The city of Bellaire announced yesterday that Trader Joe’s has officially decided to come to Bellaire. The store will be located at 5130 Bellaire Blvd, Bellaire, TX 77401. The building began as a Weingarten’s location in 1959 and was sold to Safeway, along with multiple other locations, in 1984. After a few years under AppleTree‘s ownership, the store was acquired by Randalls in 1994. The store operated continuously as a grocery store until Randalls closed ...

I’m on vacation. Here are some past letters that I’m making new again, rather than leaving them to wilt in the archives.

1. My allergic colleague has food demands I can’t meet

One of my job responsibilities is planning and ordering catering for all of my office’s meetings, trainings, gatherings, and the annual regional corporate holiday party. I’ve taken account of everyone’s dietary restrictions, and I make sure that the restaurants or catering companies always adhere to these specifications and restrictions, whether they are ethical, religious, or allergy. I send a menu out to those with restrictions and make sure that they feel they have enough to eat and are taken care of adequately. Most of them respond quickly with any changes they might need and thank me for looking out for them. I feel it’s my job to look out for these things, but always appreciate some appreciation!

One person (Chandler) does the exact opposite. Chandler’s dietary restriction is a severe allergy. Most recently, I asked him to look through the menu for an upcoming event, pick which item he wanted, and I’d ask catering to make it differently to take care of his needs. He refused. Instead, he asked me to just change the menu completely so that he wouldn’t have to eat a separate thing. The change I was asking them to make was as simple as “Please use brown rice instead of white rice,” but the change he was asking me to make was more like serving beef stew instead of salmon.

This has been an ongoing struggle. I order sandwiches for everyone, and have Chandler’s made separately and wrapped separately to avoid cross contamination, and he makes a face and complains that it is separate! I’ve clarified and confirmed exactly the extent of the issue, so I don’t think I am going overboard here. I get that nobody wants to feel separate or left out, but I’m at a loss here of what I could be doing differently to accommodate him. I don’t have any restrictions, personally, so I’m trying to put myself in someone else’e shoes here. I don’t understand what I could be doing differently to better accommodate Chandler without somehow offending him. Do you or the readers have any insight for this?

It sounds like you’re doing everything you should do, and Chandler is being unreasonable. It’s completely appropriate for Chandler to ask you to order him food that he can eat, but it’s not reasonable for him to insist on changing what everyone else is eating too, as long as there aren’t contamination issues. And it sounds like when you take steps to ensure there won’t be contamination issues, he complains about that.

You could certainly try saying something like, “I’m happy to order you what you need. I’m also happy to let you order your meals directly and have it billed to us, if it’s easier for you do that. Of course, I have a lot of different people’s needs to meet, so I can’t change what everyone is eating to what we’re ordering for you, but is there something else you’re hoping I’d be able to do?”

But unless there’s some key detail we’re missing here, it sounds like you’re handling this well, and you shouldn’t take his complaints as a sign that you’re being negligent.

– 2018

Read an update to this letter here.

2. My coworker is a blood drive bully

I’m the newest and youngest employee at a small office that’s the perfect place to start a career in my industry. I love the work, and I like my coworkers. The problem is “Alice.” She’s the long-time office admin, a very sweet and upbeat woman in her mid-50s. She’s involved in all kinds of charities and volunteer work, all for causes I support. She never solicits donations (it’s against company policy); she doesn’t badger people to join her groups though she’s always delighted when someone expresses an interest.

One of her causes is the Red Cross. Last week they launched a blood drive in our neighborhood—actually there’s a “bloodmobile” parked on our block. Alice enthusiastically announced the drive, urging everyone to donate. You get a sticker when you do, and she wears hers prominently every day. She also keeps tabs on who’s gotten a sticker and who hasn’t; over the last few days she has affectionately chided any un-stickered employees, usually in the morning when we’re all getting coffee, and once at a staff meeting. (Also the office has an open floor plan.)

I fully support the Red Cross and their work. But I am a bisexual man, and not exactly celibate, and I don’t meet the Red Cross’s restrictions on recent sexual activity. I’m out to most people in my life, and not keeping it a secret from anyone else. But it hasn’t been an easy process and to be honest I’m still coming to terms with my identity, including how or when to come out (I’m not in a relationship and most people assume I’m straight). The one thing I’m sure of is that I’m done lying.

So whenever I see Alice coming at me with her big smile and her sticker I break into a cold sweat. I’ve dodged the question so far, sort of walking a thin line between the truth and the whole truth. It just feels like if I laid it out for her I might as well be making an announcement to the entire office: “Attention everyone! I have sex with men!” I’m not ready for that.

What’s worse is that our HR department is basically one guy: a gay man who casually strolled in with his “I donated” sticker the second day of the drive. I don’t know if he really did or what, and I’m truly not judging him. But it makes me feel even more self-conscious about coming out in this way, much less talking to him about it.

How should I handle this? The blood drive’s almost over; can I just wait it out? Or am I being a coward and a hypocrite by not explaining my situation to Alice? I feel so embarrassed and awkward about the whole thing, I’ve kind of lost perspective. But I can’t bring myself to wear that damned sticker if I didn’t earn it, and as much as I wish I could, I can’t donate without being dishonest. (I should add that I’m fully confident about my negative HIV status, so this really is just about being bisexual.)

You are 100% entitled not to explain the situation to Alice. You are being neither a coward or a hypocrite. People aren’t entitled to information you didn’t intend to share with them just because they’re pushy.

And Alice is being pushy. Yes, blood donation is a good cause, but people have all kinds of personal reasons for not wanting or being able to donate blood, and she should be more thoughtful about that.

If you just want to wait it out, that is completely fine! There is no shame in taking the path of least resistance here.

But if you wanted to say something to Alice, you could say, “You know, some people have medical or other reasons they can’t donate blood, and might not want to announce those reasons at work.” Ideally you’d add, “This kind of pressure isn’t cool when you consider that,” but you can leave that off if you want. (But do know that’s true, and it’s not just men who’ve had recent sex with men — you can’t donate blood if you’re on certain medications, including antibiotics, or have certain types of cancer, or ever tested positive for Hepatitis C, or a bunch of other reasons.)

And if you want to, you can also point out the same thing to your HR guy — as in, “I’m concerned about how much pressure Alice is generating around the blood drive. I’m all for giving blood, but given the whole range of medical and other reasons some people aren’t allowed to, I worry she’s inadvertently pressuring people to reveal personal medical info to her because she’s not taking no for an answer.” This framing is “I’m concerned for the office as a whole” and “this is a landmine for the company,” not “Alice is making me uncomfortable. (Although the latter would be fine to say too! It just sounds like you’d prefer not to.)

But you don’t have to do any of that if you don’t want to. It is perfectly fine to just wait this out. Hell, it’s fine to lie to/mislead Alice (“yep, I’m good”) if she continues being so pushy. You have zero obligation to share anything you don’t want to share.

– 2019

3. Can I advise my replacement about my difficult boss?

I’m about to leave my current position to attend graduate school, and my boss is interviewing for my replacement. I’m very ready to move on for a variety of reasons, in particular the fact that my boss Fergus has a very strong personality that does not mesh with my own (I’m not alone; others in the office also feel this way). I’d like to give my successor some advice that might help them “manage” Fergus — such as “if you want concrete deadlines, you need to ask for them clearly, vocally, and often” and “as the youngest person in this office, your informal job duties will also include computer support.”

I realize that my perspective is a little biased, and I don’t want to sound like a disgruntled former employee because overall this workplace has given me many opportunities and Fergus is a genuinely good (but, to me, infuriating) person. What kind of advice is appropriate in this situation?

You can absolutely do that and it can be really helpful. You just have to be careful not to sound negative about it — you can’t sound resentful or like you’re complaining or eye-rolling. Even a little eye-rolling is undermining to your boss, and it sets up your replacement to see things through a negative lens from the start. Let her draw her own conclusions; don’t draw them for her, especially since for all we know she may turn out to be someone who can work beautifully with your boss. (That happens!)

So the tone you want when talking about this stuff is just helpful and matter-of-fact — the same tone you’d use when explaining how the office calendar works or where the best places are for lunch.

– 2017

4. My company wants to promote me but not pay me for it

I interviewed about a month ago at my current company for a promotion. The position was open because they are opening a new work site and they moved one of the managers there, leaving his position at my work site vacant. Yesterday my manager called me into his office and told me I’d been selected for the position. He then asked me to start working in the position immediately, without a pay increase or even an offer letter. This position will be a huge increase in responsibility from my current position, so I don’t fancy doing it for no pay.

After discussing it for a while, I found out that the last person who was in that position, as far as HR is concerned, is still in that position, despite his having been working at the new site for weeks already, and they cannot put me into a position that is not vacant. Supposedly this is because the new work site has not yet secured funding for its operations from our customer.

My company has a history of promoting people and not increasing their pay for a long time after they start in the position. Six months to a year until someone sees their salary increase is normal. Since they cannot even have HR change my status to the new position, it will likely be even longer. I offered to do the new position for 30 days, and if I haven’t received a formal offer at the end of 30 days I will return to my current job. My manager’s counter offer was that I will just work in the new position and whenever they can officially promote me they will.

I would like to take this promotion but will only take it for a significant salary increase because it is a much more stressful job than my current one. I find this whole situation very strange because I am working for a well-established company with thousands of employees. What is the best course of action?

If you’ll only accept the position for a significant salary increase, you don’t have a lot to lose by holding firm on that. You can try saying something like, “I’d love to accept the position and I’m excited about doing the work. But it’s a significant increase in responsibility, and I want to ensure that my compensation reflects that. I understand that the position isn’t officially vacant yet. But surely if we were hiring someone from the outside to do this job, we’d give them a salary that reflects market rate for this work. I’m asking that we do that now, before I accept the role. I can’t commit to it without first knowing what the salary will be.” (Or you could change that last sentence to, “Once I start doing this higher level work, I think it’s fair that my salary reflect that. Alternately, I’d be willing to wait up to two months as long as we can put in writing that I’ll receive that increased pay retroactively. Otherwise I’d be doing higher level work at a lower level salary, which of course wouldn’t be reasonable.”)

But it sounds like they’re counting on you to want the promotion enough that you’ll just do the work for a year or more at your old salary. And if you hold firm, you do risk losing the promotion, so you should just be sure that you’re willing to take that risk before drawing a line in the sand about it.

– 2018

The post allergic colleague has food demands I can’t meet, coworker is a blood drive bully, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

Hawkins, Indiana – Netflix has announced that they plan to release the highly anticipated potential conclusion to Stranger Things, eventually. “We know fans got a real kick out of Season 5, Volume 1: Chapter One – Act One,” said Bela Bajaria, Netflix’s chief content officer. “We also know that viewers crave quantity over quality, and […]

The post Stranger Things to eventually release Season 5, Volume 4: Chapters 9-17 – Acts One and Two appeared first on The Beaverton.

self-report

editor in flames

fish: "so this is everyone who thinks you're cool for using vi over vim."

girl: "but nobody is here - oh."

fish smiles

https://analognowhere.com/_/ratmrg

• archive
• support/store

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 three updates from past letter-writers.

1. Can I report my coworker’s drunken, racist aggression outside of work?

My two coworkers and I discussed the weekend’s events and ended up reporting the incident with Fergus the very next day. My boss was horrified and immediately had him sent on a flight back to his home country that evening, and told Fergus’s manager that regardless of the outcome, he was not welcome in our country program again and he wanted another teammate assigned to our program. It turns out, Fergus had visited my boss’s office the day before to tell him that over the weekend, he “maybe had too much to drink” and may have “offended” me and my coworkers. He had also visited my coworker’s office to try to apologize to her, but she sent him away. The commenters were right — he was already trying to cover for himself.

My coworkers and I were asked to write statements, and HR began a process for a disciplinary hearing. However, very soon after, Fergus resigned with immediate effect, so we never had the hearing. I received a personal phone call apology from the C-suite member in charge of Fergus’ department, and Fergus’ team now has a policy where teammates are not allowed to consume any alcohol while on business trips out of their duty station.

For those wondering about my coworker who took care of Fergus while she attempted to sober him up, she was okay and he was not abusive towards her. She did have to endure his self-loathing rants as well as prevent him from escalating his poor choices further as he attempted to find other, harder substances later that evening. Eventually he calmed enough that she called a taxi to take him to his hotel. Looking back, I wish we hadn’t left him alone with her.

Thank you to your advice and all of the commenters for reassuring me that I had every right to report the incident. I’m thankful to work for a supportive manager who took the matter seriously and acted immediately and decisively!

2. I get possessive over my work (#2 at the link)

About possessiveness in general, I did a deal of self-reflection. Part of it was about my perceived worth at work — I really struggle with self-assessment and imposter syndrome, so to a great deal my possessiveness over my work was tied to my self-perception. This came to a crisis point this year when, for reasons far outside my control, my role was split in half to cope with the expanding scope of the workplace. The planned goal is to have us both working in far more depth with smaller groups rather than one person working with a shallow group. Despite my knowing that, my lizard brain decided that I was obviously about to be fired (thanks, lizard brain) and it was a very stressful time.

I decided that the most helpful thing I could do was work with my new coworker to make sure the transition was as smooth as possible, so that it felt less like something was being stolen from me and more like I was helping someone grow. Also, it keeps me from *sounding* possessive even if my emotions are haywire. So far she seems great and my role is not in danger. I definitely feel under-utilized right now and am hoping to reach out to my boss for more projects, but I’m still being trusted with the management of major clients and working on improving things there.

As far as measuring my work worth, I’ve picked a couple of specific metrics I know we’re working on improving and focusing on those. I’d love more day-to-day affirmations that all is good, but my former manager got promoted, I now have a new manager, and I do not yet have a regular one on one meeting set up with her. We do have a workplace culture of calling out specific people who’ve done good work, but that’s more for the operations crews than our finance department. I spend a fair amount of time telling my nerves to quit it, because I don’t intend to make my manager the keeper of my mental health. However my workplace is one where you’re encouraged to close the laptop and go home at 5, emergencies are rare, and I trust these people to have my personal cell number because they’ve proved they don’t abuse it (the only work text I’ve ever gotten was to tell everyone the power was out, don’t come in to the office). On the whole, I’m happy here and it’s a good environment for me to heal from some damaging patterns.

As to the specific project that prompted my email, I realized that my specific frustrations were that a) my prior work on the project would end up automating me out of it and b) that I wouldn’t have a chance to clean up my terrible spreadsheet from last year. I’m happy to report that I did get the project again and I did have a chance to improve on my prior year design. I’m still hesitant to hand it over to someone without giving them a walkthrough, since it’s still a complicated and unintuitive sheet, but I feel like I had the chance to actually finish the project. I’m still working on getting actual layers of review in place (small business finance, y’all) but I feel a lot better about it.

3. My spouse’s company is suddenly competing with mine (#3 at the link)

A bit of a boring update here. We both got reassigned to different accounts, completely independent of the fact that we were married and competing for the same work. Just routine agency shuffle. Also, we had a baby and I’ve been on maternity leave for a good portion of the year, so even more unplugged from reality! More than anything else, that has shifted my perspective on the issue. I couldn’t care less anymore because I have bigger priorities now!

The post updates: reporting a coworker, I get possessive over my work, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

Boy, he must need a hand with that luggage or something.

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.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

1. I think my disastrous ex-employee is co-opting queer identity

Where do I begin.

I followed the advice and said nothing, generally kept my distance.

Pam sowed chaos “leading” the LBGTQ+ group. She created what an ex-member described as a sexualized atmosphere, including a pinup photo of her in an event announcement. A lot of members left. A young employee, Mary, very publicly accused Pam of blowing up her life. Pam promised to leave her husband and move in with Mary, but turned on Mary once Mary had done all Pam asked, including taking on debt to rent a home for them. Mary lost her job for this because Pam complained about being outed. Pam seemed to enjoy the painful drama. (And yes, people at the company helped Mary. But there was a lot of damage.)

What else.

Pam is on a PIP now and practices malicious compliance when she is at work. That doesn’t happen much because she is often just AWOL. Junie (unlucky new manager) has visibly aged. We had drinks and she asked, “Did Pam do X and Y when you were managing her” and it’s the same batshit things, including the spooky rage. Our labor laws and risk-averse HR mean it will be a year or more until Pam can be fired.

Also, Pam decided she wasn’t queer after the head office pulled support from DEI programs, following the Trump executive orders. She has turned on the ERG members. She doesn’t seem to care when people are angry at her. It’s unsettling. She just smiles and looks kind of happy whether she’s getting cheers or curses (not literally).

I don’t know what we’ve learned from this. How do you not hire a sociopath?

2. My boss wants my employee to report to him (#2 at the link)

My post was about how my supervisor wanted to file himself as supervisor of record for my long-time supervisee, while I continued to handle the “day to day” of supervising her. I reacted to this proposal out of anger because this sounded like I would be covering for him, and, as a woman in this organization, I have previously had to cover work for a male supervisor, with no credit given.

After reading the comments, it occurred to me that if we could mitigate any functional issues with this change (such as confusion or crossed wires), it could be a net neutral for me and a net positive for Sarah. Over the years, Sarah has had many growth opportunities through new projects and responsibilities, but we’re a small and immobile organization (eight employees), and it’s hard as a supervisor to provide a continual cadence of growth. And so I had the realization that it made no sense that I stand in the way of this change for Sara. To mitigate potential problems, I asked my supervisor to meet to chart out Sarah’s reporting line for each of her projects. I also asked him to identify at least one or two projects to work on with her, so that he had some substantive role as a supervisor.

It’s been about two months since the change. It has really been nominal. Sarah reports to me on all of her projects but one. We connect for 3+ hours a week, and my supervisor has met with her once so far. But we haven’t had any communication problems, or confusion about my role. I think the big positive is that the change has elevated Sarah’s sense of her own importance in the organization — which is great, because she is important. Even if it was not the reason my supervisor proposed it, this boost has been a big positive.

On my end, I am looking for a new job, not due to this situation but due to the general lack of accountability of management in this organization. Altogether, going forward with this change with negotiated conditions was by far the most frictionless solution, and I am happy we could make this a win for Sarah. Thank you to the commenters for helping me to see the opportunity for Sarah.

3. What’s up with unannounced video calls?

I wrote way back in 2022, what feels like a lifetime ago, about joining a new team in my same company with a culture of unannounced, unexpected video calls. We were all remote at the time and video calls weren’t a part of the routine with my old team (and it was a very small company) so the hard shift was jarring. It was, as some folks might have picked up on, an extremely stressful time (lots of extraneous context involved that made the move itself unannounced, unexpected, and involuntary) and the perceived rudeness of the passively demanding video calls were just the crap cherry atop the stress sundae. And yes, they were always video calls with an expectation for video-on.

I can only chart correlation, not causation, but the worst offenders were also the leaders with the most boundary issues — they had the hierarchical power and authority and they used it to demand their direct reports be “besties” with them (actual quote) even after being rebuffed (!!), use their employees for emotional support and venting, caring more about being liked than being a leader, and a whole host of other issues. I didn’t end up addressing the video calls thing because there were much bigger fish to fry — including a neurodivergence diagnosis that helped explain why being wrenched from my task to answer an unannounced call made me feel bitey!

I do not miss that job.

4. My coworker got angry that I gave her time-sensitive info at the start of her shift (#3 at the link)

Management moved my coworker away from that position where she was having issues, and at the end of the day I think she had some things going on in her personal life that caused some challenges at work.

A few months later, she was fired because she got caught clocking into work and then going home for hours at a time.

If any lesson is to be learned, I imagine seeing small conflicts like what occurred in the past is a good sign a manager/supervisor should be checking in to support someone as things aren’t likely going so well! I’ve also been moved into other positions with more responsibility away from the role where I would attempt to help that previous coworker.

Now when I present “too much” information, my peers are very grateful and I’ve helped catch a lot of mistakes and helped solve some problems before they even occur! (Heard about this in my most recent performance review.)

I’m happy I didn’t take it to heart and I kept being who I was and just communicated that my previous angry coworker was having personal issues.

The post updates: disastrous ex-employee is co-opting queer identity, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

IT's coPtok, and you'll only find it right here on Cowboy Who? #CowboyWho

Fundraising website GoFundMe reported a sharp uptick in the number of people using the platform to help cover the cost of basic necessities, including housing, food, and other day-to-day expenses. What do you think?

The post Report Finds More Americans Using GoFundMe For Basic Necessities appeared first on The Onion.

In brief: Today we have some commentary on a developing story, where the Trump Administration is planning to dismantle one of the premiere atmospheric research centers in the world. Also, we focus back in the West, where more atmospheric river problems lie ahead.

National Center for Atmospheric Research

I want to start today’s post with a quick note on a story that broke yesterday evening. USA Today reported (and OMB head Russ Vought confirmed) that the Trump Administration would direct the National Science Foundation to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research, or NCAR. The plan is to fully close the historic Mesa Lab in Boulder, CO.

I cannot begin to tell you what a bad, bad, bad decision this is. Objectively so. This will absolutely cripple and devastate weather research in the U.S. While the administration claims that NCAR is “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country,” (it isn’t) almost any climate and weather research done in this country is underpinned in some way, shape or form by NCAR. The administration also claims that vital weather research activities will be “moved to another entity or location,” which seems a bit sus to me given many examples of them causing chaos by dismantling things without adequate replacements or contingency plans. But it also completely misses the forest for the trees. The reason the work done by NCAR has been so critical and important to the science and to industry (and thus the American people) is because of NCAR acting as a (very effective) cog in the weather enterprise wheel. This needlessly breaks up an organization at taxpayer expense for no other reason than they don’t like it. NCAR is not an inefficient organization, nor do they do anything but advance atmospheric science research. In other words, there’s no real value derived by anyone in dismantling the organization.

Just as a slight relevant example from my recent past, and this is something that happens a lot all around the country. At a previous job, we sent another meteorologist to NCAR to take part in a discussion forum with leaders from both there and in the field at large to learn and discuss ways we could incorporate machine learning techniques to potentially improve seasonal or sub-seasonal forecasting (S2S). It would be important to note here that both seasonal and sub-seasonal forecasting is very much a climate-related research topic. Grant proposals, 16-to-45-day models, etc. will use the word “climate” to describe the research here. Nothing about that work is involved in climate change. Since the Trump administration gets uncomfortable about particular words and phrases, they probably see “climate” and assume the worst, when in reality a lot of the “climate research” is actually working to help improve forecasts for the economic and societal benefit of the country — not for pedaling alarmism. Go figure. Meetings like these happen a lot, and it ultimately leads to economic and human benefit, as well as uncovers new avenues of research to travel down.

Anyway, suffice to say, this is a terrible decision that will have significant negative consequences for the country and the economy over the long-term, long after these people leave office. That’s why I am writing about it here. Two organizations within government atmospheric research would be devastating to lose, not that others would not but these two are particularly critical: NOAA’s OAR (Office of Atmospheric Research) and NCAR. The Administration has now tried to gut or is in the process of gutting both of them at zero meaningful taxpayer savings and plenty of meaningful negative consequences for the American public and economy. I must question how that fits a so-called America first agenda.

On to the weather

The big story over the next several days into next week will be another atmospheric river event on the West Coast. Note that NCAR does work to support atmospheric river reconnaissance research that helps improve forecasts of these events. This event is taking aim at the Pacific Northwest right now, where we have numerous watches and warnings posted for flooding (thankfully not as bad as last week), heavy snow, blizzard conditions, and strong winds. In fact, the footprint of wind advisories and high wind warnings is tremendous, extending from the Northwest into the Northern Rockies and Northern Plains.

One specific area to watch closely today will be the Front Range in Colorado where gusts of 70 to 90 mph will be possible in the higher terrain and wind-prone bases of the foothills. Winds could gust as high as 50 to 60 mph in the Denver area as well later today.

Wind gusts on the Plains will be nothing to sneeze at either, with widespread 50 to 70 mph gusts in the Dakotas, Montana, and Wyoming, along with stronger winds at higher elevations.

Meanwhile, back on the West Coast, thankfully snow levels are lower with this event than we saw last week. So for Washington that means less rain running off into the swollen river basins. Currently, no rivers in Washington are forecast to hit major flooding levels over the next few days, with several back into moderate flooding. Better news for sure.

In case you missed it, there was a story that dropped about the Skagit River, and this is a great example of the economic and societal value of weather forecasts. The Army Corps took over dam operations from area utilities that use dams for hydropower. By taking over operations and impounding the water rather than releasing it, about 4 to 5 feet (!) of water was kept out of the river, which prevented an already bad situation from turning into an absolute catastrophe. None of this would have been possible without good coordination, good forecasts, and quick action. This is an example of the value and benefit of weather forecasts and when government agencies and partners perform at their best.

Moving southward, the next target of the atmospheric river will be Oregon. Heavy rain and mountain snows will move in tomorrow through Saturday.

Snow levels will be low today, rise tomorrow, and lower again on Friday. While there may be snow down to pass levels, a lot of water is going to be pushed through the river systems here that are already fairly elevated. So there is some legitimately localized serious flooding risk in these areas.

For California, the next few days will see varying levels of moisture move in, heaviest in far northern California on Friday and for parts of northern and central California on Sunday. The bigger story may be what’s coming next week, where a major storm could overtake all of California, including SoCal. This is highlighted on the 8-to-14-day hazards outlook from Tuesday, showing Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Friday in play for a potentially significant rainstorm and Sierra snowstorm.

So, things are busy! Folks in Cali will want to pay attention to next week’s storm, as it does have the potential to be a serious one.

Elsewhere, record warmth is a story. We’re expecting multiple days of records threatened here in Houston, with highs in the 80s next week. The interior West and even parts of the Northeast (Friday) will see record warmth tomorrow into next week. More to come.

In brief: In today’s post we discuss the scattered showers moving through parts of Houston today, and a warm-up in temperatures before a short-lived front on Thursday night. Beginning Saturday we will see a period of much warmer-than-usual temperatures that will persist through the Christmas holiday.

Christmas Day, about a week away

We are now eight days away from the Christmas holiday, and although that lies at the edge of what we would normally consider forecastable, we are pretty confident about the outlook for Christmas Day this year in Houston. Beginning this weekend a rather warm pattern is going to settle over Texas (and much of the southern United States) and this will persist through much of next week.

Therefore the most likely outcome for Christmas in Houston is a partly to mostly sunny day, with high temperatures in the upper 70s. We cannot entirely rule out rain chances at this point, but they look to be low. The air will feel fairly humid. Bottom line: Christmas this year is going to be much warmer than normal, although at this point I think we’ll fall just below record high temperatures for late December.

Wednesday

A fairly weak storm system has traversing the region this morning. It will bring scattered showers today, mostly but not exclusively to coastal areas. Overall accumulations don’t look to impressive, but we might see a few brief bursts of moderately strong showers. I expect the rains to clear out this afternoon, or the evening by the latest. Otherwise we should have a mostly cloudy day with highs in the upper 60s. Winds will be light, generally from the east. Lows tonight will only fall into the low 60s, and given the fairly high dewpoints we probably can expect to see some patchy fog develop.

Thursday

Skies should become sunny as the day progresses, and this will allow high temperatures to push into the mid- to upper-70s. A cold front will approach from the northwest by Thursday evening, but I don’t think there will be much in the way of showers, if any, with its passage. Winds will shift to come from the north, and be a bit gusty overnight as drier air moves in. Lows on Friday morning will likely drop into the upper 40s.

Friday

This will be our last “chilly” day for awhile. Expect highs in the low- to mid-60s with sunny skies and northerly winds. This brief incursion of winter-like weather won’t last long, however, as winds will already turn southeasterly by Friday afternoon or evening. Lows on Friday night should drop into the 50s.

Saturday and Sunday

The weekend should see partly to mostly sunny weather, with highs ranging from the mid-70s to about 80 degrees (Sunday looks especially warm). Overnight lows will be warm for December, in the mid-60s. The air will feel fairly humid, overall. On Saturday, as the southerly flow really gets going we could see some winds gusts up to 25 mph.

Next week

As noted above, there won’t be much variance in our weather next week, with highs generally in the range of the upper 70s to 80 degrees, partly sunny skies, and warm nights. Rain chances, overall, appear to be fairly low. Will this pattern break? Yes it will, eventually. Right now our best models are indicating that our conditions could turn cooler some time around 10 days from now, in the period of December 27 or December 28. That really is at the edge of predictability, so it is not a forecast I would feel highly confident in at this time. But hopeful? Certainly.

Yes, there is such a thing as good-natured brawling. We’ll be right back.

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.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

Remember the letter-writer who was asked out on LinkedIn (#2 at the link)? Here’s the update.

It was really interesting seeing the commentariat split. I come from a family with a lot of public and semi-public figures (think your local news station’s traffic guy rather than, like, celebrity nepo baby) and unfortunately, we’ve dealt with actual stalkers that required police involvement before, so I’ll admit to being on higher alert to being tracked down on LinkedIn than your average bear. As people said, it wasn’t being asked out that gave me pause but being tracked down in such a manner. This situation ended fine — I took what one might call the coward’s way out and didn’t respond via LinkedIn but saw him at the same cafe a month or two later and waved, but didn’t engage. He didn’t engage either.

There were some responses that were mildly condescending about how “freaked out” I got by one message, so I hope this clarifies a bit. I work as a librarian, which means my job is public-facing day in and day out. To have someone suddenly know where I worked, at a job that had a set schedule, and therefore how and when to find me had me thinking a lot more about the optics of wearing a branded jacket out and about. It’s gathering dust in the closet at the moment, unfortunately not primarily because of this — because a colleague got harassed in a public park by someone upset by our policies about a month after this happened. (To anyone considering libraries as a career, they will not cover this in graduate school).

For the record, the initial interaction was sparked because we have the same gender-neutral name. The cafe employee called out “order for Taylor” and we both jumped at it, so there was kind of no way to avoid giving my name I realized after sending in the letter that yes, it would be a little ridiculous for the cafe staff to give out my relationship status, but that’s hindsight for you!

Update that is very little related to the initial post: my long-term partner is now my fiancé, and I was just(!) promoted out of my branch and therefore away from the coffee shop where this all went down. Sometimes you win a salary increase and the respect of your colleagues, but you lose the really good cappuccino.

The post update: I was asked out on LinkedIn 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 three updates from past letter-writers.

1. My boss sent me a bereavement gift, then demanded to know how I felt when I received it

Your advice and everyone’s comments really helped me get some perspective on the issue.

I took your advice and sent a brief thank-you to the boss for the bereavement gift, saying I hoped my colleagues had passed on my appreciation at the time. I decided to treat the weird tone of the boss’s initial email as likely ChatGPT / Autocomplete / Inbox-wrangling-fatigue strangeness and definitely not take it personally.

I haven’t heard back from the boss — not that I’d expect to — but now that some time has passed and the bereavement fog has lifted and I’m seeing straight again, I’ve been hoping to run into them to say hi and thanks again in person. But I haven’t seen them in the office at all, since — now I come to think of it — February.

I have since learnt that they’ve taken a year’s sabbatical. We have a new interim CEO now, who I haven’t met.

Remember how I said that my colleagues are a bit prone to gossip? It turns out that the boss is in a long-running and acrimonious dispute with another senior employee, with accusations going both ways about each other’s conduct, and mediation has been unsuccessful. About the time the boss sent me that odd email about the bereavement gift, they’d also contacted a few others, including people from client organizations who’d had contact with them, asking for comments about their working relationship, as evidence in support of their case in the dispute.

I’m “officially” not supposed to know this. A colleague sort of blurted it out one break time, when — despite my “oh dear, so sorry, but let’s not” responses — once they started, couldn’t stop. I’m staying very, very neutral and professional when I’m in the office and avoiding the kitchen and informal spaces where most of the gossip happens. But the atmosphere is kind of sad and strained.

Thanks again for responding to my letter, Alison, and to everyone who commented, and for all the good advice.

2. How to ask people who want free advice to pay me for it (#4 at the link)

I received an email from a former manager after they had received a major violation because they missed a massive piece of work from my former position. I actually don’t know how it was missed. In that email, two other managers were copied — my former boss and a person who was covering some of my former work, but who I had screened out for an opportunity due to lack of experience. They sent this email to my new work email, and I had to notify my manager because it was now public record. I used some of your wording to tell them I could request permission to do a short-term contract and could send them my anticipated rates, or they would need to handle this without me. There was some legal liability involved, and I no longer had authority to advise them; I would have wanted to protect myself from any legal implications under a contract as well. I never performed my job for free before, so continuing to answer questions and navigate them through enforcement wasn’t something I was going to do.

When I brought up a contract and payment, I never heard from them after that. Although I am glad I don’t have to untangle the mess, I was disappointed that I didn’t even hear anything over a year, given that we had a positive work relationship. No keeping in touch even just to be pleasant, it was crickets.

Overall I am glad I am off the hook and I have a way to respond to other requests in the future. My “new” job has been going well, and I am glad to have a large team instead of drowning in work and managing chaos. I also replaced a toxic manager who was terrorizing my team, and overall everyone seems happy with my more laid-back style.

3. How to interpret new daily meetings with my boss (#3 at the link)

My daily 1-on-1s with my boss continued for about a month, and then priorities in our company shifted and my boss couldn’t sustain the time and they just kind of petered out. While we were still meeting daily, I did try to take the advice of using the time to my advantage. I tried to step things up myself — not just projecting confidence but showing more evidence of my work and strategic thinking — and I do think that helped reassure him and make things feel less tense, and make me feel like I was getting something out of the meetings as well.

I never asked point-blank about why the meetings were happening, but looking back, it does seem like there was more going on affecting my boss than I was aware of. I was so focused on the why me of it that I didn’t recognize about how much had been changing for him as well, and how he probably felt under additional pressure and scrutiny at that time and was probably using these meetings to pass on some of that to me (not maliciously but probably just to, in a roundabout way, get some support himself).

After a few months, I had an opportunity to switch divisions and step into a role starting to manage some junior folks, which I’m really enjoying! I’m trying to be really clear in my communication with them so I don’t pass on anxiety and ambiguity myself going forward, but I also have a little more appreciation now for the stresses of being responsible for other people’s successes.

The post updates: the bereavement gift, the free advice, 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.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

Remember the letter-writer wondering whether to write a list of rules so a colleague, Paul, would treat them decently? Here’s the update.

I’ve recently taken a step that commenters had advised — leaving the group.

Getting Paul to leave (your excellent advice) wasn’t an option, though perhaps me leaving will push things in that direction. I alerted five people to why I was leaving, and a number of them seem to be realizing that the group has to address the “missing stair” of Paul. So we’ll see what happens! But for now, my stress level is definitely lower, and I can focus on other organizing work that is also meaningful to me. It was the right decision for me at this time to just leave the org. That’s the tl;dr. For the full story…

After I wrote to you (and you and the commenters affirmed for me that I was not going to be able to write a list of rules that would solve my Paul problem), I decided to step away from my leadership role in the org and also change other commitments I had made so that Paul had as little reason as possible for interacting with me within that org. Magically, Paul somehow still managed to get involved with the things I was doing, even though they were part of different committees. They also kept trying to contact me through third parties.

A long-distance partner of mine came along to one of the org’s activities and Paul was pretty weird about it. That reminded me about one of our early interactions where Paul ignored my boundaries: when they kept asking me to see a movie (over and over and over) despite me repeatedly declining. Perhaps obviously, I came to believe that despite what Paul had claimed about this being about “our friendship” … it really wasn’t about friendship for them.

In theory, if the group eventually was able to create a code of conduct then Paul’s behavior could be addressed, so I hoped all summer that would move forward; however, Paul has long resisted a code of conduct, and they remain in leadership (and have been in that role longer than anyone else by a wide margin).

Meanwhile, Paul and I also have another community in common, and Paul hung around me there a lot, especially standing behind me and watching me – so much so that a friend who knew nothing about the situation started asking me why that guy was staring at me so intently. All this escalated when Paul emailed me asking for mediation again. They also sat right behind my family at two different events, continuing this pattern of being really close (and specifically *behind* me). I told Paul I wasn’t interested in mediation and that I was leaving the org to hold the boundaries I needed. I also outlined those boundaries: don’t contact me, on any platform, including through third parties, don’t hover behind me, and don’t sit behind/near me and my family. Paul said they had never wanted me to leave the group but would honor these requests. My spirits started to lift, perhaps they were finally hearing me – and then at another event Paul sat about ten feet behind my family. They met my eyes when I walked into the room to join my family, and it was clear they knew what they were doing. So I told people within our other shared community as well.

It’s been interesting to see how the two communities have responded, and some of that is because the one is “non-hierarchical” (in theory — but Paul has a lot of power!) and the other has clear leadership. It’s definitely proving you and the commenters right that the problem with the one org is that someone like Paul is allowed to stay and there’s no mechanism to get them out. In the non-hierarchical org, people are interested in addressing the Paul situation, but there’s no clear path to do so. I’ve left the org, so don’t really know what’s going on. I’m not guessing anything will happen quickly though. The other org immediately set up a meeting with me and someone else Paul had harassed, took our statements seriously, started crafting a harassment policy (since it didn’t exist), and gave Paul a warning. I’m still part of that org and feeling very supported there.

Thanks again for the opportunity to think through these boundary issues with you and the great commenter community! It really helped me to feel clear about my decisions as I’ve navigated this situation (so far). Hopefully Paul loses interest in me and the org that I left is able to find a way toward dealing more effectively with this kind of behavior. At least I’ve brought it more to the surface as a problem by finally naming the missing stair.

The post update: should I write a list of rules so a colleague treats me decently? appeared first on Ask a Manager.

#Kento #RoninWarriors

[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.]

Concrete is the second-most-consumed substance on our planet. Only water beats it, and actually water is a major ingredient of concrete anyway. Every year, humanity mines, mixes, and places roughly three metric tons for every person on Earth. It’s ubiquitous. Most of us hardly even think about all the concrete around us. We’ve all seen the grey lumpy mixture flowing down chutes into formwork to become a road, sidewalk, footing, pile, patio, or foundation. It’s easy to think of concrete as a single, uniform substance used around the world. But it’s not.

The only reason we are able to use so much concrete in construction is that it’s cheap. Of the four main ingredients - sand, gravel, cement, and water - two of them come directly from the ground with little need for processing or refinement. One is water. Cement is the only ingredient that requires a significant manufacturing process, but the raw materials for it are fairly widespread across the globe. Many building materials are constrained by geography. They only grow, occur mineralologically, or are manufactured in specific locations. Then they have to be transported, often at great cost, to where they’re needed. It’s not true for concrete. No matter where you are on earth, there’s a pretty decent chance that somewhere nearby exists a ready source for at least most of the raw ingredients you need to make it. That simple fact has significantly contributed to its widespread use, but it’s done something else too.

Take a look at any geologic map. If you’re like me, you do this in your spare time anyway. You realize pretty quickly that there is tremendous variability in the different kinds of materials that make up the surface of Earth’s crust. And the practical result of that, at least for the purposes of this discussion, is that every batch of concrete is just a little bit different depending on where you go. In a way, that’s kind of special, right? In most cases, the concrete you see around you represents a particular place on Earth. Its strength, durability, appearance, and essence are highly local characteristics. It’s literally made from materials that were sourced not too far away. But, in some cases, we’ve learned too late that local materials had some hidden problems when used in concrete, and the ways we’ve worked to fix those problems have created some of the most interesting stories. I’m Grady, and this is Practical Engineering.

This is Fontana Dam on the Little Tennessee River in North Carolina. At 150 meters (or nearly 500 feet) in height, it’s the tallest dam east of the Mississippi River. The north shore of Fontana Reservoir forms the border of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. And if you’re through-hiking the Appalachian Trail, the famed 2200-mile path through the wildest parts of the eastern United States, you have to walk right over the top of it. Built by the Tennessee Valley Authority (or TVA), Fontana was completed in 1944, just in time to provide hydropower to the Alcoa aluminum smelting plant at the end of World War II. It’s a concrete gravity dam, meaning that it derives its stability to hold back Fontana Reservoir entirely from its own weight. And boy does it have a lot of weight. More than 2.1 million cubic meters of concrete went into the structure before it was finished. That’s well over half the volume of Hoover Dam, and if you watch the same kinds of videos I do, you know that putting all that concrete in Hoover Dam was a major challenge.

Concrete heats up as it hardens, which can negatively affect the curing process, but more importantly, it causes the concrete to expand. For a structure like a dam sandwiched between two rocky abutments, that expansion can lead compressive stress to build up in the concrete. Then, after curing, when the concrete starts to cool back down, it shrinks. That shrinking can lead to cracks, especially in mass concrete structures that heat up and cool down unevenly. And cracks are not ideal for dams. To mitigate this issue, pipes were installed within the concrete at Hoover Dam, and chilled water was continuously circulated during construction to pull heat out of the concrete. The same thing was done when they were building Fontana Dam. In fact, in addition to the cooling lines, the dam was built with deliberate expansion joints that would allow each separate concrete block to cool off and shrink. Once the concrete cured, those joints were grouted to add strength and make the dam watertight. It was a pretty robust and thoughtful plan to avoid the buildup of stress in the structure, or so they thought.

In 1972, engineers inspecting the drainage gallery, a tunnel through the concrete dam used to collect and redirect drainage, noticed unexpected cracks right where the dam curves. Later investigation revealed that the cracks extended through a large part of the structure. At this point, the dam was still less than 30 years old. It shouldn’t be deteriorating this quickly. But the cracks were serious enough that something needed to be done.

Engineers initially blamed the Tennessee sun. Fontana Dam runs almost perfectly east to west, with its broad downstream facing directly south. That means a huge area of concrete is exposed to sunlight for most of the day. The sun heats the concrete, causing it to expand, and over thousands of cycles, cracks are inevitable. The curved section of the dam was most vulnerable. Reaction forces from the abutments align with the axes of the dam. Instead of pure compressive stress, the expansion of the concrete created bending stress (a combination of expansion and contraction) at the corner. In addition to the cracks, the movement was also causing the spillway gates to bind up.

After instruments were installed on the dam, the scope of the problem became clear. Thermal movement is cyclical with the seasons. Concrete may expand in the summer, but it returns to its original size in the winter as temperatures cool. Fontana had some of that, but underneath the cyclical changes was a continuous one. The concrete was permanently growing.

TVA took some cores of the concrete to start planning a repair, and sent them out for testing. When the results came back, the reason for the unexpected growth was discovered. The laboratory that examined the concrete under the microscope noticed that some of the aggregates inside had dark rims around them. That is a classic sign of alkali-silica reaction, or ASR, sometimes known as concrete cancer.

The fundamental components of concrete are aggregates, large and small, bound together by a paste of cement and water. As the cement paste hydrates, potassium and sodium hydroxides dissolve into the water within the tiny pore spaces of the concrete, creating an alkaline solution. In some cases, this is a good thing. The alkaline environment is great for steel reinforcement, helping to prevent rust. But for some types of aggregates, it causes a serious problem. Specifically, if reactive forms of silica are present, they can more readily dissolve in the high-pH water, combining with the alkalis to form a kind of gel. As that gel absorbs moisture, it swells and expands, causing internal stress and cracking.

This is an extremely widespread problem that has caused structural damage in every state in the US and many countries around the world. You usually don’t have to search far for an example of a cracked up bridge, broken sidewalk, or ruined building foundation that resulted from an alkali-silica reaction in the concrete. Fortunately, the reaction requires three conditions, so there are quite a few ways to deal with it.

For one, an alkali-silica reaction requires the aggregates to actually contain silica, also known as silicon dioxide. Well, 90 percent of the Earth’s crust is made up of silicate minerals, so this might not seem possible to avoid. Luckily, only certain forms of silica are significantly reactive in concrete. We have tests we can perform ahead of time to identify quarries or sources of rock that react with cement, allowing us to just avoid the issue altogether. But like I mentioned before, the cost of concrete is really sensitive to transportation costs. The farther you have to go to get suitable aggregates, the higher the project’s costs rise, so avoiding local materials is not always ideal.

The second condition required for an alkali-silica reaction is highly alkaline cement. So, we have ways to control for that too. Cement can be manufactured to have lower alkali content, and we can use what are called “Supplementary Cementitious Materials,” like fly ash, to replace some of the cement in concrete. Those solutions only work if the concrete isn’t already in place, though.

The third factor of an alkali-silica reaction is excess moisture. You can just keep the concrete dry with waterproof coatings or membranes. Without moisture, the gel can’t expand, so the problem is solved. But there are some structures where waterproofing is a pretty big challenge. So TVA was in a bind, literally. They were facing the possibility of just having to perpetually repair cracks and equipment as Fontana continued to expand. Then they decided to get creative. Kristen Smith is the Senior Program Manager for Dam Safety at TVA, and she explained the thought process:

Kristen: “You know, the impacts on the spillway and powerhouse equipment. That led to major maintenance and repairs [...] Need to move from the reactive approach - that's not a long-term solution - to a more proactive approach.”

The proactive approach they landed on was a fourth option for dealing with ASR: Rather than trying to stop the reaction, TVA decided to just give the concrete more room to grow. The solid rock abutments at each end of the dam had no room to give, so that space would have to be found in the dam itself.

In 1976, they embarked on a fairly novel operation to cut a relief slot all the way through Fontana Dam and do it without draining the reservoir or causing any disruptions to the hydropower plant. The idea was pretty simple: instead of building up axial stress as the concrete expands, the dam can expand into the newly cut slots. Simple in theory; pretty challenging in practice. How do you saw a dam in half? Luckily, TVA has done this at two of its other dams in addition to Fontana, and shared some footage of that so you could see it happen.

These are big dams, so this isn’t sawing with blades you find at ahardware store. The tool used for cutting through the concrete looks more like a rope than a saw blade.

Kristen: “It is diamond wire, and it's really neat. It's, if you touch it, you know, it's 15 millimeters, which is a little over half an inch. It's abrasive. I mean, you know, it would rub your skin if you drug it across your skin, but you can touch it. You can run your hand along it and it's not going to cut you. It can cut through concrete. It can cut through steel. [...] It looks like a big necklace.”

That big diamond necklace runs along pulleys strategically installed on the dam to advance the slot downward. The saw pulls the wire in a loop, managing the slack and keeping constant tension against the bottom of the slot. There are a lot of advantages to this, in addition to the practically unlimited depth. It causes very little vibration or dust, and provides a clean cut without breaking the edges. But, there’s a pretty obvious challenge of cutting a slot in a dam: how do you deal with the water?

Turns out, it depends on the dam. At Fontana, crews installed a cofferdam on the upstream face of the dam to hold back the reservoir during the operations. It’s basically half of a steel pipe that seals against the concrete face on the sides and bottom, just big enough for access to adjust the pulleys. At Chickamauga Dam, the geometry made a cofferdam less feasible. So instead, they broke the process up into three sections separated by boreholes drilled downward into the structure. One section could be cut by the diamond wire while the other borehole was sealed, preventing water from moving through the slot. That’s easier said than done, but you can look to your feet for inspiration. The seals installed in the boreholes are long rubber tubes called sock seals.

Kristen: “Well, it's like a sock you put on your foot, but a half-inch thick rubber and a hundred feet long. And I've heard it described as kind of like an inside-out fire hose. Very strong and waterproof, but to some degree flexible.”

The mess is another problem. The dust from the fresh cut concrete mixes with lubricating water to form a slurry that runs out of the slot. Concrete slurry isn’t good for the environment. It mucks up the water and changes the chemistry. So the slurry generated by the cutting process has to be captured and pumped to holding tanks. After the concrete particles have settled out, the water can be recirculated to control the dust and lubricate the wire as it cuts. And this whole process happens essentially non-stop. Time is of the essence so that the internal stress doesn’t close the slot while the wire is still inside it. Slot cutting is relatively low impact on the dam operations, but parts of the dam have to be shut down to avoid an accident like a broken wire being pulled into a hydro unit or spillway gate.

One of the reasons this is possible at all is that TVA’s concrete dams experiencing ASR are all gravity dams. In essence, that means that any vertical slice of the dam is theoretically stable on its own without lateral support. Cutting a slot in an arch dam wouldn’t work, because they depend on axial thrust forces for stability.

Before, during, and after the slot cutting operation, there’s an intensive monitoring program to keep an eye on how the dam is behaving and methodically measure the movement and strains to make sure the dam responds in the way the engineers predict.

Kristen: “We have hundreds and hundreds of instruments on the concrete portion of the dam. We measure the slot that we've cut. Is it closing? Is it opening? At what rate is it closing or opening? We measure our spillway piers. Are they moving? We measure expansion joints. Everything in every direction we measure.”

And those measurements are important because the slot cutting isn’t a one-time permanent solution. This doesn’t slow down the alkali-silica reaction in the concrete at all. It just mitigates the stress building up in the structure as the concrete expands, which is basically a non-stop process. Over time, the slots close. That means that TVA has to go through the operation regularly.

Kristen: “Every approximately five years, we update, we use finite element analysis models on our concrete growth projects. So they take all of those years of new information data from the instruments and they recalibrate and they rerun these models and they can tell us how effective the slot cut is. They can tell us when we need to do it again. Whatever we need to do to ensure that we are maintaining the integrity of our damms and the adjacent equipment, that's what we do.”

I was curious why they don’t just cut a big slot to get a longer period of relief before having to do it again. In hindsight, it was kind of a dumb question:

Kristen: “The simple answer is so we don’t leave a big hole in the dam. The slot cut at Chickamauga is approximately a half and inch. It's a lot easier to stop water from flowing through a half an inch slot in a dam than it would be maybe a six inch wide slot. In addition, slot cutting is expensive.”

In other words, TVA wants to disturb their structures as little as possible, while still mitigating the problems AAR causes. It’s a back-and-forth thing. You cut, observe, wait, and only cut again when it’s necessary. It’s good stewardship of the resources available to take care of the structures we’ve already built.

Alkali-silica reaction in concrete is a huge problem. It’s something engineers have to consider when designing basically any concrete structure, which means it’s something that quarries, batch plants, testing labs, and contractors have to think about as well. Since the 1970s, we’ve gotten pretty good at avoiding it in our structures. But since it’s often a slow-growing issue, we’re still figuring out how to deal with the problems it’s causing on the stuff we built before we really had a handle on it. On mass concrete structures, like TVA’s dams, it could have been a death blow, significantly shortening the lifespans of these massive projects. But they figured out a creative solution to live with it.

Kristen: “I mean, it's cool. And when you think about a dam, it's a water barrier. It is designed to hold back water. So the last thing you expect to do is to cut a piece out of it. But we do. We do.”

https://www.youtube.com/live/MpVYz3hCRcA

Queen of the Hacker Underworld

of hearts

queen of hearts mata_bot

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The End of the search for the F.I.S.H.

...

Girl finally tracks down FISH.

Girl: "It's just.. I thought FISH was an acronym..."

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How’s that for evil? Heh heh heh…

MINNEAPOLIS—Excitedly revealing to the staff that she had a special surprise, local data analyst Kayla Herrera reportedly delighted coworkers Wednesday upon returning from Europe by bringing back a Latvian man for everyone to share. “I couldn’t get enough of him when I was abroad,” said Herrera, grinning as her colleagues struggled to pronounce the Latvian man’s name. “I’m always excited to try something new, so I wanted to bring back some Baltic goodies for the office to enjoy. At first I was going to get some black currant chocolates, but then locals told me that this man is one of the most popular treats in Eastern Europe. Don’t be greedy now, make sure there’s enough for everyone!” At press time, Herrera was forced to throw the Latvian man away after realizing he had expired.

The post Coworker Returning From European Vacation Brings Back Latvian Man For Everyone To Share appeared first on The Onion.

CAMDEN, NJ—Revealing that the products offered customers multiple protection options in a delicious range of flavors, food processing giant Campbell’s announced Thursday it had launched a new line of self-defense soups. “Whether you attach the can to a strap and use it as a flail or heat up the soup to create a thermal weapon, we guarantee these powerful security devices will be ready in under five minutes,” said company spokesperson Cheryl Turner, who stressed the importance of always having something on hand that can be prepared quickly in the event of an unexpected home intruder. “The soups are also a convenient option for customers on the go, because you can wear one on a lanyard when out walking at night, warning potential attackers that you’re prepared to dole out the homemade taste of punishment. We recommend using our Chunky Beef with Country Vegetables variety for bludgeoning, while our cream-based soups like Homestyle Broccoli Cheddar work best for scalding enemies. Stock your pantry arsenal today!” Campbell’s executives told reporters the company was also developing a long-range aerosol version of its Spicy Nacho Cheese soup to spray in the eyes of assailants.

The post Campbell’s Unveils New Line Of Self-Defense Soups appeared first on The Onion.

NEW YORK—In a continuation of their post-MSNBC rebranding effort, cable news network MS NOW was reportedly luring in new viewers Wednesday with a slowly rotating gyro spit in the corner of all its programming. “With linear TV viewership in decline and audiences increasingly turning to social media for their news, we knew that we needed to offer something no other outlet could: a tender spit of succulent lamb that looks so good you can almost taste it,” said MS NOW president Rebecca Kutler, noting that the change was made after the network conducted a study of the content that was most appealing to viewers and noticed that “delicious meat” scored far higher than “political analysis.” “We’ve researched what keeps viewers from changing the channel, and while breaking news tickers and dynamic sets move the needle, nothing is more effective than the slow rotation of a sumptuous, juicy gyro. And soon, we’ll be adding a side of tzatziki sauce that we believe will keep viewers glued to the TV during our midterm election coverage.” At press time, ratings for MS NOW were up 700%.

The post MS NOW Lures New Viewers With Rotating Gyro Spit In Corner Of Screen appeared first on The Onion.

The post Travis Kelce Worried Patrick Mahomes’s ACL Tear Will Derail ‘Harlem Shake’ Groomsmen Entrance appeared first on The Onion.

OTTAWA – Prime Minister Mark Carney and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have reportedly outlined a first draft of the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, which includes a sub-clause limiting India to only one extra-judicial killing on Canadian soil annually. “India is the world’s 5th largest economy, and a partnership with them will make life more […]

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Early in President Trump’s first term, McSweeney’s editors began to catalog the head-spinning number of misdeeds coming from his administration. We called this list a collection of Trump’s cruelties, collusions, corruptions, and crimes, and it felt urgent to track them, to ensure these horrors—happening almost daily—would not be forgotten. Now that Trump has returned to office, amid civil rights, humanitarian, economic, and constitutional crises, we felt it critical to make an inventory of this new round of horrors. This list will be updated monthly between now and the end of Donald Trump’s second term.

These lists, along with everything McSweeney’s publishes on this site, are offered ad-free and at no charge to our readers. If you are moved to make a donation in any amount or subscribe to our website’s Patreon, please do. This will help support this project and our other work.

ATROCITY KEY

– Constitutional Illegalities, Collusion, and/or Obstruction of Justice
– Environment
– Harassment, Bullying, Retribution, and/or Sexual Misconduct
– Lies and Misinformation
– Musk Madness
– Policy
– Public Statements and Social Media Posts
– Trump Family Business Dealings
– Trump Staff and Administration
– White Supremacy, Racism, Misogyny, Homophobia, Transphobia, and/or Xenophobia

October 2025

Main Index

Trump’s first term

NOVEMBER 2025

1. – November 1, 2025 – Accusing Nigeria of failing to protect Christians, Trump threatened to send the American military into the country and cut aid. “If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria,” the president wrote on social media. “And we may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities.” The post followed an earlier post in which Trump, after watching a Fox News report about Nigeria, claimed “Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria.” Nigeria has denied Trump’s accusations, and the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom concluded in 2024 that extremist violence from a variety of religious and secular groups in Nigeria has affected both Christians and Muslims alike.
   
   
2. – November 2, 2025 – Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the US military killed at least three people in another boat strike in the Caribbean Sea. Announcing the attack on social media, Hegseth posted a video that appeared to show an explosion. He said the vessel “was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling,” but he did not provide evidence to support the claim. The attack raised the toll of the campaign to about sixty-five people killed. In a letter to the US government, Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, wrote, “Based on the very sparse information provided publicly by the US authorities, none of the individuals on the targeted boats appeared to pose an imminent threat to the lives of others or otherwise justified the use of lethal armed force against them under international law.”
   
   
3. – November 3, 2025 – The Trump administration said that it would partially fund SNAP after federal judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island ruled that the government must keep the food aid program running. Trump claimed via social media that he did “NOT want Americans to go hungry just because the Radical Democrats refuse to do the right thing and REOPEN THE GOVERNMENT.” The Department of Agriculture had planned to freeze payments to the program, which serves about one in eight Americans, due to the government shutdown. In October, Trump said that he had “identified funds” that would allow the government to pay members of the military during the shutdown, in addition to securing a $130 million donation from his billionaire friend, Timothy Mellon.
   
   
4. – November 4, 2025 – Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the US military killed two people in yet another strike on boats suspected of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean. It was the sixteenth strike in an offensive that began in early September and raised the death toll to at least sixty-seven people. The administration claimed that its policy is lawful because the president is “determined” that the United States is in a formal armed conflict with drug cartels. A wide range of specialists denounced the killings as illegal. “I can’t imagine anyone, no matter what the circumstance, believing it is appropriate to kill people who are clinging to a boat in the water,” said Michael Schmitt, a former Air Force lawyer and professor emeritus at the US Naval War College. “That is clearly unlawful.”
   
   
5. – November 4, 2025 – Chief US District Judge John McConnell ruled that the Trump administration cannot withhold billions of dollars in transportation funding to states that refuse to cooperate with immigration enforcement. Judge McConnell wrote in his ruling that the US Department of Transportation (DOT) “blatantly overstepped” their authority in attempting to link funding used to maintain roads, bridges, and highways to immigration demands. The ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed by twenty states, led by California, after Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy outlined the administration’s expectations for cooperation with immigration officials. After the ruling, California Attorney General Rob Bonta stated, “If President Trump wants to stop losing in court, he should stop breaking the law.”
   
   
6. – November 5, 2025 – Federal judge Robert Gettleman ordered authorities to improve conditions at the ICE facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview. Gettleman’s order came after detainees sued the facility, saying they were kept in “inhumane” and crowded conditions. Detainees said they were forced to sleep on the floor or in plastic chairs, and that the toilets overflowed with human waste, which seeped into sleeping areas. Gettleman stated that he found the witnesses’ testimony “highly credible,” adding, “People shouldn’t be sleeping next to overflowing toilets. They should not be sleeping on top of each other.” Gettleman’s order also required that ICE agents allow detainees to call lawyers in private with no cost and provide them with a list of pro bono attorneys in English and Spanish. Agents were also barred from misrepresenting documents provided for detainees for sign.
   
   
7. – November 5, 2025 – A mock-up of a sign reading THE OVAL OFFICE in cursive golden lettering appeared taped on the outside of the White House, mimicking Trump’s recent attempts to give the White House the same gilded flourishes as his hotels and clubs. The Oval Office sign inspired humorous responses on social media, with some joking that such a label helped people with dementia and others saying it would make even Marie Antoinette say, “Tone it down.” As part of the makeover, Trump previously tore up the Rose Garden grass and replaced it with stone pavers, turning it into a patio similar to his Mar-a-Lago property. He also added a “Presidential Walk of Fame” along the colonnade, which featured portraits of all former presidents, except Joe Biden.
   
   
8. – November 5, 2025 – In response to Democratic election victories in New York, California, Virginia, and New Jersey, Trump posted on Truth Social more than thirty times in less than three hours. The posts veered wildly in subject matter. Posts included AI-generated videos of Trump standing in front of a podium in an unknown room, covering topics such as his recent meeting with the prime minister of Japan, his G2 meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping, and Walmart allegedly lowering its prices. “Walmart just announced that Prices for a Thanksgiving Dinner is now down 25 percent since under Sleepy/Crooked Joe Biden, in 2024. AFFORDABILITY is a Republican Stronghold.” Another video has Trump criticizing Obamacare for being “really bad healthcare” and a “disaster.” Moments later, Trump railed against Democrats, telling Republicans to take the “nuclear option” and end the filibuster. Minutes later, he pivoted again and started posting about the anniversary of his re-election.
   
   
9. – November 6, 2025 – The Republican-controlled Senate voted down a measure requiring congressional approval for military action against Venezuela. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate armed services committee, had said before the vote, “If the administration intends to escalate towards conflict with Venezuela, Congress has a constitutional duty to declare and authorize such action. We cannot sleepwalk into another war.” Hours after the vote, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced another strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean. It was at least the seventeenth such strike in the region, bringing the total fatalities to at least sixty-nine. Last month, Trump had indicated that he would not seek congressional approval for military strikes against alleged drug traffickers. Instead, he had said, “We’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country.”
   
   
10. – November 6, 2025 – ICE agents arrested a US citizen in the parking lot of a Los Angeles Home Depot store, then entered his car and drove away with his toddler, who was in the back seat. After Dennis Quinonez was detained by ICE agents and taken to an ICE vehicle, onlookers shouted, “There’s a baby in the back!” Moments later, a heavily armed and masked ICE agent got into the driver’s seat of Quinonez’s car and drove away. Quinonez’s daughter, who was not yet two years old, looked on, wide-eyed from her car seat. Later that morning, Quinonez’s mother, Maria Avalos, received a call from border patrol agents using an unidentified number and was asked to pick up her granddaughter. Avalos later said she was alarmed to learn that masked agents, who were heavily armed, could drive away with her granddaughter. “This is something very, very frightening, because it’s not clear who these people are.”
    
    
    ICE Agents Arrest US Citizen in LA and Drive Off with His Baby in Car (The Independent)
    
    
11. – November 7, 2025 – The Supreme Court granted the Trump administration’s emergency appeal to temporarily block a court order to fully fund SNAP food aid payments amid the government shutdown, even though residents in some states had already started to receive the funds. The Trump administration told the Supreme Court that fast-acting states were “trying to seize what they could of the agency’s finite set of remaining funds, before any appeal could even be filed, and to the detriment of other States’ allotments.” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in the court filing, “Once those billions are out the door, there is no ready mechanism for the government to recover those funds.” Every “fast-acting” state that distributed SNAP funds before the Supreme Court’s ruling on the emergency appeal had a Democratic governor.
    
    
12. – November 8, 2025 – President Trump urged Republican senators to redirect federal money used to subsidize health insurance costs under the Affordable Care Act toward direct payments to individuals. On Truth Social, he posted, “I am recommending to Senate Republicans that the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE SO THAT THEY CAN PURCHASE THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTHCARE, and have money left over.” Trump and Senate Republicans seemed unable to grasp the fact that most consumers would still need to purchase plans from the same insurance companies they railed against.
    
    
13. – November 9, 2025 – Panamanian officials confirmed that a three-year-old migrant had died on a new “reverse migration” boat route after the Trump administration effectively sealed the US border to migrants earlier in the year. The boat, which capsized off the coast of Colón Province en route to the child’s home country, Colombia, was following a new migrant route that sprang up after the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration. Since late September, more than 14,000 migrants have ridden in small boats along Panama’s Caribbean and Pacific coasts to avoid the Darién Gap, which has effectively been sealed to prevent northbound migration. In February, an eight-year-old Venezuelan migrant drowned under similar circumstances.
    
    
14. – November 9, 2025 – Writing in The Atlantic, Federal Judge Mark L. Wolf explained that he was stepping down to warn about the “existential threat to democracy” posed by the Trump administration. Describing Trump’s actions as “contrary to everything I have stood for in my more than fifty years in the Department of Justice and on the bench,” Wolf accused Trump of “using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries while sparing his friends and donors from investigation, prosecution, and possible punishment.” In an interview, Wolf said he had resigned to speak more freely about his own views and those of his colleagues who were still on the bench. “I hope to be a spokesperson for embattled judges who, consistent with the code of conduct, feel they cannot speak candidly to the American people.”
    
    
15. – November 9, 2025 – Six more people were killed after the US military struck two more boats suspected of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific, bringing the total death toll from such strikes to seventy-six. “Under President Trump, we are protecting the homeland and killing these cartel terrorists who wish to harm our country and its people,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on social media without providing evidence for his claims, along with videos of the attacks. Many experts have denounced the strikes as illegal. Later in the week, The New York Times reported that a secret Justice Department memo approving the boat strikes relied heavily on unsubstantiated claims made by the White House.
    
    
16. – November 10, 2025 – John Braun, a felon whose sentence Trump commuted during his first term, was sentenced to twenty-seven months in prison for violating the terms of his supervised release. In 2011, Braun pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and money laundering, but his sentence was commuted in 2021 after his family leveraged connections to Jared Kushner; he had only served a little over a year of a ten-year sentence. While on supervised release, prosecutors alleged that Braun sexually assaulted a nanny, swung an IV pole at a nurse, threatened a synagogue congregant, assaulted a three-year-old, and made usurious loans, among other crimes. At least eight convicts granted clemency by Trump during his first term have since been charged with other crimes, as have several others pardoned for their roles in the January 6, 2021, Capitol attacks.
    
    
17. – November 10, 2025 – Trump pardoned Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Kenneth Chesebro, Boris Epshteyn, Sidney Powell, and other top allies who helped him attempt to overturn the 2020 election results. Though some of the pardoned individuals were named as unindicted coconspirators in the 2023 case filed by Jack Smith, none had been charged with a crime; the pardons were therefore largely symbolic, though they may also help protect the individuals from being charged at the federal level in the future. In a proclamation announcing the pardons, the Justice Department described them as a corrective to “a grave national injustice.”
    
    
18. – November 10, 2025 – Trump asked the Supreme Court to overturn a $5 million civil case that determined he sexually abused and defamed the writer E. Jean Carroll. The 2023 case concerned Carroll’s claim that Trump raped her in a department store in the 1990s and later called her a liar; Caroll also was awarded $83.3 million in 2024 after another jury found Trump defamed her about the same claims. In a filing, Trump’s attorneys claimed the district court made a “‘series of indefensible evidentiary rulings,’ improperly admitting highly inflammatory propensity evidence against President Trump,” such as testimony from additional women claiming Trump had committed further acts of sexual misconduct. Last year, an appeals court found that the trial judge had not violated Trump’s rights in allowing the prosecution to present this evidence, and earlier in the year, an appeals court also upheld the $83.3 million judgment, rejecting Trump’s claims that he was protected by presidential immunity.
    
    
19. – November 10, 2025 – Trump threatened to sue the BBC over a 2024 documentary featuring an edited version of a speech he gave to supporters on the day of the Capitol attacks. “We’ll sue them for anywhere between $1 billion and $5 billion, probably sometime next week,” Trump told reporters. “I think I have to do it. They cheated. They changed the words coming out of my mouth.” During his speech on January 6, 2021, Trump said, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.” Over fifty minutes later, he added, “And we fight. We fight like hell.” In the edited version, the clip shows Trump saying, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol … and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.” The BBC apologized for the way the speech was edited but rejected Trump’s defamation claim, arguing that the documentary had not caused any harm, that it was not atypical to edit long speeches, and that opinions on matters of public concern and political speech are heavily protected.
    
    
    Side-by-Side Comparison of BBC-Edited Trump Speech from Day of Capitol Attack with Original (The Guardian)
    
    
20. – November 12, 2025 – The US Conference of Catholic Bishops voted nearly unanimously to condemn the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. In a rare group statement, the bishops wrote, “We oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people. We pray for an end to the dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement. We feel compelled now in this environment to raise our voices in defense of God-given human dignity.” As of this writing, the Trump administration had deported 400,000 people in 2025 and detained 60,000 others, including people who are in the country legally.
    
    
21. – November 12, 2025 – Trump signed a funding package to reopen the federal government after the longest shutdown in history, all but guaranteeing that the Obamacare tax subsidies would be allowed to expire. During the shutdown, while many went without pay or food stamps, Trump stayed away from the negotiations. His agenda included visiting six countries, hosting foreign leaders at the White House, speaking at a million-dollar-plate dinner, throwing a Great Gatsby–themed party at Mar-a-Lago, golfing multiple times, and beginning construction on his ballroom project. “President Trump continued to work night and day on behalf of American people—including mitigating many of the harmful impacts of the Democrat shutdown,” said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson.
    
    
22. – November 12, 2025 – House Democrats released three emails from Jeffrey Epstein in which the convicted sex offender alleged that Trump knew about Epstein’s abuse of minors. In an April 2011 email to his longtime confidante and fellow convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein wrote, “I want you to realize that the dog that hasn’t barked is Trump” and mentioned that Trump had spent hours at Epstein’s home with one of his victims. In a January 2019 email to the journalist Michael Wolff, Epstein...

Jools Holland’s New Year Hootenanny is a pre-recorded New Year’s Eve event that is on BBC2 every year. The great and the good gather to pretend to boogie-woogie their way into the future. In an era when there is not much pop music on normal TV any more, it’s nice that we still have something to look at that isn’t about a murder.

Dame Elaine Stevens has appeared briefly in both Bad Machinery and Steeple. She’s easier to find in one than the other.

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