Cowboy Who?

State officials and researchers warned Texas lawmakers in May that New World screwworm was advancing toward the state and could carry a billion-dollar economic toll.

The governor said the PUCT and ERCOT must take steps to prevent the cost of data center infrastructure from being passed on to electricity customers.

A McDonald’s employee in California suffered severe burns across his face and body after a coworker tossed hot oil on him, the reason for the attack remaining unknown. What do you think?

The post McDonald’s Worker Suffers Severe Burns After Being Attacked With Hot Oil appeared first on The Onion.

Welcome, soccer fans from around the globe, to the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the United States, Mexico, and Canada. We hope you have a pleasant stay with us and enjoy all the exciting experiences North America has to offer.

Oh, and by the way, we’re monetizing the oxygen.

Yes, we know it’s a bummer. However, due to low ticket sales, low hotel bookings, and generally low enthusiasm, oxygen is the only necessity left for us to exploit. Thanks to European disdain for endless commercial breaks and the universal objection to using the center circle to advertise Bud Light, oxygen is now our last avenue for profit. We hope you can understand.

FAQ

How do we access the oxygen?
Thousands of O-Two anti-suffocation stations will be installed in every host city at the low cost of just $0.20 per minute. From Boston to New York, Vancouver to Monterrey, fans will be able to suck down that sweet oxygen to their heart’s content.

Will North Americans have to pay for oxygen?
In short, no. For the past two years, we have been slowly adding trace amounts of ammonia into North America until our air finally became unbreathable. However, during this period, our bodies have adapted to the additional ammonia, so only tourists are susceptible to our deadly atmosphere.

How long can I survive in the ammonia?
Depending on the person, vital organs will begin shutting down within two to five minutes of arriving in North America. For ease of survival, fans are urged to pre-book their life-saving O-Two before traveling to avoid any disappointment of a slow, painful death.

Travelers are also advised to pack goggles in the unlikely event that the ammonia burns out their retinas.

Does O-Two offer a free trial?
Yes. To receive your five-minute free trial of oxygen, please download our brand new O-Two app, where you’ll be able to track your oxygen levels, chances of survival, and connect with other suffocating soccer fans near you.

Once your free trial ends, you will be asked to subscribe to O-Two Infinity for just $149.99 a month, which includes a free O-Two coffee tumbler while stocks last.

Is there an ad-free version?
The ad-free version of O-Two is offered at a reduced rate of $139.99 per month. Please be advised that oxygen will be turned off during commercial breaks. For users who cannot hold their breath for four and a half minutes, we strongly recommend subscribing to our all-access tier.

What about the players?
Similar to cooling breaks, players will be permitted three-minute oxygen breaks at a reduced rate of $0.15 per minute. To keep things flowing at a fast pace, we’ve limited teams to a maximum of twenty oxygen breaks each half, which works out at a barely noticeable two hours of additional time.

Inspired by concussion substitutions, we’re also introducing brand-new suffocation substitutions, just in case a player doesn’t make it back to the bench in time.

This is messed up, right?
Agree to disagree. Oxygen is a vital component of human survival. It’s really no different from water when you think about it. Yet we spend hundreds of dollars on that every year, don’t we? If anything, we should’ve done this sooner.

If we purchase your oxygen, will you at least stop calling it “soccer”?
We’ll think about it.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
I don't know if it's happened yet, but you can bet in the next few years someone will start fitting people out to collect sex training data.

Today's News:

This week on Lost Terminal: Maddie goes missing, Meg acts strangely, Lyosha has a new job, and old friends return
Lost Terminal will return next week!
📓 Free transcript: https://www.patreon.com/posts/160501449
🎵 Today's SIGNAL is my cover of "La femme d'argent", by Air. (not published due to cover listening complexities)
🦣 Mastodon https://namtao.com/@lostterminal
📝 Tumblr https://lostterminalpod.tumblr.com
🎙️ Recorded using a RODE NT-1 v5 USB in 32-bit float, edited with REAPER on Linux
🙏 CREDITS
Credits narrated by Lucy Stringer
❤️ Thank you so much to everyone who supports me, but especially my Patreon Producers:
Ada Phillips
Kit
Mike McCaffrey
Jade Felicity Bilkey
Stephen McCandless
Catoxis

SAN FRANCISCO—Expanding their offerings of erectile health products, male-focused wellness brand Hims announced a new line of folders Wednesday for holding in front of embarrassing boners. “These safe, discreet folders are specially formulated to ensure you are the only one who knows that you are fully engorged,” said brand representative Erica DeLeon, touting the generic paper portfolios as a foolproof way for men to conceal their awkward, shameful erections without needing a prescription from a doctor or a visit to the school supply section of Target. “Whether you’ve taken too many of our patented ED meds and are suffering from perma-wood that will not go down or just saw a pretty lady at the grocery store, take our quiz today to find out if a quarter-inch-thick piece of folded cardstock is right for setting on your lap when aroused in public. While there is not currently an FDA-approved treatment for getting hard at work during a meeting about quarterly revenue targets right before you have to stand up to present, this off-label use of a plain, navy-blue folder is a perfectly safe and effective solution that will last for hours when held properly in front of your groin area. Made of all-natural materials that will never irritate your skin as you blush and blurt out, ‘Wait! Don’t come any closer!’” At press time, Hims had also announced an extra-strength file cabinet version of the erection hider for severely titillated men to stand behind.

The post Hims Introduces New Line Of Folders To Hold In Front Of Embarrassing Boners appeared first on The Onion.

Despite advances in technology, training, and performance optimization, some achievements in sports have stood the test of time. The following athletic records remain unbroken.

The post The Most Unbreakable Records In Sports History appeared first on The Onion.

MIAMI—In an official filing with the U.S. Department of Labor, Amazon employees alleged Monday that they had been exposed to inhumane working conditions while staffing the human chessboard that executive chairman Jeff Bezos maintains on the grounds of his Florida compound. “We’re not allowed to take breaks of any kind,” one Amazon worker said on the condition of anonymity, claiming that human chess pieces are expected to stand motionless for more than eight hours at a time on the board’s three-by-three-foot squares and cannot move until Bezos or his opponent orders them to. “Many times, we’ve had to resort to urinating in plastic bottles inside our giant pawn costumes. Sometimes we’re out there for days because he’s away at one of his other properties, but there are cameras everywhere and he’ll dock our pay if we so much as flinch. The only time you’re allowed to be off your feet is when another piece knocks you over.” Reached for comment, an Amazon spokesperson denied the allegations, noting that employees are free to move one or two squares forward during their shift and receive plenty of exercise on occasions when one piece takes another and Bezos forces them to participate in choreographed battles to the death. 

The post Amazon Employees Detail Inhumane Working Conditions On Bezos’ Human Chessboard appeared first on The Onion.

What are you doing here? This is not for piddling swine like you. Be gone! Back to your frumpy duplex you go!

Reference #295432

The post Chic Apartment With Designer Furniture appeared first on The Onion.

Doug Valdez, 91, passed away early Friday morning in an attempt to beat the weekend rush into heaven.

The post Doug Valdez appeared first on The Onion.

In brief: In today’s post we discuss the looming El Niño, and what it means for Houston if it becomes a “super” El Niño this winter. We also discuss our sunny days heading into the weekend, and the potential for rain on Sunday and next week.

Here comes El Niño

It is not quite here yet, but in the coming weeks (perhaps even days) we are likely to see temperatures in the equatorial Pacific flip over to El Niño conditions, which is defined by average temperatures in a certain area of the Pacific reaching 0.5 degrees C above usual conditions. (Conversely, La Niña occurs when temperatures in this region fall 0.5 degrees below normal). We experience a handful of El Niños a decade, so it’s not a huge deal. But there has been a lot of buzz about this particular El Niño because it is expected to become unusually strong (as defined by 2.0 degrees C or higher above normal). Here’s a look at the latest spread in the model data, released this week:

Now, what to make of this? If the bottom legend is confusing, the letters simply represent three months, so when El Niño is forecast to peak it says “OND,” which means October, November, and December of this year. So about four or five months from now. I believe there will be three major impacts for the greater Houston region from El Niño over the coming year, so let’s discuss them.

First up is a beneficial one. By August and September of this year we are likely to see a rapidly strengthening El Niño. You may remember in our Atlantic hurricane season outlook published last week, we spoke about El Niño’s likely increase of wind shear in the Atlantic, which should help reduce the overall number of named storms this year. So by and large, that’s beneficial.

Secondly, depending on when El Niño occurs, it has widely variable impacts on precipitation around the world. For the southern United States, including Texas, the impacts are most pronounced during the winter and early spring months. During this time frame El Niño increases the likelihood of precipitation.

So again, for Texas, this is probably beneficial. We typically don’t get flooding conditions in the winter months, so additional rainfall (or snow?!?) from El Niño probably won’t be a bad thing. And we’re not talking huge changes here. It might be that Houston receives 4.5 inches of rain next February instead of 3.5, or something like that.

As you can see from the initial chart above, El Niño may start to wane next spring, and if history is any guide it probably will start to peter out heading into next summer. However, we have often seen something of a temperature ‘hangover’ following strong El Niños. I am speculating a little bit here, but my guess is that as a result we see a spike in global temperatures that lingers into next summer, and we could see some record-breaking heat in Texas at that time. But that’s a long way off. I can’t even tell you whether it’s going to rain this coming Sunday for certain. Speaking of which, let’s get to the forecast.

Wednesday

With high pressure more or less in place for the next several days Houston will remain in a mostly sunny, steamy pattern. For us that means temperatures generally in the low 90s, with slightly hotter conditions possible inland, and slightly cooler daytime conditions near the coast. Skies will be mostly sunny this afternoon, with just a very slight (10 or 20 percent) chance of a brief shower or downpour. Low temperatures may briefly fall below 80 degrees in Houston, but the reprieve won’t last long. Winds will generally be from the south at about 10 mph, but may gust up to about 20 mph during the afternoon hours.

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday

The rest of the week is likely to see similar conditions, so basically it will feel pretty much like typical June weather out there. Get your sunshine on, Houston.

Sunday

At some point this weekend the high pressure influencing our weather will shift further to the south, opening up our region to the potential for more widespread showers and possibly some thunderstorms. Now I still expect mostly sunny skies on Sunday, but our chances for precipitation will be on the increase. At this point I expect about a 50 percent chance, give or take, however it is possible this number shifts higher (or lower). I don’t expect anything too crazy in terms of accumulations, but given that Houston hosts a World Cup game on Sunday afternoon, we’ll continue to watch for the likelihood of rain before, during, and after the game given all of the festivities around town.

Next week

For much of next week we likely will see partly to mostly cloudy days, with an increased chance of rain for several days. A weak front will move into Texas, but it probably (although not certainly) will die before making its way into Houston. Regardless, after this week’s sunshine a somewhat rainier pattern returns to help keep everything green.

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

1. My boss overshares other people’s private medical information

I’ve been at my job for several years, but under my current manager for less time. She is something of a force of nature — she is able to galvanize people to get things done that were previously deemed undoable at this org, and is often quite intimidating but not unreasonable.

There have been two instances recently where I have heard her speaking about team members’ private medical information, to varying degrees. One related to a soon-to-be mother’s health insurance beneficiary info, which I only heard because my manager was on the phone with HR and her door was open (my desk isn’t far from her office). The other instance, though, was much more jarring.

In a one-on-one where we were discussing how to support another team member in our department, she volunteered unprompted that this woman was going through menopause, dealing with hormones and emotions, and could “really use [my] support” with a project. I was blown away and just sat there stunned instead of saying something like, “Whoa, I don’t really need to know that,” which after enough time reading AAM is probably what I think you’d suggest.

My problem is that we are a small team, and I don’t know how often she volunteers this stuff with other folks, and that if I were to go to HR I have a pretty good feeling she would know what conversation this would be referring to. And while I understand that legally there are protections against retaliating for a report, I don’t really want to have that be a factor in my meetings with her, which I’m already on edge enough as it is. At the same time, I don’t want my medical info shared with others, if I volunteer that with her (which I’m now not ever planning on doing). Any advice?

I think you can probably write off the first instance — she wasn’t sharing info inappropriately there; you just happened to overhear her on the phone.

But the second time was absolutely inappropriate. At this point, I’d recommend two things: first, take this as useful background about her and know you shouldn’t share anything with her that you wouldn’t want shared with other people — or, if it’s unavoidable, tell her explicitly that you’d like it kept private and not repeated to others. Second, be ready with a response to use if she overshares someone else’s info with you again (for example, “I don’t think Jane would want me to know that” or “I’m concerned that’s private info for Jane and not something we should discuss” or “I don’t feel right talking about Jane’s personal medical info”).

2. I’m spending hours a week helping a struggling coworker

I have a veteran coworker who frequently asks me for help with Excel and some of the data manipulation tools we have available. I’m spending four to eight working hours a week assisting her. It’s gotten to the point where it is starting to affect my own numbers and my workflow. We are a production-based environment, so numbers matter.

Normally I would go to my supervisor and ask if we could offer her some additional training, but this coworker disclosed that she had a verbal warning about her work performance recently. She’s scared. She is only a few years from retirement age, and the job market is terrible right now. She has so much knowledge about other aspects of our job that it would be a real loss if she were to be fired, and I don’t want to be the one rocking the boat, but I also have to protect my own position. What the heck do I do here?

You can’t jeopardize your own job to help your coworker. You don’t need to report this to your manager, but you do need to set boundaries on your availability to your coworker. The next time she asks for help, explain that you are falling behind on your own work and don’t have time to continue to help.

And truly, you’ve got to do that — four to eight hours a week is a huge portion of your time and way too much. That’s up to 20% of your week! Even if it were only a few hours, though, that’s too much — you’re being paid to do your own work, and you’re being assessed on your own work, not hers. Moreover, you’ve already put in so much time that if it were going to solve the problems your coworker is having, it would have happened by now. She needs more help than you can give her.

You can certainly suggest that she ask for more training. But whether or not she wants to do that, let her know that you need to get back to focusing on your own assignments.

3. Am I going to be demoted?

My boss is kind, empathetic, and supportive, and we have a great relationship. They have given me great reviews, raises, and a promotion and have even nominated me for a couple of internal awards. Though we get along great, they sometimes push too hard with others and can be very stubborn when trying to accomplish their goals. Recently, they’ve convinced upper management that big changes are needed and received approval to significantly expand their department to absorb another department.

They just told me that in order to free up more bandwidth for themselves, they plan to consolidate my area with the area managed by of one of my peers and open up a new management role to manage both areas. I’m an individual contributor with a management title and my peer is a manager with a small team. We work closely together because our functions are related. My initial question upon hearing this was naturally, “If I apply and am not offered the new position, will I just continue to perform my current role and report directly to the new manager instead of you?” Their answer was that some things are still undefined because they want the newly selected manager to have some autonomy to structure their new team.

I suspect that my boss’s ultimate goal is to promote me into this new management role. We’ve talked about my next steps in the company and they have told me they have things in mind for me. I believe, based on my reputation in the company, experience, and my boss’s feelings about my work, that I would be the leading candidate. But they very much had a poker face when informing me of this change and did not give me any reassurance that they were looking at me for a promotion. And if I have to apply and compete with my peer, none of this is guaranteed! I could just as easily not be selected, and my work could change significantly. If that happened, I would also be reporting to a peer with much less experience than me. I don’t know yet if the new management title is, say, a senior manager title, and the candidate not selected would retain their manager title. If so, I’d feel somewhat better about it.

But … why does this all feel very crappy to me? If I’m promoted, my peer who didn’t get the role will have to report to me. If I don’t get the role, it sounds like a demotion, at least in title, is not totally off the table. I really don’t think my boss would risk that, as they seem very much to want to retain me and help me grow. But I don’t see an outcome that doesn’t seriously demoralize me or my peer.

Help me understand this! Also, what other questions should I be asking before I apply? How direct can I be with my questions and how open can I be with my feelings without harming my chances? I have some serious concerns here and I don’t want to go into this process blind.

It feels crappy because if you don’t get the promotion, there will be an additional layer of management between you and your current boss — which feels like a demotion. And the prospect of reporting to your peer is adding to that, because that’s often a weird change to contemplate. If they have much less experience than you, that only adds to the feeling of weirdness.

That said, that doesn’t mean it is crappy. This kind of thing happens as organizations or departments grow, and sometimes a peer might legitimately be better suited for the role than you are (for example, they might be a great manager even if they don’t have as much experience in your direct area of work).

But you can still talk to your boss to try to get more clarity. You don’t want to come across as if you’re bristling at the idea of reporting to someone else (or specifically to your now-peer), but it’s reasonable to ask what it would mean for your role if you don’t get the job, including whether there’s a chance that you could end up with a different title than you have right now.

4. Can I offer to be a reference without making things weird?

I have a junior colleague on my team who is exceptional — smart, personable, great initiative and follow-through, does very good work in a very timely manner. I’m not her supervisor but I work closely with her on some projects and am responsible for reviewing and giving feedback on her work in those areas.

My organization has had a few rounds of layoffs and we’re still on shaky financial footing. I don’t know if my colleague is job-hunting, but I hope she is. I’d hate for our team to lose her but she’s in the kind of support role that I could see being eliminated if the org makes further cuts and, even if there are no more layoffs, she’s definitely not getting the raises and growth opportunities that she deserves. So I’d be happy to see her move on to greener pastures.

Is it weird if I discreetly let her know that she can put me down as a reference if she’s ever looking? I know it can be hard to find good references when you’re junior in your career, and I would be a good one in the sense that I’m not her manager, so less risk if she were to tell me she was interviewing for a new role, but I have enough involvement in her work to be a relevant reference. I don’t want her to think I’m trying to push her out or, worse, make her wonder if I have insider information about future layoffs (I 100% don’t). The risks make me lean towards not saying anything, but there were times earlier in my career where this kind of offer would have been helpful to me.

It’s not weird to do that! Start off by telling her how impressed you’ve been with her work and why, and how much you enjoy working with her, and then say, “I’d never want to lose you as a colleague, but if you’re ever looking around and need references, please know I’d be thrilled to be one for you.” That wording isn’t likely to make her think you’re trying to push her out or discreetly signal that her job is in jeopardy, but if you wanted to, you could add, “Especially with how shaky things have been around here — which, to be clear, I have zero inside info about, but I know it’s a time when people may be thinking of looking around.”

5. If I’m sent home after arriving at work, do they still have to pay me?

Twice now, I’ve been scheduled to work and I’ve arrived for my shift only to have my manager say that we’re overstaffed for the day and I’m not needed, and they send me home. Do they still need to pay me when this happens? It seems unfair that I set aside the time on my schedule and went to the trouble of coming in, with no pay for it.

It depends on your state. Some states have what’s called “reporting time pay,” which is a minimum number of hours that you have to be paid if you showed up. To find out if your state does, google the name of your state and “reporting time pay.”

If your state doesn’t require it, they don’t need to pay you — but if it keeps happening, it’s reasonable to talk to your manager about how to avoid it.

The post boss overshares other people’s medical info, I’m spending hours a week helping a struggling coworker, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

One Nation has finally announced their first costed policy, with a multibillion dollar investment in innovation towards making brand new slurs.

The investment will reportedly go to both slur creation in the private sector and a new government department dedicated to slurs.

“For far too long woke governments have been ignoring the opportunities that having new slurs can provide,” said Hanson.

“Australia used to be a world leader in bigotry, I am confident we can be one again!”

The party also reaffirmed their commitment to all things ‘slurs’, by continuing to have Pauline and Barnaby slur their words every time they talk.

The post One Nation to invest $3b in innovation for new slurs appeared first on The Chaser.

With his chaos level usually pegged about a fathom lower than the average Tackleford resident (eg Mad Terry, Potty Grote), Glenn is the perfect emollient for a lot of situations. Here he soothes a sigma wolf.

#Kento #Cye #Ryo #RoninWarriors

During the development of Windows 8, we needed a name for “that thing we’re creating.” Not being a particularly clever bunch when it comes to code names, we just called it “the modern experience,” to distinguish it from what we had in Windows 7, which was called “the classic experience.”

And then, as Microspeak demands, we started abbreviating like mad.

The new shell was called the “modern shell” or “MoSh” for short. By comparison, the old shell was called the “classic shell”, which some people started calling “ClaSh” for short. (That name didn’t stick.)

When we couldn’t come up with a name for a component of the modern experience, a common fallback was to stick the prefix “Mo” in front.

The new Start menu derived from some earlier explorations known as the “Go page” (since it’s the place you go when you want to do something). Its new code name was therefore “MoGo.”

The portion of the screen for snapped applications was called the “MoBar”, and the portion of the screen used for filled applications was called the “MoBody.”

The settings control panel? “MoSet.”

The ListView control? It started out with the more tedious name “modern collection control”, which got shortened to “MoCo.”

Even the new applications got the Mo-treatment. The new Web browser initially called itself “MoB”, but then decided that an even hipper name would be “MoBro.”

And the new photo manager? The people who worked on that didn’t want to get left out of the “Mo”-party, so they called themselves (wait for it) “MoPho.”

I hope somebody put their foot down out of frustration. “Enough already. This Mo thing is completely out of control.”

Windows 8 was announced fifteen years ago today, on June 1, 2011.

The post The placeholder name for the Windows 8 experience was “modern” appeared first on The Old New Thing.

A little while ago, we considered how the cover of the book C++: The Programming Language raises questions not answered by the cover, since the cover illustration for a book putatively about the C++ programming language shows code written in JavaScript.¹ But there’s also a question raised by the back cover.

According to the blurb for the book,

The topics included in it are of utmost significance and are bound to provide incredible insights to students. Some of the diverse topics covered in this text address the varied branches that fall under this category. Those in search of information to further their knowledge will be greatly assisted by this textbook.

This sounds like a book report written by a student who didn’t read the book! Those sentences could be used to describe pretty much any textbook.

Indeed, I found nearly identical sentences in the blurb for Casting Handbook (Hannah Wells, editor).

The topics included in this book on casting are of utmost significance and bound to provide incredible insights to readers. Some of the diverse topics covered in this book address the varied branches that fall under this category. It will serve as a valuable source of reference for graduate and post graduate students.

And in Food Industry: Processes and Technologies (Kaden Hunt, editor):

This book is compiled in such a manner, that it will provide in-depth knowledge about the theory and practice of the workings of food industry. Some of the diverse topics covered in this text address the varied branches that fall under this category. This textbook, with its detailed analyses and data, will prove immensely beneficial to professionals and students involved in this area at various levels.

And in Nutrition and Metabolism: Processes and Technologies (Kaden Hunt, editor):

This book provides comprehensive insights into the field of nutrition and metabolism. It provides deep insights about this field. Some of the diverse topics covered in this text address the varied branches that fall under this category. Such selected concepts that redefine this subject have been presented in it. This book aims to shed light on some of the unexplored aspects of this field. It is meant for students who are looking for an elaborate reference text on nutrition and metabolism.

One more example: Material Science and Engineering (Emilio McMahon, editor)

The book aims to shed light on some of the unexplored aspects of materials science and engineering. It describes in detail the various concepts and theories of this field. The topics included in it are of utmost significance and bound to provide incredible insights to students. Some of the diverse topics covered in this book address the varied branches that fall under this category. This textbook is an essential guide for both graduates and post-graduates in this discipline.

The common thread is that all of these books are published by Larson and Keller. I guess they can’t be bothered to spend time crafting a blurb that suits the book, so they just use the same blurb template for all of their books.

¹ Rory Jaffe found that the book cover image it is an Alamy stock photo from 2013 with the title “Program code on a monitor.”

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

CALGARY – Speaking to a crowd of supporters, Pierre Poilievre urged Albertans to vote to stay part of Canada, partly for national unity, and mostly because he doesn’t want to have to find a third federal riding to run in, in just under 2 years. “As we debate the fight for a united Canada, we […]

The post Poilievre campaigns on a united Canada: “Please don’t make me find yet another riding” appeared first on The Beaverton.

The post Trump Still Sleeping In MSG Seat appeared first on The Onion.

Actor Idris Elba dismissed longstanding rumors that he would be the next James Bond, calling the speculation “unrealistic” and claiming that many global audiences would never accept a Black male in the iconic role. What do you think?

The post Idris Elba Says Some Audiences Won’t Accept Black James Bond appeared first on The Onion.

Hey, we're not arm wrestling anymore Cowboy Slim. #CowboyWho

In a moment, the results of that trial.

Traffic has been rising extra quickly these past couple of years. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view) it’s mostly from automated AI bots scraping all they can get. From Matthew Prince, the CEO of Cloudflare:

Welp, that happened faster than I predicted. Thought it would be end of 2027, then early 2027, but agentic traffic growing so fast that bots have now passed human traffic online for the first time in the Internet’s history.

It was only nine months ago when bots accounted for 30% of web traffic. Ninety percent next year?

Tags: bot, Cloudflare, Internet, scraping

My series, Tex-Pats, examines how Texas-raised artists’ upbringing continues to inform their creative practice. Through in-depth conversations, the series explores themes of place, memory, distance, family, cultural inheritance, and how leaving Texas reshapes one’s understanding of it. Tex-Pats continues this month with Shana Hoehn to explore the impact that memory, culture, and politics had on her artwork after she fled the state lines. 

Hoehn, who is currently based in Los Angeles, grew up in the East Texas swamps of Texarkana, where the landscape significantly inspired her work. Creating sculptures and drawings made from local trees, metal, and charcoal, she transforms fragments of disembodied limbs, braids, and breasts to capture gestures of Texas pageantry and cheer culture. Her work portrays both the violence of institutional control and the resilience that survives within it through the merging of bodies and natural forms: trees split into legs, figures collapse or transform, and landscapes become extensions of flesh. Hoehn received her MFA from the Virginia Commonwealth University in Sculpture and Extended Media and earned a BFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Chloe Victoria Powers (CVP): Growing up in Texarkana, which is a state-border city, are there influences from Arkansas that are blended into your practice?

Shana Hoehn (SH): Yeah, many generations of my mother’s side are from Texarkana, and then also a few of the neighboring cities, like Fouke, Arkansas, which I’ve referenced in a few of my earlier works. Even one of the pieces I made as a Core Fellow referenced the Fouke monster, our own local Bigfoot.

CVP: I’m curious about your time as a Core Fellow at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s Glassell School of Art.
SH: When I started, it was around President Trump’s first term, and it pushed me to look inward in ways I’d been avoiding. Growing up in a small conservative town in Texas, there’s a lot I’m critical of in that culture, but a lot of people I love inside it too. That tension is hard to hold, and for a long time I didn’t.

Since 2016, Americana objects and symbols have been threaded through my work, things that felt very particular to Texas and to my upbringing. Cheerleading is a big one, which is not exclusive to Texas, but to me, it’s a symbol of American purity, which I really love to fuck up. Then there are other symbols I keep returning to: braids, infants and fetuses, car culture, and trees. Together they build a kind of encyclopedia I draw from.

CVP: Tell me more about cheer, because that’s very repetitive in your work. Is that something you grew up doing, or you were just around that environment, and that’s why it’s influenced you?

SH: Texarkana has a really big pageant culture, so we have the huge homecoming mums that are bigger than the girls who wear them. You know, most little girls from middle-class backgrounds take dance classes and gymnastics in East Texas. I took dance classes, gymnastics, did cheerleading in middle school — my mom was actually my coach — and then was on the drill team. I feel like a lot of people wanted to be like Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. I did that whole trajectory. 

A lot of my interest in pageantry does come from experiencing it, and the hopes and desires of my family and my culture to fulfill being this ideal feminine creature. The bows and performances do come up in my work, but even though I trained and participated in that world, I think about it more as a symbol rather than myself when I’m making these objects. I do use my body to model them, but I don’t view them as self-portraits, or surrogates for myself. They’re like an icon, a symbol. The stunts – a Pike, a Basket Toss – [also titles of Hoehn’s sculptures] are these moments of midair performance that read as both triumph and total loss of control. The body at its most disciplined is also at its most vulnerable.

CVP: Dreams and subconscious imagery seem central to your practice. Do your works begin intuitively or through research and reflection?

SH: Dreams aren’t exactly central, but the logic of the subconscious is; that nonlinear, symbolic way of processing both personal and larger American symbols. When I’m planning my sculptures and drawings, I’m basing them off of research of gestures. By the repetition of gestures, I’m imagining people will think more about performance, especially if the gestures feel very specific, mostly they’re levitating women right now, people doing toe touches, folding their bodies in half, or other jumps. I haven’t made an arched back yet, but that’s actually where a lot of my research on these certain gestures started with seeing images — collecting this archive of these different gestures of women under types of possession. 

I showed an example of this in a small exhibition in Houston. Actually, I had this magazine, called The Sirens, that I started making with another Core Fellow right after we left the program. She did the writing, and I did the image collections. I had a lot of images of mostly women levitating in exorcisms or magic shows, alien abductions, and athletic events like gymnastics and cheer. It was interesting to map all of these very similar gestures. A lot of them were starting with hypnosis and hysteria studies, and so there was something about these gestures that were linked to mostly female bodies and madness that got eroticized and performed over and over again, mostly through cinema. I capture them a little bit through cheer. 

I don’t think that there’s necessarily any exact link between the hysteria studies and cheer, but it’s an interesting visual connection to see these repeated harsh facts and levitating figures, because it’s a spectacle, but it’s not something that’s really considered the main event.

CVP: Was this level of research introduced while you were in grad school, or was that something you dove into more after?

SH: I was making video art then, so I was watching a ton of films and making visual storyboards. When I started to go into sculpture, that felt like a natural way to document what I’ve been seeing, and also as a way to index the body through gestures. I don’t use that as much anymore, but it still plays a foundational role on how I decide what gestures I’m going to use, if any. I still use the levitating women a lot and people folding in half.

CVP: Disembodied limbs, braids, breasts, and torsos recur throughout your practice. Why are fragments more compelling to you than complete figures?

SH: Fragments function like words to me. They’re symbols. I don’t need a full body every time I include figurative elements, and a complete figure can actually be distracting. It pulls focus away from what I’m actually interested in. Right now, I’m working with legs and backs- and it’s less about gestures. It’s harder to capture a full gesture if you don’t have the full body, but I’m interested in using as little of the body as possible. It’s not about cutting or torture. I’m not taking away. I’m thinking about it as these are phrases, or snippets of parts that I want to look at.

CVP: Further to fragmentation, you also depict things midtransformation, whether that’s splitting, hatching, collapsing, emerging. What interests you about those states of becoming?

SH: Recently, I’ve been thinking about hatching and birth, mostly. A lot of the births are these figures or bodies being born of these braids or coming out of trees that are becoming these strange nests or cocoons that are really messy and menacing. I’ve been interested in these perverse births for a while. There’s something about a transformation, whether that be someone actually giving birth to a new being, which is a really beautiful act, but it’s also something that’s insanely violent. You can’t bring a baby into the world without bodies ripping and tearing, without pain and blood. Transformation, even self-transformation, even something amazing and glorious, is most likely still extremely painful and destabilizing. 
There’s been a lot of rebirth in my symbols, some of them are large snakelike braids, these are almost archaic symbols of virginity and control. I like when they misbehave and get messy. That’s how I’m viewing a lot of these symbols as mis-performing. There’s actually a self-portrait I made a few years ago that is this big braid cocoon, and I’m coming out of it in this dark forest. It’s called I Give Birth to Myself, but it’s in a state that is pretty ambiguous of what’s happening, and I like that you’re not sure if the figure is going to be consumed, or if it’s a rebirth event. It really could be both.

And then there’s the more literal question of birth, which I can’t fully separate from the work either. The infants and fetuses have been in the work since 2022 as symbols of longing and terror. I’m 35, I live a precarious life, and having a child is something I think about constantly, but the architecture around that decision feels almost impossible. I live in LA now, so Texas abortion laws don’t govern my body directly, but they govern my friends’ bodies. Friends who want children and friends who don’t, all of them still have to prepare emergency birth plans, who will drive them over state lines if a pregnancy becomes dangerous, because the law does not guarantee they’ll receive care. So the infants in tree limbs and braid cocoons are held at a distance. The desire is real, but it feels like too much to hold directly. I almost have to isolate it.

CVP: You resist fixed interpretation. Do you intentionally construct symbols that remain unstable?
SH: Yeah, it’s intentional, for both the gestures and the objects. I name them after stunts that sit between active and passive states. The floating women, for example, can appear as someone under possession, levitating, or someone who has a completely fixed body, all of their muscles tensed, ready to be caught by their team. The same for a sculpture series I did called Pike, where I have these bodies that are unnaturally folded in half, exhausted, being carried by a large bird. I named them after this jump that you do in cheerleading, but also divers do. I’ve been thinking about these double meanings, mimicry in nature, the way people camouflage themselves to assimilate and perform something to survive. Visual strategies that animals and people do to camouflage themselves.

CVP: You use a lot of symbolic storytelling in your work. Do you look at any myths or literary traditions to lean on, other than cultural references?

SH: Yeah, I do. I try to keep Greek mythology at arm’s length because it’s a little overused, but there’s such a rich history of bodies and transformation in Greek mythology. Although most of these transformations are punishments, and I don’t like that framing. Transforming and undergoing something doesn’t have to be a punishment.

There’s also a history of women undergoing some transformation to escape oppression or to live a life with a different agenda. There’s a common trope of a woman desiring to be a plant or tree in a forest. I’m thinking of movies like Annahilation and The Witch. Elvia Wilke has a chapter about this in her book, Death by Landscape, where she traces some literary examples of women doing this. What I find interesting is that these are usually read as victimhood or escape. But I think they’re more complex than that. To become less legible, to shed a vulnerable form, is actually a kind of refusal. You become harder to govern. The landscape isn’t just receiving these women, it’s complicit as a sanctuary and consuming force at the same time.

CVP: Does experimentation play a part in your practice?

SH: I always start with sketching. I always have a notebook on me that’s filled with sketches. Anytime I have a spare moment, I’m drawing out different sculptures, and a lot end up becoming prints or other works of art. I don’t feel like I can start before I have a sketch. To get to that initial phase, there is so much planning that has to happen; the materials alone have to be certain sizes, there are measurements, and a lot of material decisions are logistical too. What’s my budget? What materials forgive mistakes? I work mostly with wood and metal because they allow for both subtractive and additive processes, and I can mix in natural materials. The process ends up mirroring the concept: building and breaking, control and accident, in the same gesture.

I love it when the sculptures come out of you exactly how the sketch appears. But when something isn’t coming to me, when the works are about 50% to 75% done, I put them in “timeout,” and they’ll stay in timeout for years, but they always come back into my studio practice and cannibalize with other forms. Putting them away, helps me divorce myself of what I wanted the sculpture to be. I like treating these half-made things that I’ve built as different parts of my found objects. I also use furniture, car hood ornaments, dishes, or sometimes, shoes and skirts — things that come into my practice by chance, and that’s important, because planning every single step rarely works and can close off opportunities for the work.

CVP: You’ve been doing tree rubbings, which preserve traces of local landscapes, and now that you’ve changed landscapes from Texas to LA, what do you think about that new understanding of landscapes?

SH: Most of the drawings I make are also woodcuts, so I rub bark and wood textures the way you’d do a gravestone rubbing. I’m carving into dimensional lumber and using colored pencil and graphite to rub them, almost like Japanese woodblock prints, but made directly rather than printed. I actually started that process in California, though I have trees in my studio from Texas too. I grew up in a heavily forested area, and my dad likes to clear trees, so it became a material I could source here affordably. People call me now when their trees are coming down, and I collect them and bring them into the work. It’s a really beautiful thing to be able to work with these trees that have so much sentimental value.

Some of the trees I’ve collected most recently are from the Pasadena windstorms, the ones that fed the Altadena fires last year. The wood arrives with a local emotional charge already in it. Because of the fires, the trees mean something different than they did in Texas. 

When I started working with trees in Texas, it was the forest and the humidity, the space to hide, truly hide, and decay, where so many different kinds of beings and people could coexist. There was something really mysterious about it, a sense of real possibility but also something eerie. Here it’s quite different. The main symbol is the palm tree, which I’ll never use in my work. But I do see a similarity between where I grew up and here, this desire to be enmeshed in trees even inside a city. In LA I can have a parking lot studio, work outside with a chainsaw, and make large sculptures from these materials. I would never be able to do that in New York.

CVP: Is there anything that feels unresolved in your practice right now, or that you want to make work around that you haven’t before?

SH: There are some things that I want to go back to that used to be more prevalent in my practice. A lot of my early sculptural forms were based on hysteria studies, and there used to be more in my work about medicine. I’ve been thinking about the work referencing medical systems again. Precarity is such a defining part of American life, and so much of that runs through a privatized medical system tied to a certain kind of employment. I’m interested in how those systems shape and surveil bodies in real time, not just symbolically. So many of my figures are already in precarious gestures and positions, and lack of access to medical care feels like a very American condition. 

I’ve also been thinking about ways of making that feel less polished. Early on I would sand everything smooth, and I’m not opposed to that, but I want there to be areas that are rough, where I leave the chisel marks or the chainsaw marks. There’s something about speed and gesture that feels more honest. The thing I’m still working out is how to let the work feel unresolved in its making without feeling unresolved as a piece. I haven’t quite figured that out yet.

The post Tex-Pats: In Conversation with Shana Hoehn appeared first on Glasstire.

Dried tumbleweeds stand stacked like a tower reminiscent of a Christmas tree, with childhood photographs meticulously placed in between the thorns of the sculpture. Nopales sourced from the roads and fields of El Paso hang upside down to signify boxing gloves, as sandburs rest scattered like stars across a navy blue lace curtain floating on a dried yucca elata flower stem, bearing the words: I felt loved here / Let me let you go. In The Violence of Armor, the inaugural collaborative showcase of artists José Villalobos and Keith Micheal Murphy at Presa House Gallery in San Antonio, these natural plants sourced from South Texas cater to the complexity of adornment when it comes to queer masculinity in respective communities of Texas and Chicago, as seen throughout the mixed-media installations and works on view across the four rooms of the house gallery.

Meeting in 2024 at the opening of Villalobos’ solo exhibition Diseñando Masculinidades / Designing Masculinity at ArtYard in Frenchtown, New Jersey, the collaboration between Villalobos and Murphy is one that merges lens-based techniques with metalworking and weaving, forging together found objects and fashion into an interdisciplinary fusion. Notable as well is how queer romantic partnership affords a mutual understanding of masculinity that is nonconforming to the heteronormative standards of each individual’s respective upbringings in El Paso and Chicago, and how two practices blend to become one, difficult to separate and differentiate.

The four rooms of The Violence of Armor each follow a theme, specifically in the use of material. The foyer entrance that greets visitors is flanked on each wall by printed photographs on paper and fabric that subtly lean into sculpture. Round in frame, the left wall features a diptych of hands and feet that are anonymous in their attribution. What is clear is the visceral body horror of the South Texan landscape, portrayed through a bloodied hand wrapped by a nopal cactus and tattooed feet encased by barbed wire, bookended by blue jeans and scarlet red boots.

The sharp pointedness of a nopal thorn and barbwire is heightened by their physical presence on the works, encasing each photograph as a natural protective frame. Across from this diptych is a curtain printed with a portrait of Villalobos and Murphy in matching outfits, faced away from each other in front of Villalobos’ childhood home in El Paso. Rather than standing on its own, the addition of the home’s actual steel window bar guard shields the couple, symbolically and literally. The tan hue of the landscape and the window guard is solemn, alluding to the grief in the wake of losing Villalobos’ mother just a month after the couple returned to take care of her in ill health. 

In the room to the left of the entrance, series Lace and Leather #1-8 (2026), red velvet backgrounds elevate the cutout leather patterns that rest atop the rich texture, each individually tied to designs found on the sides of vaquero boots. For Villalobos’ childhood and lived understanding of El Paso, the symbology of worn items that can be found across cattle ranchers and cowboys of Southern Texas are nothing foreign to his practice, one that repeatedly honors this landscape through the presence of boots, belts, and Western rancher cotton shirts. 

Speaking to the seeds of their collaboration, Villalobos told me, “It actually started with the shirts. We did a show together in El Paso, and we were talking about this idea of armor and dress wear, and how we present ourselves. I feel like in Keith’s work, he is really interested in pattern. With the Western shirts, he would pay attention to them. There are these very interesting patterns in the back. He wanted to make the cutouts out of metal and present them to be the duality of hard and soft. We were also talking about how the cactus assimilated to its environment to protect itself. The thorns were never thorns, and turned into leaves throughout time because they were picked at and became something else to protect themselves. It’s the first body of work we’ve done at home together.”

Encased by the velvet and leather framed works and in the center of this room is Let me let you go (2026). The navy blue lace curtain is meticulously intervened by dried sandburs that Villalobos and Murphy collected over time, hooking them sporadically throughout the textile sculpture. In seeing these spiky details, I think of ceiba thorns in my native home of Miami and the kinship of a thorny trunk that exists now because of evolutionary adaptation, considered sacred and a protective symbol by Santeria practitioners. Common in Texas, the sandbur is notorious for its pervasive presence anytime one walks into an interior space and realizes the back of a pant leg is coated in them, and for the pain it inflicts if accidentally stepped on, the natural equivalent of stepping on a Lego. Charging the sculpture with the duality of hard — in the sharp spikes of the sandbur — and of soft — the gentle billow of the blue lace — Villalobos and Murphy continue the textural dance in this singular quadrant of the exhibition.

Past this room is the space that holds the strongest embodiment of protection and pain, danger and security, with the series titled Embedded in a mans armor are memories #1-3 (2026). Each hung by a nail, the belts encase childhood photographs in resin, turning the necessity of an item into a vessel for memory. Used in certain households to discipline children, the belt also works to support Norteño outfits across Mexican American communities in the Southwest. Technically tedious in application and execution, the resin of each belt bears a ghostlike pattern of the leather it once bore, now bordering images that speak to the joint nature of Villalobos and Murphy as partners and collaborators. The images themselves are ambiguous, from an older woman blindfolded to a faceless man with outstretched hands, facing visitors to the work. Each childhood photograph is covered by the haziness of the dried resin, an allusion to the inevitability of memories fading and losing loved ones to time.

In the room to the right of the entrance, Wherever the winds take us (2026) is a tumbleweed altar to childhood that blurs the upbringings of both Villalobos and Murphy into one timeline, similar to the belts. While the printed archival photographs encased by the tumbleweeds are unclear at times in terms of who they render, they are easier to understand in terms of visual sharpness, asking viewers to come closer and attempt to differentiate the aesthetic differences between a child raised in El Paso and one raised in Chicago. Delicately placed and attributed to as well is the early notices of queerness in each artist’s childhood, such as Villalobos as a child wearing a dress as egged on by his sisters. Even more notable about the lack of clear distinction of who is who in each photograph is Murphy’s relocation to El Paso in recent years, assimilating gradually into an environment he was not raised with but is now romantically partnered with in life.

The Violence of Armor is an exhibited definition of dichotomy — El Paso and Chicago, photography and metalwork, the clothing worn to bear masculine queerness and that which enforces masculine heteronormativity, the toughness of conservative upbringings and the gentleness of adult partnership. Fittingly exhibited within the walls of a home gallery turning a decade old in San Antonio’s Lavaca district, Villalobos and Murphy pay reverence to their relationship in a new home — one entirely their own.

The Violence of Armor is on view through June 20, 2026, at Presa House Gallery in San Antonio.

The post Review: “The Violence of Armor” by José Villalobos & Keith Micheal Murphy at Presa House Gallery, San Antonio appeared first on Glasstire.

The post Blindfolded ‘Love Island USA’ Contestants Challenged To Guess Who Saying Slur appeared first on The Onion.