Cowboy Who?

#Rowen #RoninWarriors

Excuse me, are you wearing a lot of makeup? #CowboyWho

You're not fooling anyone young man! I've dealt with your kind before young man and I know EXACTLY what's going on between those two little ears of yours! #CowboyWho

In brief: In today’s post we look back at the first six months of the year, and review the most impactful weather event during that time. We also talk about some increased rain chances for Thursday, and a hot and sunny holiday weekend.

Six months into 2026

As of this morning, this year is now half over. In terms of weather it has been a fairly unspectacular start to 2026 in the greater Houston region, but given the extremes possible here, boring is usually good. The most notable event this year was an Arctic front in January, which followed a very warm start to the year (remember when five of the first nine days of the new year reached 80 degrees, or higher?)

The Arctic front brought widespread low temperatures in the 20 to 25 degree range, and the forecast was complicated by a large amount of precipitation falling just as it moved into the region. Ultimately Houston escaped the worst of this freezing rain. While other parts of the state such as Dallas and Austin were iced and snowed in for days, our region was relatively unimpacted in terms of mobility.

Overall with regard to temperatures, this year has seen above normal conditions on average. The greater Houston region has generally recorded an average temperature of 1 to 4 degrees above normal. With regard to precipitation, a wet end to spring and start of summer helped pull the region out of a drought. Although parts of Montgomery County remain below normal for this year, most of the Houston region has received 100 to 130 percent of normal rainfall levels. Some parts of Chambers County have received nearly twice as much as normal.

What will the second half of the year bring? It’s always a mixed bag in Houston. We get our hottest temperatures of the year from mid-July into early September, and our best chances for hurricane disasters. But then, if we can get past that period, fall beckons and that is a great time of year for our region. So as ever, with our weather, we will have to see what happens.

Wednesday

This day will see a continuation of our recent weather pattern, with high temperatures generally in the low- to mid-90s across the region, along with mostly sunny skies. Like we saw on Tuesday, there will probably be some isolated showers and possibly thunderstorms dotted across the region this afternoon. But your overall rain chances are probably on the order of 20 percent, and in most cases the showers should pass quickly. Humidity remains high (of course!) and lows tonight will likely fall into the upper 70s.

Thursday

We’ll see a little more atmospheric moisture on Thursday, and with high pressure now having moved away to the northeast, I think there will be a slightly better chance of rain, probably something like 30 to 50 percent for the Houston area. Of course any showers will be hit or miss, with some locations getting no rainfall at all, and perhaps a few isolated areas seeing as much as 1 inch. Highs should still reach the low- to mid-90s.

Fourth of July holiday weekend

For the most part sunshine and heat will prevail this weekend. Expect daily highs in the mid- to possibly upper-90s for most of Houston, with only coastal areas remaining a few degrees cooler. Winds will also be fairly light. We’ll see something like 10 percent rain chances on Friday and Saturday, and possibly up to 20 percent on Sunday. So again, overall odds are low, but we cannot rule out some passing showers during the afternoon hours. Conditions for fireworks look ideal, if hot.

Next week

It is difficult to say too much with confidence about our weather next week, but we may enter a pattern in which we see a few more clouds during the afternoon hours. This may shave a degree or two off of high temperatures and introduce some slightly better rain chances to start the week. Whether this weather lasts all week is something we’ll have to see about.

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

1. Coworker photographs our empty cubicles when we work from home

My company established a three-days-a-week-in-office rule beginning in April 2024. Over the last two years, and with a new CEO who is very vocal about being pro-flexibility, the three days has become more lax. Plus, we are encouraged to work from home if we have appointments, are sick, have childcare responsibilities, etc., on days we would normally be in office.

I recently found out there is an employee who is keeping track of whether or not I am in office, going as far as taking pictures of my and a coworker’s empty cubicles if we are working from home. One of my coworkers who sits in our cubicle “square” saw him, and said he comes in and loudly says things like, “Oh, look who isn’t here again!?” And I’ve personally seen him poking around in other cubicles of people were working from home that day.

This employee is not our boss, not on our team, and does not even sit on our floor. We do not know what he is doing with these pictures, but we assume he sends them to our boss, whom he is allegedly friends with. I have seen him going into and looking around other people’s empty cubicles as well (mostly women). There is also history of this person tattling on people’s comings and goings. He seems to be specifically targeting female employees, and now I am one of them. I am so bothered by his behavior, I removed pictures of my family in my cubicle because I do not want pictures of my children on his phone. The friendship between him and my boss makes me question if I say something to my boss. Do I approach the perpetrator directly or go to HR?

You could say something directly to this coworker if you want to! The next time you see him poking around in other people’s cubicles, say, “Are you looking for someone?” or “Are you looking for Jane? She’s remote today.” And then if necessary, “Is there something specific you need? I don’t think people want you poking around in their workspaces while they’re not in the office.”

But you don’t need to address it directly with him if you don’t want to, and instead could go straight to HR. Be sure to include that he seems to be targeting women (which takes it from annoying/obnoxious to creepy and potentially a lot more pressing to HR).

For what it’s worth, whatever he thinks he’s “documenting” sounds like it’s not going to get anyone in trouble, but it’s obnoxious nonetheless.

2. My new manager might join my time-intensive hobby team

I work in a small office (about 50 people), and we have a new director starting in about a month. The majority of my role is project management and admin support for the director so I’ve had some contact with him already, and I’m excited to work with him, with one major reservation: we share the same team-based, time-intensive, athletic hobby. (Think team triathlons or similar. One person’s performance has the potential to make things great or awful for everyone.) There’s only one place in my area that does this, and I know he’s looked into it, so I’m sure we’ll be on the same team shortly after he moves here.

While I love this hobby and I wish more people did it, I have some concerns about how it’s going to impact our working relationship and on my enjoyment of the hobby. It’s time-intensive (often eight hours a week plus occasional weekend travel), so between this and working very closely together, he and I are about to spend a lot of time together. How do I get off to a good start maintaining boundaries and not having my work life and hobby bleed together? The last thing I want is to have a bad day a work turn into a bad practice, or vice versa.

It’s also going to be obvious to other people in our organization that the new director and I spend a lot of time together outside of work. Are there ways for me to make that less of an issue in the office? I do worry people will think there’s favoritism going on. For what it’s worth, some people in the office know about my hobby, so it’s not going to seem like I started it to suck up to the new director.

If you haven’t already, find a way to mention to him early on that you’re an active member of that team because he really should recuse himself from joining it once he realizes you’re on it too. It does create the potential for issues — from awkwardness in his relationship with you, to both of you being unable to escape work dynamics, to perceptions from others on the team that you have special access to him. But that’s all his to manage, both as your manager and as the person coming in who isn’t already on the team.

3. Can my boss “unofficially” cut off certain employees from receiving new clients?

I work in the office of a small business. For the sake of anonymity, let’s say we groom llamas. We’ve got three office staff, about two dozen groomers, and one owner. A large part of my job is setting up new clients with a groomer. I and the other office staff have a lot of flexibility over who we set up with who — if a client wants their llama groomed every Wednesday at 3, I usually have between one and four groomers with availability and I’m the one who sets up the appointments. Some clients stay with the same groomer for years. The groomers are all independent contractors who set their own schedules but only get paid when they’re working. If they have big gaps in their schedule, they don’t get paid for those.

The owner is lovely and well-liked, but she can be extremely petty too. My issue is that she will “unofficially” direct us to stop giving clients to Groomer X because they’re too busy or too flaky or she suspects they might be planning to leave soon. That’s understandable from a not-jerking-clients-around standpoint, but it feels unfair, especially when Groomer X ends up with a schedule that’s more holes than clients and functionally gets a pay cut, often leading to them eventually leaving. If she would just say “this is what I’ve decided,” I could deal with it as boss’s orders, but usually it’s roundabout by way of office gossip. If I do still give Groomer X new clients — even when they’re the only one who still had availability at the time the client requested — I get significant pushback from the owner and other office staff complaining that I’ve just made more work for them, didn’t you know Groomer X was supposed to have a freeze on new clients, etc. The more work part usually turns out to be true, too, when Groomer X leaves and we have to shuffle their clients into other groomers’ schedules.

Is this legal? Is it just a conflict-averse way to fire certain groomers without actually having to fire them? I feel guilty because some of the groomers who are being cut off are nice people and I feel like if they are truly allowed to set their own schedules (as independent contractors are supposed to be able to do), we should be accommodating that even if we think they’re overbooked or might be planning to leave soon. Can I legally get fired for scheduling llamas with someone who has only unofficially been closed to new clients? I do love the rest of my job and most of the people I work with, but this one thing feels ethically icky and I sympathize with the groomers who get stuck in an untenable situation.

Yes, it’s legal for the owner to do this, and it would be legal to fire you for not complying. But your boss is a bad manager — if she wants groomers to operate differently, she needs to tell them that with her words, not just stop scheduling them. Some of the groomers, if not all, would probably be happy to adjust what they’re doing if they knew she wanted them to — or if they couldn’t, they could have an actual conversation with her about whether their availability still aligns with the business’s needs — so it’s bizarre that she’s being so avoidant.

Do you have the kind of relationship with the owner where you could say, “If you feel like Jane isn’t opening up enough of her schedule (or fill in with whatever the owner’s objection is), could we tell her that and see if she can adjust it? She probably doesn’t know you’re concerned about it and might be able to fix it.”

4. When your example of a conflict involves one of your interviewers

The question you answered recently about providing examples of how you deal with conflict in an interview made me think of a question.

When you’re applying for internal jobs and have a good example to share involving one of the interviewers (i.e., one of your current colleagues), how would you advise dealing with that? Especially where you might want to say something not entirely complimentary about the interviewer’s own behavior.

I’m not thinking of launching into a rant or being excessively critical, just giving examples in a measured, balanced way that might involve some level of saying “in this situation, you did X or said Y, which I found less than ideal and here’s how I responded effectively and positively to that.”

You’d nearly always be better off finding a different example. The exception would be something where there could be absolutely no implied criticism of the interviewer’s behavior — something like, “I know when you and I were working on X, we came to it with different perspectives on Y, and my approach was ___, which I think was helpful to both of us and the final project, by accomplishing Z.”

But if there’s any hint that your assessment of the colleague was less than complimentary, pick a different example. You’re trying to get the interviewer to feel warmly toward you, not feel defensive.

5. Insurance stopped covering my ADHD meds

This month, the insurance my job provides decided it would no longer cover the medication that I take for my ADHD. Problem is, switching could be an arduous process. I don’t tolerate stimulants well, and there’s only one other drug of the class that I take covered. At best, I am going to have potentially up to two weeks where I’m anywhere from “not at my best” to “only barely functioning.” At worst, I’m going to have to probably stop medication entirely for a while (the other non-stimulant meds have side effects that are a bad idea for me).

I’ve seen your advice on explaining medication issues, but what do you do when you genuinely don’t know if you’ll return to a functional baseline in a few weeks?

Say this: “I’m dealing with a medical situation that is making it hard to be at 100% right now. I’m working with my doctor to resolve it and we’re hopeful I’ll be back to normal soon, but I wanted to mention it in case you notice me seeming off.”

Or: “Our insurance stopped covering a medication that I take and so I’m working with my doctor to find a new one that will work, but we don’t know yet how long that will take. Meanwhile, I may seem off so I wanted to let you know what’s going on and that we’re working on it.”

The post coworker photographs our cubicles when we work from home, new manager might join my hobby team, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

MILWAUKEE—Climbing down from the stands with mustard and ketchup packets clutched in their fists, dozens of rabid, salivating Milwaukee Brewers fans reportedly chased down the contestants in the traditional Johnsonville Sausage Race midway through Tuesday’s game. “They took after those sausages like a pack of wolves,” said Brewers outfielder Brandon Lockridge, recalling the unmistakable look of fear in the eyes of the last-place bratwurst as ravenous fans huffed closely behind shouting, “Get the brat!” and “Slow down, you mouthwatering fuck!” “I’ve never seen big dudes like that run so fast. You could tell they were really hungry.” Sources confirmed the mob came within feet of tackling the Polish sausage before they collapsed in exhaustion and spent the remaining innings dry-heaving behind home plate. 

The post Salivating Brewers Fans Chase Down Mascots In Sausage Race appeared first on The Onion.

CAMBRIDGE, MA—Insisting any missteps be viewed in the full context of each individual’s contributions to the institution, Harvard University officials defended on Wednesday their decision to keep several confederate generals on the school’s teaching staff.

Last week, Harvard president Alan M. Garber told students in a campus-wide email that he had declined to discipline several dozen tenured professors who held prominent roles in the Confederate army between 1861 and 1865. Despite public backlash, including widespread campus protests and a petition signed by over 10,000 individuals, Garber has reiterated that the faculty members’ involvement in the Stonewall Brigade and the 43rd Battalion of Virginia Cavalry did not violate the university’s code of conduct and only contributed to Harvard’s rich diversity of thought.

“We assure you, we do not take our decision to employ professors like Gen. Stonewall Jackson and his fellow commanders lightly,” said Garber, adding that the men had pledged to separate their experience fighting gruesome battles along the Mason-Dixon Line from their academic studies. “We understand that some students feel uncomfortable being taught by Professor Jackson because of his significant role in the First Battle of Manassas. But that was 165 years ago.”

“Professor Jackson is a rigorous academic scholar who has since released most of his slaves,” Garber continued. “While it’s a sensitive subject for many students from the North, we hope they can learn to accept it.”

The generals, many of whom have had tenure at the university for more than a century and a half, faced renewed controversy this week when a student leaked a video that showed professor of economics Nathan Bedford Forrest standing at the front of his classroom in a Confederate uniform, calling a student “dirty Yankee,” and saying repeatedly that the South would rise again.

Although Forrest later issued a public apology stating that his actions were inappropriate, many students, alumni, and donors questioned how Confederate professors could claim to be “objective” while they still openly swore allegiance to Gen. Robert E. Lee, owned cotton plantations, and conceived dozens of children with female slaves.

Several of Forrest’s students, however, felt that their professor was being unfairly persecuted and told reporters he should not lose his tenure simply because he led troops who killed over 300 surrendering Black soldiers during the 1864 Fort Pillow Massacre, or because he was serving as the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan at the time he was hired as a lecturer at Harvard College.

“Personally, I feel that my Confederate professors are better than most of the non-Confederate professors,” said Harvard senior Zach Weelan, who argued that his classmates were “hyper-fixated” on how many thousands of Union soldiers the educators had slaughtered in cold blood. “So what if my professor was in the Confederate army? I don’t see how that conflicts with his ability to teach me American history.”

“My thesis advisor actually used
to be one of the ‘big four’ slave traders in Memphis, and his perspectives on whipping, branding, and forced family separations have been very refreshing,” Weelan added. “Why should I suffer just because my classmates are overly sensitive Union sympathizers?”

In an open letter to the university, dozens of the Confederate generals’ renowned colleagues, including Professor Heinrich Himmler, Professor Adolf Eichmann, and Professor Emeritus and Harvard Board of Overseers chair Pol Pot, pledged their support, claiming that the administration should not give in to the “woke” and “radical” agenda of a small fraction of students.

“These professors consistently receive rave reviews from many of our top-performing Aryan undergraduates,” Garber said. “It’s a slippery slope. If you fire someone just because they were in the Confederate army, then suddenly you have to fire someone just because they systematically imprisoned and murdered over 6 million Jews and other untermensch in a coordinated campaign across Nazi-occupied Europe. When does it end?”

“As a wise man once told me, ‘I wish I was in the land of cotton, old times there are not forgotten,’ ” Garber added. “ ‘Look away, look away, look away, Dixie Land.’ ”

The post Harvard Faces Pressure To Fire Confederate Generals appeared first on The Onion.

WASHINGTON—Stating that he hoped action in the region would draw to a close in the coming weeks, President Donald Trump made comments Wednesday indicating his desire for a speedy end to the entire world. “We’re getting very close to meeting our objectives as we move toward winding down humanity’s presence on planet Earth,” Trump said during a press conference meant to address concerns over the world’s duration, adding that Americans didn’t want to get bogged down in a protracted existence with no clear end in sight. “It was never the plan to continue having life go on forever. We’re gonna hit those 8 billion sons of bitches with everything we’ve got and achieve total annihilation for the American people. Frankly, if it weren’t for the Democrats and the fake news media coverage, we could have wrapped this world up and moved on to the void already.” Trump went on to acknowledge that the GOP could face heavy midterm losses if the world was allowed to continue through November.

The post Trump Indicates Desire For Speedy End To World appeared first on The Onion.

DAYTON, OH—Expressing disappointment with what she described as unfulfilled campaign promises, local Make America Healthy Again voter Sandra Murrow told reporters Tuesday that she felt betrayed by the continued survival of her own children. “I voted for Trump because I was sure RFK Jr.’s health policies would put my son and daughter in the dirt on day one, but lately, I’m starting to worry that my kids might make it to adulthood,” said Murrow, adding that in her view, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vaccine skepticism, opposition to water fluoridation, and embrace of raw milk simply hadn’t gone far enough to endanger her kids. “I’ve always been a believer in dismantling public health infrastructure in favor of life-threatening pseudoscience, and I’m starting to feel like the GOP used that to take advantage of me with a bunch of hollow campaign-trail bluster.” “I had assumed this administration would take a much more active role in killing my children, but those measles outbreaks still haven’t made it to our school district,” she continued. “I voted for mass childhood mortality, dammit! How dare they tell me to be patient while my kids are thriving? If more children don’t start dying soon, Republicans are going to see a massive midterm backlash from parents like me who were expecting to be bereaved by now.” Murrow went on to state that she was considering moving her family to a place like Gaza or Iran where the American government takes killing children seriously. 

The post MAHA Voter Feels Betrayed   By Continued Survival Of Own Children appeared first on The Onion.

More Americans than ever are choosing to watch movies at home rather than going out to the theater. The Onion lays out the drawbacks and benefits of both experiences.

Concessions: 
Streaming:  790 calories of stale crackers, spoonfuls of peanut butter, and shredded cheese. 
Theaters: 790 calories of whatever 16-year-old theater employee didn’t confiscate. 

Size Of Vin Diesel’s Head: 
Streaming: Unacceptably small
Theaters: Gigantic, as God meant for it to be seen

Sound Quality: 
Streaming: Tough to hear dialogue while cooking, vacuuming, and practicing drums 
Theaters: Dental fillings shaken loose by sound of Coca-Cola ad

Screen Size: 
Streaming: A giant 55 inches 
Theaters: A middling 50 feet

Get To Walk By Pottery Barn Before Watching: 
Streaming: Rarely 
Theaters: Often  

Worst Annoyance:  
Streaming: Constant buffering 
Theaters: Constant gunfire

Drawbacks: 
Streaming: Rarely finish movie without encountering distraction 
Theaters: Forced to finish movie without any distractions

Glen Powell: 
Streaming: Yup, he’s here. 
Theaters: Plenty of Powell here, too.

Thing You Wanted To See: 
Streaming: Unavailable 
Theaters: Sold Out

Dynamically Inserted Ads: 
Streaming: In Use 
Theaters: Just You Wait

Way To Cheat The System: 
Streaming: Use friend’s login 
Theaters: Wear homemade mask to resemble AMC Stubs member 

Quality Of Films: 
Streaming: Terrible, formulaic movies made with shoestring budgets 
Theaters: Terrible, formulaic movies made with $100 million budgets

Feeling Afterward: 
Streaming: Wish you saw it in a theater
Theaters: Wish you just stayed home

The post Streaming vs. Theaters appeared first on The Onion.

A large airy kitchen like this, with ample room for seating? Mom’s definitely going to say it’s time for your generation to start hosting holidays.

Reference #33813

The post Damn It, Mom’s Totally Going To Make You Host Christmas Now appeared first on The Onion.

The two tied the knot after four years of dating and three years of Jarrett carefully excavating every slice of cake she received to look for a ring.

The post Anya Lopez and Sara Jarrett appeared first on The Onion.

Unjected, a dating app for unvaccinated people that began in 2021, has been gaining popularity, currently boasting 65,000 active users. What do you think?

“Perfect, I’ve been looking for something more short-term.”

David Yee, Systems Analyst

---

“What a fun ‘how we met’ story to tell your kids if they get older.”

Ella Abrams, Tortilla Steamer

---

“I am riddled with plague and absolutely cleaning up.”

Howard Gautier, Hook Baiter

The post Anti-Vaxxer Dating App Gaining Popularity appeared first on The Onion.

OTTAWA, ON ― Suddenly dropping his calm, boring, bankerish public façade, Prime Minister Mark Carney responded to a simple inquiry as to how his haircut was looking so far with a screaming, red-faced demand to “cut until there’s nothing left to cut,” prompting the unfortunate barber in question, Tyler English, to cower behind the check-in […]

The post “More, more, keep cutting, cut more!” screams now-bald Carney at terrified barber appeared first on The Beaverton.

INT. LIVING ROOM – NIGHT

We are in a hip neighborhood that is like Williamsburg circa 2003. The roommates are a “three-person couple polycule,” although in this case, there is no polyamory, because young people these days never have sex.

TONY enters on his skateboard. He has “’tis” (slang for “magnetism”).

TONY: Hey, “chosen fam.” Have you seen the video that went viral today on TikTok.com?

SAM (ambiguous gender) crochets. NAOMI (ambiguous ethnicity) wears virtual reality glasses to “doomsday scroll.”

SAM: No, because I am not “extremely World Wide Web–logged on” like you two.

Tony boots up his Gateway desktop computer and surfs the ’net to show them.

NAOMI: That is so “afire”!

TONY: I made it with computer software I programmed myself that I am now selling in “The Apple Application Store.”

SAM: You have to turn this into a “side piece hustle.”

TONY: But how? I am already drowning in debt from frivolously purchasing so many slices of toast with avocado thinly spread on them at my local coffee house.

NAOMI: I’ve got an idea…

Instead of huddling and whispering, the three roommates text in “Slacker,” a messaging application named for Richard Linklater’s seminal 1990 independent film.

EXT. BOARDWALK – DAY

The trio stands on a boardwalk as beachgoer youth ignore them in favor of the wind-powered Ferris wheel, self-driving bumper cars, and target-shooting stations (the proprietors wear gun-control buttons).

SAM: (after making a land acknowledgment) Step right up, those of you who can, and be the star of a viral video!

BEACHGOER: My dream is to be an “influential online personality,” much the way Jason Priestley and Luke Perry on Beverly Hills, 90210 once swayed a generation of young men to grow sideburns that many of them continue to sport.

TONY: That is a “slapping action and/or sound”! Just sign here.

The beachgoer skips the terms and conditions and gives his consent, because his literacy skills have declined precipitously from years of not reading forty-something novelists who are still writing books despite a culture that no longer cares.

BEACHGOER’S “PARTNER”: Hold on—did you just sign away your personal information to “the A.I data centers”?

Tony begins sweating. His whole program runs on the A.I. data centers, which his Gen-Z cohort uses constantly, even though it will destroy their future capacity to work, think, and bathe.

TONY: No, this has nothing to do with data centers. It is powered by, uh…

NAOMI: (slowly) “Democratic… socialism.”

SAM: (even more slowly) Yes… democratic socialism.

The beachgoers send Tony all their Bitcoins as they shout catchphrases like “down with the fuzz,” “reduced in-network out-of-pocket maximums,” and “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.”

INT. LIVING ROOM – NIGHT

The roommates celebrate with nonalcoholic beverages and “girlies dinners.”

TONY: Guess who just came “sliding into my Yahoo! Mail inbox”? The world’s richest tech baroness, who is also ethical in her relationship to capitalism. She “Loki the shapeshifting Norse god” wants to buy my application!

SAM: “It is donating” cha-ching! What are you going to do with all that money?

TONY: Run for mayor. My slogan is, “A slice of toast with avocado thinly spread on it in every rent-frozen apartment!”

NAOMI: You as mayor? What are you smoking?

TONY: I think you mean, “What are you eating?”

He produces a legally acquired bag of edible marijuana gelatins.

Freeze frame of them laughing despite the dystopia they’re inheriting and also partially creating. Credits roll over Pavement’s “Summer Babe” covered by The Goose.

Teddy Wayne’s new novel, The Au Pair, is available now. For more information, go to teddywayne.com.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
It's not an uncanny valley, it's an uncanny mountain that you're afraid to climb.

I love the simple compositions in this comic. I just slapped everything on the page that needed to be there, and it works fine. When I went through this story doing the tiny fixes, I wished I could still draw like this, unencumbered by the need for everything to be “correct”, as if I’m competing with the star names of art. I couldn’t draw a page like this now. Somewhere along the way, the rules in my head changed, and arguably not for the better.

NASA officials said Tuesday that they are seriously considering sending the full-scale engineering model of the Perseverance rover, which is currently housed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, to the Moon to expedite their efforts to explore the south pole region.

The car-sized rover nicknamed "Promise," which serves as a testbed for Perseverance and was not otherwise planned for a launch, would land equipped with a multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator (MMRTG) to power it across difficult terrain and through the lunar night. NASA's other rovers primarily operate on solar power.

"We are thinking very hard right now about sending Promise to the Moon," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said Tuesday during a monthly update on the agency's plans to build a Moon base.

Read full article

Comments

During my discussion of the evolution of system-windows window and class extra bytes, I noted that even though IDs are typically small integers, people liked to stash pointers there, so we had to expand the ID field to a pointer-sized integer.

One thing I’ve learned is that anywhere it’s possible to hide a pointer, people will hide a pointer there. This is true even for small integers.

As I was digging up the history of the extra bytes, I saw a special note in the 16-bit code for Set­Class­Word: It says that there’s an app that expects to be able to modify the value of GWW_CB­CLS­EXTRA.

Now, modifying this value has no practical effect because the memory for the class was allocated when you called Register­Class. You can’t go back in time and change the allocation size.

But one program realized that it could use this value as a place to store some private data, so they did. Sure, that’s not the purpose of the GWW_CB­CLS­EXTRA, but that never stopped them.

For compatibility, Windows lets 16-bit programs modify GWW_CB­CLS­EXTRA. But at least it blocks it for 32-bit and 64-bit programs. One loophole closed. Countless more to go.

The post A compatibility note on the abuse of Windows window class extra bytes appeared first on The Old New Thing.

A reader writes:

I participated in an online written test last week and have been reflecting on the experience since. The invitation asked me to join a Zoom meeting and keep my camera on throughout the test — no problem, I understand the intention behind this as it likely aims to prevent outside assistance.

However, when I logged into the meeting room, I was surprised to find that multiple candidates were there, with full names visible and cameras on. This wasn’t communicated in advance, so it caught me off guard. During the session, we received the test by email and were given one hour to complete it while remaining on camera. At times, there were interruptions when HR staff asked some candidates to turn their cameras back on, which made it a bit challenging to stay focused while working through several in-depth questions. Additionally, I noticed that the test email was sent with all candidates CC’d rather than BCC’d, meaning everyone’s emails were visible.

To me, this practice raised some concerns around privacy, especially because this company works for vulnerable populations and I should expect them to uphold privacy. It also made me think about situations where candidates might know each other but are not openly job-seeking — there could be implications if that information were to circulate. I also wondered about potentially awkward scenarios, such as colleagues or managers and team members unexpectedly encountering each other in this setting.

I’m considering sharing this feedback after the recruitment process concludes, as I believe it could help improve the experience for future candidates and also be more in line with the company’s mission. At the same time, I recognize that in an in-person setting, candidates might also encounter one another, so I may be overthinking parts of this. What would be your advice?

Whoa, no, this isn’t okay for all the reasons you said!

It’s true that when you interview in person there’s always a chance you could bump into another candidate who you know (perhaps they’re leaving just as you’re arriving, or similar), potentially outing you both when might have wanted to keep your job search quiet — but (a) that still gives you a chance to play it off as something else if you want to (like “having lunch with an old colleague who works in this building”) and (b) that would be a rare accident that it’s hard to prevent unless we start cloak-and-dagger-type protocols for interviews and everyone is hustled through a secret tunnel. But what you encountered was designed to have you all in the same space together.

Moreover, there was zero need for the employer to do it this way! If they needed to have everyone take the test at once while they “proctored” it, they should have set it up so participants could only see the host and not see each other (for example, some platforms let you do this by setting it up as a webinar or have a “focus” mode that will do this).

Putting you all in the CC field so you each had a list of other people who were applying for the job makes it even worse. What if one of the other candidates knew your boss and decided to mention it her? Or what if, as you suggested, one of the other candidates was your boss? Someone there is remarkably out of touch with how to use technology or it’s never occurred to them to think about candidacy privacy, or both.

Please do share your feedback with them after the process is over — you’d be doing all their future candidates a big favor.

The post I unexpectedly met all the other candidates for the job on a Zoom call appeared first on Ask a Manager.

Let me get over by a sharper rock.

He needs new brake pads.

WASHINGTON—Saying the nation had enjoyed a perfectly adequate amount of dribbling, passing, and loud chanting, a new report published Tuesday confirmed that was enough soccer for now. “Welp, that was fun, but we’ve got our fill,” the report read in part, adding that after a couple weeks of watching men from places like Italy, Bulgaria, or wherever kick the ball back and forth, Americans were ready to thank everyone involved and move on to something else. “It was fun and all, and we’ll be sure to tune in again in four years. But for now, that’s plenty of soccer—no need to overdo it. Everyone can gather their scarves and drums and face paint, make their way to airports, and go back to their homes. We’ll just say that Europe won. That work for everyone?” The report concluded that a future global soccer tournament wasn’t out of the question as long as it could be wrapped up in a day or two.

The post Report: That’s Enough Soccer For Now appeared first on The Onion.

A 3-year-old giraffe is missing after escaping a ranch in Texas two weeks ago, with search helicopters turning up nothing. What do you think?

“This is why you always walk your giraffe on a leash.”

Alice Beale, Cactus Farmer

---

“She’s probably a burger by now.”

Steve Frantz, Tire Inflater

---

“Maybe they need a more specific description?”

Chuck Staub, Glass Duster

The post Escaped Giraffe Unable To Be Located appeared first on The Onion.

Elaine Gardener’s loved ones can rest easy knowing the 63-year-old passed after having finally completed the Devil’s Dozen Challenge at Sliders Bar & Grill.

The post Elaine Gardener appeared first on The Onion.

The post Last Living Millennial Dies appeared first on The Onion.

WASHINGTON—In a statement that mourned “the extinguishing of one of the league’s oldest and most infernal lights,” the Washington Wizards announced Tuesday that the organization’s founding wizard, Osric the Baleful, had died at age 682, bringing to an end a centuries-long career in necromancy, prophecy, and NBA ownership.

Osric’s 1997 acquisition of the team then known as the Bullets is said to have taken place after an omen from the entrails of a hanged usurer convinced him that possession of a middling sports franchise would grant him an inexhaustible river of mortal anguish on which to float into eternity. Osric emerged from his crypt during a lightning storm and presented the team’s owners with a yellowed parchment granting him “full dominion over basketball in the District of Columbia, together with all courts, revenues, and towering gamesmen, who are hereby subject to permanent indentureship.” Before the owners could protest, the wizard had already turned them into wooden pestles.

During his tenure, Osric was known to oversee team operations through the use of scrying bowls, graveyard rites, and cat-roasting, reportedly believing the Eastern Conference to be a natural home for the dark arts. Former employees noted that he would frequently appear in clouds of green vapor to weigh in on everything from roster decisions to contract negotiations. Medical staff recalled Osric forecasting injuries by examining the smoke of burnt box scores, while scouts said they were ordered to rank prospects according to “wingspan, courage, and might of soul and tooth.”

He was also credited with bringing in star talent over the years. When the team was badly in need of a reliable scorer, Osric took it upon himself to walk the earth for three winters in search of an elite combo guard before eventually discovering Gilbert Arenas. When the team was lacking a dominant paint presence, he transmuted the corpse of a white foal to create 7-foot-7 center Gheorghe Muresan, whom he allegedly modeled after “a colossus from the old kingdom who ruled the bogs.”

Though feared by generations of coaches, players, ball boys, and Southeast Division rivals, Osric brought stability to the organization through his front-office savvy and command over terrible forces of evil. According to team officials, the Wizards will honor the late sorcerer by interring him beneath center court so that his spirit might continue influencing the franchise’s fortunes for all ages yet accursed. 

The post Washington Wizards Announce Founding Wizard Dead At 682 appeared first on The Onion.