Jades

Jade came to me skinny...small. I fed her more than normal because of that and her demands! 3 weeks after she arrived she had a sagging pouch started. Thought, "yes!, she's gaining weight!" Cool. One more week went by, I got suspicious. I pet her belly and felt the TEETS! Shrugged it off. Contacted some family members as I grew more confused. I said to them, "I think she may be pregnant." I was sure I was right. 3 weeks after I made up my mind I was having my morning coffee in my chair and Jade was on my lap....PANTING. She stopped panting. Ok, she's fine. I look down at her, I looked more, she was giving birth to one of her babes in my lap! I panicked! Picked Jade up, no way I was going to let live kitten birth happen on my lap! I took her to her nest I made for the labor and delivery. She was NOT having it. She had the one kitten and took off running after me through the house. Jade just wanted a quiet room away from my Chihuahua. I grabbed her and her stuff and put her in a spare room and closed the door. I checked on her a lot! She ended up having four kittens! It was a three-hour process, in the middle of that I had to get ready for work. Moral of this story is; THE ELEMENT of SURPRISE! Jade was my first pregnant animal ever! I did not think I'd be a good choice to help her out, but my God, I fell in love like a new mom myself again. These kittens had and still do have me very attached, jade as well.

It’s time to vote on the worst boss of the year — and we have so many terrible nominees that this year we’re voting in brackets. Today we’ll for the worst in each of four match-ups … tomorrow the winners from today will go head-to-head … on Wednesday we’ll vote on the final two … and we’ll crown the winner on Thursday.

Please vote below. (Voting in this round ends at 11:59 p.m. ET tonight.)

If the polls aren’t showing up above for you, here are direct links:

1. A Terrible Trio

2. The Treacherous Triplets

3. A Threatening Threesome

4. A Tawdry Triad

vote for the worst boss of 2020 was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

[android launchers on google play store1

It’s been just over five years since Google shut down the Google Reader. I was surprised to see a lot of people are still bitter with them about it, even though *ahem* independent alternatives continue to exist and thrive.

I get it though. I was one of the millions of people who got my news from Google Reader. But it was infuriating to watch them kill a useful tool and then invest billions in magic glasses, killer drones, and self-driving cars.

So while it’s okay to be bitter, I think most of us probably realize we’re all better off with them gone. RSS took a serious hit that day, and use remains down. But in many ways, RSS is in a healthier and more sustainable position. 

It’s now clear that the demise of the Google Reader was first really loud warning that you can’t rely on a publicly traded, profit-driven Silicon Valley tech company to deliver content. There is no way that story ends well. They will feed you sponsored crap, undermine your democracy, or pull the rug out from under your feet entirely. 

I’m not going to pretend life is necessarily easier with Google gone from the game. The problem is that the tech giants are successful because they make things so easy. I know that RSS may never have as many users as it once did when Google was invested in it. 

But online publishing isn’t supposed to be easy. And being an informed citizen isn’t supposed to be easy, either. The idea that we just casually check our phone every hour or so and Google, Twitter, or Facebook would give us a quick dose of everything we need to read is a fantasy. 

When Google got out of the RSS game, those of us who remained realized that yes, we can survive without them. Five years later, RSS is still the best, most unfiltered way to get content you want. There’s a greater diversity of choices and no one company dominates everything. So let’s stop hoping Facebook or Twitter or someone else will do our job for us. Let’s stop waiting for someone to tell us what we want to read. Let’s stop publishing what they want us to publish. We can do better without them.      

With so many people working from home now, lots of us are on more video calls than we ever were before, and it’s pretty evident we don’t have video etiquette mastered.

I wrote a column for Slate with some of the funniest stories readers have shared here recently about video calls gone very wrong … including an oblivious flosser, a naked husband, and more. You can read it here.

some weird stuff is going down on video calls was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.