I dare you to actually reflect on those nasty things you seem to be saying about yourself, you'll realise none of it's true I promise. It's not you saying it at all! It's me in an adidas t-shirt and cap. Let him have it!
Don Huffines, Christi Craddick and Kelly Hancock are talking more about fighting DEI, trans athletes and illegal immigration than the office’s traditional fiscal duties.
In brief: In today’s post we’re celebrating like it’s the 80s all over again, because that’s how February is going to end. In fact, with three days to go, this month already has had the third-warmest days on record in Houston. A weak front will bring somewhat drier air into Houston for the weekend.
Frying in February
On average, February is the third coolest month of the year in Houston. Put another way, of the winter months, it is the warmest; but still significantly cooler than the rest of the year. The normal high temperature for the month, based upon temperatures from 1990 to 2020, is 67.9 degrees. This year, our average high temperature with three days to go is 74.2 degrees. (Only 1962 at 74.4 degrees, and 2017 at 76.8 degrees rank higher).
High temperature anomaly for February, to date, across Texas. (Weather Bell)
It’s not just been Houston. Persistent high pressure for much of this month has kept the entire state of Texas and our neighbors much warmer than average (see map above). Highs in the Panhandle and parts of Oklahoma have been especially hot, relative to normal temperatures this time of year. As we’ll report below, the heat party we’ve been dancing to this month will turn into a rave today as high temperatures soar as much as 20 degrees above normal. In fact we probably will end February with four straight days of highs of 80 degrees or above.
Thursday
Our winds have settled down some this morning, but they’re still a bit blowy from the southwest. We could see gusts up to 20 mph, but that will feel like nothing after widespread gusts of 40 mph on Wednesday. Because skies will be a little more cloudy today, I think that may shave 1 or 2 degrees off our previously forecast highs, and that could keep most of our locations at or below record high temperatures this afternoon. It’s still going to be warm, however, with highs in the low- to mid-80s for most locations except for the immediate coast. A weak front will arrive late tonight, but not in enough time to do much with lows, so expect them in the range of 65 degrees for most locations.
Friday
This will be a sunny day, and lower dewpoints should allow temperatures to push into the low- to mid-80s again. However, with the drier air it should feel somewhat less humid (the further inland you are, the less humid it will be), and low temperatures on Friday night should drop down to around 60 degrees. Note this is still pretty warm for this time of year, as the front just is not going to bring all that much oomph along with it in terms of colder air.
Saturday and Sunday
These should be partly to mostly sunny days, with high temperatures around 80 degrees. Yes, there will be some humidity, but no, it will be very far from oppressive by Houston standards. Saturday night should see temperatures drop down to near 60 degrees again, but Sunday night will be warmer. Saturday’s winds look moderate, but by Sunday afternoon we might see some southerly gusts up to around 20 mph.
Next week
Not much changes through at least the middle of next week. We’re going to see partly sunny days with highs in the vicinity of 80 degrees, and lows in the lower- to mid-60s. Some slight rain chances may return by the middle of the week, but we may have to wait until the weekend for a real uptick in the precipitation outlook. But this is far enough into the future that our forecast turns pretty fuzzy, pretty quickly.
The British royal family is under pressure to remove Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor from its line of succession. The Onion sat down with the former prince to discuss his arrest and connection to Jeffrey Epstein.
The Onion : Any reaction to the accusations against you?
Mountbatten-Windsor: On advice of counsel, I can only state that my name is Andrew, and I am a multicellular life form.
What’s been the hardest part of losing your royal status?
They used to do a big Cava order for everyone on Thursdays. Always thought that was a nice perk.
How would you respond to people who accuse you of being part of a corrupt, predatory cabal of elites?
I didn’t choose to be born into the royal family.
Do you have anything to say to the victims?
Sorry, but you guys aren’t my type anymore.
What would you say to Jeffrey Epstein if he were alive today?
Help.
Without the support of the royal family, how will you make money?
I’ll probably have to get a normal job like parade watcher or big game hunter.
What’s next for you?
I simply intend to lie low, take each day as it comes, and die under suspicious circumstances.
CHANDLER, AZ—Noting that he had shown a lot of vulnerability by communicating his true feelings so explicitly, sources confirmed Thursday that an ex’s death threat proved how much he really cares. “When you two were together you often felt that he didn’t put in any effort, so it’s not really fair to turn around and complain about it now,” said those close to the situation, adding that the ex had thoughtfully created an alarming handwritten note with very personalized threats to kill and dismember. “He’s been driving by the house at least once a day, which is pretty romantic when you ignore that dead look in his eyes. Plus, it was really sweet of him to turn up when your cat died, although it was kind of weird that he knew about that without you telling him.” At press time, sources confirmed the ex was walking toward the car with a huge wrench, which was convenient because the vehicle randomly had four flat tires.
BURBANK, CA—Admitting that her medical knowledge was “very limited” before landing the role of nurse Dana Evans, actress Katherine LaNasa told reporters Thursday that she had never heard of blood before The Pitt. “At first I wasn’t even pronouncing it right,” said the 59-year-old Emmy winner and HBO star, who credited the series’ “genius” team of medical consultants for getting her and the rest of the cast up to speed. “Thank God we have these real-life doctors on set. Nurse Dana may be a pro, but when I learned we have red liquid inside of us, I was like, ‘huh?’ I had to do a lot of research.” LaNasa went on to admit that even with a medical expert’s detailed explanation, she still didn’t really understand blood at all.
SANTA FE, NM—Putting to rest a debate that had stirred in the art world for decades, newly uncovered letters from Georgia O’Keeffe made public this week confirmed long-running speculation that the painter’s iconic flower works were in fact veiled depictions of basset hounds.
“I want to tell you about the paintings—those flowers, Alfred—and all of the hearsay over what they supposedly represent, when the truth could not be more plain: They are basset hound dogs,” O’Keeffe wrote in a 1941 letter to her husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz, revealing that she had purposely incorporated “a long basset face and deep mouth” into each bloom she rendered and did not try to be subtle about it. “Look straightaway and you can’t miss it—the way the color pools like sleepy eyes, the way the petals fold over themselves like those unbelievable dog ears, those sorrowful curtains, all dragging and layered.”
“There is canine in every brushstroke,” O’Keeffe continued. “That is the intention, not an interpretation. The only reason I don’t state this outright is because, well, that’s the whole trick. That is the power. To place a hound where they expect a flower and watch them make theories about the curves of the petals, loudly proclaiming, ‘Here is the melancholy of the modern prairie,’ and then, in a whisper, ‘Or is it the drooping jowls of a mutt?’ But they’re kennel portraits, Alfred, and they always have been. Hold this secret, dear, just as I hold you.”
Other letters from the same period reportedly contain revelations that O’Keeffe’s landmark paintings of animal skulls were all meant to represent vulvae.
LOS ANGELES—Calling the project a crucial piece of world-building for an iconic sci-fi saga, filmmaker James Cameron revealed Thursday that the next movie in his blockbuster Avatar franchise would focus on the vast menagerie of sodas available in the fictional world of Pandora. “We’re really going to show how the soda selection on Pandora is as varied and interconnected as its delicate ecosystem,” the 71-year-old filmmaker told reporters, remarking that he was particularly excited to show viewers how the Na’vi connected their neural queue to intricate beverage dispensers and established a neurological link that enabled them to choose from one of over 10 million varieties of fizzy drinks. “From the fruit-flavored Yovo Blaster to Spineberry Cola to more exotic varieties like Teylu Spritzers—which are made with real Teylu beetle larvae—the sodas the Na’vi drink are a deep expression of their respect for all the amazing flavors of their world. The film is really going to be a deep meditation on what it means to find balance and harmony among so many amazing choices of soft drink.” Cameron added that despite the expansive options available to them, most Na’vi still chose to drink Diet Coke most of the time.
The chapter comes to an end and alas, intrigue has reared its ugly head once more! It seems to me that you will have to return for the next story, HULL OR HIGH WATER, to find out Glenn’s ultimate fate!
Large swaths of western Mexico have been shut down after a surge in cartel violence sparked by the killing of one of the world’s most wanted drug kingpins, known as “El Mencho”, in a military raid, with foreign governments warning their citizens to stay inside. What do you think?
“The first week with a new boss is always chaotic.”
Alexander Dunya, Crate Shipper
“I was this close to getting the resort package with unlimited cartel protection.”
Raul Youngblood, Floss Spooler
“It’s ultimately the drug consumer who gets hurt by all this.”
WAUKESHA, WI—Saying his approach to parenting was “hands-off” as far as imparting fundamental life lessons was concerned, local dad Derrick Pomeroy told reporters Wednesday that he was really counting on sports to instill all of the core values his two children would need in life. “I could probably find more opportunities to teach my kids about fairness and self-discipline, but with any luck, sports will cover that kind of stuff,” Pomeroy said after he brought his two preteen sons home from Little League and sat them down in front of a TV tuned to a Milwaukee Bucks game, expressing hope that patience, respect, confidence, resilience, accountability, generosity, perseverance, personal hygiene, and financial responsibility would be sufficiently conveyed by the evening’s two activities. “To be honest, if they don’t develop a moral compass from team sports, I’m kind of screwed. Thankfully some of their coaches seem like pretty decent guys. I’m sure one of them will give my boys the sex talk better than I ever could.” At press time, Pomeroy added that any parenting gaps left by sports could be sufficiently filled by video games.
Brad Reese, the grandson of the man who invented the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, is publicly criticizing The Hershey Company, accusing the candy giant of replacing traditional ingredients like milk chocolate and peanut butter with low-cost substitutes. What do you think?
“I’m not eating them for the taste. I’m eating them because I’m depressed.”
Rochelle Caraballo, Bakery President
“That’s just because H.B. Reese never had the pleasure of tasting hydrogenated palm oil.”
A lot to unpack here, but first let me stress the difference between the AI investment bubble bursting, the AI hype train derailing, and any chance that AI is going to disappear from your life. All three are big questions and each has a very different answer. Working backwards:
AI is not going to disappear from your life. In fact, you’re gonna have a difficult time avoiding it. Software companies are going to keep jamming it into everything, and eventually it will make your life easier and better. But it’ll probably annoy you and mess things up along the way. Electricity was a lot like this. Intermittent and prone to setting things on fire, but the benefits were great enough that we pushed forward, refined the tools, and accepted it as a necessity. The internet went through similar growing pains.
So for those who hope AI will just go away, it won’t. And you might not believe this now, but in ten years you’ll wonder how we got by without it. Automated customer service without ever talking to a human and getting immediate and better results is just one thing worth looking forward to. Personalized travel agents who know what to book and handle all the details for you. Only ever seeing emails that need your personal attention (yes, your AI and another person’s AI will sort things out without your involvement). Guess what? Most executives have staff who do the same thing, and soon everyone will be able to afford that luxury. Your real estate agent needs a smoke detector form signed and notarized? Your AI will just make it happen. Anything electronic you don’t enjoy doing can be automated.
That’s what we have to look forward to. But right now, the tools are not living up to expectations. In fact…
… the AI hype train is derailing as I write this. AI will eventually lead to gains in productivity, but those gains are going to be marginal. That’s the optimistic take. Right now, there are practically zero gains. A study published just this month found that 80% of 6,000 firms polled showed no gains in productivity from their integration of AI. Forecasted gains of 1.4% over the next three years are expected, but that’s not the employment apocalypse many fear. And those are just guesses. We are just as likely to see a productivity paradox, where distraction from these tools and time spent double-checking their work takes as much time as doing it via human labor.
There are already cases of supposed AI turning out to be remote operations from cheap offshore labor mills. It even has a name that I absolutely loathe and because it annoys me, you’re going to have to live with it as well: Fauxtimation. The Nate example is one of the more egregious and fraudulent. But Google has done this with its Duplex service, Amazon was doing it with their cashier-less stores, and Tesla does it with their driverless taxis. There’s a lot more fake-it-until-you-make-it happening than actually making it. My personal experience with this was being at a tech conference where a robot was making and serving drinks, and me and a few friends followed a power cord to a curtained area, behind which was a human in VR controlling the robot manually. The magic of AI is currently a bunch of Wizards of Oz.
A few issues I foresee while we’re on the hype train. Two of the biggest problems are both summed up in the Pixar movie The Incredibles. Helen tells her son, “Everyone is special, Dash.” To which he replies: “That’s just another way of saying no one is.” The benefit of AI is the democratization of digital labor. The profit problem AI has is the democratization of digital labor. When everyone can make an app, there’s no profit in making apps.
This is a problem both on the macro and micro scales. On the micro scale, someone will tell you they vibe-coded an app to handle splitting dinner receipts among friends in a single day and launched it on the app store. The problem will be getting people to pay money for this app when their AI can handle this task for them already without the need for an app. It’s not just programming jobs that will get replaced, it’s the programs they were making that will no longer be needed. Instead of purpose built apps, you’ll have agents who can handle most tasks. Two historical examples that are similar: the smart phone replaced dozens of purpose-built devices all at once, and the internet browser replaced dozens of purpose-built apps that used to live on your desktop.
On the macro scale, the browser provides another good historical lesson. There was a similar level of panic and investment in silicon valley back during the “browser wars.” Microsoft’s antitrust problems stemmed from this era, as they tried to limit Windows customers from using rival browsers. The idea back then was whoever won the browser war would profit just like the companies who won the OS war. The problem is that customers weren’t willing to pay for a browser when free options worked just fine. It’s worth diving deeper into this to see why AI will follow the browser route and not the OS route.
Operating systems might have been free as well, with UNIX and Linux giving it their best shots. Power users back then (I was one of them), loved installing these distros and fiddling with all the dials. But most users just want something that works, without needing to troubleshoot anything. Simplicity always wins out over quality (see MP3 vs FLAC in the music space). Most of what a customer pays for when buying a computer is the hardware. The software is a fraction of the cost. So why pay $1,000 for a LINUX laptop that requires a computer engineering degree to operate when you can get a Windows for Mac laptop for $1,050 and it uses a uniform OS that you are already familiar with from the computers at work, the library, school, etc? Uniformity, familiarity, and simplicity win.
Once you were familiar with the OS that came with your PC or Mac, you were trapped in a upgrade cycle that cost money over time, upgrading from Windows 3.11 to Windows 95, to Windows ME (omfg), etc. Microsoft made lots of money without needing to make a product much better than the best Linux distribution (which got better and easier to use, but by then it was too late). The lesson here isn’t that Microsoft made a great tool that increased our productivity, the lesson is that Microsoft got lucky by being first and humans are lazy and set in their ways.
The first mover advantage was strong in those days. It’s less powerful now. OpenAI is not likely to survive the AI wars, because they need to copy someone’s profit engine and business model. But all other companies need to do is copy OpenAI’s training techniques. Which they already have. Chinese companies then copied those techniques, leading to models like DeepSeek that do most tasks for free just as well as paid-for models. And here’s where the browser wars have something to teach us: customers will not pay extra when free is good enough. A company like Google, which makes plenty of money, is going to let you use their AI for free, which will prevent a competitor like OpenAI from ever making enough profits to vie for Google’s ad marketshare. This is why Microsoft and Apple don’t charge for the use of Safari and Edge (Internet Explorer). Charging you money immediately creates a market for their competitors. If they ask $19.99 for Safari, Apple creates a market for Firefox to charge $9.99 for a much superior product. With the browser now the true user Operating System, that’s not worth the risk.
Now for the AI Investment Bubble. This is the one most people are talking about when they refer to a bubble, and the reason it’s currently popping is related to the comments above. The productivity gains are not evident, and any path toward profitability is currently unclear. The entire bubble is powered by a combination of techno-religious fervor from Silicon Valley and get-rich-quick-don’t-get-left-out insanity from Wall Street. The biggest tell that we’re in a goldrush is that Nvidia is the only company making real profits here, and they’re the ones selling pickaxes and bluejeans. But the cracks are already showing.
Datacenter construction projects are already seeing cancelations. Capex promises are being revised downwards. The comparisons to the tech bubble of the late 90s misses something crucial here. After the tech bubble popped, we still had miles of fiberoptic cables, network infrastructure, and trained technicians and engineers. When the AI investment bubble pops, we’re going to have warehouses full of GPUs which get outdated with every passing year and don’t have any other good use. Cloud computing doesn’t need this much compute. Serviceable LLMs already run just fine on your laptop or smartphone, without needing any cloud compute at all. And the amount of money being thrown around here is staggering, estimated to reach SEVEN TRILLION dollars by 2030. You’d get more productivity gains with that money if you gave people healthcare, high speed trains, and a functioning democracy. And that’s where the techno-religion comes in.
The justification for spending so much money is the race to reach AGI first. This isn’t conspiracy; AI CEOs admit as much proudly. The idea is whomever gets there first will “run the economy.” Winner take all. Destroy the competition. One person or company gets to rule the roost. And every other disgusting way you want to phrase this. Basically, betting the house because the CHANCE of winning is great enough that going bankrupt is a smart calculation. Meanwhile, most AI experts are telling us that existing LLM technology is not a path toward AGI. OpenAI itself released a paper saying hallucinations are an integral property of LLMs and can’t be avoided. So these tools will never be able to automate work without a human double-checking everything. And the cost of mistakes will only go up, especially when human lives are at risk.
The reason for the pullback from investors is pretty simple: ChatGPT 5 was a major disappointment. The gains seen in ChatGPT 3 and then 4 were not replicated. And every other model has seen a similar plateau. Investors were pouring money in thinking the gains would skyrocket, but it turns out that LLMs grabbed low-hanging fruit and can’t seem to reach much higher. This doesn’t make them useless, but it does make it pretty silly to divert a large percentage of the economy toward their further development. We might want to invest in other things as well.
Let’s zoom out for a second. The biggest companies on earth tend to extract value out of an enormous userbase by providing them with some value in return. Google gives great search results, so we spend a lot of time on their website, and our eyeballs and mouseclicks are valuable to advertisers. Amazon lets us shop in one place and delivers to our door, so we do a lot of our shopping there. Microsoft and Apple sell us hardware and software we can’t seem to live without, however much we loathe. Netflix gives us Love is Blind. Facebook lets us know which friends to stop talking to. All of them make money from hundreds of millions of customers.
What customers will a purely AI company have, and what service will they offer? The biggest use right now is creating images and videos, returning search results, and chatting. Existing players are already offering all of these for free or on the cheap, and the number of copycat models is just going to explode going forward. So what are they going to offer? How will they turn a profit? Or are they like Uber and AirBnB, which gave us value while the VC inflows were keeping them cheap but become hellscapes when they need to actually make money?
Microsoft and Amazon make a lot of their money now by offering tools and services to other companies. Is there a possibility for OpenAI and the like to do the same? I don’t see it. Google didn’t need to license OpenAI; it just built Gemini. Amazon is working on their own model. Apple licensed Gemini for now, but the cost of creating their own model is going down by the month (DeepSeek proved it doesn’t require billions to train a model as good as ChatGPT 5). To make back SEVEN TRILLION in capital expenditure, these companies are going to need to offer a compelling product that hundreds of millions of people are willing to pay for or spend their attention and clicks on. What could that be? Because I’ve got no idea. Our attention is already full. Population growth is going to slow and then reverse. Unlimited growth is not an option. Most of the consumers coming out of poverty and participating in the global market did so in the last two decades.
The last zoomed-out thought to consider here is that most consumer spending is accounted for, so your massive profits need to come at someone else’s expense. Google is getting advertising dollars that used to go to classified ads, newspapers, and magazines. Netflix is making money that used to go to Blockbuster, the cinema, and broadcast advertising. Amazon is making money that used to go to smaller retailers and other big-box stores (Circuit City, Toys-R-Us, and Borders are no longer with us). Apple is making money that used to go to Casio, Texas Instruments, music labels, broadcast radio, and others. Facebook is getting ad money from the same sources that Google is stealing it from. We have tech giants because of consolidation and a sudden rise in global affluence. Existing money and low-hanging fruit. So where’s the SEVEN TRILLION gonna come from?
If you think a small company is going to gobble up all the money that Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple are currently making, rather than these companies simply offering you AI services that eventually become helpful, I want some of what you’re smoking. When I zoom out, I see something different. I think AI is going to change your life for the better in ways you don’t expect, but it’s not going to change the lives of AI CEOs in the ways that they hope. Things will get a little easier for you, and they are about to get a lot poorer.
1. My coworker is in a cult and it’s affecting my work
A new junior staff person joined my department about a year ago. About six months in, they asked if they could start working remotely because they had been asked to help start a new church across the country. This employee is quite young and this is their first job after college. They were initially very dedicated to their work, but since moving, they have dropped the ball on multiple projects, frequently ask for time off and don’t make up their hours, and have just generally been performing poorly.
I was starting to think they had just checked out and weren’t committed to their job, but another coworker recently discovered that this “church” is really more of a cult known for preying on college students. Church members have to pay in and are expected to do countless hours of free labor. Ex-members have complained online about being taken advantage of and isolated from their friends and family.
I really feel badly that my coworker is probably being manipulated and, at the same time, their life outside of work is impacting my job. I have had to pick up the slack repeatedly, and their performance is giving our department a bad reputation. Should I tell our supervisor what I know? Or talk to this junior coworker privately? I am old enough to be their parent and I could give them some kind advice. If they were just bad at their job, I would probably wait for my supervisor to deal with their obvious performance issues. But I feel like this situation is more nuanced, and I wonder if my supervisor needs this extra information.
Unless you’re quite close to this coworker (and it doesn’t sound like you are), I don’t think you’re well-positioned to get through to them about the reality that they’re in a cult … since even friends and family are notoriously unable to reach people in that situation, and cults operate that way by design.
But what you are well-positioned to do is to make sure your manager knows about the specific problems you’re seeing because she might not know the extent of everything you’re aware of. As part of that, there’s no reason you can’t discreetly share your concerns; it might provide some useful background about what’s going on, although ultimately there’s not much your boss can do either other than to address the habits that are showing up at work. (Someone might argue that it’s not really your manager’s business, but there’s no particular expectation of privacy around this sort of thing; it’s info you have and there’s no reason you can’t share it with your boss as context for your concerns.)
2. My coworker acts like people are late to a meeting if they aren’t early
My office has a meeting culture of starting meetings 1-2 minutes past the time, so pretty close to on time. People are often going from back-to-back meetings. We are a hybrid office, and virtual joiners aside from the host usually show up on the dot unless they are delayed.
We have a couple people who are always early to join said virtual meetings, and one who is really rubbing me the wrong way.
Arya will start getting antsy several minutes before meeting start time, and then at, for example, 9:59 will say, “I guess we’re waiting on Sansa” or “Well, we better get started. Hopefully Sansa can join us” and often sends people “are you able to join us?” messages the moment the time hits the hour (literally within seconds).
The lack of alignment with the office culture is getting to me. It’s literally true that we are waiting on her, but only because Arya started the meeting early. Sansa and several other people will almost never be able to join early. People in Arya’s role have 1-3 meetings a day, while people in Sansa’s role have at least 5 meetings most days. It affects nothing but I want to know if I’m weird for finding this rude!
I don’t know that it’s rude exactly, but it’s unreasonable and certainly impatient. If you’re quite junior to Arya, there’s probably nothing you can do, but if you’re not you should feel free to say, “We’re not quite at the start time yet so I’d give her a minute or two” or “She’s often in back-to-back meetings; I’m sure she’ll join in a minute or two.” (And if you were her boss, I’d tell you to tell her more directly to chill out about it.)
3. Should I raise this in an employee’s performance review?
I oversee four employees who work at several facilities throughout our city. On the first Thursday of every month at 9 am, we have an in-person meeting at the main office where I am located. I send out an email the Monday before as a reminder and include any other pertinent information.
I am having a minor issue with “Paul.” I am guessing he has our meeting on his calendar so feels he does not need to read the reminder email I sent. I came to this conclusion because several months ago a person from corporate wanted to speak to the group, and to fit her schedule the meeting was moved to 9:30 and Paul showed up at 9 as normal. Another time we had to meet in a different room than our normal one, and he went to the old one (but found our new room before the meeting started). This information was in the reminder email.
His one-year review is coming up. How big of a deal do I make of this? He hasn’t ever been late for the meetings, and he really doesn’t need to prepare anything for the meeting so he isn’t unprepared. Technically he hasn’t done anything wrong, but I feel I need to address the issue somehow before not reading the reminder emails causes an issue.
This doesn’t rise to the level of something to discuss in a performance review; it’s just a normal conversation completely outside of the review. Just name what you’re seeing and want him to do differently: “I noticed you’ve missed some of the info I include in the emails I send out for our meeting prep, like changes to the meeting time and location. Can you make a point of reading those so you see what I’ve included?”
The fact that you haven’t done that but are thinking about addressing it in his review makes me wonder if you shy away from giving routine, fairly low-stakes feedback throughout the normal course of work! It’s worth asking yourself whether corrections (even small ones) feel like a big deal to you and, if so, whether people aren’t getting routine feedback as often as they should. Not only would that mean they’re not getting the chance to do better in their work, but it can mean that when feedback conversations do happen, they feel like Big Deals with high stakes rather than just a normal part of work.
4. Accommodating Tourette’s at work
The recent event at the BAFTAs reminded me of something that happened years ago at work. I used to work with a lovely person who had Tourette’s, the kind with coprolalia (the involuntary outburst of inappropriate words). He was a very kind person who did a lot of educational work about his condition and clearly felt horrible about what his condition made him say. That said, we were in an open office space, and I can’t say it wasn’t hard to hear slurs said — I’m Jewish, for example, and sometimes he would shout Jewish slurs.
At some point, a woman (also a lovely person) complained to HR that she found his slurs triggering; he would sometimes say slurs about her gender and race. As a workaround, they offered her a seat away from him. But then he felt so horrible about it that he started working in a conference room and avoiding his coworkers. He left for a new job shortly after, and it was hard not to read the incident as a cause.
I guess my question is: was this an appropriate solution? What would you have done as a manager or HR in the same situation? On one hand, no one should have to hear slurs all day, but on the other, this person had a disability they had no control over.
When you have two competing needs for an employer to accommodate — in this case, one employee’s medical condition and other employees’ right not to be harassed on the basis of sex, race, or religion — it’s what the law calls “dueling accommodations” and the employer is required to enter into an interactive process with each side to see if they can solve it. Accommodations cannot violate the rights of other employees (so an accommodation couldn’t be “just deal with it because you know it stems from a medical condition”), so in this case you’d typically need to look at having the person work from a more private space or from home.
5. AAM columns in outside publications
When your answers to reader questions only appear in other publications such as the Cut, will they eventually be available in Ask a Manager archives too? Purchasing several subscriptions to access only your content isn’t an option on my fixed income.
Some of them! My columns for Slate only appear in Slate, but my agreement with The Cut lets me publish my columns here 90 days after they’re originally printed there. I don’t create fresh posts for them here when that happens, but I do go back and add the full columns to the existing posts once those 90 days have passed (for example, like this). I am admittedly sometimes delayed in doing this, but I try to stay on top of them.
With Inc., it’s a little different; my columns for them are all reprints from the archives here, so they appear here long before they appear there (and you can usually find the original by using the site’s search function to search for the headline).
A new grad (“Eva”) joined our team about six months ago. She had previously interned with us and had really impressed us with her knowledge, efficiency, and proactive approach.
As a seasoned member of the team, I went out of my way to be kind, helpful, and patient with Eva as she learned the ropes. She had tons of questions, which is to be expected at first. However, things started to sour when she began messaging me non-stop about things unrelated to work and excessively badmouthing another coworker, even calling him vulgar names (on the company’s internal messaging platform!). I began to feel that Eva’s messages were crossing a major line and asked her to stop with the name-calling, but she didn’t.
Even after several months on the job, she was still calling me three to four times per hour with questions which she could easily look up with company-wide resources. I started lying and saying I was busy on another line, which I hoped would nudge her towards more independent problem-solving, but to no avail. I also asked my other coworkers if they were having similar experiences with Eva, but they all said she barely interacted with them except when absolutely necessary.
At this point, I intentionally started to make myself less available. I would ignore most messages Eva sent me at work, as well as her frequent attempts to contact me outside of work via text. She didn’t get the hint and started trying to get my attention by telling me random work-related anecdotes that were outrageously false and completely unrelated to anything we were working on at the time. It was really confusing and just … odd.
Recently we were assigned a week-long project, which required us to work in the same room with a few other coworkers instead of in our separate offices. I noticed on the first day that she kept walking behind me to look at my computer screen and read my messages. They were strictly work-related so I had nothing to hide, but it made me uncomfortable.
About halfway through the week, she once again tried to strike up a conversation by making a wildly untrue assertion about our workplace closing on certain days (we’re open 24/7). I couldn’t contain my bewilderment at this point, and messaged another coworker across the room, “Why is she telling me about this?”
Unbeknownst to me, Eva unfortunately saw that message. Over the next few days, she started having seemingly unprovoked violent outbursts, slamming things on her desk and yelling profanities at other coworkers and even some of our vendors. One coworker was so concerned about this work environment that he brought it to our manager’s attention.
Finally, the coworker who I had messaged about Eva’s random anecdote (who I’ve been close with for many years and who had shared his own frustrations about Eva with me before) told me that Eva was telling everyone she saw the message and was calling me “two-faced.” Now she’s requesting a formal face-to-face meeting with me, moderated by our manager, to address it.
What is the best way to approach this meeting with a coworker who seems to be showing obsessive tendencies towards me? Won’t it just reinforce her belief that she’s entitled to my time and attention? Given the nature of her outbursts, would it be unreasonable to tell my manager I’m concerned for my own well-being at this point?
It would not be unreasonable to tell your manager that you’re concerned for your safety. Eva is displaying what sounds like obsessive behavior toward you, and it’s turning aggressively hostile now that she feels you don’t like her.
Talk to your manager privately, before this meeting with Eva happens. Tell her that Eva has been calling you three to four times per hour, texting you outside of work with obviously false anecdotes, and generally paying you an uncomfortable and unwelcome amount of attention, and in the last week it’s transitioned to violent outbursts and yelling profanity. Let her know other coworkers and even your vendors have witnessed this.
Tell her you don’t feel safe around Eva, definitely aren’t comfortable participating in a formal meeting with Eva to address her feelings and worry it will exacerbate things further, and in fact are asking your manager to intervene because this has gone beyond anything you can field on your own, and Eva is making everyone’s work environment feel volatile and unsafe.
The friends are reunited as their legal troubles cease to bubble and slip down back into the cracks in the pavement. Poor Claire needs a rest, but as is so often the case, as she sinks, Lottie is on the up, and the slack can be taken up.
ATLANTA—Explaining that watching his movements on video had really helped him identify weaknesses and track his gains and losses, local bodybuilder Antonio Vergara filmed himself eating chicken Wednesday to make sure his form was correct. “People don’t realize it, but over 70% of injuries from ingesting lean proteins happen because of bad technique,” said Vergara, who added that setting up a tripod in his kitchen had allowed him to understand why he often sustained muscle strains, ligament tears, and stress fractures while repeatedly sitting down at his table to eat several pounds of boiled chicken breasts per day. “In the heat of breakfast, lunch, or dinner, it can be hard to assess how you’re handling the meat, but the camera is the best way to ensure I’m getting clean bites and swallows. If you’re not careful, you can do some serious damage to your core, obliques, and anal sphincter. I had a friend who ate a rotisserie chicken the wrong way and couldn’t walk for a month.” At press time, a wincing Vergara revealed that he’d had no choice but to send his personal trainer a 15-minute video of him vomiting up a skillet of chicken fajitas to determine where exactly he’d gone wrong.
State Of The Union February 24, 2026 Washington, DC
8:52 PM: The State of the Union is opened by House Majority Leader Mike Johnson, who has been released from his medium-sized dog cage specially for this evening. He welcomes congressional attendees with a giggle, as this is the first time he’s been permitted to speak since late January. Standing on the dais beside him is Vice President and Fall Out Boy fanfic author JD Vance. While most Republicans have chosen red, Vance wears a blue tie to complement Peter Thiel’s eyes.
9:10 PM: Having just styled his hair by rubbing it against a balloon, President Trump enters the House Chamber in the building formerly known as the US Capitol and now known as the “Crypto.com Funzone.” Republicans in the audience give him a standing ovation. Trump, reading from his teleprompter, declares, “Our nation is back—bigger, better, stronger, and richer than ever before.” The audience stands and claps louder as White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles holds an “Applause-o-Meter,” which grants additional presidential pardons to the most enthusiastic audience members.
TRUMP CLAIMS: “This is the golden age of America.”
FACT CHECK: As of publication, this is unfortunately untrue, as Donald Trump is still alive.
9:16 PM: Texas Representative Al Green holds up a handwritten sign that reads BLACK PEOPLE AREN’T APES!, referring to racist videos that Trump has shared about President Obama. Republicans shout “USA!” and force him to leave as RFK Jr. attempts to redirect the crowd by ripping off his shirt and doing a line of coke off of an oddly dirty toilet seat he seems to have brought himself. He demands that everyone around him lick the toilet seat. Kristi Noem pulls a small dog out of her purse, giggles, and snaps its neck.
9:22 PM: As anticipated, Trump focuses on immigration. “We have the strongest border in American history by far,” he claims. The crowd of Marvel villains applauds. “In the past several months, zero illegal aliens have been admitted to the United States unless they were escorted by, or delivered to, a Republican congressman as a sex slave.”
TRUMP CLAIMS: “I secured commitments for more than $18 trillion pouring in from all over the globe.”
FACT CHECK: This is one of the fun lies where you have to enter Satan’s trash pit of degraded imagination even to begin to guess what Trump’s talking about. Our best bet is that he likes the number 18 because he’s a fan of girls that age, and “trillion” sounds like a big number.
9:45 PM: The US Men’s Olympic Hockey Team is saluted by President Trump. He is clearly a fan of Icebreaker and Heated Rivalry, and gazes adoringly at his TBIdols. As rich, violent white men who are missing some teeth and likely have degenerative brain disease, they represent the Platonic ideal of a Trump supporter.
TRUMP CLAIMS: “A short time ago, we were a dead country. Now we are the hottest country anywhere in the world.”
FACT CHECK: Due to Trump’s recent deregulation of greenhouse gases, America will be a direct driver of global warming, but other countries, and not just the United States, will also likely get hotter as a result.
9:55 PM: Trump addresses the SCOTUS justices in attendance. “Unfortunate ruling from the Supreme Court, it just came down, it just came down,” he says. “JD, go do the thing. You know the thing.” Vance walks off the dais, pausing in front of a remarkably lifelike Amy Coney Barrett before pulling out a pocket knife and continuing to Brett Kavanaugh.
TRUMP CLAIMS: “Prices on everyday goods are falling.”
FACT CHECK: Prices on items such as groceries have risen sharply, but it is true that the cost to bribe an American president is the lowest it’s been in decades.
10:13 PM: Cocking his wobbly mass of ever-melting head, Trump says, “Somali pirates ransacked Minnesota. I talked to the ghost of an eighteenth-century plantation owner, and he said, ‘Sir. Sir, people think pirates are cool, but you’re much better than pirates. Please help my people and me so that we can be richer.‘” The president then instructs the audience to look under their seats. Everyone leans down and pulls out white robes. “That’s right, we have a little something, a gift, very comfortable, and they have hoods. Some people are calling it a ’Trump Robe,’ and they’re calling me a ‘Grand Wizard.’ I’m not calling myself that, if you can believe it, but they’re saying it, and I don’t know, maybe it will stick.” Mike Johnson smiles and nods.
TRUMP CLAIMS: “We have lifted a record 2.4 million Americans off of food stamps.”
FACT CHECK: This claim is true. It was achieved by eliminating necessary programs and letting people starve.
10:22 PM: Trump announces a new “War on Fraud” initiative to be led by Vance. The vice president squints as Trump says that he will begin by going after Maybelline, because “maybe she’s born with it,” but what about HIM?
TRUMP CLAIMS: “I took prescription drugs… from the highest price in the entire world to the lowest. That’s a big achievement. The result is price differences of 300 percent, 400 percent, 500 percent, 600 percent, and more.”
FACT CHECK: True. Drug companies now pay you to take their meds. While you can send them a bill, we advise simply robbing pharmaceutical execs directly.
10:34 PM: Republicans continue to bob up and down in deference to their diapered king while Democrats in attendance remained seated. Trump contorts his face into a wide, pained grimace that is meant to convey what he seems to think is a smile. “These people are crazy,” he says. “Democrats are destroying our country!” Pete Hegseth chugs half a bottle of tequila and yells “IN YOUR FACE” toward the Democratic half of the room, before vomiting onto Tulsi Gabbard.
TRUMP CLAIMS: “I love America.”
FACT CHECK: Trump has never once felt love.
10:37 PM: Trump continues, now all riled up, “Democrats are evil and shouldn’t be allowed to live. Speaking of, we must reject political violence of any kind. Look what happened to my best friend, Charlie Kirk. Well, we have a little surprise for you.” The taxidermied corpse of Charlie Kirk is dropped and swings from the rafters as red, white, and blue fireworks explode inside the room, raining down sparks and lighting one of the attending military generals on fire. Erika Kirk pretends to sniffle like a bad simulacrum of grief before holding up a QR code for viewers to donate to her Charlie Kirk Memorial Tiki Vacation Facelift Fund.
TRUMP CLAIMS: “We love religion, and we love bringing it back, and it’s coming back at levels that nobody thought possible.”
FACT CHECK: True. The number of middle-aged women taking up witchcraft to learn hexes has grown dramatically during Trump’s presidency. And, according to one God, the number of people praying for “it to happen” has nearly tripled in the last year alone.
10:43 PM: Trump continues introducing various guests and sharing their stories, including the “brave parents of a beautiful young girl,” likely referring to the courage it took them to bring their daughter to a room swarming with sex pests.
10:51 PM: Addressing a grieving mother, Trump continues, “I want to present you with an award for your bravery, and an expired coupon for a Big Mac. We love Big Macs, don’t we? The way the ketchup drips out of them when you take a bite, much like your horribly murdered daughter’s neck dripped blood. Probably the same color, blood, ketchup, awful, awful stuff, she screamed a lot, didn’t she? That’s right, point the camera at that mother there. What a sad thing. Your daughter screamed, huh… but you get to be here with me now so we know it didn’t all turn out too bad, did it.” Vance and Johnson stand and applaud.
11:08 PM: Nearly concluding this lengthy lie festival formerly known as the State of the Union, Trump introduces a WWII fighter pilot and awards him the Medal of Honor. “I’ve always wanted the Congressional Medal of Honor,” he says, "but they never give it to me. I keep killing people all the time, and yet they still don’t give it to me. We’ll change that in my third term.”
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