charge you rent on your accelerator pedal via a monthly subscription? Just mod the car by toggling the "subscription paid" bit and get the accelerator for free:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

HP tricks you into installing a "security update" that sneakily disables your printer's ability to recognize and use third-party ink? Just roll back the operating system and you won't be forced to spend $10,000/gallon to print out your boarding passes and shopping lists:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

Self-help – AKA "adversarial interoperability" – isn't just a way to override the greedy choices of corporate sadists. It's a way to hold those sadists in check. It's a constraint.

Imagine a boardroom where someone says, "I calculate that if we make our ads 25% more invasive and obnoxious, we can eke out 2% more in ad-revenue." If you think of a business as a transhuman colony organism that exists to maximize shareholder value, this is a no-brainer.

But now consider the rejoinder: "If we make our ads 25% more obnoxious, then 50% of our users will be motivated to type, 'how do I block ads?' into a search engine. When that happens, we don't merely lose out on the expected 2% of additional revenue – our income from those users falls to zero, forever."

Self-help is the third constraint on enshittification. But when competition fails, and regulatory capture ensues, companies don't just gain the ability to flout the law – they get to wield the law, too.

Tech firms have cultivated a thicket of laws, rules and regulations that make self-help measures very illegal. This thicket is better known as "IP," a term that is best understood as meaning "any policy that lets me control the conduct of my competitors, my customers and my critics":

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

To put an ad-blocker in an app, you have to reverse-engineer it. To do that, you'll have to decrypt and decompile it. That step is a felony under Section 1201 of the DMCA, carrying a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine. Beyond that, ad-blocking an app would give rise to liability under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (a law inspired by the movie Wargames!), under "tortious interference" claims, under trademark, copyright and patent.

More than 50% of web users have installed an ad-blocker:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

But zero percent of app users have installed an ad-blocker, because they don't exist, because you'd go to prison if you made one. An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to add an ad-blocker to it.

This is why self-help, the third constraint, no longer applies. When a corporate sadist says, "let's make ads 25% more obnoxious to get 2% more revenue," no one says, "if we do that, our users will all install blockers." Instead, the response is, "let's make ads 100% more obnoxious and get an 8% revenue boost!"

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/16/23763227/uber-video-advertising-ads-taxi-food-delivery-apps

Which brings me to the final constraint: workers.

Tech workers have historically enjoyed enormous bargaining power, thanks to a dire shortage of qualified personnel. While this allowed tech workers to command high salaries and cushy benefits, it also led many workers to conceive of themselves as entrepreneurs-in-waiting and not workers at all.

This made tech workers very exploitable: their bosses could sell them on the idea that they were doing something heroic, which warranted "extremely hardcore" expectations – working 16 hour days, sleeping under your desk, sacrificing your health, your family and your personal life to meet deadlines and ship products ("Real artists ship" – S. Jobs).

But the flip side of this appeal to heroism is that it only worked to the extent that it convinced workers to genuinely care about the things they made. When you miss your mother's funeral and pass on having kids in order to meet deadline and ship a product, the prospect of making that product worse is unthinkable.

Confronted by the moral injury of enshittifying a product you care about, and harming the users you see yourself as representing, many tech workers balked at the prospect. Because tech workers were scarce – and because there were plenty of employment prospects for workers who quit – they could actually prevent their bosses from making their products worse:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

But those days are behind us, too. Mass tech worker layoffs have gutted tech workers' confidence. When Google lays off 12,000 tech workers just months after a stock buyback that would have paid their wages for the next 27 years, they deliver two benefits to their shareholders. It's not just the short-term gains from the financial engineering – there's the long-term gain of gutting worker power and stripping away the final impediment to enshittification:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/10/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers/

No matter how strong an individual tech worker's bargaining power was, it was always brittle. Long before googlers were being laid off in five-digit cohorts, they were working in an environment where harassment and predation were just part of the job. The 20,000+ googlers who walked off the job in 2018 were an important step towards replacing the system where each tech worker's power was limited to their moment-to-moment importance to their bosses' plans with a new system based on a collective identity.

Only through collective action and solidarity – unions – could tech workers hope to truly resist all the moral injuries of their bosses enshittification imperatives. No surprise then, that tech unions are on the rise:

https://abookapart.com/products/you-deserve-a-tech-union

But what is a little surprising – and very heartening! – is what happens when techies start to self-identify as workers: they come to understand that they share common cause with the other workers at the bottom of the tech stack. Think of Amazon's tech workers walking out in solidarity with Amazon's warehouse workers:

https://gizmodo.com/tech-workers-speak-out-in-support-of-amazon-warehouse-s-1842839301

Superficially, the bottom rank of the tech industry is as different from the tech workers at the top as you can imagine. Tech workers are formally employed, with stock options, health care and theme-park "campuses" with gyms and gourmet cafeterias.

The gig workers who pack, drive, deliver and support tech products aren't even employees – they're misclassified as contractors. They don't get free massages – they get AI bosses that monitor their eyeballs and dock their paychecks for peeing:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/11/robots-stole-my-jerb/#computer-says-no

Gig workers desperately need unions, but they also derive extraordinary benefits from self-help measures. When an app is your boss, another app can make all the difference to your working conditions. Take Para, an app that fights algorithmic wage discrimination by allowing gig workers to collectively and automatically refuse any job where the pay is below a certain threshold, forcing the algorithm to pay everyone more:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/tech-rights-are-workers-rights-doordash-edition

Para is fighting a grim legal and technical battle against companies like Doordash, whose margins depend on atomized workers with atomized apps, prohibited from countertwiddling. This is a surprisingly effective tactic: in Indonesia, gig workers co-ops create suites of "tuyul" apps that modify the behavior of their bosses' apps', unilaterally securing concessions that they lack the bargaining power to secure by other means:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#gojek

Tuyul apps and other forms of countertwiddling aren't a substitute for unionization, they're an adjunct to it. The union negotiator whose rank-and-file are able to modify the apps that monitor and control their working conditions operates from a position of strength. "Please give my members more bathroom breaks" is a lot weaker than, "If you want my members to stop hacking their apps so they can piss when they need to, you're going to have to give them official bathroom breaks."

This is where solidarity between the high-paid tech workers at the keyboard and low-paid tech workers on the delivery bikes comes in. Together, they can wring more concessions from their bosses, sure. But unionized coders can give their unionized delivery riders the apps they need to countertwiddle and increase the bargaining leverage of all the workers in the union. And when unionized coders' bosses force them to put enshittifying anti-features in the apps they care about, unionized front-line workers can run counter-apps that disenshittify them.

Other sectors are already working through versions of this. The ouster of the old corrupt leadership of the Teamsters ushered in a new, radical era that produced historic wage and working condition gains for drivers and the abolition of the two-tier contract system that eventually destroys any union that tries it.

That change in leadership was possible because the Teamsters organized the Harvard Grad Students, and those Harvard kids memorized the union rulebook. At the historic conference where the old guard was abolished, it was teamwork between the union rank-and-file and the rules-lawyers from Harvard that turned the proceedings around:

https://theintercept.com/2023/04/07/deconstructed-union-dhl-teamsters-uaw/

We are deep into the enshittocene and it is terribly demoralizing. But by understanding the constraints that kept enshittification at bay, we can rebuild them, and shore them up. Labor organizing among all kinds of tech workers isn't just a way to get a better deal for those workers – it's key to the disenshittification of all our lives.

Hey look at this (permalink)

• Maintenance: Of Everything https://books.worksinprogress.co

• New Podcast "Necessary Tomorrows" Offers Hopeful Visions of the Future https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-podcast-necessary-tomorrows-offers-hopeful-visions-of-the-future-302028975.html (h/t Chris Brown)

• The Bill Gates Problem https://www.c-span.org/video/?531845-1/the-bill-gates-problem

This day in history (permalink)

#20yrsago Kodak gives up on film cameras https://web.archive.org/web/20040401104936/http://www.msnbc.msn.com/Default.aspx?id=3948032&p1=0

#20yrsago Tim O’Reilly’s 2004 wishlist https://web.archive.org/web/20040119133107/http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/4117

#20yrsago Gene Wolfe interviewed by Neil Gaiman https://web.archive.org/web/20040407120711/http://www.bordersstores.com/features/feature.jsp?file=gaimanwolfe

#20yrsago S-Train blogger confronts a troll in meatspace https://web.archive.org/web/20040211084754/http://s-train.kaphmedia.net/archives/000318.php

#15yrsago Complete fan-reading of my essay collection “Content” https://archive.org/details/CoryDoctorow-Content_268

#15yrsago Bush official: we tortured Gitmo detainee https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/13/AR2009011303372_pf.html

#15yrsago Thomas Edison’s crappy, price-fixing EULA https://web.archive.org/web/20090125121517/http://www.alchemysite.com/blog/2009/01/eula-end-user-license-agreement-edison.html

#10yrsago Why fiction works https://locusmag.com/2014/01/cory-doctorow-cheap-writing-tricks/

#10yrsago Holding mirrors up to police lines at #Euromaidan https://web.archive.org/web/20140113120206/http://www.kyivpost.com/multimedia/photo/mirror-action-in-memory-of-nov-30-334467.html

#5yrsago China has a very Orwellian reason for banning typing “1984” on social media, while allowing people to read Nineteen Eighty-Four https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/why-1984-and-animal-farm-arent-banned-china/580156/

#5yrsago Hannu Rajaniemi’s Summerland: a midcentury spy thriller, with the afterlife https://memex.craphound.com/2019/01/13/hannu-rajaniemis-summerland-a-midcentury-spy-thriller-with-the-afterlife/

#5yrsago Not customers: doctors have patients, libraries have patrons, lawyers have clients and teachers have students https://memex.craphound.com/2019/01/13/not-customers-doctors-have-patients-libraries-have-patrons-lawyers-have-clients-and-teachers-have-students/

#5yrsago Trump chose a thin-skinned, blowhard ignoramus as ambassador to Germany, and now no one will talk to him except Nazis https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/u-s-ambassador-richard-grenell-is-isolated-in-berlin-a-1247610.html

#5yrsago An embroidered computer whose circuits are ornate, golden thread https://ireneposch.net/the-embroidered-computer/

#1yrago Booklist on "Red Team Blues" https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/13/marty-hench/#red-team-blues

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

• Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS JAN 2025

• The Bezzle, a Martin Hench noir thriller novel about the prison-tech industry. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2024

• Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM

• Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM

Latest podcast: The Internet’s Original Sin https://craphound.com/news/2023/12/17/the-internets-original-sin/)

Upcoming appearances:

• Books & Books (Coral Gables, Florida), Jan 22
  https://www.booksandbooks.com/event/in-person-an-evening-with-cory-doctorow/

• Marshall McLuhan Lecture 2024 (Berlin), Jan 29
  https://transmediale.de/en/2024/event/mcluhan-2024

• The Lost Cause at Otherland (Berlin), Jan 30
  https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/autor-innenabend-mit-cory-doctorow.html

Recent appearances:

• The Lost Cause (The Writer's Voice)
  https://www.writersvoice.net/2024/01/cory-doctorow-the-lost-cause/

• What the Future will Bring (Homeless Romantic)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_Vq8qW2A8I

• Talking "The Lost Cause" with Warren Mosler (MMT Podcast)
  https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-182-cory-95211955

Latest books:

• "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). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)

• "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. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.

• "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

• "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

• "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

• "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

• "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

Upcoming books:

• The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books, February 2024

• Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025

• Unauthorized Bread: a graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

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

s-n-arly:

As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse.  It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms 

As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable.  As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.

Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.

⁂

Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free

One-sentence summary

An active stretch of weather continues with a major storm developing today and tomorrow, followed by a serious blast of Arctic air across much of the country next week and the potential for an East Coast storm.

The next storm up: More flooding, more Midwest snow, more strong wind

The next storm in our parade is gathering in the Rockies today. This one will track south into the Texas Panhandle and then hook back northeast across the mid-Mississippi Valley into Michigan, Ontario and Quebec into the weekend. At its peak, this storm will likely test some January low pressure records in the Midwest, including in places that just set them earlier this week.

So, yes, it’s active.

There will be some tweaks compared to the storm earlier this week, but in general, the story is similar in some ways. Let’s run through the impacts.

Heavy rain & flooding: The Northeast and parts of the Mid-Atlantic will again be ground zero for flooding risks from this storm. Another inch and change of rain is expected here into portions of Atlantic Canada, on top of saturated ground and ongoing flooding in spots. While these totals are lower than the previous storm this week, the ground is more saturated now than it was then, so less rain can cause issues.

The Weather Prediction Center has the area outlined for the upper end of a slight risk (level 2 of 4) for excessive rainfall, close to a moderate risk.

Flood Watches are already posted in parts of southern New England.

Severe weather: Another round of severe storms is likely from northeast Texas into the Lower Mississippi Valley later today, and an enhanced (level 3/5) risk is in place for parts of Arkansas and extreme northeast Texas, and northwest Louisiana.

That will expand into the Southeast on Friday, where another enhanced risk is already established from Alabama through the Carolinas. This map may be updated after publication.

Tornadoes and damaging winds will be a possibility in these areas on Friday.

Heavy snow: The storm earlier this week brought heavy snow in a corridor from Kansas through Nebraska, northern Missouri, Iowa, northwest Illinois and southern Wisconsin into Michigan. Tomorrow’s storm will bring the heaviest snow from Nebraska into Iowa, Wisconsin, northern Illinois (including Chicago), and Michigan into Ontario.

An additional area of heavy snow will be possible in Upstate New York and interior New England, particularly in the mountains. That will extend into Canada with heavy snow across Quebec (outside of Montreal) and in Newfoundland and Labrador.

More travel headaches are expected in those areas.

Meanwhile, as that storm exits east, another storm, the one that will really help drag in the Arctic blast for early next week, will dump snow in the Western U.S.

We’ve been in a bit of a snow drought nationally this winter, so this is helping to make up some ground.

Strong winds: In addition to the heavy rain and flooding, heavy snow, and severe weather, widespread strong winds will once again tax trees and power lines across the country. A huge chunk of the nation will see 35 to 50 mph wind gusts in the coming days, with the worst coming in parts of the Rockies, Texas, Appalachia, the Great Lakes, and on the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic coasts into Atlantic Canada.

This has been a pretty remarkable week for wind across the Lower 48. I know we have a subset of readership in portions of Atlantic Canada, so I just want to note the wind gusts there as well. They may not be as strong as explicitly shown on the map below (especially east of Nova Scotia), but I just want to highlight that the wind doesn’t magically stop in Maine.

Really an impressive stretch lately.

Arctic blast next week impacts much of the country

As alluded to above, the cold coming next week looks impressive. Nationally, it may be the coldest outbreak since just before Christmas in 2022. Numerous locations are already forecast to reach record lows on Monday and Tuesday next week.

This won’t be as long lasting or potent as what was seen in February 2021 in Texas, but it marks yet another in a series of winters with some sort of cold air shenanigans in that part of the world. The core of the coldest air relative to normal will likely pass over the northern Rockies Sunday and Monday, the central Plains and Mid-Continent Monday and Tuesday, and into the Ohio Valley and Southeast on Tuesday and Wednesday.

For folks in Texas, this will be a prepare for impacts type of cold: Protect plants, pipes, pets, and people. The shorter duration of this event compared to February 2021 should hopefully take some of the more catastrophic problems off the table (like grid failure), but cold of this magnitude in this part of the world can always spring surprises on folks. So please take it seriously and prepare accordingly.

A second push of cold may arrive again next weekend, but that’s TBD at this point.

East Coast storm chances next week?

The rumor mill is cranking on the potential for an East Coast winter storm next week. As the Arctic air slides east, a secondary storm is expected to develop in the Southeast and track off the East Coast. Exactly where it tracks will determine what, if anything is seen in parts of the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, or Northeast. We’re still a good 5 to 6 days or so away from this, so there’s plenty of uncertainty.

Let’s look quickly at the Euro ensemble “spread” in options for this storm. The IQR values for sea-level pressure shown on the map below from Tomer Burg are high, which tells us that there is considerable spread within model guidance for potential outcomes. The European ensemble runs the European model 51 different times with different tweaks each time. When you see this sort of variability within the ensemble, it lends to lower confidence in the forecast track of the storm. Obviously that will have huge implications on what sort of precip falls and where.

So it’s much too soon to say with any confidence who will see snow and how much next week. Suffice to say, however, there is a storm system likely that will cause impacts on the East Coast, continuing our active weather pattern. Milder weather may be on the horizon for later in January.

As promised, we’re providing a p.m update on the cold weather we’re anticipating that will arrive in Houston, beginning Sunday. We’ll be doing twice-a-day updates through the weekend to keep you abreast of what’s happening—this is a fairly dynamic situation, and the forecast is changing as a result.

This afternoon we want to try and provide some clarity on what we think are the three biggest issues: timing of the cold weather onset, chances for wintry precipitation (i.e. freezing rain), and how cold it is going to get early next week. What about electricity? At this time we don’t think there will be widespread power outages with this cold outbreak. While that it is possible, it is beyond our ability to forecast. But given that the Texas power grid held up during the 2022 freeze, there is no credible reason to think it will buckle with this cold weather outbreak.

When will the front arrive

The majority of model data now supports a faster arrival, with the cold front initially reaching the Houston area on Sunday morning. If this ultimately happens, it has implications for the Houston marathon, both the runners and wonderful volunteers. This forecast is still uncertain, but it seems likely that race time temperatures will be in the upper 30s to low 40s. Right now I’d lean toward 30s.

Fortunately, the passage of this front is likely to be dry. There also is no indication, at present, of strong northerly winds. So while there may be gusts on the order of 15 to 20 mph, I don’t see much evidence of crazy strong winds we sometimes get with “blue norther” fronts. So expect partly sunny and cold on Sunday, with daytime temperatures perhaps in the upper 30s. We should have more confidence in these temperatures in a day or so. But confidence is high that it’s going to be cold.

The very coldest air is going to be delayed, so my expectation for Sunday night is that much of the region will probably experience, at most, a light freeze. This really should not raise too much of a concern. Daytime temperatures on Monday should be above freezing for most of the region.

Chances for wintry precipitation

Sunday looks dry, as does Sunday night. After that? Well, quite frankly it’s too early to say too much. There appears to be a chance of freezing rain during the afternoon or evening hours on Monday. My best guess is, at this point, that the freezing stuff stays north of the metro area. It could be an issue for areas along and north of Texas State Highway 105. It could surprise us and come further south.

So I would say this: We need to consider the possibility of icy roads on Monday evening and during the overnight hours into Tuesday morning. I think it’s a fairly low concern within the Houston metro area, that is for The Woodlands and points south. But with that said, it’s far too early to issue any kind of guarantees. We’ll be watching this closely in the coming days, of course.

How cold things will get

Our real concern for cold will come starting Monday night. Temperatures will bottom out in the morning hours on Tuesday and Wednesday. The forecast remains fuzzy because there are a lot of factors that will go into how low things get, from clouds to winds, to the amount of Arctic air that spills into Texas. But a good guess is that both nights will see lows in the upper teens to low-20s north of Interstate 10, and low-20s south of Interstate 10. The coast may avoid a hard freeze.

Daytime temperatures on Tuesday probably will briefly get above freezing for most of the metro area, but my confidence in that is fairly low. Houston should then warm comfortably above freezing on Wednesday.

We’ll have a comprehensive update for you on Friday morning.

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

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

1. I was asked to take down a family photo

I was called into a one on one with my manager today. Someone anonymous has complained about a photo of my son I have at my desk and has asked management to have me take it down. The photo is a very cute black and white photo of my son at one year old. He has no clothes on but there is no butt or genitalia showing. To me, it’s an adorable photo of my son as a baby. Some anonymous person sees it as pornography.

I agreed to take it down, but I increasingly feel angry and attacked. I am the only gay man in our department, and I feel that a woman having a photo of her naked baby with no genitalia showing would not be asked to take the photo down because it was offensive to someone. I feel like I want to defend myself and not just meekly censor my own family photos out of fear for my job. I want to make a statement to my co-workers of some kind to defend myself from accusations of inappropriate photos of my child. I am a very popular and productive newish hire (2+ years). Do I have any recourse?

Ugh, I’m sorry. I don’t think you do have any practical recourse, largely because it’s not outrageous for your company’s stance to be, essentially, “We don’t want to get into debates about what photos of unclothed subjects are and aren’t okay, so now that there’s been a complaint we’re just asking people not to display them at all.” (Which is what you’re likely to hear if you do push back.)

But I hope you will replace the photo with at least three more super cute photos.

2. My coworker is working a second job during her hours for us — should I send HR proof?

My coworker has been using company time by lying about her activities and going to a second job while being paid by our employer for 1 hour a day a couple times a week. I recently verified this as she left her desk calendar (paid for by our employer) on her desk in plain view. I did report this to HR. Is it unethical or a violation of privacy to take a picture of the calendar with her other work schedule to show that this is indeed happening? Thus sending only to HR as proof and no one else?

I don’t think it’s unethical per se — as long as it’s being left in plain view — but you will probably look overly invested. The exception to that is if her absences are affecting you (because you need to cover her work while she’s gone, for example). However, if HR wants to investigate this, they won’t need a photo of her calendar to do it; they could simply pay attention to when she’s actually at work and not at work.

Related:
how can managers spot people who are working two full-time jobs at once?

3. Can I intervene on a coworker’s horrible, hacking cough?

I work in a large org as an EA. Due to the way the building is structured, I share an office with around six other people but am not on their team. My boss has their own office next door to ours so I can greet their visitors, etc.

One of the office colleagues, Jim, is a cigarette smoker and has a very unhealthy, phlegmy-sounding cough that goes off multiple times a day, at length. This was the case before Covid lockdown and after we returned to the office. I find the noise incredibly intrusive and distracting, and my boss has picked up on it herself and also picked up on my discomfort with it.

I’m autistic so find noise intrusion very difficult; my boss is supportive and I can wear noise-cancelling headphones in the office when I’m getting on with work (although I can still hear the coughing!). But I recently appointed an assistant who sits behind me so I can’t hunker down under headphones anymore as I want to be present for them and open to being asked queries without them having to get my attention or feel like they’re being ignored.

With my headphones off again, I’m finding the coughing absolutely unbearable and have occasions when I have to exit the office because I can’t keep listening to it. I’m worried I’m not hiding my reaction to it well and that I’m going to snap at Jim in the end or cause an ongoing issue with him.

Do I have any scope to speak to his manager about how difficult it is being around the noise and whether Jim is looking after his health? I’m aware it’s absolutely not my place to intervene and I do acknowledge that Jim is the one really going through it, I’m just sitting by and having to listen, but it’s proving to be a real struggle at this point trying to ignore it, and both the cough and my patience are getting a lot worse.

You really don’t, I’m sorry. You could have standing to ask about being moved if that’s practical, and if that’s not an option you have standing to talk to your boss about the problems the noise is posing for you and whether there might be other solutions. But you don’t really have standing to complain to Jim’s manager about the cough (there’s likely nothing that can be done about it, at least not something that an employer could direct), and you definitely don’t have standing to ask whether Jim is looking after his health.

However, if the headphones were making it more bearable, can you return to using those? You could explain to your assistant that they help you focus and encourage her to IM you or use some other system for alerting you when she needs you. Headphones don’t have to be an inherent block to being interrupted if you stress that you want the interruptions and agree on a system for doing it.

4. Can I ask my boss for feedback on my speaking in meetings?

I recently joined a nonprofit organization in a comms role fresh out of college. My manager often wants me to be a part of some cross-department meetings and contribute my thoughts. The problem is that I’m not a confident speaker and I struggle with phrasing ideas especially since English is not my first language and I’m new to the corporate world. Would it be a bad idea to ask my manager for feedback on my performance in meetings?

Not a bad idea at all! It’s great when employees ask for feedback; managers should give it anyway, but you’ll usually get more of it if you make it clear you’re eager for it, and it’s especially helpful to flag it when there’s a specific area you want to grow in. Say to your manager exactly what you said here!

NEW YORK—After their compensation packages emerged from the difficult commercial landscape unscathed, top executives at Symbios Enterprises told reporters Friday that economic headwinds had narrowly avoided C-suite budgets for the 15th straight quarter. “It was touch-and-go there for a bit with all the macro changes…

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TEMPE, AZ—Taking a moment to acknowledge their fallen comrade, a group of Arizona State University students announced Friday that the drunk guy who just tumbled off the balcony would have wanted the rest of his friends to keep partying. “If Caleb could be here now, he would definitely tell us to carry on with the good…

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NEW YORK—In an innovative expansion of its popular puzzle section, The New York Times Games department announced a new feature Thursday that sends reporters to subscribers’ homes to play a round of Scrabble. “Our readers can’t get enough of engaging games like Wordle and Connections, and now a $50 annual Games…

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Wow Texas Library Association ... not a good look (hat tip Neil Gaiman): https://drchucktingle.tumblr.com/post/739065274126499840/the-texas-library-association-tells-chuck-tingle

madeleinewitt:

my sincerest wish for Cathy

16/30

TAPETHOK, NEPAL—Beaming with delight as he was carried down the south face of the Kangchenjunga mountain in a torrent of snow, ice, and rocks, alpinist Herman Stelling reportedly noted Thursday that the first few seconds of being swept up in a cataclysmic avalanche was actually pretty fun. “Weeeeeeeee! Yay!” said the…

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Pat McAfee announced that Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers will no longer appear as a weekly guest on his ESPN talk show following statements by Rodgers that late-night host Jimmy Kimmel is linked to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which caused Kimmel to threaten to sue. What do you think?

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SOUTH BEND, IN—Concluding from the name of the product that the wool had long been pulled over their eyes, astute consumers reported Thursday that the appearance of new Cheez-It Extra Cheesy crackers served as a tacit acknowledgment that the manufacturer could have been making the snack cheesier all along. “If this…

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This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

For some reason, work makes people have weirdly strong reactions to relatively mundane events — examples here over the years include an office-wide meltdown when new phones were installed with fewer speed dial buttons, or the person who threw a massive tantrum when they were told they could no longer wear pajamas to work.

Maybe you’ve had your own inappropriately intense reaction to something at work that you later realized didn’t quite warrant your response.

Let’s discuss! In the comment section, please share your stories of weirdly dramatic reactions you’ve seen people have to small events at work — the more disproportionate, the better. If someone lost their mind when they were asked to clean up their office or flipped out when bagel Tuesdays ended, we want to hear about it.

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

Here are five updates from past letter-writers.

1. Can I ask coworkers to stop introducing me as my dad’s kid?

Last March, I wrote to you about my concerns about how I was introduced in professional settings. A lot has changed since the time I wrote, and a lot has gotten better.

Firstly, while I still work at the same firm as my father, it is a different firm. Two of four the attorneys left the other firm I was working at — one on bad terms, one on terms that were slightly better — and the remaining two attorneys decided to start new with a new name and a new firm. I work under the other attorney, and we work really well together.

Working with one of the now-departed attorneys was miserable. I think that working remotely can be a good thing, but it doesn’t work in all situations. This was one of those. Almost every court was conducting hearing in-person, and this attorney would insist that either the office manager or I draft motions to allow him to appear remotely or would insist that one of the other attorneys go to court for him. He would call the office and dictate what he wanted written because it “took less time”, and he would complain about everyone else behind their back constantly. Among other things, he thought I was incompetent. I didn’t learn that he felt this way until after this attorney left the firm, but in hindsight, it really affected the way I saw myself professionally. I put a lot of pride into the work I do, and I like to do my job well. I want to make it clear that I don’t blame anyone but him for his conduct, and I hold no ill-will towards any of the people I work with for not stopping him earlier. There were circumstances that I won’t go into that affected how comfortable different people felt speaking up when it came to the egregious things, and a lot of what he did was small enough that we all sucked it up. In any case, this attorney is gone and a problem of the past.

As for your advice, it worked really well. I was definitely overthinking everything, and the solution was easy. I’m fairly early in my professional career — being a paralegal was my first full-time job — and given everything going on with the now-departed attorney, I was really hesitant to rock the boat. Because I’m a paralegal, I don’t get out the office a whole lot, so there’s only been one or two opportunities where the attorney I work under has actually introduced me. At one of those, a professional convention my boss was presenting at, a few people actually thought that I was related to my boss, and not my father, who was also there.

In short, I was a frog in boiling water asking if hard water or soft water was better. Now, I’m a very happy frog in nice, cold soft water.

2. My mentor falsely accused someone of sexism on my behalf without my knowledge (first update here)

A couple months after the whole Bill incident, Bill said he had some news during one of our leadership meetings. It was quite a shock to everyone when he announced he’d accepted a position at a prestigious firm in Asia and would be leaving within the month! His new work is similar to what he did with my company, but his new firm is in a totally different field, so even if he wasn’t moving to another continent, it would be unlikely that he and I will cross paths again. Ironically I happened to be going on vacation to the city where he was relocating shortly after his move and all of my colleagues who heard about it asked if I was going to arrange a time to catch up with Bill…needless to say I didn’t manage to find time for that.

Once Bill left, our CEO Belinda assigned part of his portfolio to me because she knew this was an area I was passionate about. It’s been really fulfilling to get to do this work and has gotten me connected to some great people with similar interests to mine.

Another big surprise came when Belinda announced shortly after Bill’s departure that she would be retiring at the end of the summer. I realized in hindsight that she had really been investing a lot of time to help me grow into my senior leadership role, which she had personally picked me for. I’m really grateful to her, and her believing in me was a big confidence boost. As uncomfortable as the Bill situation was, the way that Belinda handled it provided a great example for me of how to handle these situations and overall she was a great role model who has really helped shape who I am as a leader.

3. I didn’t receive the company Christmas gift (#4 at the link)

I sent an email to HR (since that was the only team I could think to get in touch with), and explained that over the holidays, I didn’t receive the company Christmas gift, and I wanted to take the opportunity to see if my address was correct for them, especially in case something important (like updated insurance cards or tax information) needs to be sent by mail. I got a response a couple hours later where they apologized for the gift not coming, and said they would talk to the person in charge of the gifts and see what happened. I thanked them and then the next day got a response saying that when they were putting the addresses in the order from, apartment numbers on line 2 of the addresses didn’t come over and it affected me and a handful of other employees who didn’t have apartment numbers all on line 1. They apologized again and gave me a $10 virtual Starbucks gift card. Which I do like Starbucks, but I was just relieved to find out it was an accident.

4. HR says we can’t contact a coworker on leave even to find out when she’ll be back (#4 at the link)

Our colleague returned from surgery after three weeks as scheduled. We kind of forgot that this even happened until recently when HR ruffled more feathers over something else. At this point, even when HR is doing something reasonable, they have built up such ill will that everyone treats any announcement from them with suspicion. Thank you to Alison and the commenters — we appreciated the validation that HR were the weird ones here!

5. I only have one job on my resume (#3 at the link)

I had written in March 2021 about having only one job on my resume, and my various frustrations with it. Nearly two years later, I have a new job! And have gone through a lot of change.

I started a new position in the spring of 2022, that was somewhat of a lateral move, but more money, slightly more responsibility, and overall a good change at the right time. I was starting to regain some of the joy in my field that I had been missing for a number of years, and I also started to unlearn a lot of bad habits I had gotten into out of a need to protect myself from supervisors and other leadership that were hostile, or at times just not the right fit for me.

And then after about 6 months, after I had moved states, my boss announced she’s leaving! So I became interim director for the department, her supervisor got eliminated as well so it was a whole new reporting line for the department, and it was a very chaotic few months. I had originally not been interested in the director role permanently, but after being in the interim role for a few months, ended up getting asked to stay as permanent, and accepted. I’ve been the permanent director for about 8 months now, and overall it’s been really good. It’s a good use of all my skills, I enjoy working with and building my team up, and we’ve been able to make some necessary changes. I like my boss and other leadership, I feel appreciated and valued for my skills and knowledge, and overall I feel like a different person.

Looking back at my letter and the comments, I can recall how frustrated I was with my former employer, and the lack of advancement, or just some recognition of my work. There was definitely a split in the comments that seemed to be along generations, with some people surprised it wasn’t more valued to be in a job for a long time (for the record, I am solidly a millennial). It’s also been interesting being on the other side now, and having to make those hard decisions, and recognizing bad habits that I had, show up in my team at times. I’ve tried to incorporate much of what I’ve learned and be a better leader than some of the ones I worked for, but also have a better understanding of what they were going through!

FAIRFAX COUNTY, VA—Emphasizing that the void left by outgoing CEO Wayne LaPierre would be difficult to fill, the National Rifle Association announced Thursday that it had narrowed its search for new leadership with a round of Russian roulette. “After an exhaustive search, we’ve honed in on the best candidates by…

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Hunter Biden, the president's son, appeared in the audience at a congressional hearing on holding him in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify behind closed doors.

(Image credit: Jose Luis Magana/AP)

1. Check this place out, it’s dope

2. Technology solves problems (future good)

3. Technology creates problems (future bad)

4. A world much like our own where some subtle differences highlight humanity/reality/society/perception

5. What if your cock was a bomb?

6. Rockets are not phallic, please stop saying that

7. Here is why religion is bad

8. Homestuck

9. Four thousand pages on the adventures of Prentiss Plum, a space pirate, scientist, and award-winning Virgo

10. Winking parody that doubles down on sexbots

11. Cory Doctorow’s most recent night terror

12. “Me am play god”

13. Tracy Chapman’s A New Beginning

14. A list of legally non-binding patents disguised as a narrative

15. There is a secret number and it’s pissed

16. The Strugatsky brothers do not like Stalin

17. Star Trek, but they smash

18. Time, considered as a helix of semiprecious stoners

19. It is 1860, let us go to the Moon

20. Basically Mein Kampf

21. Bomb Cock 2: Mutually Assured Destruction

22. The franchise equivalent of findom

23. A power fantasy that focuses on maintaining the status quo (Supercop)

24. Your happiness, as a commodity

25. Margaret Atwood, sharing with us her gift of prophecy

26. Science monster

27. An alien who’s just really nice with it

28. Young adult

29. Hung adult

30. Fear & Loathing in Arcturus

31. Ansible only good for sexting

32. Apocalyptic

33. Apocalypso

34. Post-apocalypso

35. Post-scarcity

36. Multi-planetary

37. Suckpull

38. A thought experiment, taken literally

39. Multiversal polycule

40. An obvious yet powerful allegory

41. David Cronenberg has something to show you

42. The Turing Test, but sexy

43. 1980s pop culture as understood by Dan Quayle

44. I Have No Friends and I Must Infodump (narrative tension is a sin)

45. A plot that should have stayed in the fanfic

46. A fun twist on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave

47. Oops! The author got high and watched Akira

48. One where you can’t tell whether the optimism is naïve or revolutionary

49. Bomb Cock 3: World War Chindo

50. Secretly just a treatise on economics

VIRGINIA BEACH, VA—Regaling her friends with tales of promiscuity from her single life, local woman Erica Bennet reportedly referred to the sole “hi” she sent to a man on a dating app Wednesday as a “ho phase,” according to sources. “Truly in my ho phase, y’all,” the 29-year-old wrote in a group text with her…

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On Tuesday, several left-leaning reporters and critics of Elon Musk were removed from X with no warning, a move that seems contradictory to his previously stated goals of fostering free speech on the social media platform. What do you think?

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This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

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

1. New hire is treating me like I’m brand new

I am a college professor. I teach a variety of courses, but there’s one that I have every semester. I get great evaluations from students every semester and I have a proven track record of success in this class.

This semester we have a new colleague who is teaching a section of this same course for the first time. I received an invite to meet with her and assumed she wanted some help or advice about the class, so I accepted. The next day, I got an email from her saying that she has the whole course planned out for me, “but we don’t have do it exactly the same.” Basically, she has taken ownership of the class and for some reason it seems like she’s decided that she is in charge of me and how I teach it. She also advised me that I should keep track of the students’ assignments, and that it’s a good idea to try and learn the students’ names, among several other pieces of absurdly obvious advice. I have taught this class six times in the last two years, so I’m not sure where she’s coming from.

So I wonder, how can I address this in a collegial manner, rather than saying the first words that came into my head, which are not at all professional? My boss is notoriously flaky and unsupportive, so I don’t intend to escalate this, my main thought is to just shut her down as politely as possible.

The subject line of your email to me was “I work with Leslie Knope” and … yes, you do.

The easiest way to shut this down is, “I’ve been teaching this class every semester so I have my own course plans that I’ve spent a lot of time developing over the last few years. Let me know if you want advice on anything; I’m happy to offer guidance if you want it.” That doesn’t touch on how ridiculous she’s being (reminding you to learn students’ names?!) but it pretty definitively lays out that you’ve got it covered and you’re not the one coming in new.

If she keeps it up after that, you might need a more explicit conversation along the lines of “Some of the advice you’re giving me is really remedial; has there been a miscommunication somewhere about my experience or the job we’re each doing?” But wait and see if the first conversation fixes it; she might have just gotten carried away with the Leslie Knope of it all and will pick up the hint.

2. Overwhelmed by stress in my first post-college job

I’m a recent college grad in my first full-time position. I’ve worked a variety of jobs throughout college to earn income, but they’ve all been either part-time or temporary in whatever field would pay the bills.

I’ve had this job for six months, and while it is a pretty low-level admin position (which is not completely my preference), it’s finally in the field I want to work in and that I studied for! I’ve never minded doing admin work and the company I’m working for is a huge stepping stone to all sorts of other positions in the field.

What I’m finding, though, is that I have been completely overwhelmed by stress from the job — whether it’s minor mistakes I’ve made in the process of learning, things that need to be done, or just if I’m doing enough. It’s gotten to the point where I’ll have nightmares about it and then promptly wake up and worry until my alarm goes off. Again, this is an admin position with low-level responsibilities where I work 40 hours a week, no one is expecting me to be on call or solve major issues, and even in the field as a whole, it’s pretty low-stress.

I am seeing a counselor for this, since I recognize it isn’t normal to be waking up in the middle of the night from this, but I’m also concerned about its relation to my career. I’ve had trouble like this with previous jobs, but since they were either part-time or temporary, the stress was lesser and I was usually able to write it off. I know your readers have made suggestions in the past for avoiding taking work stress home with them. These are great and I’ve been utilizing them, but I think what I’m hung up on is that I can’t imagine ever advancing in my career if such a low-stress administrative position gives me such overwhelming anxiety even when I’m not there. Is this something that new grads just have to get through (to a point — again, I know a level of this is above and beyond) or is this an indication that I won’t ever be ready to advance in my career?

Neither! What you describe isn’t typical, but it’s also not an indication you’ll never be able to advance. It’s an indication that you need some help sorting through what’s going on, which you’re getting. Especially if you have anxiety symptoms in other areas of your life, this could be clinical-level anxiety that’s latched on to work as an outlet (which is something a good therapist should be able to help with), but there are other therapy-relevant things that could be causing it too (like growing up in a hypercritical family, or one where small mistakes were punished disproportionately, or where you carried too much responsibility at a young age, making you feel like the stakes for messing up were very high, and on and on). Therapy is exactly the place to figure out what’s going on and to solve it, so you’re already where you need to be! (But if you don’t feel like you’re making progress after a reasonable amount of time, talk to your therapist about that too, since you might need something different from those sessions or a different treatment modality altogether.)

3. Management rejects my ideas, then proposes the same thing

I am the lead on a project at work. When I present ideas in regards to the project to three specific managers, they often reject my ideas. But then they provide a “solution” which is exactly what I had just suggested. It’s driving me wild. It’s really gnawing at me and I’m feeling stupid. I even intentionally ask “anything I can clarify?” before the rejection. I’ve never had this happen and for these three people to keep doing this is just blowing my mind. Is there anything I can do?

Some additional background: I’m a woman. The three people are the VP of our department (female), my manager (male), and a manager (male) I dotted-line report to.

Approaches I’ve taken: I used to explain things verbally. But perhaps I talked fast? So I slowed it down and presented things in simple terms. That didn’t help. I now present things with some sort of printed out aid, such as a slide or a graphic, to help drive my point across. I have only a few times replied, “Yes, just like I was saying…” and then elaborate. But that hasn’t much of a difference. I feel stupid, and honestly, it’s been a hit to my self-esteem.

It’s a known thing that sometimes happens to women, but it’s also a known thing that sometimes happens when dealing with people who don’t listen fully or aren’t great communicators themselves. To be thorough, I should note that it’s possible you’re not being as clear in presenting your ideas as you think, so if anyone else is in those meetings you could ask them for feedback about that. But otherwise, can you ask others if anything similar happens to them with this group? Maybe you’ll find out they do it to a lot of people and then you’ll know it’s about them, not you.

But also, do you have the kind of rapport with your boss where you could ask him about it directly? For example: “I wanted to get your feedback on something. I’ve noticed that I’ll sometimes present an idea to you, Fred, and Jane and the three of you say no to it, but then suggest a solution that’s the same as what I’d initially proposed. For example, it happened recently with X and Y. I’m wondering if I’m not being clear enough when I make the initial suggestion, or what you think might be going on.” If he’s stumped or says he doesn’t see it, ask if you can check back with him again right after the next time it happens so that you both have a clear and immediate example to look at.

One other thought: The next time it happens, try saying, “Yes! That’s exactly what I was proposing!” and see what happens. (Say that in a way that sounds enthusiastic, not irritated.)

Related:
my coworker rejects any ideas that aren’t her own, then suggests them herself

4. Should I tell a former employee that I got called as a reference?

Last year was my first time as a manager. It was on a grant-funded project that had limited-term appointments for several employees that terminated when the funding ran out. My whole staff was fantastic and I’ve been doing my best to support all of them on their job searches, and I’ve offered to serve as a reference.

One of my former employees has contacted me several times to let me know she’s applied to certain positions and put me down as a reference. I just got my first ever reference call for this employee and gave what I believe was a glowing reference. (I did also talk honestly about areas where she needed extra support, but I got to say how receptive this employee was to feedback and how much she grew, so I feel good about it!)

My instinct after I got off the phone was to email her to tell her she made it to the reference stage and I gave her a glowing recommendation, but I wasn’t sure if I should. The hiring manager told me that they’re between this former employee and one other candidate. So while I want to tell my employee that she’s advanced in the process and I’m hoping my reference will support her candidacy, I’d also feel like I’d need to temper her expectations and tell her they’re still considering other candidates.

This candidate is someone who I know has anxiety. As someone who also has anxiety, I know that I would love hearing I got to the reference phase and it would be soothing to hear my former manager tell me they gave a positive reference. But I’m afraid I’ll just set her up for disappointment if she doesn’t get it. Since I haven’t been called before now, I assume she hasn’t made it past the intial interview for the other positions she’s applied for. So I really don’t want to get her hopes up. That said, I also want her to know she’s advanced so she can celebrate that accomplishment, and I want her to tell me whether or not she gets the job! I’m afraid she won’t follow up if she doesn’t get it unless she knows she’s made it past the initial stage. So, is it cruel to tell her she’s made it to the reference stage? Or would it be encouraging? Am I overthinking this?

You are overthinking it! I always send a quick email to people I’ve just given a reference for, to let them know that I talked to the employer (and will add that I gave them a glowing reference, assuming that I did) — but that’s just about keeping in the loop about something that’s about them. I think you’re overstepping because you’re getting too invested in managing her emotions for her. Just give her the information, and trust her to handle it like the adult she is.

I would also mention that the person you spoke with said they are choosing between her and one other person — because that’s also relevant to her and it wasn’t said in confidence.

But don’t have any expectations about her updating you about whether she gets the job or not. She probably will tell you if she does, but she shouldn’t need to follow up with you if she doesn’t. She might choose to, but a lot of people hate giving those updates, so it’s better to train yourself not to expect it.

5. Can I put a job I haven’t started yet on my resume?

I am a senior in college, but I haven’t gotten much experience in my field yet and am applying to jobs for after I graduate. In two weeks, I am starting an internship that will run for one semester, so it will be completed prior to when I start the job. It is very relevant to the role I am applying to, but the semester starts two days after applications are due. I have a meeting to discuss what I will be working on before the semester starts, but I don’t know if I’ll do any actual work. Can I put that internship on my resume, even though it hasn’t started?

Yes, as long as the dates make that clear. For example:

Oats Incorporated, Porridge Intern (January 22, 2024 – May 15, 2024)

Ideally you’d add one bullet point about what you expect to do in the internship, but if you really have no idea, it’s fine to skip that and just list the company/title/dates.

(Also, normally just listing months/years is fine. In this case I listed specific dates to make it super clear you haven’t started yet, but really you’d be fine just listing January – May 2024, especially since by the time they’re interviewing you, you will have started.)