There Are Many Different Kinds of Love, Brethren Arise, Candlepower, Cylinder Five, God Be With You Till We Meet Again, I Am Running Down the…, I Dont See the Branches I See the Leaves, I Want to Fall in Love on Snapchat, Out of the Skies Under the Earth, Take off and Shoot A Zero, The House Glows with Almost No Help, There Are Many Different Kinds of Love, all by Chris Zabriskie are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...) Source: http://chriszabriskie.com/vendaface/ Artist: http://chriszabriskie.com/
A man was arrested in Atlanta for allegedly stealing hard drives containing Beyoncé’s unreleased music and other tour-materials, which were taken from a vehicle used by her crew. What do you think?
“Jay-Z knows he can just ask, right?”
Leo Bandholz, Systems Analyst
“God forbid a fan want to get a jump on learning the choreography.”
Katherine Periat, Report Generator
“He’s just lucky the police got to him before her fanbase did.”
The Harris County Sheriff’s Office also responded to two calls at a Cypress home that public records list as owned by d4vd’s family. Both calls were false alarms.
The Pentagon implemented stricter grooming standards, requiring male service members to be “clean shaven and neat in presentation for a proper military appearance.” What do you think?
“Good luck getting military personnel to follow orders.”
Damien Linskey, Elbow Specialist
“Just let them wear beard nets while on duty.”
Cory Lafont, Citation Writer
“The sinks at Fort Bragg are going to be disgusting tomorrow.”
1. “And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God… unless of course that rich man makes over $10 million a year, in which case his wealth will create jobs in the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Matthew 19:24)
2. “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. Oh wait, is she trying to get an abortion? Give me that stone.” (John 8:7)
3. “Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second commandment is ‘Don’t let trans people compete in women’s sports.’” (Matthew 22:37–40)
4. “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. But especially blessed are those who launch preemptive strikes in the Middle East, for that definitely won’t end badly.” (Matthew 5:9)
5. “Judge not, that ye be not judged. In fact, the judicial branch really shouldn’t be telling the president what to do at all.” (Matthew 7:1)
6. “Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people who had paid their premium on time.” (Matthew 9:35)
7. “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them. Where two or three thousand gather, that’s a riot waiting to happen. Send in the Marines.” (Matthew 18:20)
8. “Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Why does he do it? I do not know. The welfare state has completely destroyed the fowl family.” (Matthew 6:26)
9. “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do. The people who nailed me to this cross are just a few bad apples with mental health issues. The majority of people who own crosses only have them for protection.” (Luke 23:34)
10. “But whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him… GOOD. Tell your brother to get a job.” (1 John 3:17)
11. “But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You shall be repaid at tax time, when you deduct the feast.” (Luke 14:13)
12. “If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. If they slap you again, that’s a violation of stand-your-ground laws, and you can shoot them with your AR-15.” (Matthew 5:38–39)
13. “Jesus wept, because of all the immigrants.” (John 11:35)
OTTAWA – U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra has vowed to improve anti-American sentiment he sees in Canada, no matter how many illegal tariffs, forced annexations, or literal bombs it takes to do it. “I’m disappointed that I came to Canada,” Hoekstra said during a public event in Halifax. “A Canada that it would be very easy […]
This week on Party Politics, co-hosts Brandon Rottinghaus and Jeronimo Cortina break down the latest developments in Texas and national politics. TEXAS TOPICS: The legacy of Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo amid her decision to not run for another term. Congressman Michael McCaul and Morgan Luttrell announce they won't seek reelection. Andrew White enters the […]
Junk journaling, a hobby that involves using materials like receipts and ticket stubs to create a keepsake journal, has taken off among arts and crafts enthusiasts. The Onion shares tips for creating a junk journal of your own.
Always be ready to petulantly explain why it’s not exactly the same as scrapbooking.
Visit a local landfill for inspiration.
See if there is a way you can do it while still staring at a screen.
Think of it as something your children will roll their eyes at one day before throwing away.
Pick a theme like “the 2020s” or “my descent into madness.”
Scan TikTok for advice, get overwhelmed, and abandon this project like you do everything else.
Create memories of all your amazing meals by gluing in a lunch meat scrap from every sandwich you eat.
Just paste some shit into a notebook. It’s really not hard.
Hello dear readers. Daring Fireball has been silent for the last week. I realize how unusual it is for the site to go un-updated any week of the year, let alone this particular week of the year. I’m so sorry about that, and also sorry about not being able to write this note to you sooner.
I have been dealing with — and working through — a very personal situation for the past week. It’s OK. I’m going to be OK. But it has kept me offline for some time. Given the one-man nature of this site, that has meant that nothing has been published.
I look forward to getting back to writing very soon. I can feel it: I will be back soon. I’m itching to go. I mean, jiminy, it’s new iPhones week. But it’ll be a few more days before I get those reviews out. In the meantime, I so profoundly appreciate your patience and understanding.
The three-day event that starts Friday will feature pub crawls on The Strand, a pirate-themed festival at Seawolf Park and tours of the 1877 Tall Ship Elissa and other vessels.
WASHINGTON—Flipping through all of the options for the sixth time in a row as the clock approached 1 a.m., a bored President Donald Trump reportedly spent Thursday night channel surfing for new shows to cancel. “It feels like I’ve already canceled everything on here, or it’s from so long ago that it’s no longer worth the trouble,” said the president, growing increasingly frustrated after getting through three minutes of The New Girl only to realize that the final episode aired in 2018. “Has The Munsters been canceled yet? There’s a lot of diversity on there, and they seem like losers. How about Zoloft? Oh, that was just a commercial. Survivor might be an option, as we all know that program is the mouthpiece of antifa. Now here’s SpongeBob SquarePants. They’re saying horrible things about the crab, horrible things. You know what, SpongeBob? You’re gone.” Trump continued his channel-surfing marathon by asking his son Barron to turn on Netflix so he could find something to cancel there.
Recently released state school ratings reveal that five Texas school districts are at risk of a takeover by the Texas Education Agency (TEA)—the most since a 2017 state law expanded the state’s takeover powers. The new ratings cover the 2022-23 school year, released in April following legal delays, and the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years, released last month. One Fort Worth ISD school received its fifth consecutive failing rating for 2022-23. Schools in Beaumont, Connally, Wichita Falls, and Lake Worth ISDs, which have a total of 32,000 students, all received a fifth consecutive failing grade for the 2024-25 school year.
Some parents in Fort Worth have already organized to fend off a takeover: Zach Leonard, a parent of three children in the district, told the Texas Observer he does not want Fort Worth to lose its elected leadership and staff the way Houston ISD has under its 2023 takeover and the state-appointed leadership of superintendent Mike Miles. “It’s not a sustainable model for the future. It’s not true education. It’s just test prep,” Leonard said. “Fort Worth ISD has room to improve, but we can do it our way, and we don’t have to do it the way that TEA is prescribing.”
In the past decade and a half, 13 districts have been taken over and run by a state-appointed board of managers, under public-school accountability laws which have empowered TEA to step in and depose an elected school board if its schools do not meet academic, governance, or financial accountability standards. In 2017, the state made it easier for TEA to intervene by allowing the agency to take over an entire school district if just one school receives failing ratings for five consecutive ratings.
An Observer analysis of school ratings at those districts before and after TEA takeovers reveals that, while some districts have recently reduced their number of failing schools under state control, others racked up more failing schools and even ended their time under state control by being gobbled up by other districts.
“You’re getting people that they’re putting in there to sabotage everything that we were trying to do.”
The state agency currently controls Houston ISD as well as four smaller school districts because of governance issues or consecutive failing ratings at one or more schools. Four of those districts have shown some progress in their state scores, 2024-25 data shows. After eight years of TEA control, Marlin ISD, near Waco, received no F or D ratings this past school year and will return to full local control in January 2026. In East Texas, Shepherd ISD’s three F-rated schools improved to D-rated schools in the five years under state takeover. And for the first time since the A-F system began in 2017, Houston ISD had no F ratings last school year. South San Antonio ISD, which TEA took over due to governance issues in February 2025, also had fewer failing schools in 2025 than 2024.
But other school districts that were subject to TEA control in the past reported more problems following takeovers, based on the agency’s own metrics for academic performance, records show. Four out of eight districts where state takeovers have ended were dissolved entirely: North Forest, La Marque, Kendleton, and Wilmer Hutchins ISDs were all shut down and absorbed into other school districts. One of those districts, North Forest, was absorbed into Houston ISD, itself now taken over.
Two other districts returned to local control with more failing schools than before: Beaumont and Edgewood ISDs, which had been taken over for governance or financial accountability issues. In the case of Edgewood, taken over for failure to hire a superintendent, the number of failing schools increased from one to 10. In the two remaining cases, the results were better: Southside ISD, taken over for financial accountability reasons, had no failing schools pre- or post-TEA, and El Paso ISD, taken over for a state test cheating scandal, emerged with fewer failing schools.
When presented with the Observer’s findings, TEA spokesperson Jake Kobersky suggested TEA is not responsible for the outcome of state takeovers. “The agency does not ‘take control’ or manage the operations of school districts,” he said. “In the event a Board of Managers is appointed, the locally appointed board members and the district administration, consistent with the operating structure of districts statewide, make all operational and curricular decisions—not TEA,” Kobersky wrote, clarifying in a separate email that “locally appointed” referred to the state “appointing board members from the local community.” Kobersky continued: “Classifying the district as being under agency leadership is an incorrect characterization and would mislead your readers.”
Kobersky emphasized that TEA removed the elected boards at Edgewood and Beaumont ISDs mainly because of financial and governance issues, not academic issues. Though school ratings slipped, he noted that the percentage of all Beaumont ISD students who met overall standards at their grade level was only 30 percent when the takeover began, and it remained the same afterward. In Edgewood, a district in west San Antonio that was the center of a historic 1989 court ruling on school finance equity, the percentage of all district students who met grade level increased from 24 to 29 percent, Kobersky said.
In the first year of the state takeover at Edgewood, TEA’s appointed board of managers named Emilio Castro as superintendent. But Castro resigned only two years later, after a district employee accused him of sexual harassment. Timothy Payne, who served as an appointed board manager from 2016 to 2019, told the Observer the board then selected TEA’s recommended replacement—Eduardo Hernández, a former Chief of Schools for Duncanville ISD, though Hernández had no prior experience as a superintendent.
By 2019, Hernández pushed for private operation of some campuses under a state law that allows school districts to hand over their schools to private charter operators or public university programs in exchange for extra funding and a break from state sanctions. The district inked private partnerships with four operators to run eight elementary, middle, or high schools. But only one of those schools, run by Ridgeline Education Corporation, received passing ratings in the 2024-25 school year. Winston Intermediate School of Excellence, which was operated by the Texas A&M San Antonio Institute for School and Community Partnerships, closed following the 2023-24 school year, after receiving a F rating.
Payne blames TEA for the district’s declining ratings. “TEA is the problem,” he said. “You’re getting people that they’re putting in there to sabotage everything that we were trying to do.”
Kobersky, the TEA spokesman, reiterated that it was the state-appointed Board of Managers, not TEA, who hired Hernández as Edgewood ISD superintendent.
Edgewood ISD parents have now collected 200 signatures for a petition that demands a performance review for Hernández and more transparency on academic performance, school discipline, teacher vacancies, and district spending. Edgewood parent Jessica Martinez told the Observer that her sons’ school—Gus Garcia Middle School, another campus run by the Texas A&M program—has had a different principal each year her kids have attended and that substitute teachers are running classes “all year round.”
Henrietta Muñoz, the CEO of the Texas A&M program, told the Observer via email that staffing shortages are a statewide concern and that the state ratings “highlight areas for continued improvement” but do “not fully reflect” the accomplishments made at the school. A spokesman for Edgewood ISD did not respond to the Observer’s request for comment.
Protesters against the Houston ISD takeover (Courtesy of Community Voices for Public Education)
During its TEA takeover, from 2014 to 2020, Beaumont ISD saw its number of failing schools increase from four to eight. Right before the takeover ended, the district contracted with nonprofit charter operators to run three schools. The district terminated these partnerships in 2023 after all three received F ratings, then turned them over to another charter operator—Third Future Schools, a school network founded by Miles, now the Houston superintendent—which in turn ended its partnership with the district last school year, reverting control to the Beaumont ISD. Only one of the former Third Future Schools partnership campuses in Beaumont ISD received a passing rating in 2024-25. One of those three campuses, Fehl-Price Elementary, received its fifth consecutive failing rating, putting the district at risk of yet another takeover.
Thomas Sigee, who joined the Beaumont ISD board as an elected trustee in 2019 and is now the board chair, previously told the Observer that TEA directed the board’s selection of private partners: “We chose charter schools based on what TEA told us we could use,” Sigee said. But Kobersky, the TEA spokesman, countered that districts have always been in charge of selecting operators: “The decision-making authority has always rested with the district.”
Sigee told the Observer the district has not yet received any information from TEA regarding whether Beaumont will face another takeover. He said the district would close Fehl-Price and transfer its students to another school if needed to avoid state control. Until then, he said, “We will continue to educate the students in BISD.”
Epic Systems, the largest electronic health records company in the US, is pushing users of its ubiquitous online health portal MyChart to sign away their rights to sue the company if it mishandles their sensitive information.
Epic is currently facing an antitrust lawsuit from a rival health records company for allegedly holding a monopoly. (Kendall Warner / The Virginian-Pilot / Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
The next time patients log into the near-universal online health portal MyChart, they will be pushed to sign away their ability to sue the parent company if it mishandles their sensitive health information.
Epic Systems — the largest electronic health records company in the country and owner of MyChart — is rolling out a new terms-of-service agreement that includes binding arbitration language and a class-action waiver. These clauses compel patients to forfeit their legal right to band together in class-action lawsuits and instead direct them into a private court system, known as arbitration, where they face slim chances of winning their cases.
The new MyChart terms-of-service update comes at a time when the nation’s largest health insurance company, UnitedHealth Group, is facing numerous class-action lawsuits from consumers and physicians for a 2024 ransomware attack resulting in a massive breach of patient data. By slipping these new clauses into its terms of service, Epic could be attempting to avoid the same onslaught of litigation if it faces its own data breach or internal malfunctions, which large-scale institutions are particularly susceptible to.
Patients can still use MyChart if they don’t sign the agreement, but they will only be able to access a downgraded version with limited features. Epic is likely banking on most users accepting the updates without consideration; a 2017 Deloitte survey reportedly found that 91 percent of US consumers sign terms and conditions without reading them.
In recent decades, many corporations have slipped arbitration provisions into their agreements with workers and consumers to shield themselves from legal accountability for damages ranging from defective products to wage theft and antitrust violations.
The arbitration courts that oversee the resulting legal matters have been criticized for a variety of practices that tilt the playing field in favor of corporate defendants over class-action plaintiffs, the latter of which have been found to lose in arbitration upward of 76 percent of the time. Critics contend this is primarily because of an inherent conflict of interest: these private judges are employed by arbitration firms that work at the behest of their corporate clients.
However, a recent court ruling could expose Epic’s arbitration agreement to legal challenges. A judge in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Ticketmaster’s arbitration clause, in part because the firm’s market power over ticketing meant consumers had no other alternative and therefore were unable to voluntarily accept the contract.
Epic’s software manages the electronic health records for around 80 percent of the US population, and MyChart is used across 39 percent of all hospital systems, making its services virtually ubiquitous.
Epic is, in fact, currently facing an antitrust lawsuit from a rival health records company for allegedly holding a monopoly. That market power makes Epic’s binding arbitration agreement practically unavoidable.
This article was first published by the Lever, an award-winning independent investigative newsroom.
Abraham Lincoln is often invoked in calls for civility and reconciliation across the partisan divide. But Lincoln himself understood that such reconciliation was impossible in his own time until justice had been served and slavery abolished.
What made Abraham Lincoln great was that he understood that, in the end, there would be no establishment of the rule of law until justice had been served and slavery abolished. (Ed Vebell / Getty Images)
I understand the impulse, at moments like these, for politicians and public spokespersons to say that we need to talk across the divide, to acknowledge our similarities amid our differences, that we need leaders who understand there is no red America, no blue America, just America. It’s not my way of writing or speaking, but it runs deep in our political tradition. So it’s not surprising that people would turn to it.
Looking for precedents, people will often invoke Abraham Lincoln, particularly his first and second inaugural addresses (or least the conciliatory part of the second). The leader who bound up our wounds, who bore malice toward none and charity for all.
But Lincoln is an instructive case for a different reason. And that is that despite starting his career issuing bromides for peace and reconciliation, he came to understand, as time went on, a rather different alliance between words and deeds, toleration and power, reconciliation and reality.
From a young age — specifically, when he was twenty-eight years old, long before he came to national prominence — Lincoln had an uncanny sense that the growing violence of Jacksonian America was caught up with the question of slavery and abolition. In 1838, he delivered a fascinating address to the Young Men’s Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois, where he meditated on the growing predilection for violence, both political and apolitical, and offered cautionary words about where things were headed. Despite his keen understanding of the roots of the violence and its direction, the best counsel Lincoln could offer at this point was that all Americans needed to recommit themselves to the rule of law and the Constitution. Otherwise, he warned, some Napoleon Bonaparte type would come along and do one of two terrible things: free the enslaved or enslave the free. Despite his opposition to slavery, in other words, Lincoln’s recommendation at this point was for people to gird their loins of lawfulness against the truly violent: the abolitionists and enslavers. Both sides do it; we, in the middle, must not.
What made Lincoln great was not that early speech, though it’s interesting and prophetic in all sorts of ways that I can’t do justice to here. Nor was it his later giving into some bloodthirsty militarism during the Civil War, though there are moments of holy violence in his second inaugural that still send shivers up my spine and that I cannot read aloud without my throat seizing up and my voice cracking.
No, what made Lincoln great was that he understood that, in the end, there would be no establishment of the rule of law until justice had been served and slavery abolished. There could be no refusal of violence that would stick, that would be anything more than the blandest sanctimony, the emptiest piety, until the underlying social violence — the combination of the “Negro question” and the “labor question” — was resolved, through concerted action by the state.
What makes today’s calls for reconciliation and pleas for recognition of everyone’s humanity so formulaic, even feckless, is that they are severed from any sort of action or social awareness. At best, they rest on a studied inattention to the underlying social and economic roots of the problem. At this point, the politicians who speak this way sound like the very abolitionists who were rightly derided as crackpot utopians for their naive belief that moral suasion, without state action, could somehow win the day against slavery.
The difference is that those abolitionists had no power. Many of these politicians do.
In brief: Mainly quiet, pollen-ridden weather through tomorrow in Houston, followed up by more scattered-type showers and storms Sunday through Tuesday. A cold front that’s more like a humidity front continues to look plausible around midweek next week. The tropics remain quiet for us.
Today & Saturday
Our late summer slog continues with hot days, warmer than normal nights, and generally high humidity (though at times it feels decent outside at least). Isolated showers are possible today, and we may see isolated to scattered showers or a thunderstorm tomorrow. Overall, nothing too bad. Temperatures will be in the low-90s for highs.
An ozone action day is in effect again today. For most people this will not be an issue, but for those of you in sensitive groups, try to avoid being outside except early and late in the day. Also, for those of you (like me) that have had the sniffles lately, there’s a good chance that ragweed is the culprit.
Scattered showers and thunderstorms should be the name of the game beginning Sunday. While this will still be a patchwork type rain setup, a few more folks should begin to participate each afternoon. Expect continued highs in the low-90s but perhaps some slightly cooler afternoons at times due to the showers. Lows will remain mostly in the 70s.
Wednesday front!?
Eric has mentioned the potential of a cool front next week, nothing spectacular but a potential notable change for a couple days. That remains very much on the table today. The timing is a bit suspect, but sometime in the Wednesday or Thursday timeframe, it appears that a weak front will drop south into the area, bringing the potential for scattered to numerous thunderstorms for a short time. Behind the front, we’d turn a little cooler and a lot less humid to close out the week.
European model forecast of dewpoint between next Tuesday and Friday morning. (Pivotal Weather)
You can see the European model forecast of dewpoint for midweek, showing a distinct drop in dewpoint levels on Wednesday evening into Thursday and Friday. This is more of a humidity front than a cold front, though the lower humidity should translate into a chance at widespread lows in the 60s by Friday morning perhaps. With the Autumnal Equinox on Monday afternoon, we do see signs of fall sprinkling the forecast.
Tropics
Gabrielle is slowly building in the Atlantic, but that’s where it will stay. Another wave behind Gabrielle has some development risk, but that also looks to stay in the Atlantic. Is there anything to focus on for Houston? Nothing specific. There’s a general trend, particularly with AI models to try to spin something up in the northwest Caribbean in about 10 days, but that’s not supported much in the traditional physics-based models.
Use the slider to compare the much more active Google Deep Mind AI model to the much quieter European ensemble for the week of September 29th. (Weathernerds.org)
So this will be a good test for AI modeling: Are they capable of “seeing” a tropical genesis risk earlier than traditional models. In truth, earlier this season, when AI models were quite a bit spicier than traditional models at genesis forecasts, they tended to fail the test. This may also be a case of AI modeling being overzealous for some reason, but it’s something we’ll watch at least. Only 2 known hurricanes have had legitimate hurricane impacts on the Houston area after next week: Jerry in 1989 that hit Galveston and a storm that took a similar track to Beryl from last year that hit in 1949. History is on our side after next week, but as always, we will continue to watch.
For the record, come October we are more likely to be impacted by remnants of Pacific storms that bring heavy rain risk than a direct impact from the Gulf. That can bring its own set of problems, so forecasters stay vigilant deep into October.
1. We’re supposed to do enneagrams at a company retreat
I work at an organization with 100+ employees. We gather periodically for company-wide retreats. We have done this in the past with various professional learning opportunities. This time we were asked to fill out an enneagram survey that would be facilitated in conversation about “what truly drives you and how to apply that to your job.” I find it to be mumbo jumbo and about as scientific as astrology. I took the quiz and found myself increasingly uncomfortable with the questions and rigor of the survey.
How can I share this with management? How can they create alternative options for those of us who do not want to participate in such a session? Am I totally off-base here in my discomfort with this in the work setting?
You’re not off-base; it’s pseudoscience. Some people don’t really care about that; they figure it’s the equivalent of a Buzzfeed quiz and they have fun with it without putting a ton of weight on the results or they find it an interesting tool for self-reflection. But it’s legitimate to dislike it and to be annoyed if your workplace is spending time on it and putting real weight on the results. Moreover, materials about the enneagram can have a religious slant (sometimes a Christian one, while other branches of Christianity strongly object to it — either way, a problem at work).
At a minimum, you should point out the religious angle and ask if people can opt out.
2. My employee’s posts on LinkedIn make me worried that he might be violating our company AI policy
I have a question about my responsibility as a manager when one of my direct reports may or may not be violating our company AI policy. Like a number of other companies, we have an internal instance of Microsoft Copilot enabled that keeps data internal, and are permitted to use it (but no external tools).
Recently, I saw a LinkedIn post from one of my direct reports (he added me as a connection when he started the job), talking about a number of generative AI tools he has been using. I know he has a lot of hobby code projects that are completely independent of his job (he posts about them on LinkedIn often), and of course he is allowed to use whatever tools he pleases for those. What gives me pause is that this post talks specifically about generative AI tools for data analysis, which is a core function of his job.
It’s impossible to tell from the post whether he is talking about a personal project or his work, but it could be about either — it was a description of how he likes to use certain tools. If he’s using it for work, it’s a violation of our AI policy, and he does work with patient data (deidentified, so no PHI, but still concerning). I don’t want to overstep and grill him over his LinkedIn activity if it’s just for a personal project, but the possibility that he may be using it for work is concerning.
As his manager, I feel like I have to do something, but what is the correct course of action? Do I start by asking him? Do I start by reaching out to our go-to person for the AI policy (who I do have a strong working relationship with) to ask for guidance?
In case it makes a difference, he also drops the ball quite frequently on some bureaucratic things. For example, he failed to reset his password when it was expiring because he thought that the email telling him to do so (from an internal IT email address) was spam. I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t realize that we have an AI policy, even though it is available on our intranet and must have been communicated when he started the job.
Just ask him! You didn’t go snooping and come across his mention of AI in a shady way; he connected to you on LinkedIn and posted it about there. You can just mention what you saw and ask about it: “I saw your post on LinkedIn talking about generative AI tools you’ve using. It’s pretty interesting! I did want to ask if you’re using any of them in your work here, and make sure you know the details of our policy on AI.”
3. Intern can’t shake hands with men
We had a grad practicum student in our office this summer, and she is Muslim (and wears a hijab) and tries not to touch men. This is easy to manage in our office, but during partnership events she found herself shaking some men’s hands even though it made her uncomfortable.
How I could have made these events smoother for her and our partners? Are there lines I could use while introducing her that indicate she prefers not to shake someone’s hand, or lines she could use herself? In the future, I would brief our partners quietly about it, but that’s not always possible. Our sector is very empathetic so no one will mind, but being junior and a minority led her to feel pretty awkward during these interactions regardless of whether she shook a man’s hand or politely declined to.
A lot of people who don’t shake hands for religious or other reasons develop a physical signal that deters the handshake while still conveying warmth (which, after all, is the point of the handshake, so a warm substitute really helps). A lot of religious people with this restriction will put their right hand over their heart and bow their head a little. If someone seems confused by that, they can say, “I don’t shake, but it’s lovely to meet you” (or “to see you” if they’ve met before).
If she’s going to do that, it will be easier if she does it with everyone, not just men. In a workplace setting, you really want to treat men and women the same, which means that if you have a restriction for one sex (whether it’s not shaking their hand or not being alone with them), it’s better to apply it to everyone.
4. What’s a professional way to say “it’s been one thing after another”?
It’s been a challenging few months, and I’m significantly behind at work. Things are starting to get better and I’m catching back up, but I have no idea what to say to people (if anything) about the communication delays and other dropped balls. My supervisor is in the loop, so this is more about communicating with coworkers and stakeholders.
In short, during a three- or four-month period, my tires were slashed three times (likely a hate crime but that’s not 100% clear), I bought a house for the first time (it ended up requiring some surprise repairs), I moved, and my pet died. Throughout these events, I seem to have consistently underestimated the level of physical and emotional exhaustion that would result, and the toll it would take overall. I took a lot of PTO, some planned and some not, and even while at work I was often distracted and not doing my best.
According to my supervisor, “this is the ebb and flow of life” but even if that’s true it seems rude to say that to people who have been inconvenienced by my “ebbing.” Citing “personal issues” seems too vague and open to interpretation, but I might be overthinking it.
Is there something quick and respectful I can say that doesn’t get into all the details but does somehow convey that I was Going Through Things But Now I’m Getting Back on Track? I feel “stuck” catching up on certain areas because I can’t figure out the first sentence for my extremely late email responses.
“I’m so sorry for the delay on this — I’ve been out quite a bit dealing with a situation that should be under control now. Let me get you the answers you were waiting on.” (Adjust last sentence to fit whatever the context is.)
Or: “I’m so sorry for the delay on this — I’ve needed to be out quite a bit so I’ve been in triage mode, and I apologize for not updating you.”
That’s it, truly! These options cover a whole variety of possibilities, shares the part that’s relevant, and is the right lead-in to whatever comes next (whether that’s getting the person info they’d asked for, figuring out next steps for a project, or so forth).
“President Trump said networks giving him negative coverage may deserve to have their licenses revoked, ramping up threats administration officials have made in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s killing.” — Axios
- - -
I really like free speech. I love it, some might say. I love how I get to say anything I want and it’s totally fine, no problem. I don’t like when you do that though. I only like when I do it, or when people do it in a way I told them to do it. That’s when I really like free speech. In fact, I like free speech so much that I’ve decided it’s just mine now—not yours.
I like so many things about free speech. I like that my friends on TV can say they want to kill homeless people and then keep showing up for work like nothing happened.
But when you make a joke at my expense? When you criticize me in any way? When you say anything other than a really nice compliment about me? That’s where I draw the line. I like free speech so much that I’d rather not share it with you anymore.
Come to think of it, why are we giving away speech at all in the first place? We should be able to make a good return on investment with speech, especially if it’s free to begin with. I bet a lot of people would pay good money to get some free speech. In fact, I like free speech so much, I’ve decided to charge for it.
Now, some people are saying that what I’ve just described isn’t free speech. Some people are saying that it’s free speech only if everyone gets to use it. But I don’t like the way you’re using it. The way you’re using it is hurting my feelings. The way you’re using it is making me worry I won’t get to become president of the United States a few more times.
You know what? I like free speech so much I’ve decided you can’t use it without my permission. I’ve decided free speech is a collector’s item and it should be kept in mint condition. Let’s be honest: It’s basically an antique. So it needs to stay locked up where I can keep an eye on it.
I like free speech so much that I’ve decided to keep it.
![[img]:tcrxsm](https://analognowhere.com/_/tcrxsm/tcrxsm.png)
