Cowboy Who?

In brief: Hurricane Erin will continue to impact the Turks and Caicos and southeast Bahamas today. It remains on course to head out to sea, but it’s likely to cause significant impacts in the Outer Banks and widespread coastal flooding, beach erosion, and rip currents along the East Coast. Meanwhile, the next wave behind Erin is too early on to worry about, though it will be worth watching this week.

Can I just interject for a minute before we get into today’s post? I must be a glutton for punishment, as my “new tabs” in Microsoft Edge show up with completely absurd news headlines. Though this time of year, it becomes more entertainment than anything. For example, according to the Irish Star:

Let’s simply ignore the fact that the storms that will “batter Florida” are of the typical summertime variety, completely unrelated to Erin. Much to everyone’s relief, I did read the article, and I still don’t know what the “the worst” is that the experts fear. European tabloids are a contact sport, so I’d expect nothing less, but anyway, it’s little things like this that justify The Eyewall’s existence.

Hurricane Erin

Alright, onto the serious matter at hand, which is Hurricane Erin.

Erin is back up to category 4 intensity this morning, with maximum sustained winds of 130 mph. It sits just north of the Turks and Caicos Islands. Erin has continued to grow in size since yesterday. The tropical storm-force wind field extends out 230 miles now. Hurricane-force winds have more than doubled in size, now extending out 80 miles from the center. This places Erin in the 80th percentile of major hurricanes in terms of size. In plain language: Bigger than usual.

Erin remains a very formidable and growing hurricane. Tropical storm conditions will continue today in the southeast Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands, where Tropical Storm Warnings remain posted. A Tropical Storm Watch is now posted in the Central Bahamas.

Erin is likely beginning another period of intensification this morning that may continue into this evening. After that, Erin will likely begin to feel some impacts of wind shear in the area that will slowly erode at its intensity. Erin should remain a category 3 or stronger hurricane through Wednesday, however.

For the southeastern Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, and Hispaniola, squally weather will continue today and tonight. By tomorrow, Erin should finally begin to move away, allowing conditions to improve some.

Beyond the Bahamas, Erin’s track forecast has continued to nudge slightly westward, though not as much as it had this weekend. Erin will remain off the Southeast coast and split the difference between the Outer Banks and Bermuda on its way off to the north and eventually northeast.

As Erin passes the Outer Banks, tropical storm-force wind gusts will be likely, perhaps approaching 50 mph just offshore. While those wind gusts will be a bit of a nuisance, they aren’t anything too terrible for this area. However, the waves and rip currents will be a big problem. Based on the latest forecasts, this will be a prolonged event for the area with several days of difficult, if not impossible travel along NC-12 for Hatteras and Ocracoke Islands. Heed the advice of local officials in these areas.

Conditions should be at their worst late tomorrow into early Thursday before slowly easing up. Rip currents and rough surf will be a developing issue up and down the entire East Coast this week. Rip current statements are in place from West Palm Beach northward already. Basically, swimming won’t be advisable, as even the strongest and best swimmers can’t always overcome strong rip currents.

Tidal flooding will also be an issue up and down the East Coast, with coastal flood advisories or statements posted as far north as Long Island.

Bottom line: Hurricane Erin will directly impact the Turks and Caicos Islands and Southeast Bahamas today. As Erin passes offshore, rip currents, rough surf, beach erosion, and tidal flooding will be a concern from as far south as Florida into the Carolinas into New England.

Eventually, some of these wave issues will make it to Atlantic Canada as well toward the weekend.

Next wave up

The next tropical disturbance is a nascent wave west of the Cabo Verde Islands.

We have a ways to go here with this one, but I suspect we have an invest area out of this wave by tomorrow. The math on this is pretty simple, but deriving the equation is still very challenging. We know that a weaker tropical wave would probably continue west or west-northwest toward the Caribbean. Basically, if this doesn’t do much in the way of developing, it will probably continue to sneak westward. Alternatively, if it develops quickly as it comes across, or at the speed of Erin’s early organization, it would probably turn northwest and north and follow Erin out to sea. By the time we get to the weekend, we will see if this thing is farther south, closer to the islands, or more out into the open Atlantic, as most AI modeling seems to favor.

We have a long way to go with this one, but it’s not currently worth worrying about. Just check in daily for updates. We’ll keep you posted.

Finally, some respite from the breakneck rollercoaster pace that was this movie.

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Added by @cb in Reading & Literature › Comics.

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#Rowen #RoninWarriors

I'l see you kids later, I've got a millon things to do! #CowboyWho

The post Trump Negotiates With Zelensky Exclusively Through Pointing appeared first on The Onion.

A group of cottontail rabbits in Fort Collins have developed tentacle-like growths caused by a virus, which authorities say pose no threat to other animals or humans. What do you think?

“Not feeling so special now, are you, squid?”

Ian Renicks, Potato Peeler

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“I thought I was the only one who could see them.”

Lea Venter, Planetarium Advocate

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“I once saw a rabbit with a bowtie.”

Billy Glenister, Laundry Consultant

The post Rabbits With Tentacle-Like Growths Seen In Colorado appeared first on The Onion.

WASHINGTON—Taking offense that European leaders had, in his view, disrespected the White House by showing up inadequately dressed to Monday’s closely watched Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, President Donald Trump reportedly fumed that not a single one of them had arrived in lederhosen and a tiny feathered hat. “It’s rude and, frankly, very nasty that you would come here today in such inappropriate clothing,” said an irate Trump, interrupting European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s pleas for Ukrainian aid as he chastised her decision to forgo painted wooden clogs, a puffy milkmaid dress, and Pippi Longstocking braids. “When you think of Europe, you think of the striped shirts with the scarf and beret, the Viking hat with the horns—hell, even a bullfighting costume would have been great. Yet you choose to represent your countries at a meeting with the president of the United States in regular suits, without even carrying one of those hexagon accordion things? Disgraceful. Where’s the 20-foot-long trumpet? Keir [Starmer], where’s your monocle? That’s Europe. That’s what people want to see.” According to reports, Trump later cut off Zelensky’s remarks about the Russian abduction of Ukrainian children to further berate the European delegation for not wearing floral tunics and dancing around in a circle.

The post Trump Angry Not A Single Visiting European Leader Wearing Lederhosen, Tiny Hat appeared first on The Onion.

A reader writes:

I’m so curious for your thoughts on this. I stumbled across a social media post (somewhere deep in the pools of Reddit) about “hacks” for job searchers. The poster claimed to have gotten multiple interviews for jobs by finding a company advertising a position she was interested in, and emailing or calling the org to “confirm her interview time tomorrow,” then showing up and acting as if she’d been part of the candidate pool all along. According to the poster, she’d gotten many interviews and had even been hired multiple times this way, and only once had the person she got in contact with called BS on her claim to have an appointment.

Am I crazy for thinking this is crazy? I suppose it’s possible that at some, maybe a lot, of large orgs the person at the reception desk would just assume they missed the memo and the person is indeed supposed to be scheduled for an interview. Putting myself in that receptionist’s shoes, I have to imagine that if I got a call from someone claiming to have an interview that I can find no record of, that would raise a red flag, but maybe that’s not realistic. Maybe if the person pulling this trick also submitted their resume, so that if anyone checks the candidate pool they’ll see the name come up and it will seem like the error is on the company’s end?

I’m not saying I’m going to do this or would recommend it to anyone because I think it’s unethical in any case, but on a practical level what do you think? I kind of have to commend the creativity but … if this even worked would you consider that a red flag for the company itself that they didn’t catch the mistake or look further into it? Or am I too attached to processes and maybe this is a great idea?

No, this is bananapants, and I’m really, really skeptical that it would work anywhere except for somewhere extraordinarily disorganized, and maybe not even then.

If a random applicant calls to “confirm” their interview time for the next day, the person who answers the call isn’t just going to be like, “Oh, I don’t see you on our schedule so I better slot you in somewhere, how’s 2 pm?” They’re going to see there’s no record of an interview being scheduled for the person and so they’re going to check with the hiring manager or HR, and that person is going to say, “We never invited this person to interview” (or even, “We haven’t even begun contacting candidates yet, so this person is in fact wearing the pants of a banana”). Then they’re going to come back and tell you, “It looks like there was some kind of mix-up; we don’t have any record that we invited you to interview.”

I suppose it’s possible that if you had the perfect storm of conditions — a disorganized company, bad internal communications, a not-particularly conscientious scheduler — it could work, but good lord that’s basically just screening for the exact sort of company you don’t want to work at once you’re there. And even if you did make it to an interview that way, there’s a very good chance the hiring manager is going to realize they didn’t put you in the to-interview pile and will just go through the motions out of courtesy while not having any real investment in you, unless you somehow manage to blow them away in the interview against all odds, which I am very doubtful will happen if you’re someone who’s resorting to this kind of subterfuge in the first place.

There are a lot of really weird job search “hacks” floating around out there, and they grow in number as people increasingly think the system is stacked against them and see it as an adversarial process that they have to hack their way through. (See also: showing up without an appointment, being intentionally late as a “strategy,” sending the hiring manager chocolate, and on and on.)

They generally don’t succeed, are more likely to harm you than help you, and are largely pushed by people who don’t understand how hiring really works. It’s basically clickbait.

The post can you cheat your way into an interview by calling to “confirm” an interview time that was never scheduled? appeared first on Ask a Manager.

“You’re not leaving yet, are you? Team karaoke starts in 10 minutes!”

Welcome to today’s workplace, where meetings aren’t the only thing getting scheduled: fun — or rather, “fun” — is, too. The occasional happy hour has always been an office staple, but these days, you also might be expected to participate in escape rooms, team skits, themed potlucks, and myriad other activities organized in the name of bonding and camaraderie.

At Slate today, I wrote about how, for many employees, these enforced festivities can feel more like an obligation than a perk. You can read it here.

The post offices are mandating that we all have “fun” appeared first on Ask a Manager.

Earlier this month, we talked about coworkers overstepping their expertise in disastrous ways. Here are 12 of my favorite stories you shared.

1. The cocktail hour

At a past job, I worked at a substance use treatment center. My boss was planning a fundraising event and was completely floored that his idea of having cocktails at the event was immediately shot down by everyone. He kept saying “I have decades of experience in this and cocktails are the way to go” and leadership continued to push back with a hard no. He was a fundraising expert but was brand new to the recovery industry. Many of our donors were in recovery themselves so it would have been exceptionally poor taste, on top of just being bad optics. Not sure why he never understood that.

2. The punctuation

I used to work in corporate communications. I was helping the IT department set up a new internal site, which featured a gorgeous graphic of all the company’s various platforms. There were only three or four paragraphs of copy, which the team sent me in Word. I lightly edited and approved all the copy.

Imagine my surprise when I logged in a few weeks later and found a solid block of word soup. Every period, comma, and dash had been removed, as had spaces between paragraphs. No words were capitalized, aside from the names of IT platforms. I assumed it’d been some kind of technical error, but when I asked the team member, she told me, “Oh no, I removed the punctuation before we published the page.” Long pause as my brain malfunctioned. “But … why? Why remove punctuation?” “It made it all so cluttered.” Another long pause. “Huh. Well. In this company, we use periods. Punctuation makes sentences easier to read. So could you go ahead and put those back?”

“If you really think it’s better,” she said, somewhat miffed. i do i said i do this is not a %4*& eecummings poem this is a corporate website for the it department for the love of god put the damn periods back where they go

3. The title change

I had a friend change her own title on email and other correspondence from “Manager Assistant” to “Assistant Manager” because she thought it flowed better and meant the same thing. It definitely did not.

4. The command

My very first job out of college was as a computer programmer for a major financial institution. I could write a book about all the stupid and toxic stuff I encountered there, but this particular thing happened in my first week. The team manager (who was supposed to also be a programmer, but I saw no evidence of it during the year I was there) asked me to create a command-line script that could be called with two options. One option would list all the processes running on a specified production machine, and the other would kill all the processes. So I created a script with the options “-list” and “-kill”. The manager said this was too slow and inefficient, and I should change it to “-l” and “-k.” I did that, but added a confirmation prompt, so that if someone typed “-k”, the script would ask if they really wanted to kill all the processes, and they would have to type Y or N in order to continue. The manager said this was also too slow, and demanded that I remove the confirmation prompt. I pointed out that l and k were right next to each other on the keyboard, so it would be way too easy for someone to kill everything by mistake. I also pointed out that the script would be run once a day at most, so taking a few extra seconds to run it would hardly affect anything, while restarting everything after an accidental kill all would take much longer. No matter; everything must run at MAXIMUM SPEED!

So I removed the prompt as instructed, put the script into production, and sent out a group-wide email explaining the new command and warning everyone to be careful and not type k instead of l. Guess what happened less than five minutes later? Go on, guess?

After that, the manager grudgingly allowed me to put the confirmation prompt back in.

5. The article

The owner of a prominent local business won some big industry award and my editors told me to do a story on it (the newsworthiness of it was questionable, but that’s another issue). I reached out to the business owner, who I had done a profile on a year before, and she proceeded to condescendingly school me on how to properly write the story to ensure her many previous honors, talent, and business acumen were included and highlighted. Then she sent me a previous story about her that she said was a prime example of the best journalism she had seen, and I should try to copy that one because unlike me, that reporter was an expert who knew what they were doing.

That previous story was mine. She sent me my own story to tell me I was both an excellent reporter and a rank amateur.

6. The certification application

About six months ago, several Very High Up people at the university where I work received a Very Scary Email from a government agency with the subject line, “Recertification Request Denied.” Cue panicked calls and emails. Several people are immediately called into meetings to investigate what is going on.

Well. The university was indeed in the process of applying for a recertification (think something along the lines of, showing the Department of Education we should be able to continue getting federal financial aid dollars). At the same time, somewhere in an advising office, a well-meaning advisor told a precocious freshman to go set up a profile on a government website (think, making an account on the FAFSA site). Can you see where this is going?

Our dear freshman somehow found the backend government website used only for high-level university administrators and started an application as if he were a university applying for certification. Whenever he encountered questions like, “Who is the chair of the Board of Trustees?” or “Date of incorporation with the State Higher Education Regulatory Agency” (you know, things that would make the average person think, “Maybe I’m on the wrong form”) he conducted research on our university website to find the answers. This must have taken hours.

As it turned out, the email we received from the government said, in essence, that they had received our request from our wayward student, but the request was denied as there was already a well-established university with our name in their system.

7. The website redesign

I was the lead developer on a nonprofit’s website overhaul—clean, accessible, fast. Enter our events coordinator, Dana, who had recently taken one HTML course on YouTube and insisted she should “take a stab” at the homepage.

The next morning, we woke up to an absolute horror show:

1. The hero image was a 12MB TIFF of a cat in sunglasses (because “it’s fun!”).

2. All the navigation links were Comic Sans.

3. The “Donate” button now played an auto-looping MIDI version of “Eye of the Tiger.”

4. Somehow, she had embedded a YouTube video inside another YouTube video.

Oh, and she replaced the accessibility menu with a “sparkle cursor.” When I asked her what happened, she said: “I just wanted to add some ✨pizzazz✨ and I think I fixed the SEO too — I changed all the alt text to just say ‘hot website.’”

We had to roll back the site using an emergency backup, and our IT guy started labeling backups “Before Dana” and “After Dana.”

8. The stolen presentation

I came up with a new procedure that would save the company money. Said procedure was presented to all relevant departments, and all of those department heads approved the new process with one exception. One small department informed us that they just hired a new guy from another division who was a “genius” and he wanted to do a presentation on what he came up with.

The guy started the presentation by telling me “nice try” in front of many, many senior people, and then he proceeded to present my original idea using my original documentation. I requested that the guy zoom in on the bottom of one of the graphics on page 3, where I had typed my name in a very small font. The guy truly did not understand why everyone in the room laughed and walked out of the conference room.

My grandboss went up to the guy, shook his hand and said “Good luck in your future new career, whatever that may be.”

9. The explosive gas

I was responsible for a complex scientific experiment with many parts, involving explosive gas. We were ordered to shut our experiments down to prepare for a possible power failure and to have our supervisors check the experiments to make sure they were shut down properly. I shut it down and went looking for my supervisor. His colleague Jack said he’s not here but offered to do the inspection. I pointed out he doesn’t know anything about it and he brushed me off.

I brought him to the lab and showed him the experiment. He clearly had no idea what he was looking at. He asked me how the experiment worked and what different pieces of equipment did, and I answered.

He then nodded thoughtfully, turned to me, repeated back to me everything I’d just told him, and asked me, “Do you understand?” I was over it so I just said, “Yes, thank you” and he told me he was glad he could help.

And yes, I’m a woman.

10. The suggestion

A few years ago, part of my then-job was a focus on a specific agent process, including writing or revamping some of the procedures, and doing quality reviews of their adherence to said procedures. I did somewhere between 30 and 100 of these reviews a month; all were scored, but in a way where the points didn’t affect the agents’ performance ratings. My boss felt that the scoring had a psychological impact; also, it did give us insight into struggle areas and enable us to provide better and more targeted feedback.

So one day I get an email response to a review, in which the agent condescendingly told me that the procedure in question did not say what I claimed it said. I don’t remember the exact wording of the email, except that his final sentence began, “I suggest you educate yourself.” On a procedure that I wrote.

11. The complex mathematics

Eons ago, I got a job as a data analyst for a small company. The position had been empty for a while and a guy in marketing who was “good with numbers” had been covering it and providing KPIs for the team to use. He gave me printouts of the spreadsheets he’d been using and I didn’t understand anything. I eventually got him to email me the actual files and discovered he’d been using some very creative formulas.

Most egregious examples that have stuck with me for almost two decades:
– For the average, he would sum all values then divide by 2. Not by the number of values. Always by 2. Thus the average of 100, 200, and 300 would be 300.
– To increase a value by 10% he would add +0.10. So if you have an item that costs 200 and increase its price by 10%, the result would be 200.10.

When I pointed out that, respectfully, the numbers were a mess, he told me that mathematics is a very complex subject and I shouldn’t feel bad if I didn’t understand it. I am of course a woman and also my degree is in mathematics. People didn’t like me at that job. They said that since I started all the KPIs had gotten worse (they were just getting the correct numbers instead of marketing guy’s). I think everyone was happy when I got another job a few months later and I quit.

12. The cyberattack

My job suffered a cyberattack. An external email (the sender had a “valid” email) with an attachment and instructions to open said attachment was forwarded from the email account of a coworker – this is the point of infiltration, I think. This forwarded email was sent to approximately half the employees. The coworker with the valid email sent a company-wide email stating, “Don’t open the email with the attachment. It is not from me.”

Another third coworker took the opportunity to email the scammer directly asking, “Is it okay to open the attachment?” Scammer responded, ‘YES!!” The third coworker proceeded to tell the entire agency we could open the attachment. (He has no authority to do so.) Most of the employees who received the forwarded email opened it. The entire company was locked down. The IT department had to reconfigure ALL our computers. I’ve heard the IT department thinks the third employee should be disciplined, but we shall see if they are.

The post the website redesign with pizazz, the explosive gas, and other stories of people overstepping their expertise appeared first on Ask a Manager.

This is the short story, right?

WASHINGTON—Expanding its suite of discounted entry options to draw in more visitors, the National Park Service announced Tuesday the rollout of a new annual body-dumping pass for use on federal lands across the country.

Officials confirmed the pass covers park admission and day-use fees for the disposal of dead bodies on America’s government-owned nature preserves, including all 63 national parks and other recreational cadaver dump sites managed by the U.S. Department of the Interior.  

“This pass is your ticket to more than 2,000 scenic burial grounds across this great country,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said. “Just $80 a year gives you and up to four victims unlimited access to our many desolate campgrounds, dense areas of brush filled with natural predators, and bodies of water with strong currents.”

“Miles and miles of pristine earth for hiding evidence,” Burgum added, “right here in our own backyard.”

According to the NPS, while a 12-month pass might not make sense for Americans who only get rid of one or two bodies a year, serial visitors stand to save hundreds of dollars annually. Previously, single-day access could set guests back nearly $250 in bribes alone. 

Park officials expressed hope that the new rates would generate enough revenue to allow the facilities to offer amenities like community shovel rentals, while also helping to restore endangered scavenger populations behind the scenes.

The Interior Department confirmed the body-dumping pass is part of a larger effort across the agency to court an untapped demographic of potential visitors who in the past have historically avoided entering the parks through the front gates during daylight hours.

“I’ll admit, it’s a great place to bring what’s left of my family,” said Gary Masterson, a first-time visitor of Zion National Park, placing stained clothing items into one of the many accessible fire pits at the remote Lava Point campground. “It’s nice to get away from the barrage of questioning back home.” 

“You really can’t beat the austere, magnificent backdrop of these sandstone canyons for digging a hole or chopping up limbs,” the former father of two added.

With the NPS anticipating an influx of new visitors like Masterson in the coming season, body-dumping passholders are being issued a version of the “Leave No Trace” conservation principles that detail best practices for concealing one’s crimes with minimal disruption to the natural surroundings. The guidelines include reminders to avoid leaving behind weapons or bloody trash bags when finished, and to properly return any brain-splattered bludgeoning rocks to their original location.

A preliminary survey found that many longtime parkgoers were interested in switching to the body-dumping pass, with 56% saying they “could save a lot of money by tossing Grandma’s remains off El Capitan.” In addition, 70% suggested they had recently backed over someone in their driveway and “needed to make them disappear quickly in a way that looks like an accident,” while 94% agreed they “would like to see what happens to a bunch of corpses stuffed into a geyser.”

Several leading conservationists have praised the new campaign as a return to form, claiming the body-dumping pass falls more in line with Theodore Roosevelt’s original vision for the parks system, which under his stewardship doubled its number of sites even as the U.S. population mysteriously decreased.

“It was here that the violence of my life began,” President Roosevelt once wrote of the 230 million acres of public lands he helped establish during his presidency. “Whether it’s scouting new prey among the hikers at Crater Lake or disemboweling one’s fellow man in the Petrified Forest, America’s majestic scenery offers something for everyone.”

“There’s nothing better than looking out over the serene landscape of this beautiful country as you reckon with what you’ve done,” Roosevelt added. 

The post National Park Service Begins Offering Annual Body-Dumping Pass appeared first on The Onion.

CHICAGO—Kicking himself as the condiment splattered all over his pristine meal, local man Scott Wilkinson reportedly expressed frustration Thursday after getting mustard on his brand-new hot dog. “Son of a bitch, I just got this hot dog—how is it covered in mustard already?” said Wilkinson, dabbing the recently purchased frankfurter with a napkin and explaining that regardless of how hard he scrubbed, there was no way he was ever going to get the yellow stains out of the bun. “This frank is ruined, and I don’t have enough time to run back home and get another one. Ugh, it was 100% beef, too. Two dollars down the drain, just like that. This is why I can’t have nice wieners.” According to reports, Wilkinson later took his hot dog into the bathroom and tried to wash it in the sink. 

The post Frustrated Man Gets Mustard All Over His New Hot Dog appeared first on The Onion.

A bit of cancer is a small price to pay for this charming bungalow in the 500-mile exclusion zone surrounding the site of a catastrophic nuclear meltdown.

Reference #867530

The post What’s A Little Cesium-134? appeared first on The Onion.

A new Gallup poll found that only 54% of U.S. adults report drinking alcohol, a record low as growing health concerns and skepticism about moderate drinking drive the decline. What do you think?

“Not in my garage.”

Ed Rasch, Footage Splicer

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“My current reality requires something stronger.”

Cornelius Brown, Cheerleading Advocate

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“Nothing a good economic collapse can’t fix.”

June Montemayer, Ink Supplier

The post U.S. Alcohol Consumption Falls To Record Low appeared first on The Onion.

The White House has announced they will be reviewing all exhibits at the Smithsonian Institution in order “to assess tone, historical framing, and alignment with American ideals.” Here is a selection of the changes President Trump is demanding be implemented immediately.

New wing about the Cola wars

Plaques updated to confirm that wooly mammoths were white

Artifacts will be returned to the people who originally stole them

Air and Space Museum must loan all planes, shuttles, and gliders to Israel

Portraits and sculptures of nude women relocated to men’s bathroom

Overnight dismantling of anything even resembling disability accommodation

Melania added as newest of the 274 lifelike specimens in the Hall of Mammals

Blindfolds handed out at the entrance to the National Museum of African American History

The Wright brothers will be referred to as the Flight brothers because it just makes more sense 

At least one exhibit about how magic tricks work

Last sentence of all plaques changed to “and they lived happily ever after”

The post All The Demands Trump Is Making Of The Smithsonian appeared first on The Onion.

Let’s get this out of the way: Immigration and Customs Enforcement is nothing like the Sturmabteilung, a.k.a. Hitler’s Brownshirts. Your main clue is right there in the name. The Brownshirts wore brown shirts. And pants, coats, hats, insignia, etc. They had an actual uniform that they wore like brand ambassadors for authoritarian paramilitary violence.

ICE? Not so much. No official uniform, no clear identification, nothing that says, “I am a recognized member of a government agency, and what I am doing is legal.” Instead, they go for that “Target clearance rack meets SWAT cosplay” vibe: a tactical vest you can buy on Amazon, maybe an old baseball cap, and a face mask they want you to know isn’t there for any health-related reasons. That’s not a uniform. You can tell because people have easily copied the look to impersonate ICE numerous times in the past to brutalize or rob immigrants, knowing that it’s virtually impossible to tell apart government agents and straight-up criminals in wraparound glasses.

Say what you want about the Brownshirts (no, really, they were Nazis, say whatever you want about them), at least their kind of government-approved brutality was hard to pirate by someone with an extra fifty dollars and overnight shipping. So stop saying that ICE is like the Brownshirts. The Brownshirts wanted everyone to see them beat people in the streets. They did public terror. ICE does plausible terror so they can go out and get tacos on the weekend.

And when ICE agents aren’t wearing their vest-and-hat starter kit, they dress up as civilians. They’ve been known to pretend to be utility workers (electric company, gas, even delivery drivers) to trick people into letting them into their houses. Do you think the Brownshirts ever bothered with ruses? Hell no. They were proud of being fascists. ICE is still shy about labels because, again, tacos exist.

But this actually gets to the fundamental difference between the two groups. The Brownshirts operated out in public, in easily identifiable uniforms, so that everyone would be afraid of them. ICE has erased the line between the government and civilians. Anyone could be a secret fascist working for the government. Your neighbor. The guy fixing your car. The person asking you for directions.

The Sturmabteilung’s violence was meant to send a clear message: “We are here, and we will hurt you.” ICE’s operations, on the other hand, say: “We could be anywhere, at any time, and you’ll never know until it’s too late.” That way, everyone will be afraid of each other. Totally different strategy than what the Brownshirts were doing. So, let’s just cool it with the historically inaccurate name-calling, please and thank you.

Let’s say it again: ICE is nothing like the Brownshirts. One was an open paramilitary wing of an openly fascist political party, the other is an unaccountable government force operating without clear uniforms, identification, or transparency… for an openly fascist political party. There are SOME similarities between them, that’s true, but ICE is more like… well, we don’t really have a word for it in English. They are like… a government-sanctioned organization that operates without uniforms, masks its identity, infiltrates civilian spaces, and detains people without oversight, like some sort of… secretive… police-like thing.

But just because there isn’t a name for something like that does not give you the right to call ICE agents Brownshirts. That’d be like calling asbestos a “toxin.” Yeah, both will kill you, but THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THING.

NEW YORK—Sharing new details about The Life Of A Showgirl, pop superstar Taylor Swift revealed Monday that she wrote the forthcoming album while boyfriend Travis Kelce watched Family Guy in the background. “From the first song to the last, he was there for the entire process, sprawled out on the couch with his mouth agape and his arm in a box of Cheez-Its,” said Swift, who noted that while, officially, Sabrina Carpenter was the only other featured artist on the album, if fans listened closely they would be able to periodically hear Kelce saying, “Ha ha ha, Quagmire.” “The Tortured Poets Department was all American Dad, but lately, Travis has been on a real Family Guy kick. Sometimes I found it distracting, sure. But as an artist, you have to learn to take inspiration from the world around you. Pay attention to the track ‘Eldest Daughter.’ You might notice a few Meg allusions.” Swift added that both Kelce and Seth MacFarlane were credited as co-writers on the album.

The post Taylor Swift Details Writing New Album With Travis Kelce Watching ‘Family Guy’ In Background appeared first on The Onion.

OTTAWA – With thousands of passengers still facing travel delays as flight attendants strike for fair working conditions, Air Canada executives have decided to comfort customers by sending photos of their bonuses earned off record $1.14 billion profits last year. “We understand the frustration of having your return ticket abruptly cancelled just because we demand […]

The post Air Canada consoles stranded passengers with pictures of their executive bonuses appeared first on The Beaverton.

An in-browser tool to create your own RPG games, and play all the games other people have already made!

Added by @jayeless in Games › RPG.

The Waco Bridge is proud to announce the launch of an audio service aimed at making our work more accessible and useful. At the top of each story, you will find an embedded audio element from Everlit. Click on it, and you’ll get a machine-generated audio version of our human-generated content.  We hope this feature […]

The post Bridge Building: An audio upgrade for our local news appeared first on The Waco Bridge.