Cowboy Who?

Each year on January 1, Glasstire acknowledges Public Domain Day, when copyright terms expire and works of literature, film, music, and visual art are released into the public realm. Celebrated works of fiction, iconic movies, and influential sound recordings are “free for all to copy, share, and build upon,” as the Duke University Center for the Study of the Public Domain states. This year, the list includes literary, film, and artworks from 1930, and sound recordings from 1925.

Last year, William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury entered the public domain. This year, Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, set in the author’s fictional setting of Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi — and the basis of a 2013 movie adaptation by auteur and actor James Franco — is now accessible. Other popular literary works entering the public domain are The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett T. S. Eliot’s poem “Ash Wednesday,” and the first four mysteries of the Nancy Drew series by Carolyn Keene. Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents is also accessible, though only in the original German version Das Unbehagen in der Kultur, as is Bertrand Russell’s The Conquest of Happiness.

In lighter fare, the Betty Boop comics character is now in the public domain through her first appearance in the Dizzy Dishes cartoon by Fleischer Studios, as are Chic Young’s Blondie and Dagwood Bumstead comic strips. Mickey Mouse, perhaps the most famous American comic figure, entered the public domain two years ago through the original 1928 Steamboat Willie cartoon, followed by a dozen more cartoons last year. This year, Mickey’s public domain appearances are in 10 Silly Symphony cartoons from Disney studios, the first week of the Mickey Mouse daily comic strip, and nine more cartoons, including The Barnyard Concert, in which Horace Horsecollar and Clarabelle Cow also appear.

In the realm of film, among works entering the public domain is 1930 Academy Award winner All Quiet on the Western Front, based on the World War I tragedy by German novelist Erich Maria Remarque. Two iconic comedy troupes make this year’s list, with Animal Crackers starring the Marx Brothers, and Soup to Nuts featuring The Three Stooges. Silver screen goddesses Marlene Deitrich and Jean Harlow enter the public domain through the former’s The Blue Angel (Der blaue Engel), directed by Josef von Sternberg, and the latter’s Hell’s Angels, directed by Howard Hughes.

Ira and George Gershwin top the list of musical works released into the public domain in 2026, with four songs firmly lodged in American popular memory: “I Got Rhythm,” “I’ve Got a Crush on You,” “But Not for Me,” and “Embraceable You.” Equally memorable are “Georgia on My Mind” by Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell, “On the Sunny Side of the Street” by Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh, and the first English translation  of the German hit song “Just a Gigolo.” Notable sound recordings entering the public domain are “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby,” recorded by Gene Austin, and “Sweet Georgia Brown,” recorded by Ben Bernie and His Hotel Roosevelt Orchestra.

The status of visual artworks is murkier, given that they are released into the public domain if they were published in 1930, and as stated by Duke University, “‘published’ is a legal term of art that was not well-defined” in copyright law of the time, and could include exhibition, publication in a catalog or magazine, being exhibited, or being “offered for sale to the public.” That stipulation applies to U.S. copyright law, which differs from European law, which focuses on the year the creator of the work died, rather than publication date. 

This year’s list includes one of Modernism’s most enduring paintings, Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow by Piet Mondrian, a lesser known Paul Klee watercolor Tierfreundschaft (Animal Friendship), and an Edward Steichen gelatin silver print Fashion for Vogue, October 27, 1930, in the Whitney Museum of American Art collection. 

Visit the Duke University website for a fuller list of works entering the public domain, along with detailed explanations on copyright law and use of accessible materials.

The post Highlights from Public Domain Day 2026 appeared first on Glasstire.

Why do I push people away?

It’s time for the passing year!

✨🌟✨Happy new year!!✨🌟✨

Wishing you the best as always, health and success for you through 2026!

Keep it up!

OTTAWA – Despite best efforts and an emotional journey through time and space, three ghosts visiting Official Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre failed to inspire him to change his ways through the spirit of Christmas.  “Normally, I would take him to the past to show he’s gone wrong,” said the Ghost of Christmas Past. “So I […]

The post Report: Three ghosts took Pierre Poilievre on spiritual journey through time to no effect appeared first on The Beaverton.

I'm going in here horsey, so you stay here and don't move. #CowboyWho

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
The main fallout is that everyone learns geology really well and the rate of teen pregnancy is through the roof.

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are four updates from past letter-writers.

1. Interviewing in person while visibly pregnant (#2 at the link)

Thanks for your advice about addressing my pregnancy during an interview process. I had to make my decision before I saw your response, but it was reassuring that I hadn’t messed up!

I was invited to in-person second-round interviews for two positions through that recruiter in the same week, so I let him know I was pregnant and gave him permission to share that with the hiring committees. He responded with congratulations, but said he’d let me handle the conversation with employers. Weird, because he knew I didn’t have contact information for anyone I was interviewing with – all the arrangements went through the recruiter. So, both times I announced my pregnancy by walking through the door. Both interviews went pretty well, but I didn’t get offered either job, and I’ll never know whether pregnancy had anything to do with it. Also, the recruiter apparently just happened not to have any other postings I might be a good candidate for until approximately two months after my baby was born – which could absolutely be a coincidence. I typically hear from him every few months, but around the time I wrote to you, he’d sent me four or five jobs very close together, so the timing of the lull stood out.

During my pregnancy, there was only one job I applied for on my own, and for that one I had an in-person interview the day before my scheduled C-section! When I confirmed the interview, I let them know I was pregnant and planning to deliver the next day – I wanted them fully informed in case I had to cancel last-minute, and I figured my cheerfulness about interviewing that day might speak to my enthusiasm for the role. This was by far the most comfortable of the interviews for me, and I think telling them in advance contributed to that – they were warm and friendly and made small talk about their own pregnancies and kids (in a professional, non-TMI way) and I ended up with a very positive sense of the friendly culture and work-life balance at that organization. I was one of two finalists they invited back for a final interview via Zoom the following week, but they went with the other candidate. That person has a specific relevant (but not required) certification that I don’t have, but it’s also true that I passed up multiple openings to pitch myself as a person who “hits the ground running” – while that is usually me, it wouldn’t have been at that job, with how soon they wanted someone to start.

Most importantly, I now have a wonderful, healthy, mostly happy, almost four-month-old baby. Second most importantly, my old job (at a company that was going out of business) managed to keep me long enough that I qualified for our state’s paid family leave, which turned not having a new job yet into a good thing. And third most importantly, I have just accepted an offer and I get a whole five weeks before my start date to enjoy my baby without a job search hanging over my head!

2. How much exaggeration is too much on LinkedIn? (#3 at the link)

My coworker is no longer at the company, but things have taken a real turn on the LinkedIn exaggeration front. (For the commenters worried I would do something to sabotage my coworker, rest assured that this is filed firmly under “interesting topic of discussion/food for thought, but decidedly not my place to intervene in any way.”)

Since departing the company, this person’s LinkedIn page is now wildly inaccurate and does not represent their true work history at all, especially for their time at my company. Some examples include:
– a job title that is completely different from the actual job title (think HR representative vs accountant levels of different, not teapot specialist vs teapot designer different)
– designing and creating learning programs for the whole organization (listing a specific number of people that is about five times the number of employees at the company); these programs do not exist
– creating a large number of complex work products that do not exist using software we never had access to
– meeting every single deadline they ever had (not possible with the type of work we do, and project management was one of their biggest struggles)

I don’t know if this rises to the level of bananapants, but it has been interesting to see the evolution of their personal branding. I think I now have a very clear read on how much is too much embellishment.

3. I’m sick of being the only person who can manage our old technology (#2 at the link)

I’d like to thank you for your advice, along with the many kind commenters who weighed in with their similar experiences. It seems like it’s a pretty common problem for a lot of people working in tech.

I spoke to managers about how much was on my plate and they were very understanding and were willing to support giving me as much time as was needed to keep everything running, without having to worry about other responsibilities. Unfortunately, projects to remove these legacy systems kept being delayed and there was very little interest in others picking up the work, which still left me nervous about if a problem were to come up over the evenings or weekends.

Ultimately, last year I decided to leave. While the issue I wrote about was a big factor, there was also a huge loss of staff in our department to competitors, a lack of promised career progression, and a significant change in attitude towards my team that I became increasingly frustrated with. I initially looked for similar jobs at a similar salary, but through some hard work and a massive amount of luck I was offered a role by a much larger company that offered a title promotion, massive raise, and fully remote work. I have now celebrated one year with the new company and genuinely enjoy it.

I spent my slightly ridiculous three-month notice period documenting all the tasks I had been doing and supervising other engineers as they (somewhat begrudgingly) learnt everything I had been doing. As cathartic as it may have been for the whole system to crash and burn within days of my absence it seems like they’ve kept everything ticking along, and hopefully they’ve kept up pressure for the old systems to be sent to the great e-waste recycler in the sky.

4. Can I use an offer to try to get a second offer? (#4 at the link)

Despite my confidence in getting an offer from a local city government, that didn’t happen. I did receive an email a few weeks later saying they went with someone else. So, I wasn’t able to leverage that offer to get a full time position from Company A. But the great news is that Company A decided to hire a full-time person. As a consultant, they let me skip any screeners and jump right to the first round virtual interview. Then they had me do a virtual interview with the CEO, and they told me at the end of the interview they wanted to make me an offer! So, I’ve been happily working full time at Company A since July!

The post updates: interviewing while visibly pregnant, LinkedIn exaggeration, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are four updates from past letter-writers.

1. My vegan coworker is upset about getting non-vegan gifts three years in a row (first update)

I saw some comments on the update I sent in before (about my coworker who cluelessly gave a vegan coworker three non-vegan gifts) wanted to know what Marie would get Liz for Christmas this year, haha.

Liz ended up leaving the company in October for another job, so alas, no Christmas gift story, but we did have a farewell lunch for Liz and Marie gave her a book of plant-based recipes for dogs. Liz does have a dog, I have no idea about its diet, but still, this was an improvement, especially considering no one knew Marie was going to get a going-away gift for Liz and therefore couldn’t vet it. I was really holding my breath when she pulled it out. Fortunately, Marie actually bought this book at Barnes and Noble earlier in the year when it was on display, in anticipation of giving it to Liz for Christmas. It wasn’t weird for her to give Liz a going-away gift, since turnover in our office is pretty rare, but obviously it hadn’t gone well before, so I was still surprised (but also not, because that’s just Marie — she loves to give gifts).

2. Quitting when I just hired new team members (#5 at the link)

Update: I put in my notice.

I stayed long enough to onboard my new reports, just in case having a bigger team would help me feel less burned out. Things got a little better, but I still feel called to try something else. Hopefully my team will be better off in the long term with a manager who is bought in.

I was having trouble pulling the trigger, until my boss scheduled a quick call to tell me she was quitting. That was the push I needed. Wish me luck!

3. Our laid-off coworkers are organizing a get-together — should the rest of us attend? (#4 at the link)

Several of my remaining colleagues and I ended up going to the get together with my colleagues after checking in with some of the fired folks who were organizing it. There were a few awkward spots but most people expressed sympathy for the new organizational leadership those of us who were left still had to deal with.

On the whole, it was a good farewell, especially as several of my mentors who had been instrumental in my career success were there and it was a final opportunity to get together with them all before many of them moved out of our area.

In the following months, the changes at my organization continued, with increased hostility to the workers who were there from both those now in charge of us as well as external actors.

Some small groups were brought back while additional large scale firings at my organization continued in the months ahead, especially so during the shutdown.

I’ve tried to keep the pieces of my group’s mission alive as well as buoy the morale of my team members while making sure they have a firm understanding of our situation. With more organizational changes ahead, I’m unsure of what is next for me or my team.

I am making preparations to potentially go into the private sector and trying to make sure my team members are ready for that as well.

4. Can I leave during a project I’m leading? (#5 at the link)

The advice I received from other AAM readers really helped me shift my perspective around what we owe our jobs (and what our jobs owe us). Specifically, the idea that it is an executive’s role at the company to have contingency plans around staffing and project management–that’s ostensibly why they get paid the big bucks. The employer that had been aggressively pursuing me ended up ghosting me before the offer was final, but the support from you and the readers gave me the kick in the pants I needed to start applying and interviewing in a more intentional way. A few weeks after you published my question, I got a great offer from a local start-up and gave notice at my then employer. Tellingly, then-employer didn’t ask me why or try to bargain for me to stay. Toxic until the end, the executive I wasn’t valued by didn’t wish me luck, reference that I was leaving in any meetings during my notice period, or even say goodbye to me on my last day.

I’m a lot happier now, and I’m so glad I got the motivation to leave when I did. I only wish I’d done so sooner!

The post updates: the non-vegan gifts, the get-together of laid-off coworkers, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

Remember the letter-writer who took a job with less responsibility and her coworkers were treating her like she had no experience? Here’s the update.

It turns out the part where you asked why it mattered was the crux of the issue. At the time I wrote, we had just hired the woman who told me she had a degree in marketing and “actually knew about this stuff.” She was older than me and a little odd, but I thought she was cool and admired her amazing work ethic. She had a habit of giving me unsolicited advice, like “when you are a salaried employee you will sometimes have to work more than 40 hours a week if that’s what it takes to get the job done,” and she questioned a lot of what I told her, but I look younger than my age. At the time I didn’t realize how much she was doing it, and it often happened in meetings where other people would follow her lead, so that’s what inspired the letter. She also had other quirks, like trying to follow me into the bathroom to continue discussing work and insisting she had an innate knowledge of our local area because her father had lived here before she was born, despite the fact that she was from the South and we were a Mid-Atlantic state. This became an issue because we have many foundations and institutions named after a 19th-century robber baron, and no one could convince her they weren’t all the same organization.

Then we had a reorg and lost 75% of our staff and we became a department of two who were shoved into a basement office together. That’s when she became abusive. She started by taking any opportunity to throw my mistakes in my face. My “mistakes” were things like not covering her incidentals during a hotel stay so she had to provide her own credit card or putting the data into a spreadsheet before making it look pretty, or not ordering dry erase board cleaner while we had a spending freeze. I think she wanted me to buy it with my own money. I also stopped giving input on anything at all because she would angrily insist I knew nothing and also throw it in my face for months afterwards. We had an event and the venue gave us a list of preferred caterers. I recommended one because it fit with our mission and from then on, every time we talked about the event, she would look me dead in the face and say, “WE WILL NOT BE USING THAT CATERER.” This continued after the event, whenever catering was discussed. I had only mentioned it once.

At that point, I still thought she was just quirky (I had really liked her a lot at first), but one day I told her “no.” I refused to come in at the last minute on a day we had scheduled to work from home. She argued with me, but I stood my ground. That day she kept me on Zoom for five hours of meetings. After that she became insanely controlling. She wouldn’t let me walk around the office alone, she’d always come with me. She would be obviously unhappy if I did anything she didn’t specifically tell me to do, but she was my coworker, not my supervisor, so there wasn’t much she could do about it, and again, I wasn’t doing anything wrong, just on my own.

One day, she asked me to help another department with a task, and they wanted to have a meeting about it. When giving me the task, she said, “Don’t let this take up too much of your time.” The other department asked me to have a meeting about it, which I had on Zoom in the office with her. During the meeting, I offered to drop off some equipment for them since it was on my way. As soon as I got off the phone, she was screaming in my face that I had “broken her trust,” since she told me not to put much time into it, and demanding I tell her “what I was trying to get out of doing this,” and questioning my integrity. She then emailed the other department and told them that they had asked too much of me and that I would not help them again.

Now that I had “broken her trust,” it got really bad. Now if I was in the bathroom longer than she wanted, she’d knock on the door and ask what I was doing. On a rare day when I was at work when she wasn’t (we were both part-time), I managed to get away from her and talk to my supervisor. Remember, we had lost 75% of our staff and my supervisor was in name only. He asked if I was okay and when I asked him why he would ask that, he said, “I also work with her.” I found out that she had been lying to me about the scope of our project and that it would be ending in November despite all the plans she would talk about during our five-hour meetings.

I started looking for other jobs, but one day it was all too much. She asked me to make her a list (in a table in Word, not Excel) with one column of whose hotel rooms we would pay for and a column of whose hotel rooms we wouldn’t be paying for. For a conference with an expected attendance of hundreds of people. I explained that I wouldn’t know if someone was booking a hotel room if we weren’t paying for it. Next thing I know, she’s screaming at me that I was refusing to do a new procedure and that the (company approved) method I had been using to pay for hotel rooms was something I just made up and I was to find out if any of our conference speakers was bringing a spouse and that the spouse would have to pay for their own room (!?) and “the free ride was over.” Then she threw a barrage of insults at me until I left the room. When I returned, I told her that she couldn’t talk to me like that and I hadn’t done anything wrong. She refused to talk to me and went home.

I immediately went to HR and my supervisor and begged them to fire me. In an amazing twist, a job I had turned down a year earlier had opened again and I could move right in. During the transition, I was told to wrap up my old job and any communication I had with my coworker could go through my supervisor. But she didn’t talk to me. She did, however, have a meeting with the finance department to learn how to do my job and then emailed me to let me know that from now on I had no reason to speak to anyone else and I could take all of my direction from her. I didn’t respond, and a week after that she went to my supervisor and told him I was useless and hadn’t spoken to her in weeks and demanded I be fired. That’s how she found out I was starting my new job the next week!

My new job is amazing. I love my boss, and her boss. My days are so busy and fun that I find myself struggling to leave on time. I’m still in the learning curve stage, but I recently made a suggestion and my boss gushed over how happy she was that someone else wanted to help plan things. I am, however, in charge of the newsletter.

The post update: I took a job with less responsibility — and my coworkers treat me like I have no experience appeared first on Ask a Manager.

Hey, look, that’s my brother in that truck. What are the chances of that happening? Hi, brother!

If old women give him the creeps, maybe he shouldn’t have gone into oldwomanology.

Maybe I could just slip over there for dessert… nah, it might look bad.

North Pole, CA – After years of competition between the two Christmas lovers, Jeff Bezos has finally decided to end Santa Claus’ hold on Christmas by putting a hit out on Saint Nick after holiday season where Mr. Claus dominated headlines and trend reports. “His business model needs to be put down,” laughed Bezos. “Free […]

The post Jeff Bezos puts hit out on “socialist” Santa Claus appeared first on The Beaverton.

I ran across a promotion from a hotel.

Join us for the holidays with this promotion code.

But if you read down to the fine print, it also says

Limited number of rooms available for each date. May not be valid during holiday and blackout periods or combined with any other discount or promotional offers.

The bold print giveth, and the fine print taketh away.

My guess is that this was standard boilerplate they attach to all their promotions, and they didn’t realize that it conflicted with the fact that it’s a holiday promotion.

The post Reading the fine print, episode 4: Holiday promotions appeared first on The Old New Thing.

Regular readers of this blog may remember the giant traditional Swedish Yule Goat erected annually in the Swedish town of Gävle. The Gävle Goat (Gävlebocken in Swedish) is a source of fascination for me because of its unfortunate habit of being burnt down by vandals.

In 2023, the Gävle Goat was eaten by jackdaws who feasted on the unusually high seed content in that year’s straw harvest. But fortunately, in 2024, the goat survived, bringing its survival rate for the 2020’s to 3/5. It looked like it was doing fairly well, at least by Gävle Goat standards.

Alas, in 2025, the goat succumbed again. But it wasn’t fire or birds that did in the goat. This time, it collapsed under the strong winds of storm Johannes, which also knocked out power to over 40,000 homes and felled trees across the country.

YouTube video of the goat’s collapse.

Local officials have not decided whether they will attempt to raise the goat back up.

The post The Gävle Goat (Gävlebocken) succumbs in 2025 to a new menace appeared first on The Old New Thing.

A little while ago, I wrote about the use of color-keyed overlays to render video smoothly. The idea is that the CPU itself produces an image with a block of solid color (green in my example), and the graphics card is instructed to replace those pixels with the pixels from an off-screen image that it generated separately. Rather than doing the image composition in the CPU, the composition happens in the video card as the image leaves the card and goes to the monitor.

In the subsequent discussion, some people remembered this technique but noted that in their recollection, the color-key was not green but some other color. What’s going on?

When you set up the color-keying with the video card, you gave it a few instructions. You told it where to find the off-screen replacement image and how big it was. You told it the size and location of the on-screen rectangle where the replacement image should go. And you told it the magic color to look for inside that rectangle.

So the CPU got to pick the color-key color.

Choosing a color-key color was a bit tricky. If another window overlapped your video playback window, and they used your color-key color, then your video would play “through” the other window at any place it used that color. Therefore, when choosing a color-key color, you wanted to pick a color that is not commonly encountered. You didn’t want white or black, for example, because those are all over the place. Common choices were either neon-bright colors such as bright green or bright magenta because they are so ugly that nobody would even use them on purpose, or very dark colors like #010000 because they are so close to black that most normal people would just pick black outright.

The neon-bright colors were also useful when debugging because it’s extremely noticeable when you messed up.

Video card support for overlays was extremely varied. Some cards didn’t support them. Others did, but with restrictions. For example, “Oh, I can do overlays, but no more than four at a time, and they cannot have overlapping destination rectangles, and furthermore, I cannot apply a scale factor smaller than 1.0 or larger than 1.3.” Navagating all of these limitations and restrictions was quite a cumbersome undertaking for programs that wanted to use the feature.

The key to all this overlay trickery is that the magic happened inside the video card, and the result went out to the monitor without ever being sent back to the CPU. Programs themselves never saw the result of the overlay. All that programs saw or knew about were the color-keyed pixels. When you took the screen shot, you got the green (or whatever) pixels. When you loaded the bitmap into Paint, it showed green pixels, (but if an overlay was active, the video card changed them to something else before sending them to the monitor). When Paint saved the bitmap, it just saved green pixels. As far as anybody on the computer could tell, those pixels were just boring green pixels.

The post Additional notes on color-keyed overlays as a way of doing smooth video rendering appeared first on The Old New Thing.

In brief: Houston is quite chilly this morning, and we’re dropping down another notch tonight. But following this we’ll be solidly on a warming trend heading into the new year. This weekend looks quite pleasant. Also, we take a peek at what weather might be like for the Houston Marathon.

Freeze line

Temperatures are comfortably above freezing this morning across the Houston metro area, but what about tonight? We are going to see ideal conditions for heat to radiate back into space this evening, including clear skies and light winds. This will bring a light freeze into the Houston region. My sense is that urbanized parts of Houston and coastal areas will remain just above 32 degrees, but that inland areas and outlying suburbs, such as Katy, probably will briefly freeze tonight. Essentially, if you experienced freezing conditions back on Dec. 15, there is a decent chance you will again tonight. These temperatures are not cold enough to affect pipes or anything like that, but do take care of sensitive plants and pets.

Tuesday

We are going to see solid sunshine today (and most of the week). This will allow highs to warm into the 50s today, with light northerly winds, before our chilly night tonight.

New Year’s Eve

After a cold start, expect highs in the mid-60s on Wednesday with sunny skies. Light winds will turn west, and then southwest over the course of the day and evening. We have no weather concerns for the New Year’s Eve holiday aside from chilly temperatures during the evening, likely dropping into the 40s by the time we ring in the new year.

New Year’s Day

With a southerly flow in place we’ll see a warmer day to start 2026, with highs in the lower 70s. As moisture levels creep up, we may see a few more clouds in the sky, although I expect plenty of sunshine. Lows on Thursday night will be warmer, perhaps dropping only into the lower 60s.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday

Friday looks downright warm with highs in the lower 80s and sunshine. The weekend should be a bit cooler (although there is still some uncertainty here) as a modest front pushes down from the northwest. For now let’s go with highs in the 70s and lows in the 50s, with mostly sunny skies. Really, it looks to be like ideal weather for most outdoor activities.

Next week and the Houston Marathon

The first half of next week looks to be rather warm for January, with highs likely in the vicinity of the upper 70s and nights perhaps in the upper 50s. If you’ve been wondering about rain chances, those start to pick up around Wednesday or Thursday. That’s not to say rain is likely, but it does appear to be possible.

If you’re planning to run the Houston Half or Full Marathon, then you’re keenly interested in conditions for Sunday, January 11. I just completed my final long run early on Monday, so my body is (mostly) ready. What about the weather? I’m afraid the forecast is still pretty uncertain at this point. It’s possible that a weak-ish front arrives by Wednesday or Thursday of next week (bringing some rain), but depending on the timing of this front I think we might see a warming trend by Friday or Saturday. In that case we need another front to bring temperatures down for Sunday. This appears to be possible, although not certain.

My best guess is for low temperatures in the 50s on Sunday morning, with highs rising to the 60s. In terms of wind and rain, that is going to be depend heavily on whether we get that second front to drop temperatures for the marathon. In summary: there’s just not much clarity yet on running conditions. When there is, I will definitely let you know.

The post To Cirrhosis With Love appeared first on The Onion.

WASHINGTON—Claiming that his longstanding interest in the arts made him a perfect fit for the role, President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he had appointed himself to the divine muses. “Many are saying these nine inspirational goddesses have become beholden to DEI and woke ideology, so I’m ascending Mount Helicon as a muse to make sure literature, science, and music continue to serve the American people,” Trump said during a press conference, adding that in his position as the 10th muse, he would embody the practices of pastoral poetry and late-night posting sprees on Truth Social. “Buskin-shod Melpomene must be doing very well, because it’s a tragedy what’s happened to the muses. Calliope is turning epic poetry into a Marxist nightmare, and Terpsichore, it’s so sad what she’s doing to chorus and dance, isn’t it, folks? And what happened to Euterpe? Good old Euterpe, we loved Euterpe. But the flutes now, they’re terrible, so we’re going in and fixing it. I actually had a great relationship with the Titaness Mnemosyne in the 1980s, and she used to say, ‘Donald, we need someone like you in the muses to keep my daughters in line.’ So it’s happening. I’m in charge, and together we’re going to make Boeotia great again.” At press time, Trump had reportedly been transformed into a magpie after boasting that the Kennedy Center could stage a production of The Phantom Of The Opera more beautifully than the nine original muses.

The post Trump Appoints Self To Divine Muses appeared first on The Onion.

“I know we’ve had many pictures of Mark Carney on our website… but I’m not entirely sure I could pick him out of a lineup.” Hit the bricks, you stupid year! Ian and the Panel (Clare Blackwood, and in the guest chair for the first time, Luke Gordon Field) discuss the top 5 stories of […]

The post Canada names Mark Carney ‘2025 Man Of The Year Unless Anyone Better Comes Along’ appeared first on The Beaverton.

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

Remember the letter-writer whose boss (Ned) and she shared an office with a volatile jerk (Peter)? Here’s the update.

After my letter was published, I spoke to Ned and told him I would not be assisting Peter further, which he fully supported. I started referring Peter to his adult children for assistance, which left him huffy but he stopped bothering me. He also began spending more and more time away from the office and out of state, “working” on their joint venture.

As for Peter and Ned, their business relationship has ended and their personal relationship is slowly untangling. It was an explosive conclusion that ended in a company bankruptcy, home foreclosure, and other items that left Ned’s finances in ruin. Unfortunately everything was in his name for various (in my opinion bogus) reasons that left Peter getting off practically scot-free. People in the comments wanted to know if they were romantically involved and that was not the case. They owned a duplex, and when funds for their business venture became tight they decided to share one half and rent out the other.

After the home foreclosure, Peter has left the office and in fact left the state entirely! It has been about eight months since he made that permanent transition. Their project failed (though Peter is convinced he can revive it, Ned has stepped away 100%). Ned now lives on his own in a quiet apartment that he is very happy to have to himself. We are back to focusing on his business, and the office is a different place. We are both happy and relaxed and have a great working relationship. Ned does not talk about his personal life with me much but I have noticed friends and family rally around him now that Peter is gone and he seems so happy and full of life, including taking some time of work. Prior to this, I could count the days he took off on one hand over five years, but now he is taking some much needed time for himself.

As for me, I am taking on more complex and varied tasks and thriving. Don’t worry, Ned is compensating me fairly for the increased work and responsibilities and has expressed a desire to make sure I have contact with others in our field, as he is getting older and wants to make sure I have adequate contacts and transferable skills for the future.

Peter is still moving files and equipment out of the office and will be here for one week in January, but the limited contact and the fact that he is failing has really cowed him and given me the ability to tolerate him in small doses, knowing he is going to be out of my life permanently very soon.

Thank you and all the commenters for your advice. I know a lot of it was to leave, but I am happy I stuck it out.

The post update: my boss and I share an office with a volatile jerk appeared first on Ask a Manager.

Uh… huh… yeah, I think I would.

Oh, Dr. Forrester…

The Interior Department announced plans to replace a picturesque image of Glacier National Park on the 2026 “America the Beautiful” pass with President Trump’s face, prompting a lawsuit from an environmental group. What do you think?

“At least we know the national parks will be around for one more year.”

Patrick Tirel, Systems Analyst

---

“What’s nature without Donald Trump glaring at you?”

Curtis Hoy, Maritime Reporter

---

“Have you seen his centerfold in the IRS Tax Guide?”

Sue Gettys, Ant Researcher

The post Images Of National Parks Replaced With Trump’s Face On Annual Passes appeared first on The Onion.

WASHINGTON—In response to her husband Vice President JD Vance beaming with excitement as she opened his Christmas gift to her, second lady Usha Vance reportedly forced a smile Thursday after unwrapping another Bible. “Oh, wow, another King James Bible, you shouldn’t have,” said Vance, placing the Christian religious text on a large stack of Old and New Testament translations her significant other had given her over the years. “I have some Vedas I’ve been meaning to read first, but I can’t wait to get to all of these Bibles soon. Oh, and it comes with a rosary. Yay.” At press time, Vance expressed some relief that it was another Bible and not “another fucking copy of Hillbilly Elegy.”

The post Usha Vance Forces Smile After Unwrapping Another Bible For Christmas appeared first on The Onion.

SAN FRANCISCO—Citing a right to keep their torsos sheathed in windproof synthetic fabrics, tech billionaires were reportedly threatening to flee California on Monday over a proposed statewide vest tax. “If the legislature passes this measure, you can bet that countless entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are going to pack their bags and move their gilet collections to Texas,” said tax advisor Aaron Faucher, who confirmed that several of his clients, including Larry Page and Peter Thiel, had already begun transferring garment bags to states more friendly to billionaire wardrobes. “Will they be sweatier wearing their insulated vests down in the Austin heat? Yes. But they earned that $300 Arc’teryx vest, and they’re not going to let some radical socialist take it away from them. The sweat stains will be worth it.” Faucher went on to say that billionaires’ vests had created thousands of dry-cleaning jobs in California.

The post Tech Billionaires Threaten To Flee California Over Proposed Vest Tax  appeared first on The Onion.

WASHINGTON—Amid ongoing concerns over the aging president’s medical status, health speculations reportedly swirled Monday after President Donald Trump was seen with damage numbers above his head. “Recent photos of Trump appear to show him sustaining a series of double- and triple-digit damage values during a press event, fueling rumors that his hit-point pool may be rapidly dwindling,” said medical analyst Rebecca Benson, adding that several smaller numbers in purple, red, and light blue indicated that Trump had taken recurring damage from untreated poison, fire, and frost status effects. “These damage numbers contradict official White House claims that Trump has been running a completely hitless second term, and several larger numbers with exclamation points after them seem to confirm suspicions that Trump is suffering from critical damage multipliers. In a man of his age, even low-grade chip damage can be run ending, let alone the base 9999 damage value if Trump’s hidden ‘stroke’ status bar fills completely. Skilled doctors have struggled to outheal that kind of burst damage even in a tankier president like Gerald Ford.” At press time, Trump had taken to social media to deny that the damage numbers were his and claim that the Last Chance perk seen in one of the photos had actually been activated by an aide standing behind him.

The post Health Speculations Swirl As Trump Seen With Damage Numbers Above Head appeared first on The Onion.