The $1.3 million project will slim an eight-block section of the street from four lanes to three and add bike lanes in an effort to make travel safer and smoother.
The post Waco is putting Sanger Avenue on “road diet” near Tennyson Middle School. Here’s what that means. appeared first on The Waco Bridge.
I've written before about the futility of "voting with your wallet." Billionaires love it when you try to vote with your wallet, because while billionaires only represent 0.00004% of the population, their wallets are 100,000 times larger than average, which means that when we vote with wallets, a billionaire's vote counts 100,000 times more than yours:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/13/consumption-choices/
The idea of voting with your wallet is fundamentally antiprogressive, and not only because wallet-voting favors the wealthy. The ideological basis for voting with your wallet is the belief that politics are slow and unresponsive, while markets dynamically optimize for human wellbeing. By voting with your wallet, you are supposedly injecting information about your preferences and dispreferences into a vast, distributed computer we call "the market," which uses "demand signals" to decide how we live our lives.
This belief is incompatible with the idea of politics – that is, the idea that our lives can be shaped by representative democracy, deliberation, and/or solidarity. It's a nihilistic view that insists that the only nice things we can have are the things that "the market" chooses for us. If "the market" doesn't decide to swap out fossil fuels for cleantech, then that's that – any attempt to draw down our carbon emissions through regulation will only "distort the market." If you're roasting in a drought, drowning in a flood, or being incinerated by a wildfire, your only move is to go shopping and hope that by buying a Tesla, you will emit a "demand signal" that "tips the market equilibrium" to "not killing you and everyone you love."
Shopping isn't politics. Politics are politics, and shopping is shopping.
This isn't to say shopping can't improve your life! I am a materialist, and having nice things is nice. If there's a lovely independent coffee shop in your neighborhood where the baristas are treated well and the coffee is delicious and the vibes are impeccable, then by all means, get your coffee there. If you love the staff and selections at your neighborhood indie bookstore, then you should buy your books there. If you love the discourse on Mastodon or Bluesky and find yourself feeling sick and angry when you use Twitter or Facebook, then ditch the legacy social media and take up residence in the Fediverse and/or Atmosphere.
But don't kid yourself that this is politics. No matter how indie your coffee, books and social media, your consumption choices will not have a material impact on Starbucks, Amazon or Twitter. Going vegan won't make the meat industry treat animals better. Taking the bus won't induce improvements to your town's public transit network.
Having nice things is nice, and the more nice things you have – good food, good health, good books, good coffee, good social media and good transit – the more space and energy you'll have to devote to politics.
But what about boycotts? Surely the Montgomery bus boycott, the anti-Apartheid boycott, the California grape boycott and the BDS movement were politics, right?
They sure were. But they weren't shopping. The Montgomery bus boycott lasted 382 days, during which time organizers worked with bus riders, cab drivers, the UAW and community groups to provide material and legal support and alternatives like car pools, all while communicating about their specific demands. After 382 days, the courts ruled in their favor, their demands were met, and Montgomery's buses desegregated:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_bus_boycott
That wasn't "shopping." The bus boycott didn't consist of a bunch of individual choices to walk to work, repeatedly made by a city full of Black people and their allies. The shopping part was the least important part of the whole matter, and the meaningful part of the shopping was never individual. If the boycott was nothing more than shopping, it would have broken as soon as individual people found themselves unable to convince their bosses to tolerate their late, sweaty arrival at work, day after day. The boycott worked because it was politics.
And because the boycott was politics, it left behind a movement: the boycott brought people into solidarity with each other, and when they comprehensively defeated their political adversary – National City Lines – they went on to form the backbone of the civil rights movement, going from strength to strength.
Of course, shopping is part of a boycott. It's the individual part that each participant in the boycott undertakes. But without the collective, organized part, shopping is no way to effect change.
Is voting politics? Well, sure, but voting is to politics as shopping is to boycotts. For several decades now, most voters have been asked to chose the lesser of two evils (and now they're asked to choose the significantly lesser of two evils). Voting can change things, when there's something good to vote for, or something very bad to vote against, and when lots of people show up at the polls.
But to make voting effective, you have to do politics. You have to get involved in the primary races that select the candidate. You have to go to candidates' meetings and ask tough questions. You have to ring doorbells for your chosen candidate, volunteer to take your neighbors to the polls and volunteer to defend the polls from chuds and ICE fascists. The part of voting that takes place in the booth is the least important part of politics.
It's obvious why we might prefer to substitute voting or shopping for politics: they're activities you do alone. You don't have to find anyone else to do them with you. You don't have to convince anyone else to do them with you. You don't have to argue about them or justify them. They are zipless fucks, a source of satisfaction without connection, compromise or complication.
Of course, that's also why voting and shopping make a poor substitute for politics. All the retail therapy in the world can't lift your spirits the way that solidarity and community will. Doing politics creates solidaristic ties with the people around you, who might help you if you lose your job and can't buy groceries, or break your leg and can't get to the grocery store, or if ICE fascists try to kidnap you while you're out shopping.
Solidarity gets you through times of no money way better than money gets you through times of no solidarity – just ask the psycho billionaires who wanted Doug Rushkoff to invent a system of bomb-collars that would keep their post-apocalyptic mercenaries from whacking them and stealing their bunkers:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/13/collapse-porn/#collapse-porn
Last weekend, I walked through a crowd of tens of thousands of coked-up fascists in central London on my way to meet up with 250,000 comrades marching for an end to genocide in Palestine and a new British social compact based on mutual aid, pluralism, and care. Walking through those flag-draped chuds was incredibly demoralizing:
But when I got off the tube at South Kensington and found there were so many of us we were backed up all the way from the every street entrance to the bottom of the escalators, my morale surged. Hours later, when we all reached Pall Mall together, I was ready to take on the world. That's what politics does for you: it makes you feel like you belong to a polity and that together, you can really change the world.
Politics runs on solidarity, but shopping destroys it. Individual consumption choices don't change the world, but if you've been convinced that the only way to change the world is by voting with your wallet then when the world stays terrible, you can only conclude that your friends and neighbors have ruined by things by voting (shopping) wrong.
In politics, we build bonds of mutual regard and understanding that we use to navigate our differences. But when you vote with your wallet, all that's left is the endless policing of your allies' consumption choices, endless scolding for their failure to leave Twitter, or give up meat, or eschew chatbots. Shopping for change ends up replacing politics with petty snooping and endless sniping and attempts to bully or shame people into consuming different things.
If "the personal is political," then every political disappointment in your life is down to your friends' personal defects. If you let yourself get tricked into organizing your life around "living your politics" – that is, giving up on nice things in the hope that this will make politics change, and then getting mad at people who consume different things from you – then you will end up sucked into the stupidest fights imaginable with the people you need to get along with in order to do politics.
Once again, this isn't to say that you shouldn't choose to have nice things. Buy stuff you like, shop at places you like. And when circumstances allow all of us to start making consumption choices in unison – as when Comrades Trump and Putin stage an orgy of demand-destruction for fossil fuels, catapulting the world into the Gretacene – then by all means, take the win. That is one of the rare instances in which we can do political change with consumption!
https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/04/hope-in-the-dark/#hormuzed-into-the-gretacene
And there definitely are times where a single individual can intervene in the system in a powerful way that really fucks up the worst actors in our society:
https://www.theverge.com/tech/931532/bambu-agpl-pawel-jarczak-open-source-threat-dmca-github
These usually involve using technology to "move fast and break things," which is fine, actually! It's fine to move fast and break things belonging to Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg or some other monster. Indeed, it's practically a moral imperative:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/30/zucksauce/#gandersauce
But even in those highly leveraged, highly individualized opportunities to make a dent in the universe, you'll make a bigger dent, and have more fun, if you do it as politics, with a big group of people, in bonds of solidarity.
Messages of Solidarity https://movement.wwwrise.org/solidarity
The Enshittification of History https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/05/the-enshittification-of-histor.html
Europe’s big tech bet is only as safe as its democracy https://defenddemocracy.eu/eu-tech-democracy/
Iran demands Big Tech pay fees for undersea Internet cables in Strait of Hormuz https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/05/iran-demands-big-tech-pay-fees-for-undersea-internet-cables-in-strait-of-hormuz/
#25yrsago Software-based antennas https://web.archive.org/web/20010518225333/http://www.etenna.com/
#25yrsago Aimster loses trademark to AOL https://web.archive.org/web/20010523001415/http://msnbc.com/news/575492.asp?cp1=1
#25yrsago House to ban online anonymity https://web.archive.org/web/20010526220254/https://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,43938,00.html
#20yrsago Lawsuits of Web 2.0 https://web.archive.org/web/20060528001734/http://www.fuckedsuit.com/
#20yrsago Is one month’s piracy worth more than France’s GDP? https://decordove.com/one-month-of-torrents-is-worth-more-than-the-gdp-of-france-riaa-rant.php
#20yrsago Audio from Bruce Sterling’s “Neither Arphid nor RFID” rant https://web.archive.org/web/20060614140414/https://dev1.manme.org.uk/~luke/Sterling_SPACE_160506.mp3
#20yrsago Cops raid “sex slave cult” based on science fiction novels http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4996410.stm
#15yrsago Legal rebuttal: “vade et caca in pilleum et ipse traheatur super aures tuo” https://newyorkpersonalinjuryattorneyblog.com/2011/05/joseph-rakofsky-i-have-an-answer-for-you.html
#15yrsago List of economists involved in violent sex crimes, for Ben Stein https://blog.xkcd.com/2011/05/18/answering-ben-steins-question/
#15yrsago MAFIAA wants warrantless searches of CD and DVD factories https://web.archive.org/web/20110520232527/https://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/05/riaa-warrantless-seizures/
#15yrsago CDC explains how to prepare for a zombie apocalypse https://web.archive.org/web/20110519201602/http://emergency.cdc.gov/socialmedia/zombies_blog.asp
#10yrsago 129 of Gandhi’s speeches on India and self-rule https://archive.org/details/HindSwaraj?and[]=subject%3A"Post+Prayer+Speech"
#10yrsago A backer message as Earth leaves beta and goes 1.0 https://web.archive.org/web/20160521054706/http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v533/n7603/full/533432a.html
#10yrsago EFF files Chelsea Manning appeal on hacking conviction https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-asks-court-reverse-chelsea-mannings-conviction-violating-federal-anti-hacking-law
#10yrsago Apple rejects game about Palestine because political messages disqualify games from consideration https://web.archive.org/web/20160520111154/https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/05/apple-says-game-about-palestinian-child-isnt-a-game/
#10yrsago Nerdcore rapper Sammus’s amazing OSCON keynote https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELczJ07XPnw
#10yrsago Everything is a Remix on “The Force Awakens” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKvsc6a03Es
#10yrsago Angry dudes are downranking woman-oriented TV shows on review sites https://web.archive.org/web/20160519014153/https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/men-are-sabotaging-the-online-reviews-of-tv-shows-aimed-at-women/
#10yrsago Second Life’s Trump army lays siege to Bernie Sanders’s virtual HQ with swastika cannons https://web.archive.org/web/20160428093534/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/second-life-donald-trump-bernie-sanders
#10yrsago Xenophobic UK politician ranting about “political correctness” gets a public spanking from an historian https://web.archive.org/web/20160520224731/http://indy100.independent.co.uk/article/ukip-councillor-attempts-to-blast-bbc-for-historical-inaccuracy-gets-destroyed-by-actual-historian–ZyZAasU2fb
#10yrsago A look at digital habits of 13 year olds shows desire for privacy, face-to-face time https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/parenting4digitalfuture/2016/04/18/the-class-living-and-learning-in-the-digital-age/
#10yrsago Big Vitamin bankrolls naturopaths’ attempts to go legit and get public money https://web.archive.org/web/20160520123659/https://www.statnews.com/2016/05/17/naturopaths-go-mainstream/
#10yrsago We Stand on Guard: in 100 years, America seizes Canada for its water https://memex.craphound.com/2016/05/18/we-stand-on-guard-in-100-years-america-seizes-canada-for-its-water/
#5yrsago Apple's complicity in Chinese state oppressionhttps://pluralistic.net/2021/05/18/unhealthy-balance-sheet/#think-manorialism
#5yrsago Community Health Services sued its way through the pandemic https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/18/unhealthy-balance-sheet/#health-usury
#5yrsago What Would Open Source Look Like If It Were Healthy https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/18/unhealthy-balance-sheet/#user-personas
#5yrsago Dead, broke https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/19/zombie-debt/#damnation
#1yrago Who Broke the Internet? Part III https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/19/khan-thought/#they-were-warned
SXSW London, Jun 2
https://www.sxswlondon.com/session/how-big-tech-broke-the-internet-b3c4a901
Kansas City: Facing the Future (Woodneath Library Center), Jun 10
https://www.mymcpl.org/events/119655/facing-future-cory-doctorow
LA: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Brian Merchant (Skylight Books), Jun 19
https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-cory-doctorow-presents-reverse-centaurs-guide-life-after-ai-w-brian-merchant
Menlo Park: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Angie Coiro (Kepler's), Jun 21
https://www.keplers.org/upcoming-events-internal/cory-doctorow-2026
Toronto: TBA, Jun 23
NYC: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Jonathan Coulton (The Strand), Jun 24
https://www.strandbooks.com/cory-doctorow-the-reverse-centaur-s-guide-to-life-after-ai.html
Philadelphia: TBA, Jun 25
Chicago: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Rick Perlstein (Exile in Bookville), Jun 26
https://exileinbookville.com/events/50628
Edinburgh International Book Festival with Jimmy Wales, Aug 17
https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/events/the-front-list-cory-doctorow-and-jimmy-wales
EFFecting Change: How to Disenshittify the Internet (EFF, with Wendy Liu)
https://archive.org/details/effecting-change-enshittification
The “Enshittification” of Everything (Bioneers)
https://bioneers.org/cory-doctorow-enshittification-of-everything-zstf2605/
Enshittification (99% Invisible)
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/666-enshittification/
Artificial Intelligence: The Ultimate Disruptor, with Astra Taylor and Yoshua Bengio (CBC Ideas)
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-23-ideas/clip/16210039-artificial-intelligence-the-ultimate-disruptor
"Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
"Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).
"The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).
"The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).
"The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
"Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026
"The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027
"Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027
"The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027
Today's top sources:
Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Third draft completed. Submitted to editor.
"The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.
A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
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For as long as his hair has been silver (going back to his 20s), John Cornyn has been winning elections.
Among those victories seemed, perhaps, to be the 74-year-old U.S. senator’s surprising first-place finish in the March primary—over expected frontrunner Attorney General Ken Paxton—which set up next week’s decisive runoff. On primary night, Cornyn called the scandal-plagued AG “flawed, self-centered and shameless” and boldly called his shot: “Judgment Day is coming for Ken Paxton.”
The next day, The Atlantic published a purported scoop—reported by two prominent ex-Washington Post political correspondents—stating that President Donald Trump would soon throw his endorsement to Cornyn in an attempt to end what would otherwise be a protracted, expensive bloodbath. Trump confirmed he would be endorsing one of the two and calling on the other to bow out.
What a coup this would have been for Cornyn, the consummate Senate hand who had spent his life cultivating influence in the deepest ends of the D.C. swamp—the sort of figure that’s fallen out of fashion in the brash era of unbridled Trumpism. Here was a man who was never a full convert, who had the gall to—in brief spurts in the distant past—not always speak of Trump with pure reverence, now seemingly about to get the nod over Paxton, a favored MAGA son.
Then came… nothing. Hours passed, then days, weeks, and months as the painfully long period between Texas primary and runoff dragged on without Trump intervening.
Both camps kept lobbying Trumpworld for his endorsement—each playing to the president’s personal vanity, his guiding principle when it comes to picking sides.
For Paxton, there was no amount of groveling that would come off as shocking. For Cornyn, though, it was sometimes cringeworthy to see him go through the motions: posing with The Art of the Deal and giving up on his beloved filibuster.
Meanwhile, each also commenced with campaign bloodsport—spending tens of millions of dollars attacking the other (to be fair, more so the Cornyn side than Paxton). Then, just before noon on May 19, on the second day of early runoff voting in Texas, Trump put his proverbial hand on the shoulder of his chosen one, and lo, it was Warren Kenneth Paxton.
In a 683-word, typically self-absorbed missive posted on Truth Social, where posts are supposed to be known as “truths,” Trump wrote that Paxton is “an America First Patriot, and someone who has always been extremely loyal to me and our AMAZING MAGA MOVEMENT.”
Cornyn, on the other hand, was merely “a good man, and I worked well with him, but he was not supportive of me when times were tough.”
In a tight runoff, the Trump endorsement, though late, almost certainly ensures the scandal-tarnished attorney general the nomination. (As incumbents from Louisiana to Kentucky—who’d risked considerably more independence than Cornyn, to be clear—recently discovered in their own primary contests.)
And, of course, this will almost certainly ensure that Cornyn’s decades-long run as a statewide official in Texas is brought to a likely end with a flippant tapping of a button on Trump’s own social media app.
As John Cornyn rose, over the course of the 1980s, 90s, and 2000s, from a San Antonio lawyer to district court judge, from Texas Supreme Court justice to state attorney general, and ultimately to the Senate in 2002, he served in many ways as a sort of cipher for the political arc of the traditional Republican Party in Texas—its rise to power, its deepening and maintenance of that power, and, ultimately, the fading of that power in the face of insurgent forces. Cornyn pioneered the Republicanization of the Texas Attorney’s General Office that paved the way for his successors: Greg Abbott and Paxton. And, in the Senate, Cornyn helped usher in the 21st century brand of conservatism that fused the religious and social right with the power of Corporate America (while, in his own way,never really managing to become a consistent favorite of the hardcore base).
All along the way, Cornyn was the most loyal of servants for the GOP cause—and he steadfastly rose through the ranks of power in Washington as his tenure advanced.
Ken Paxton, meanwhile, has been a cipher for the Trumpification of the Republican Party in Texas and nationwide—the beneficiary of an era wherein one can enjoy the trappings of a Christian conservatism brand while possessing the personal ethics and morality of an unrepentant hustler. He is of the tendency that cast aside some traditional pro-business principles (including the tort reform revolution that Cornyn rode to power) in favor of a wildly vindictive, heat-seeking agenda to take out the scourge of “Woke,” “DEI”, etc. Despite his generally dull personal affect, Paxton has used each ounce of his official and political power to fan the flames of conspiracy theory and neo-McCarthyism.
The day before Trump’s (likely) fateful endorsement, Cornyn was hitting the campaign trail across Texas. The list of guests who were at his side was instructive. Up in North Texas, there were the Republican state Representatives Jeff Leach and Matt Shaheen, both once faithful Collin County conservative allies with Paxton who have since become outspoken adversaries—and public enemies among the pro-Paxton grassroots. In Austin, Cornyn rallied a small crowd with Michael McCaul, a longtime congressman and Cornyn mentee who was once seen as his potential successor in the U.S. Senate, who’s now had his fill of Congress in the age of Trump.
Then, down in San Antonio, the senator was flanked by former Governor Rick Perry who has now been out of political office for nearly 12 years, plus Cornyn’s own predecessor, Phil Gramm. (Both men, it should be noted, made the transition from conservative Dem to Republican during the Texas political realignment of the 1980s.)
In short, this was not really a crowd that met the current moment, even as Cornyn has sought to pucker up and display his Trump fealty. (One of his most recent official acts was a proposal to name a Texas highway after the president.)
The undignified way in which Cornyn’s political career appears to be meeting its maker now begs a bigger question.
In many ways, his Senate career was already over—becoming so when he narrowly lost his long-coveted shot at becoming majority leader of the U.S. Senate last year. His path to power in that case was blocked, in part, by a pressure campaign led by Paxton and his allies. Trump ultimately chose not to endorse in that contest.
So why exactly did he, well into his 70s, even want to spend another six years in the U.S. Senate, a political body that has lost its august sheen and become yet another venue for unvarnished politicking, a body that couldn’t even feign to pass a non-budgetary, non-defense piece of legislation. A body whose core tradition, the filibuster, he felt forced to abandon in a desperate campaign tactic? Why not retire and ride off into the sunset?
Cornyn has explained repeatedly that this was mostly, perhaps entirely, about preventing a man of Paxton’s immoral character from ever stepping foot in the Senate—not about passing some long-denied piece of legislation, or solving the immigration policy dilemma that he helped blow up over a decade ago, or anything else beyond the symbolic. Congress, after all, is no longer a place where things get done.
But now, it appears that even his seemingly straightforward goal of stopping Paxton’s ascent is on the verge of failure.
In the end, Cornyn always had a rather unnatural, if not unpleasant, relationship with Trump and the Trump era—and those points where he chose to speak out against the GOP uberleader probably led to his (also probable) demise. Even still, his resistance ultimately amounted to little more than stray comments.
So, if he loses his runoff, will Cornyn become another in the line of Jeff Flake, Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse, or, most recently, Bill Cassidy, who at least managed to exit the stage with what seemed a genuine flourish of principle over position?
Don’t count on it.
The post Not with a Bang but with a ‘Truth’ appeared first on The Texas Observer.
In brief: While rain totals across the Houston area have been rather variable (ranging from less than an inch in some spots to over 8 inches in far southern Brazoria County), we expect everyone to participate in rain and storm chances this weekend, especially from Saturday night into Monday. Flash flooding remains a distinct possibility, and our Stage 2 flood alert will remain up through at least Monday.
We’re a few days into this relatively significant change to a rainy pattern, and so far, so good for the most part. We’re going to maintain the Stage 2 flood alert through the holiday weekend. I think the rains we saw Wednesday down in Brazoria County (7 inches) exemplify what this setup is capable of.
So far, the northern half of the area has seen a relatively pedestrian 1 to 2 inches (even less in spots), while the southern half has seen 1 to 4 inches on average, with pockets of 5 to 8 inches. We expect another 1 to 4 inches on average over the next week across the entire area. Isolated higher and a couple lower amounts are indeed possible.
For those concerned about the situation in Corpus Christi, Lake Texana has seen about 3 inches of rain, while Lake Corpus Christi has seen about 4 inches of rain so far. Areas upstream of those lakes have received anywhere from 2 to 4 inches as well. By no means does this “save” Corpus Christi from a very bad situation, but it obviously helps buy some time. And any help is great news down there right now.
Right now, weather modeling is suspiciously calm today and much of Saturday across the area. Obviously, showers and thunderstorms are still possible. But I would suspect most places stay dry as the best “oomph” for storms remains south or offshore in the Gulf. We’ll probably see clouds and sun. Highs may nudge back up into the middle or even some upper-80s after a couple days of lower 80s. There will be plentiful humidity to go along with that.
If we’re going to get smacked by rainfall, Saturday evening through Memorial Day would be the timeframe I’d be watching closest. A rather vigorous disturbance in the middle and upper atmosphere is going to swing into the Houston area on Saturday evening. This should provide the trigger necessary to get storms off and running. It’s impossible to really say exactly how things are going to setup right now, but expect increasing thunderstorm chances after about 4 PM on Saturday into Saturday night across the Houston area.
We’ll then need to watch for repeated development of storms and the risk for flash flooding, including in areas that have not seen much rain so far. With moisture in the atmosphere much higher than normal, any storms will be capable of dropping 2 to 4 inches of rain in an hour or so. Any “training” or repeating thunderstorms over the same area means those totals could add up quickly, hence the concern for some localized flooding and our Stage 2 flood alert. More to come on this throughout the weekend as we get more clarity on timing and locations impacted.
The area will remain under the influence of an unsettled weather pattern and above normal atmospheric moisture. I would expect this on again/off again type rain and storm stuff to continue through much of next week, though perhaps at a slightly slower pace. Either way, what we can say with fairly high confidence right now is that any sustained, strong early summer heat is not in the cards through at least early June.
It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go…
1. Employee never paid me for baby clothes but now wants a reference
I left a job about 2.5 years ago on good terms. One of the people who worked for me (who was a great employee) reached out when I left and asked if I’d be hiring soon, which I wasn’t. I wanted to help her, and I did find a different job opening at another company and sent it to her. She applied and ultimately got the job.
Shortly after, she asked about baby items I was getting rid of. She asked if she could buy them from me (I had already given away a fair amount of maternity clothes and baby things for free) and I said I had several massive bins of clothes/shoes and that she could pick up the lot of clothing, pay me $1 per item, and return the bins and unwanted items. She picked them up and I never heard from her again. She never paid for anything, and I never received leftover clothing or my bins back. I realize the opportunity to ask was way back then, but truthfully I felt too petty to ask for an unknown amount of money or the storage bins (which I had to replace) but she also did not remotely hold up her end of the arrangement.
This week she contacted me asking if I’d be a reference. I said yes, then received a text from a third party with a link to a questionnaire. The instructions said this will take 30-40 mins to complete. Less than 24 hours later, she was reaching out asking when I’d have time to fill this out.
I am going to make good on my word and complete the questionnaire. This situation just rubs me the wrong way all around because it feels very one-sided. Would you say anything about this? Or is this just the risk you run when you try to do something nice within a workplace relationship?
There’s a pretty good chance that her absconding with your baby clothes and bins was just baby brain and she didn’t even realize she did it … but you are allowed to feel peeved by it!
That said, yeah, ideally you would have addressed it at the time by texting her when you hadn’t heard back within a couple of weeks to say, “Hey, just checking in — did you decide what you wanted and when is a good time to return the bins and anything you’re not taking?” I get why you didn’t, but if you’re going to be annoyed it’s nearly always better to just reach out and check.
I do think you’re right to complete the questionnaire because you said you would — and to continue being a reference for her if she was a great employee when you managed her. And because so much time has passed, I don’t think there’s a lot of point in raising the baby clothes now. If you have otherwise known her to be a responsible, conscientious person aside from this, you’re better off figuring that it slipped her mind at the time and she would have made it right if you’d contacted her. (And really, that is the grace we’d all want in her shoes if it was a genuine oversight.)
2. Should we be doing quarterly performance reviews?
My company recently moved from semi-annual to quarterly performance reviews, and I’m trying to figure out if my feelings about them are well-calibrated.
For context, I’ve spent most of my career at small companies without formal review processes. My current larger company is good at giving feedback so there’s nothing surprising in a review, and we have weekly 1:1s with managers to discuss goals and adjustments.
Many of my coworkers find self-reviews and peer feedback stressful enough that we have multiple long-running Slack channels dedicated to discussing them. I’m less stressed about the reviews themselves and more bothered that the whole process feels like a time sink box-checking exercise.
Our system has three ratings that essentially amount to: improvement needed by next quarter, doing fine, and doing excellent. I’m one of roughly 80–90% of the company who will land in the middle category. If someone needs to improve, they already know before the review. If someone is working toward a promotion, they have a general sense of what’s expected and can actually achieve one with a “doing fine” rating. The top rating is uncommon and not structurally achievable by everyone each quarter. Ratings do affect raises, so there’s real motivation behind them.
Given all that, is there a version of quarterly reviews that serves a genuine purpose? Or is what I’m describing closer to what you’d call work theater, a performance of performance management not the same outcome? And do you have general thoughts on what separates a well-designed review process from a performative one?
No, quarterly reviews in most cases are way too often! First, doing formal reviews well takes an enormous amount of time and energy (and if you’re not doing them well, there’s really no point to doing them that often). Second, that frequency just isn’t necessary if your managers are managing effectively; they should already be having ongoing conversations with people about how they’re doing, what’s going well, and anything that needs to change. If they’re not doing that, the solution is to better train those managers, not to implement quarterly bureaucratic time sucks.
I could see if it’s literally just a quick check-in with one of those three ratings and any accompanying discussion that needs to happen for a “needs” improvement” — that could be a way to ensure managers are staying on top of communicating about issues. But if it’s accompanied by the more detailed narrative that evaluations usually include, it’s just too much.
As for what makes a review process well-designed, I have some thoughts here:
how to make performance evaluations useful to your team
conducting strong performance evaluations
how managers mess up performance evaluations
3. Was I wrong to give input to my manager about our frustrating temp?
I am an individual contributor in a creative role at a small company. The work is challenging, but fulfilling.
Recently our team experienced an unexpected setback and needed temporary support so we brought on a temp. This has been challenging. On a practical level, their skills don’t translate well here; as a result, other team members often have to step in to fill gaps or rework deliverables. We are under a deadline and it doesn’t seem like I have a choice but to try to make this work, but it has added strain to an already high-pressure environment.
There are also interpersonal challenges. Their overall tone can come across as negative or tense, which affects team dynamics. In meetings, they sometimes talk over me and can become visibly frazzled under stress. They seem to think that managers provide me with more support and training than them, but in reality, I’ve just been doing this for years and can work independently.
The complicating factor is that we do, in fact, need to hire another full-time person. The temp has expressed strong interest in staying on permanently. From a distance, this might seem like an easy solution: they already know the company, and hiring them would be efficient. However, I have serious reservations about whether they are the right long-term fit for this specific team. My concern is not that they lack talent — they clearly have strengths — but that their strengths don’t align with the demands of this role, and that the interpersonal friction may continue over time.
I recently shared this feedback with my manager. I tried to focus on the work itself and the team’s needs, but I worry that my personal frustrations may be influencing my perspective more than I realize. Was it appropriate for me to voice concerns about hiring this person full-time? Did I just come across as not a team player? Am I overstepping by weighing in so strongly on what could be seen as a management decision? More broadly, how do I distinguish between legitimate concerns about team fit and performance versus personal irritation with a someone?
Yes, when your team is considering hiring a temp full-time and you’ve been working closely with that temp and have input that could be relevant, you absolutely should offer it. Your input presumably wasn’t “I don’t like Jane”; it was about real work issues, like the skills gap that causes other coworkers to have to step in to redo her work. In your manager’s shoes, I’d want to hear about the interpersonal issues too (I want a team that works well together and where people are collegial; someone who regularly talks over others, gets visibly frazzled under stress, or is inappropriately competitive with a peer can be coached, but I’d want to be aware that those are issues as I’m making a hiring decision and not find out about them later if someone could have filled me in earlier.)
To your question about how to distinguish between legitimate concerns and personal irritation, think of it terms of work impact. Skills or lack thereof: highly relevant. Work habits or approaches that make more work for others: highly relevant. Interpersonal habits that are generally recognized as rude (not listening when someone is talking, interrupting, letting stress affect the environment for everyone else): also relevant. Personal habits that are more like pet peeves (gum chewing, uptalk, taking about their social life an annoying amount): usually not relevant (although even there, sometimes it could be relevant — for example, someone who talks non-stop to the point that it’s disruptive to other people’s ability to focus).
4. Changing my name in my email after I get married
I’m probably overthinking this. I recently got married and I’m changing my last name. My company is going to assign me a new email address, and I’ll only have access to the old one for two weeks (too short, in my opinion, but I don’t make the rules). Would it be weird for me to put my maiden name in parentheses in the signature block of my new email for a while, like this:
Miranda (Stewpot) Warbleworth
We deal a lot with people who only know us through the computer, and I think it would be nice for them to see that it’s the same person. If this is okay, how long should I do it for?
Note, I’m positive my company will have no opinion on this. I just want to make sure I’m not overthinking or being too emotional. It never occurred to me that I’d be a little sad to change my name, but it’s bittersweet.
Yes, you should absolutely do that, and it’s very normal when you change your name. Not weird at all! (What is weird is that your company won’t set the old email to forward to your new one, but so be it.)
As for how long … I’d say at least six months. The exception to that would be if you’re generally only emailed by people on a short-term basis and then you’re never in contact again (for example, if you sell a product but then pass the client on to your tech support team for everything after that). If that’s the case, you could keep it there for whatever the typical lifecycle of the relationship is plus a couple of months.
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A reader writes:
I have an odd dilemma that I have no idea what to do about.
I started a new job recently and my cubicle has a really nice large window that looks out into the side garden, where there is a view of a hummingbird feeder and a bluebird nest box. I’m super appreciative of my nice view but the problem is, so is everybody else. As it’s warmed up and more birds are active, several coworkers have started just stopping in my doorway or stepping into my cubicle behind me to just … view the birds.
On one hand, I get it. I have a nice big window and most people don’t. But also, I find it super distracting to have people sneak up on me or just stand there creepily behind me while I’m trying to work.
What’s a nice way to handle this? I’m on the verge of being like, CAN I HELP YOU? I thought briefly about moving the feeder, but the box can’t be moved and it wouldn’t solve the problem, really.
Yeah, this was foreordained as soon as they put the nest box and feeder there. Of course people will want to look at it.
It would likely have been better located by a conference room or kitchen window, rather than at one person’s desk, but here you are.
Is there any chance you can just move desks? Maybe there’s not, but it might be worth saying to your boss, “I love the view at my desk, but I’m realizing people stop by all day to watch the birds and it’s really distracting. Any chance there’s a different desk I could use?”
If not, can you change the direction you’re facing so that people who stop by aren’t right in your line of sight? It’s still unnerving to know someone is standing behind you, but you might get better at blocking that out over time. You could also try arranging a piece of furniture to stop people from standing right behind you.
If none of that works, you could ask people who are lingering, “Do you need me?” and look at them expectantly. With some people, that will be enough to make them realize this is someone’s workspace they’re standing in. But other people will say no, they don’t need you, they’re just watching the birds. In those cases, you can decide if you want to say, “Yeah, they’re really cute! It’s hard to work with so many people coming in to watch them though.” You might not go straight to this the first time someone does it, but you might after the second or third.
That said, this is trickier because you’re new and you want to be warm and friendly to your new colleagues and not end up as The New Hire Who Ruined Our Bird Fun. Or possibly, The New Hire Who Kept the Birds All For Herself. So before you move to that, the better plan might be to spend a few weeks really trying to block people out. Realistically, I don’t know if you’ll be able to — I think I would find that really distracting too, and I am someone who can normally block out distractions when I’m working — but if you’ve made a good faith effort to do that before asking people to stop (plus allowed that additional time for people to get to know you as someone other than Bird Fun Destroyer) it’ll likely go over better when you do.
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After you, my dear… in case there’s any danger.
Hi, I’m in the movie. See? See? That’s me, right there.
The post OpenAI Announces Construction Of New Data Center On Top Of Sick Child appeared first on The Onion.
SUN PRAIRIE, WI—Struggling feebly against the temptation to abandon the ethical standards he swore to uphold upon his election to the position, local student council treasurer Grayson Burner’s deepest convictions were reportedly tested Thursday after he obtained access to $52 in singles. “Let’s not do anything too hasty—this kind of money doesn’t come along every day,” the Sun Prairie High School sophomore and aspiring civil servant is said to have muttered to himself in a fit of sudden greed, feeling the heft of the stack of bills in its manila envelope as he conjured up mad power fantasies about the lavish indulgences the $52 intended for the quarterly pizza budget could be spent on instead. “ I can’t just let this moment pass me by. Imagine the doors this could open for me. This money could change my life. I always told myself I’d be able to resist the pull, but…she’s a foul seductress, wealth.” At press time, reports confirmed Grayson was screaming incoherently as rubbed the dollar bills against his face.
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The Department of Justice filed charges, including murder and conspiring to kill U.S. nationals, against former Cuban President Raúl Castro for the 1996 downing of civilian aircraft, raising the specter of war as tensions ramp up with the Communist island nation. What do you think?
“If you’re going to kill civilians, you’d better be prepared to face the wrath or support of the United States.”
Jayden Pacheco, Rice Boiler
“It’s blatantly illegal to attack a civilian aircraft. They have to be on a boat.”
Hakeem Novaes, Decal Applicator
“Did we run out of exploding cigars?”
Mariana Valdez, Shift Enforcer
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You aren’t alone. It happens to every majority government. One minute, you’re engaged in a lively debate at a bipartisan committee meeting. The next thing you know, the press release you already wrote because the meeting was just a sham to appease your opposition is coming out and making a giant mess. It’s everywhere. The […]
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With apologies to Wallace Stevens.
I
Meeting with the academic dean
I asked him to share with faculty
How admin are using AI.
II
A colleague shares a short story:
Kafka sitting in a sales meeting
For AI.
III
AI can help faculty take
Burdensome things off their plate,
Says the dean who doesn’t use it
Or know how the plates will empty.
IV
Students want faculty to teach them
Responsible use of AI.
Students refuse to read AI statements in
Syllabuses.
V
The thinker and the thought
Are one.
The thinker and the AI thought partner
Are less than one.
VI
O slumped and gray writing professors,
Why do you imagine human-filled writing?
Do you not see that AI is the future?
VII
A philosopher writes doggerel for
An English professor
Frustrated about the lack of leadership
Regarding AI in higher ed.
VIII
I know what transformative learning can be,
And I know that outsourcing
Wonder—perhaps to a generative AI—
Transforms no one
And leaves landscapes
Ravaged.
IX
Copilot will protect your data
From outsiders;
Your campus owns your private
Questions.
X
I asked ChatGPT to review
My thyroid levels,
And was prepared for the doctor’s phone call.
XI
Is this strong student writing or
Is this a revised draft of a strong
AI prompt?
XII
It’s finals week.
Can we map electricity spikes
To college towns
To academic integrity reports?
XIII
It was the semester’s twilight.
No one knew what AI would look like
In the morning.
An American infected with Ebola is being treated in Berlin, while another exposed to the deadly virus is being sent to Prague after the White House reportedly resisted allowing citizens to return to the US for care and monitoring.
According to The Washington Post, five people close to the Ebola response said that, over the weekend, the Trump administration resisted allowing the return of Peter Stafford, a 39-year-old surgeon working in the Democratic Republic of the Congo amid a raging Ebola outbreak. The resistance allegedly delayed Stafford's evacuation and care, risking his health, as experts note that early treatment is critical for Ebola, which can turn deadly in days.
On Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Stafford had developed symptoms over the weekend and tested positive for Ebola late Sunday. In a press briefing on Wednesday, Satish Pillai, the CDC's incident response manager for the Ebola outbreak, said Stafford had arrived in Germany and is in stable condition. His wife, Rebekah Stafford—also a doctor who was exposed to the virus in DRC but is asymptomatic—along with the couple's four children, have been flown to Germany as well.
The 119th Congress might be one of the most dysfunctional and least productive legislative sessions in the 250-year history of the United States, but it seems there's one thing it can agree on: Electric vehicles don't cost their owners enough money. The Transportation and Infrastructure committee has published its bill to fund surface transportation for the next half-decade, and among the provisions in the "Building Unrivaled Infrastructure and Long-term Development for America’s 250th Act" is an annual fee levied against owners of EVs.
“I’m extremely proud of the historic level of investment in America’s bridges—at more than $50 billion, it’s the largest such investment in our history. And the BUILD America 250 Act ensures that electric vehicle owners begin paying their fair share for the use of our roads," said committee chairperson Sam Graves (R-Mo.).
Should the bill pass—and it enjoys support from the Democratic Party, too—you will be required to pay a $130 federal registration fee to drive an EV. And starting in 2029, that fee will increase by $5 each year until it reaches $150. Plug-in hybrids don't escape untaxed, either; the fee for a PHEV begins at $35 a year and will escalate by $5 each year until it reaches $50 annually. And if state departments of transport don't collect this federal EV tax, the federal government will "withhold an amount equal to 125 percent of the amount owed from the state’s highway apportionment."
