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The Fourth of July flood bore a striking similarity to the Hill Country flood that killed 10 summer campers in 1987. In the following years, officials took little action to protect against the next storm.
My direct report fell behind in her work. Because this put our workplace at risk legally, she was terminated by my boss and grandboss today. I feel responsible because I should have known, and could have easily discovered, that she had fallen behind in her work. Had I known, I could have and would have done something to help her.
I think her termination was a horrible move because we don’t have anyone else with the knowledge/training to catch up her work. I feel this further exposes us to more risk.
I knew my boss was mad upon discovering this issue last week, and he told me it was a fireable offense. I didn’t think her termination would actually happen. Usually we have a graduated disiplinary process, and she had never had any prior disciplinary issues. My boss did not further discuss disciplinary measures after his initial comment last week, and I only found out about the termination upon receiving an automated email informing me that my employee’s account was closed and I now had access to her email, etc.
I feel horrible about this for several reasons, not the least of which is that I feel I failed her by not keeping on top of what she was (or wasn’t) doing. Everyone in my department is overworked and underpaid. We are chronically understaffed. I am hanging on by a thread myself, often doing the work of two people, and this might have just broken me.
Do you have any words of wisdom? I am seriously considering resigning and when my boss asks what he can do to keep me, I will tell him he has to re-hire my employee. I can’t really afford to lose my job, and while I don’t think he’d call my bluff, I’m not sure about anything anymore.
If you can’t afford to lose your job or leave it on the spot, you shouldn’t tell your boss you’re leaving if he doesn’t rehire the employee. It sounds like you don’t actually mean it, and you don’t want to bluff where a job is concerned if you can’t genuinely risk losing it. Moreover, people don’t normally get hired back in a situation like this; it’s not impossible, but it’s unlikely. (There’s also no guarantee your employee would even want to return.)
You’ve got to have a conversation with your boss about the workload and understaffing issues that led this to happen. Explain there’s no realistic way for her or anyone on your team to keep up with all the work, and there’s no way for you to spot what’s not getting done unless you make room for that by doing less yourself. You should explain that going forward, that’s what you’re going to be doing — because as the manager, you’ve got to be aware when things aren’t getting done (always, but especially when there are legal consequences in the mix, and also especially when you have a boss who apparently will fire people without asking questions) — but you’ll need to let him know that means you won’t be able to do as much XYZ in order to create room for that. There’s other advice here about managing an unreasonable workload, including setting clear limits on what you can and cannot do, but the first step is to sit down and talk with your boss about what the whole team is experiencing.
And unless your boss is willing to work with you on the workload issues (whether by increasing staffing or accepting more realistic outputs from your team), start working on getting out.
2. Should we say anything to our young male coworker about risqué photos we saw of him online?
In our travel agency we have eight employees — seven middle-aged women and one young man who is new to the travel agency world and is 19 or 20. Most of the women in the office think he’s cute, but of course not in any serious way as he’s way too young for any of us. He’s just cute, according to most. (The friendship among the women is very strong as most of us have been working together for a long time. Otherwise we would never have been talking about this.)
Our male colleague’s college has a tradition of taking an end-of-year skinny dip in the ocean. The news has covered the event with online articles and even pictures in multiple years. Well, recently it was discovered that our young male colleague took part in this year’s festivities. There was apparently a news photographer on the beach, and two of the photos for the online article included our colleague, both snapped when he was leaving the water. In the first picture, he is laughing with friends and his bare bum is on display. In the second, he is leaving the water and there’s full-frontal nudity. The owner of our travel agency, who is one of the seven women, thinks he must be unaware of these pictures and thinks someone should tell him, because then he can try to get them taken off the internet. Most of the rest of us, including me, think that he more than likely knows about the photos. We also assume anyone doing the event probably checks online afterwards. There is also one person who wants to discipline him somehow for doing the event. Everyone else disagrees with that because everyone is entitled to do whatever they want in their personal life.
Long story short, there is a debate about whether to tell him or not. These photos would not cause any issues for the travel agency. More than anything, I think the other women in my office just can’t get over it because they think he’s cute.
Don’t raise it with him, and encourage your coworkers to stop talking about it. If the photos won’t cause any issues for his job, then it’s really no one’s business and it shouldn’t a topic of conversation at work (let alone an ongoing one).
It might become easier to see how inappropriate this is if you reverse the genders and imagine if an office full of older men kept talking about nude photos of a young female coworker who they all found attractive. It’s not okay. Try to shut it down (and the talk of his looks, too).
3. Is there a way to reassure internal candidates that a hiring process wasn’t rigged?
I had been mentoring one of my staff (Lily) for a position that then came up on our team when another employee retired. I knew she would do a fantastic job, but also knew that we had to post it both internally and externally per our HR regs. I got a very experienced manager from another team to help me with the interviews (Dave) and he agreed that Lily was a strong number 2 choice, but that an external candidate was stronger. We offered the external candidate the position, but after some back and forth with HR over salary, he ultimately declined. I checked back in with Dave to make sure I wasn’t biased towards Lily, and he agreed that I should offer it to her. She immediately started knocking it out of the park, so was definitely a great choice.
My question is: more than half of the candidates who applied were internal (although not on my team), and I wondered if, at the time, they thought I had made them jump through all the hoops when I knew who I wanted to hire all along. Is there wording that I could have used when I communicated that the position was filled that could have alleviated that belief? I don’t think it was appropriate to tell them that the first guy we offered to declined (Lily didn’t even know that she was second), but is there anything I could have said?
It’s easier to address it early in the process rather than at the end: let all your internal candidates know from the outset that it’s going to be an open hiring process where external candidates will be considered too and there’s not a preferred internal candidate with a leg up. People won’t necessarily believe it, but it’s easier to say it at the start than try to explain it later on. Also, when you announce the hire, it can help to be specific about the person’s qualifications and why you chose them (not to the point of violating anyone’s privacy, but just to lay out what made them your top choice).
4. Can I ask my supervisor about a meeting I saw on his calendar?
My supervisor has a meeting scheduled for next week with the title “Progressive Discipline Confirmation” and no further details. I have not been invited to this meeting and it may or may not be about me. Is it acceptable to ask my supervisor if I should be worried? If so, how do I phrase the question and how should I ask (via chat, email, phone, by stopping by his office)?
For more context: Our boss’s calendar has the same chunk of time blocked off. My same-level colleague (the only other person my supervisor manages) does not have this time blocked off, nor does the other supervisor in our department. Of the three of us in our part of the department, I am the most likely to be censured for something. I don’t think anything is wrong but wouldn’t necessarily know because I am autistic, which means I don’t intrinsically understand social things and/or hierarchies. I have not received any previous disciplinary actions. I have been at this workplace less than a year, but am past the “probationary” stage.
My primary concern is that I don’t want to embarrass my supervisor if he is being disciplined, seem nosy if my same-level colleague is being disciplined, or put my supervisor in a tough spot if I am being disciplined and he’s not allowed to talk about it yet. My secondary concern is that I do not want to worry about this for the next week.
Don’t ask about it. If it’s about you, you’ll almost certainly find out soon. If it’s not about you, you’ll look inappropriately nosy (and if it’s your manager who’s being disciplined, you’ll be putting him in a very awkward position). Assume that if you need to know anything, you’ll find out.
5. How to handle thank-you notes for A LOT of interviewers
I had a first-round job interview via videoconference a couple of weeks ago, with the hiring manager and two other people. After the interview, I emailed a thank-you/follow-up note individually to all three interviewers. I got a nice email back from one of them the next week and a phone call from the hiring manager later that same day acknowledging my note and inviting me to an in-person interview.
I’m driving a couple of hours to attend that early next week, and it’s going to be a four-hour engagement, during which I will be speaking with what sounds like A LOT of people: the hiring manager again and her boss, and then I’ll be in an unknown number of separate meetings with people from two different teams and “divisional directors.” I would imagine the other two people I spoke with in the first interview will also be involved. Doing a little internet sleuthing to check out team size, I’m guessing I’ll be speaking with 10-15 people.
How do I handle sending thank-you/follow-up notes after this second round of interviews? At least one person — and possibly three — will have already received one from me in which I reiterated my interest in the position and my relevant strengths and experiences. On top of that, sending individual notes to 10-15 different people seems like … a lot. What would you recommend?
Yeah, you don’t need to send notes to 10-15 people! You can if you want but it wouldn’t look bad to just send them to the key people — maybe the hiring manager and her boss and anyone else you especially clicked with. For content, ideally you’d build on something you discussed in your conversations with them this time so you’re not just reiterating your strengths, but referencing something specific that you talked about. It doesn’t even have to be talking yourself up; it could be “here’s a link to that book I mentioned that you might like” or “I really enjoyed hearing about the challenges you’ve been having with the monkeys” or so forth. They can also be short since they’re Notes Round Two.
For the record, though, if you did do this with all 10-15 people and personalized them (sending even just a few lines to each person), some people would really, really love it. Others wouldn’t care at all! (And no pressure to do that.)
The show in her hometown of Houston brought the live debut of songs from her “Cowboy Carter” album. And the Emmy takes Beyoncé halfway to an EGOT with her 35 Grammys. She still needs a Tony and an Oscar to complete the quartet.
Salmon Cove, NL – In a stunning display of generosity, the Newfoundland government has given wildfire evacuees an unprecedented one-time payout of $500, covering 50% of a single monthly Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro bill. The payments will be distributed through the Red Cross to those who have been displaced by the incredible destruction caused by […]
The rumors are true: I’m overjoyed and not at all ashamed to share that I’ll be joining the HBO Max Harry Potter family as Stickles the Gender-Policing Elf, a character created exclusively for this series to, in author J. K. Rowling’s words, “address the crumbling morals of a world I haven’t really interacted with since 1997.”
Of course, it’s a lifetime dream to be part of the Wizarding World. I loved the books as a child, and I’d say their message of friendship, courage, and imagination is more relevant than ever—please treat this as my official stance and disregard any contradictory statements I’ve made on social media, at least until my accounts are deleted.
From the start of the audition process, I had a good feeling about Stickles, described as “a mischievous, unpredictable creature who brings levity and chaos to the Hogwarts grounds while reminding students there are forms of self-expression so indulgent and dangerous, they make Avada Kedavra look like a nursery rhyme.” Also, he wears a jingly hat.
After I got the first callback, I began to think I might actually have a shot at the role. I was shown grainy public restroom security camera footage and asked to point out anyone who looked “lost” or “not quite what I was expecting.” I was unsure at first, then my improv training kicked in, and I pointed at a service dog, saying, “If they’re in the men’s room, that better be a blue collar.” I swear I heard an executive whisper, “…That’s Stickles.”
When my agent gave me the news, I hugged him so hard he had to catch his breath before saying he couldn’t represent me anymore. (Nate, if you’re reading, I get it: We have to live our truth, and I couldn’t go back to asking my parents for rent and portraying “tuberculosis patient #18” at a local nursing school. Blessings on your journey.)
Soon, I’ll be on set to begin filming. Honestly, I can’t believe I’ll be standing alongside legends like John Lithgow, Nick Frost, and several other actors currently in legal battles to determine whether their involvement with the show can be mentioned in public. My first scene is on the Hogwarts Express, where I scold a male student for transforming into a butter churn that’s a little too female-presenting. “Remember,” I tell a train car full of children, “Hogwarts is a place where anything can happen, except a few very specific things we’ve decided will unravel the fabric of society. Beedle-dee-dee!”
I hope you’ll all tune in when the series premieres. We’ll be hard at work bringing Harry Potter’s story to life—again—for the next seven years. Because that’s how much of my life I’ve committed to this project: seven years. Maybe more if they extend the storyline. Who knows, this role could take up the rest of my career. Wow.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m feeling lightheaded and would like to lie down on my new bed in my new apartment and look at my no-longer-overdrawn bank account balance. I guess I’m dizzy from being around so much magic, right? Yeah, that must be it. See you at Hogwarts!
Reddit’s reasoning isn’t really about anything the Internet Archive has done. It’s that Reddit has decided to prevent tech companies from crawling its site to either show up in their search engines or train theirlarge language models; now those companies must pay for the privilege. And since the Wayback Machine contains what amounts to an imperfect copy of Reddit, apparently one or more AI labs had decided to just crawl that version of the site instead of the real thing. So Reddit’s blocking the Internet Archive. Worryingly, it’s not hard to imagine other publishers following suit with the same reasoning, which could radically reduce our knowledge of the web that was.
But the Internet Archive isn’t the only way to keep and research a copy of a website. Today Bellingcat, the OSINT-fueled news organization, announced a new version of its tool Auto Archiver, which it describes as “a tool aimed at preserving online digital content before it can be modified, deleted or taken down” — a critical need for any reporting on our lives online.
Publicly launched in 2022, it has preserved over 150,000 web pages and social media posts to date. The Auto Archiver has been used by Bellingcat’s journalists to preserve information on dozens of fast moving events such as the Jan. 6 riots — when we first used the tool internally — as well as gather digital evidence for our Justice and Accountability project and to monitor Civilian Harm in Ukraine.
The Auto Archiver has also been adopted by both large newsrooms and NGOs. It has been used by individual researchers, journalists, activists, archivists, academics and developers as well. With interest in the tool strong, we have worked hard to add to and improve it over time. But we have used the past few months to take a step back and to build a new and more robust ecosystem to further help individual organisations and researchers use and benefit from it.
The new features aim, in part, at making the tool more useful for journalists who don’t live on the command line: a “user-friendly interface,” better setups for newsroom teams, easier configuration, more documentation.
If you work in a newsroom or research team and want to access a demo or help to deploy the Auto Archiver internally you can reach us at contact-tech@bellingcat.com with the subject “Auto Archiver at [my team/organisation]” and tell us more about your organisation and archiving needs. Building a greater adoption base is the best way to ensure the future of this tool and its versatility.
Fine art video works will arrive to the big screen of the EVO Theater in the town of Kyle, southeast of Austin, on Wednesday, August 20, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. The event is a collaboration with ICOSA Collective, an Austin-based nonprofit artist-run gallery space.
The curated showcase will feature eight short video works by ICOSA member artists: Shawn Camp & Vy Ngo, Veronica Ceci, Ariana Gomez, TJ Lemanski, Juliette Miller Herrera Nickle, Matt Rebholz, Seth Relentless, and Ana Trevino. According to a press release, the two-hour program will span “a wide range of formal and thematic explorations, from the deeply personal and political to the collaborative and absurd.”
A panel discussion and audience Q&A moderated by Austin-based multidisciplinary artist Alexis Hunter, a former ICOSA member artist who was named The Austin Chronicle’s “Best Visual Artist of 2023,” will follow the films.
“Icon Meal,” (still) 2023, by ICOSA Collective member Seth Relentless
The press release further explains the occasion:
“While video art is often experienced on small monitors within gallery spaces, this program offers a rare opportunity to view these works in their full cinematic potential: projected in a darkened theater with focused sound and uninterrupted attention.” EVO Theater also touts its “progressive vision of cinema as a platform for artistic innovation and cultural dialogue.”
EVO Theaters is part of Austin-based Elevate Entertainment Group, with several Central Texas entertainment complexes offering first-run films, bowling, gaming, private events, and chef-driven food and craft beverages from in-house kitchens and bars. The press release states that the partnership with ICOSA “demonstrates a meaningful commitment to expanding the role of film beyond entertainment, and into the realm of visual arts.”
General admission tickets are available for $10 each through the EVO website. To learn more about ICOSA Collective, visit the Glasstire archives.
Installation view of “Michael Velliquette: The Distance Within Us” at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum in Austin. Photo: Ian Clennan
“Skill” and “effort” are precarious qualities for contemporary artists. Oil painters that attend classical painting academies in Florence will often find themselves relegated to portraiture and boomer landscape galleries. “Concept,” “process,” and “social practice” carry more lucre in today’s landscape for both intellectual reasons (skepticism towards aesthetic beauty given its adjacency/tango with fascism is warranted) and emotional ones (art is so deemphasized in our public life that any reason to justify itself will be taken).
And yet, skill and effort still resonate on an elemental level. Take Raqib Shaw’s Paradise Lost, the massive 100-foot acrylic work in the Art Institute of Chicago. Even if you find the piece aesthetically off-putting or treacly, the skill and effort give the work gravitas. It took someone literally years to make it, and one can feel that. Michael Velliquette’s exquisite paper sculptures, which are painstakingly handmade, radiate their effort, their skill, their intention. They conjure some arcane, lost craft, of which there is precisely one master left in the world (Velliquette).
Installation view of “Michael Velliquette: The Distance Within Us” at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum in Austin. Photo: Ian Clennan
There’s a wonderful frisson between the immense effort and skill in his technique and the playfulness of his aesthetics. These are wondrous pieces to look closely at; you can sometimes see a slight crimp or crease in one of the tiniest components and imagine the Swiss watch-like delicacy with which Velliquette must work. The subject matter and aesthetics are daringly New Age — hearts, stars, hands, mandalas, a facial profile reminiscent of the serene eternity of the PBS man. A few pieces wade into the cracked, goofy psychedelia of Jim Woodring, but throughout the tactile rigor imbues the work with gravitas and aura.
Velliquette’s process is ennobling; it reminded me obliquely of the great Pedro Costa film In Vanda’s Room, a documentary about heroin addicts living in a shanty town on the outskirts of Lisbon. Like Velliquette’s use of an “unserious” or “impermanent” medium (paper), Costa uses a consumer-grade 480p digital camera, but his care and precision with lighting and composition render his frame as gorgeous and beguiling as paintings by Dutch Masters. The characters’ lives are given dignity through Costa’s efforts. So too does Velliquette dignify his whimsy through his own.
Installation view of “Michael Velliquette: The Distance Within Us” at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum in Austin. Photo: Ian Clennan
In a new wrinkle to Velliquette’s work, this exhibition includes powder cast aluminum sculptures. These works were created much differently: Velliquette digitally sketched their designs in a rapid and improvisational process. On their own, the sculptures might be a bit impersonal, but they work beautifully in concert with the paper works. The breezy quality of the sculptures made from the resilient fabricated aluminum contrasted with the detail and care of the impermanent paper pieces creates a revelatory experience where the appearance of the works is indivisible from their ideas; the two are symbiotic carriers for each other.
It is a resonant joy and pleasure to witness an artist who has truly found their lane, specifically one that seems to go one indefinitely. Velliquette is two decades into this practice, and it only continues to deepen and complexify (as with his incorporation of the aluminum sculptures). In this way, Velliquette is a perfect fit for an exhibition at the Umlauf: Charles Umlauf, the museum’s namesake, was another artist who knew who he was, what kind of art he wanted to make, and the deepening richness and mystery that comes from such self-knowledge.
Michael Velliquette: The Distance Within Us is on view at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum in Austin through August 22, 2025.
I hired someone who presented themselves as a senior-level configurations specialist with over seven years of experience. They interviewed well and said all the right technical answers that convinced me they already knew how to operate the system and would just need to pick up the configuration.
A week before they started, I found an identical application with the same name and contact info, but for a different department — with a completely different resume and job history overlapping the one that had applied for my role. I thought this was very weird, but I decided to give this person a shot, thinking maybe they were a person of many talents. Their LinkedIn profile matched the resume shared with me, so I didn’t question it too much.
Since they started, I progressively gave feedback and suggestions to their work, offered many times to provide any support they needed, gave them a summary of the expectations and job description again after they committed a significant error, and finally gave them an informal coaching document per the guidance of HR. There was no improvement in the three weeks following the coaching document.
Fast forward to terminating this person at the end of their informal trial period. It got to this point after:
• They removed a data entry rule that led to over 100 employees getting shortchanged by a day’s worth of pay (this data entry rule is a basic and common installation a junior-level person could grasp). This mistake still rears its ugly head to this day with a different ripple effect from implementing later enhancements even though we have already corrected the issue.
• It took two to three times longer to design a configuration that is very basic. Even though I checked in on their progress once a week, reviewed their work, and gave feedback based on real-life examples of where their draft design is likely to not work as intended, they didn’t make any changes and tried to pass off their unchanged draft as if they did something.
• The workload that I used to do that was now the new hire’s scope of work barely moved (to their credit, they completed one assignment), so it felt like it more work to manage this person and the existing workload that they were supposed to work on.
• A peer confided in me that they were on a Zoom call with the new hire and could clearly overhear the new hire talking to an unknown person about what to do about a troubleshooting item in our systems.
• Every time I asked this person if they needed anything to help them complete the assignments, any questions, etc, they always said, “I’m good.” They would take more than 24 hours to get back to people about status updates for troubleshooting items (too busy googling for the answers?).
This person, predictably, did not take the news of termination well and used the opportunity to list out all the grievances they had about me even though they had never communicated any of it to me or my manager. I was convinced that I had failed as a new supervisor because I didn’t know any of these grievances that I could take action on.
Several months later, out of morbid curiosity, I looked at their LinkedIn profile, wondering if they had found work similar to the job we hired them for. Turns out they’re now presenting as a senior-level person with 7+ years of Site Reliability Engineering, which is wildly different from the past two resumes they have previously applied with at our company.
Now I’m just more paranoid about screening whatever applicants come by my desk to make sure I’m not hiring an imposter.
I wrote back and asked, “Did you ask them about the second application at all (and if so, what did they say)? And when you interviewed them for the job you hired them for, was the interview in-person or virtual, and did you do any skills testing as part of that process?”
I never asked them about the second application, because at that point I was already onboarding them. This was my first hire and I decided that since I already committed to hiring them, I should give them a chance.
When I interviewed them, it was virtual and the only “skills testing” we could do was asking them questions about what they had done in the past and to explain in detail how they build solutions. We can’t give access to our test sites to non-employees. This person used all the right technical keywords that someone experienced in a specific HR system would know.
Nowadays, a lot of resumes I see have very similar verbiage like this ex-new hire so I don’t know what to trust anymore.
Before you throw up your hands and conclude you can’t trust anything you see from candidates, there’s a lot you can do to ensure that a person actually has the skills they say they have.
First and foremost, you have to test people’s skills and see them in action doing the work they say they can do. Otherwise, it’s entirely too easy for someone to bluff their way through an interview — which happens a ton, because people have an overly-inflated idea of their own skills or they don’t know what they don’t know and so they wrongly estimate how easy it will be to figure things out on the job. Combine that with someone who talks a good game, and you can easily end up with a terrible hire if you don’t bother to verify what they’re claiming. Less commonly, it can even happen for nefarious reasons, like you’ve been targeted by a sketchy company that hires people to interview and then sends someone else to do the job (see this example!).
Seeing people demonstrate their skills is always important, but it’s especially essential when you’re only interviewing virtually. In fact, if at all possible, I’d recommend you do your final interviews in-person because it will help weed out deliberate scams like the letter I linked to … but if you can’t do that, there’s still plenty you can do virtually. You don’t need to have someone go in-person to a test site. You can ask them to whiteboard problems right there in the interview and show their process. Have them share their screen. Pose work questions and ask them to talk you through their answer. Make sure you’re not just asking people to solve a problem, but to explain to you in their own words how they got there, and then ask follow-up questions to probe for real understanding.
If someone’s behavior seems suspicious during an interview — like if they seem to be reading answers off their screen, or they keep having “connection issues” and then magically have the answer as soon as the connection is reestablished — don’t be afraid to address it in the moment. There’s no reason you can’t say, “It looks like you might be reading from notes. Can I ask that you put those away so we can have a less scripted conversation?” or “I’d like you to talk through your work as you’re doing it, so if you’re having connection issues, let’s reschedule for a time when that won’t be the case” or so forth. You don’t want your mindset to be, “This seems suspicious but there’s nothing I can do about it.”
In fact, if anything seems weird when you’re hiring, ask about it! I can kind of see why you didn’t ask about the totally different resume, since people tailor their resumes to the job they’re applying for. There’s no requirement to include everything you’ve ever done, and so your resume for job 1 might highlight A, B, and C while your resume for job 2 highlights D, E, and F … but it really depends on exactly what the differences between the two resumes were. If the work reported on the one resume would have been hard/impossible to be doing at the same time as the work reported on the other resume, that’s not a situation where you want to just figure, “Well, I’m already onboarding them so I should give them a chance.” Instead, that’s a situation where you should talk to them and say, “This didn’t line up with the work we talked about, so I want to ask you about it.” Listen with an open mind — it’s possible there’s an explanation that will make sense — but have the conversation; don’t just ignore it.
You should also always check references before you hire anyone, to confirm that what they’ve told you about their experience and accomplishments is actually their work experience and accomplishments.
And then once someone is on the job, if you see problems right away, address it very assertively. If their skillset appears to be wildly different from what you thought when you hired them, don’t let that drag out for months. If it’s clear that they can’t do the job, have a very direct conversation about the mismatch and bring things to a resolution quickly rather than waiting for the end of a probation period. (To be fair, I’m not sure how long you did let it play out, and it’s possible that it wasn’t long at all.)
If you do enough hiring, you’re going to occasionally make a bad hire. Hiring isn’t a perfect science and managers aren’t infallible. But there’s a lot you can do to weed out actual fraud in the hiring process.
I’m a senior engineer working for a major multinational company. We have ongoing problems with filling more senior engineering roles. We have far more vacancies than applicants. My line manager has been suggesting I apply for promotion for several years, so I have agreed to start the process to move up to the “lead engineer” grade. Now I want to drop out as I really dislike the process.
To be considered for promotion I need to:
1) Complete a guided assessment demonstrating “how I exemplify company values” (my answers are currently at 14 pages)
2) Get written testimonials from 8-10 colleagues and customers (!) with positive comments and saying they think I’m ready for promotion
3) Do a 10-minute presentation to a promotion panel followed by a interview where I have to “really sell myself”
In the main advice offered for the process, they say they are not looking for “nuts and bolts” answers, they are looking for people “to really shine.”
I don’t want to engage with this process any further. I think it’s totally cringe. I am very uncomfortable with the idea of the selling myself to the required level or asking people to provide feedback filled with praise.
This isn’t imposter syndrome. I am literally already doing the lead engineer role on several projects. I am confident I can do the role.
I think blowing your own trumpet is vulgar. I think that hyping yourself up is vulgar. I think nagging people to provide positive feedback is vulgar. I am not happy about conducting myself in this manner.
While I understand that all jobs do contain a certain amount of corporate BS, this is an optional process which makes me really uncomfortable.
Should I tell the bosses the real reason why I’m dropping out of the process or should I just make vague excuses about this not being the right time?
Tell them.
It’s ridiculous that they have senior vacancies sitting open and they’re making people who are already known quantities jump through these hoops.
To be clear, I don’t agree that blowing your own horn is always inherently vulgar. There are ways to do it that are, for sure — anything overly sales or smarmy sets alarm bells off for me — but “blowing your own horn” can also include just talking about your approach to work and what you’ve achieved. It’s normal to need to do some of that when you want to move up at work (whether internally or in an outside company). But the specifics of what they’re asking for are excessive. 8-10 written testimonials? Asking customers to write letters saying you’re ready for promotion? (How would customers even know? They don’t know what various levels in your company look like.)
Most importantly, your company already knows you and your work, far more intimately than they’d ever know the work of an outside candidate. (Although for the record, this would be too much to ask of an outside candidate, as well.) They can just look at your work and accomplishments and talk to your manager and your colleagues. Choosing to instead ask all of this from you comes across as making you jump through hoops for the sake of jumping through hoops — and that would be a bad idea under any circumstances, but it’s particularly ridiculous when they can’t fill the senior roles they want you to do this for.
So yes, tell your bosses. Say it’s an enormous amount of work and hyping yourself up when they already know you and your work, and while you’d be happy to be considered for promotion — particularly since you know they need the role filled — you’re turned off by the process and will be opting out.
WASHINGTON—In a gesture many critics have decried as yet another blatant bribe to secure favorable regulatory treatment, Frito-Lay CEO Steven Williams presented President Donald Trump this week with a 24-karat, solid gold Funyun. “The president has long voiced his desire to own a golden, crunchy onion, and we knew it would be our privilege to make that a reality for one of the greatest dealmakers in history,” said Williams to reporters as a beaming Trump proudly moved the gold Funyun sculpture to a permanent spot on the Resolute Desk. “This expertly crafted artwork reflects how much we at Frito-Lay respect the president’s unwavering commitment to protecting the freedoms of American snackers and snack makers alike. We hope that here, under your visionary stewardship, this Funyun will stand as a tribute to our shared commitment to bold, flavorful action.” At press time, Frito-Lay has pledged to donate $26 million in Funyuns, Ruffles, Munchos, and Cool Ranch Doritos to the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library.
Sections of Alaska’s capital city are bracing for the arrival of what could be record floodwaters due to rainwater and snowmelt flowing downstream from a basin dammed by the Mendenhall Glacier.
Established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge was set to grow up to 700,000 acres to protect wildlife in West Texas and the Panhandle.
In brief: Today’s post discusses our increasing confidence in the track for Tropical Storm Erin, and takes a look at some of the near- and long-term risks from this system, which should become a hurricane by this weekend. We also discuss a new Blobby McBlobface in the Gulf.
Status of Erin
As of Wednesday morning the Atlantic season’s fifth named storm retains a fairly ragged appearance on satellite, with the National Hurricane Center (a bit generously, maybe?) holding Erin’s intensity at 45 mph. The system continues to encounter somewhat dry air, and sea surface temperatures that aren’t exactly sizzling. So Erin is just kind of slogging westward across the Atlantic. But it is making progress, having moved about halfway between Africa and the Leeward Islands; and Erin continues moving with purpose, at about 20 mph. On this path the storm should find more favorable conditions in the coming days.
Tropical Storm Erin is still facing some challenges this morning. (NOAA)
Those conditions include warmer water and, crucially, rising air that should support further intensification. Accordingly, the National Hurricane Center expects Erin to become a hurricane by Friday, and potentially a major hurricane by this weekend. This is well supported by a suite of models we look at, and seems like a reasonable best guess. Bottom line, Erin is still very likely to become this season’s strongest storm to date, by far.
OK, so where is Erin going?
After several days of uncertainty, our confidence in Erin’s track is increasing. Although it is moving west now, it should slowly turn west-northwest by Friday or Saturday, and then northwest on Sunday as it finds a weakness in the high pressure system to its north. By early next week the storm’s center should lie somewhere to the north of Puerto Rico or Hispaniola, and be turning further north.
Super-ensemble forecast for Tropical Storm Erin. (Tomer Burg)
If we look at the overnight guidance there is a lot of support for this track, and it helps build our increasing confidence. Along this track the center of the storm should approach Bermuda by Wednesday (give or take a day) next week. We’re not saying the track of Erin is a done deal here, as there remains a broad range of outcomes beyond day four or five of the forecast. And we’re going to discuss other risks below. But at this time our land mass of biggest concern is the island of Bermuda. Residents there should be keeping very close tabs on the system.
Other concerns with Erin?
Yes, we have some. Depending on how quickly Erin strengthens (i.e. a slower-to-organize storm would remain further south) we would advise people living in the northeastern rim of Caribbean islands, including Antigua and Barbuda, the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico to remain vigilant. These islands are unlikely to see a direct hit from Erin, but they are at risk of higher waves and heavy rainfall beginning late Friday and running through the weekend.
Areas of the US East Coast, such as the Carolinas and Virginias, should also keep an eye on Erin. The risk of a landfall there is very low, but it remains non-zero. More importantly, like the Caribbean islands discussed above, there could be impacts to seas along with heavy rainfall. Overall our concern level for the mainland United States is fairly low, but at a week out we cannot say anything definitive about impacts there.
What about the Gulf?
What about it? I like living there. Good people. Great seafood. This week even the waters near Galveston have even been blue-ish. Oh, you mean the new tropical blob there highlighted by the National Hurricane Center this morning.
Blobby McBlobface comes to the Gulf. (National Hurricane Center)
Well, I don’t have much to say about this this morning. On one hand, yes, the calendar says it is August. So anything tropical in the Gulf at this time of year raises one’s eyebrows. But I’m having a hard time getting too worked up about a tropical low that will find only marginal conditions for development. If we dig into the ensembles there does not even appear to be too much of rainfall threat. For example, based on the European model, the probability of rainfall amounts of 4 inches or greater is near zero for all but a few isolated areas of Mexico. So yes, we’re going to watch this thing. But no, we’re not going to get too excited about it.
What else?
Overall it’s fairly quiet out there today. We’re watching for some flood concerns in southern Kentucky and Tennessee, including the Great Smoky Mountains area. A flash flood watch is in effect for much of this area, where there could be some training rainfall and higher wind gusts. The threat of heavy rainfall should pass this evening or tonight.
Beyond that, it’s mostly just hot out there in the United States, which is to be expected in August.
In brief: Parts of central Houston saw some fairly strong showers and thunderstorms on Tuesday, with a few isolated areas picking up 1 inch, or more, of rain. That pattern of sporadic afternoon storms should occur through Saturday before high pressure asserts a little more control. We also discuss the chances of a tropical system forming in the southern Gulf late this week.
Wednesday
The overall story remains the same for Houston’s weather in the coming days, with hot weather and just enough instability and moisture to support the possibility of scattered showers and isolated thunderstorms. These storms are most likely during the afternoon and evening hours, at a time when kids are coming home from school, participating in after-school activities, or during the evening commute. Today, however, I expect slightly less coverage than we saw on Tuesday. Overall I would say there is about a 30 percent chance of showers, with isolated storms. Highs today will range from the lower 90s near the coast to the upper 90s inland, with plenty of humidity.
Wet bulb globe temperatures remain in the “high” range this week, but that is typical for August here. (Weather Bell)
One thing that’s been noticeable this summer, to me, is the lighter winds. This is because we have not seen tight pressure gradients (i.e. very strong pressure systems) to really draw in the onshore winds. Today, for example, winds will come from the west at about 5 mph, with only slightly higher gusts. Winds may be a little more pronounced on Friday and Saturday, but overall they look to remain in the 5 to 10 mph range for quite a while.
Thursday and Friday
The forecast remains similar to end the work week, with highs in the 90s. Thursday and Friday may see slightly better rain chances, with 50 percent coverage of showers, and a few embedded thunderstorms. The most likely period for these showers remains the afternoon.
Saturday and Sunday
Saturday should see a continuation of this pattern, with highs in the mid-90s for most locations and a healthy chance of showers and thunderstorms. As high pressure starts to build some, I think most of Houston may push into the upper 90s on Sunday, with decreased (but non-zero, to be clear) rain chances. All in all this should be one of our hottest weekends of the year, which is to be expected in mid-August.
Next week
Temperatures for most of next week look hot, in the mid- to upper-90s, with lots of sunshine. I think rain chances will take a step back toward the 20 to 30 percent daily range. So yeah, full-on summer for Houston.
The Atlantic tropical outlook, now featuring a Southern Gulf of Mexico blob. (National Hurricane Center)
The tropics come alive
In the Atlantic Tropical Storm Erin continues to struggle with the intrusion of some drier air, but should soon move into more favorable conditions. A hurricane is likely to form later this week, or this weekend. The majority of modeling still shows the system turning before threatening the United States, but Bermuda is definitely at risk.
The European model ensembles indicate a low-end chance of something developing in the Bay of Campeche on Friday. (National Hurricane Center)
Additionally the National Hurricane Center is tracking a low pressure system that should emerge into the Bay of Campeche on Thursday or so. There is a slight chance of some development over the southern Gulf, and you always want to keep an eye on anything in that region in August. However, none of the models are particularly excited about this tropical low, and the atmospheric conditions are not super supportive. So, at this point, the most likely scenario is that the low has minimal to no impact on our weather. We’ll see.
I’m flanked by them in most pictures. Perched atop a yellow parking curb in swimsuits and sneakers, we squint and smile for the camera, a mix of frizzy curls and stray hairs haloing our faces. It’s Memorial Day weekend 1986, and we’re minutes away from learning that Hands Across America will not solve the problem of hunger. But in this shot, we’re full of hope and sisterly adventure, and my diaper, bulging beneath my swimsuit, is, well, full.
In a photo from the previous year, the three of us pose in leotards, showing off our splits atop a gymnastics mat that’s covering shag carpet. Only Sienna, the middle sister, is a gymnast, but I’ll give it a try soon, and promptly quit. She can keep the hand chalk and stubborn wedgies. But I know exactly why I’m smiling in this picture. I can feel it blooming now in my chest, at forty-two: Safe. Complete. We’re all doing the same thing together.
My sisters, six and a half years and five years older than me, didn’t choose the role-model life. Birth order chose them, and they became my guides for how to be in this world. As the baby of the family, I looked up to them. Took their money. Woke up early to eat the best leftover pizza slices. Okay, and once I hid in Sienna’s closet and took a bite from her school fundraiser chocolate bar, wrapped it back up in foil, and denied it when she discovered the work of my baby teeth. What are you, an archaeologist? You’re just a middle school cheerleader in need of new uniforms. But now, seeing myself as the AuDHD baby of the family, who masked her way through the first forty years of life, my à la carte mimicry of them makes so much sense.
Neurodivergence aside (*laugh track plays), can anyone parse sibling influences in a true or worthy way? I’ll take the bait.
Autumn, the firstborn, embodied a more maternal role. When I started talking later than most kids, trying to say “squirrel” while sucking on my Nuk, or passionately explaining how I loved the clapping of dress shoes across tiled floors, my parents recruited Autumn to translate. She’d listen, make guesses, and give me multiple-choice options, somehow never too tired to try.
When neighbors gifted us a doll from Portugal, she named it “Portugali” and sang lyrics I know by heart:
“I’m Port-u-gali and I love to walk, Port-u-gali and I love to talk, Port-u-gali and I love to sing, Port-u-gali, give me a ring! Do-do do-do do-deh-do-deh do…”
I sat on our parents’ bed, watching the stiff doll lean right and left in her hand, waiting for the rhyming words I was so good at spotting, mostly just being without any expectations but to giggle when I wanted.
My oldest sister, who skipped two grades in elementary school and left for college at sixteen on scholarship; who answered Jeopardy! questions faster than Alex Trebek could ask them; and read Waiting to Exhale in one night while the rest of us were satisfied watching Angela Bassett start a fire, set the intellectual bar high. When she visited me in DC in my early twenties, she pointed out the NPR building like it was the empty tomb. “How cool is that, Taz?!” I knew the NPR spoofs on SNL better than I knew NPR, but I paid attention, and, a few years later, interned with Michel Martin.
But Autumn also brought a heavy dose of quirk that made my own weirdness okay. We watched Daria together like we were in on a cosmic joke and sang the words to Indigo Girls’ songs as though we knew what fast-fading love could do to a person’s soul. The summer before I was diagnosed as autistic, I intuitively went back to these songs, downloaded them on my phone, and listened as the deep harmonies and storytelling pulled out a chair for me once more.
And when she left for college, and I stayed behind as a rising fifth grader, I wrote her letters with purposely misspelled words, and drew a winged poodle-type creature for her, called it Mini-Habas. Maybe he served as what writer Ann Hood calls the “objective correlative.” The thing that carries the weight of the emotion in a story.
Sienna, born five years and a day before me, acted as a goofy friend who knew how to do everything well. Your TV and VCR acting up? Have Sienna take a look. Not sure what to wear for picture day at school? Ask Sienna if jelly shoes are still in. Feeling a bit drab-headed into senior year? Sienna can give you a bob with a pair of kitchen scissors that would make ’90s icon Monica jealous. Want to imagine breaking the rules by getting drunk off IBC Root Beer? You know who to call. I don’t remember our dynamic ever really shifting, except for the time when I helped Sienna feed her newborn, who arrived seven months after my son. And here’s how you extract the colostrum. Are we even now?
Most of the time, I was thrilled just to watch her work:
Picture us in the ’80s, duh, and we’re standing at the sink of the shag carpet house’s half-bath. Today’s occasion isn’t a fake baptism or Holy Communion with Welch’s and Mikesell’s potato chips. Beloved, today my sister will fit her Barbie’s broken leg with an expertly constructed cast of toilet paper and water, inserting a popsicle stick if she finds a compound fracture.
“I’m going to marry a Hawaiian man and live in Hawaii and be a doctor,” she tells me. I am honored to be a smelly plebeian in earshot of her wisdom.
“Me too. I’m going to marry a Hawaiian man and be a doctor too.” It’s not the first time she’s shared her keys to a good life, but I need to re-emphasize my commitment. She’s the Naomi to my Ruth. The Ren to my Stimpy. The pitcher of water to my frozen juice concentrate. I still cry if Mom is five minutes late picking me up from school. I’m a long way from being able to set a bone across the Pacific.
After Sienna heals the Barbie at the well, I borrow a porcelain doll from Autumn, break its hollow femur, and make no plans to tell her. When she finds the doll, still adorned in its red velvet dress, in perfect condition from the pelvic floor up, I just stare at her, then at the doll, then into the void, hoping for a Christmas miracle. Jesus, be a leg regeneration.
This is how I perceived our bonds as siblings inside the house. I realize, to the outside world, and especially our predominantly white suburb, we looked a lot alike. We functioned as a unit. The Sharp Sisters. As the littlest, the last hurrah, I had to keep up and live up to the good name my sisters made for us. A Sharp sister skipped grades or made the Honor Roll every time or was a class valedictorian. (Imagine my shame when I failed the gifted program test the first time around after interpreting my teacher’s instructions to be “creative” quite literally. It was an IQ test.) She edited the high school paper or won a national essay contest or tried track and field for fun, and clinched a trip to States. She excelled in science or Spanish or both, and performed in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. These girls turned in their homework, didn’t drink or do drugs, and never worried about parent-teacher conferences. Sometimes they were even asked out by a white classmate who wasn’t afraid of what his parents would say.
Sometimes.
When I couldn’t find a date for the junior prom I’d planned as part of student council (shoutout to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who faced the same predicament), I called Sienna, who was away at college. How humiliating, to be so unlikeable or unattractive that no one would accompany me to a dance for a couple of hours. I cried through my story, embarrassed to admit how I’d failed.
“Taylor, the same exact thing happened to me,” she said.
My sister, the one who’d sent in a picture to Seventeen magazine and was named a semifinalist in some hot mama contest on her first try?
“Yep, the same exact thing, Taz. They think they’re all that.”
That was all I needed.
“Me too,” she’d said this time.
Keep holding on, I’d heard in her voice. Don’t let them take anything else from you. You’re gorgeous, Taz, I’d heard Autumn tell me, often and unsolicited.
There’s a word in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows that describes how my sisters have helped ground me in this life:
kenaway (“ken-uh-wey”) n. the longing to see how other people live their lives when they’re not in public; wishing you could tune into the raw feed of another human existence… if only to give you something to compare your own life against, and figure out whether you’re bizarrely normal or normally bizarre.
I don’t know exactly where I fall on the spectrum of bizarrely normal to normally bizarre, but I lean toward weird no matter what. And I still look at my sisters sometimes and feel the alone-ness of being just a writer, not even a best-selling one, instead of a lawyer or entrepreneur. We aren’t a monolith, it turns out. What did I miss? I ask, or berate, myself on rough days.
Their words, the echoes of “you’re brilliant” and “that’s incredible,” don’t make it all better every time. My sisters have their own lives; they can’t be on call to shore up every place where shame and ableism erode my self-worth. But year after year since 1983, often in moments we didn’t catch on film, they’ve urged me not to turn back from myself. We can see it, they’ve foretold. There’s still more for you here.
The independence of federal statistical agencies is “nonsense,” the head of the Commerce Department and one of President Trump’s chief economic emissaries told employees on Tuesday, who said they need to focus only on obtaining “the right answer.”
The comments, coming on the heels of President Trump firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after her agency released a weak jobs report, sparked concern among the staff present for the remarks. Commerce Department Secretary Howard Lutnick immediately followed up his comment by noting accuracy was the only important concept for federal statisticians and stressed they “can’t be twisted by anyone,” according to a recording obtained by Government Executive.
Still, Lutnick seeming to label statistical independence as an irrelevant consideration caught employees off guard and renewed questions of potential political interference in federal statistical work. Trump’s firing of Erika McEntarfer, who had served as BLS commissioner, caused watchdog groups, former agency leaders and current employees to sound the alarm on what the decision could mean for future political interference with their work.
“What is the answer to the question?” Lutnick asked at a town hall for Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis employees when asked about the importance of statistical independence at federal agencies. “As best as humanly possible with as many tools as possible, get the right answer. So independence is a nonsense. Okay, accuracy is the only word that matters.”
Lutnick did make clear he sought only truthful data and would not accept any improper biases. He said that being “honestly accurate” is the driving force of the statistical agencies and anyone who has an opinion on an outcome they prefer is working for the wrong bureau.
“If someone's opinion is driving them, then they're tilting the foundation, and they're going to mess with America,” Lutnick said. “Let's get the answer right. God knows, let's get the answer right. And, therefore, that's all I care about.”
The secretary went on to call for the right answer several more times.
“Get the answer right, and let's try to get America on the right track to take care of all Americans. You are the driver of those statistics that we rely upon. They can't be twisted. They can't be twisted by anyone.”
Robert Santos, who led Census from 2022 until shortly after Trump took office, noted the 2018 Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act codified the independent nature of statistics-related work at federal agencies.
“The core values of the Census Bureau are scientific integrity, objectivity, transparency and independence,” Santos said. “Independence of federal agencies to gather and process data, then publish federal statistics is what the public needs and deserves.”
Lutnick spent much of his address talking up the benefits of AI, calling for federal statisticians to integrate it more into their work, according to one attendee. They should produce more and better data that is delivered on a timelier basis, he said, repeating three times “more, better.” He cited revisions made to BLS jobs data in suggesting that delays in accurate data can lead to bad decisions by policymakers. Trump and other administration officials have taken that line of thinking further, suggesting without any evidence that BLS purposely misrepresented the data to reflect negatively on the president.
Paul Schroeder, executive director of the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics, said Lutnick’s goal of accuracy could become not credible if he does not ensure independence of the agencies he oversees.
“I certainly disagree that independence is nonsense,” Schroeder said, adding that independence in the context of statistical agencies refers to independence from political bias or favor. A failure to ensure its work is free from such bias, he said, would “harm the accuracy” of the data.
The Trump administration has taken an adversarial approach to the independence that some agencies maintain. Trump signed an executive order this year curtailing the autonomy that many independent regulatory agencies have historically enjoyed, requiring the White House to have more oversight of their actions. Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought prior to taking office told Tucker Carlson that he was focused on “destroying independence at every agency.” In his first time leading OMB during Trump’s first term, he said, he was frustrated by who got to “make the decisions on statistics” and vowed to remove related independence that enabled that mindset.
Violent crime in the United States fell 4.5% in 2024, according to a new FBI report, while property crime dropped 8.1% from the previous year.
The declines continue a trend seen since crime surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, when homicides jumped nearly 30% in 2020 — one of the largest one-year increases since the FBI began keeping records in 1930. By 2022, violent crime had fallen close to pre-pandemic levels.
Homicides, which the FBI classifies as murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, dropped nearly 15% in 2024. Reports of other violent offenses also decreased, including rape by 5.2%, robbery by 8.9% and aggravated assault by 3%.
Property crime also fell across all major categories, with motor vehicle theft down 18.6%, burglary down 8.6% and larceny-theft down 5.5%. Reported hate crimes decreased 1.5% from the previous year.
The 2024 report draws on submissions from 16,675 law enforcement agencies — 2.1% more than last year — representing more than 95% of the U.S. population. Every city agency serving a population of 1 million or more people provided a full year of data. Participation in the FBI’s crime data collection is voluntary, and the data is based on crimes reported to police.
About 75% of participating agencies submitted information through the FBI’s new, more detailed National Incident-Based Reporting System, or NIBRS, which covered 87% of the population.
The data release marks a shift from recent years when participation lagged following the FBI’s 2021 transition to the new system, which required many law enforcement agencies to invest in training and technology upgrades. In 2021, national reporting rates fell below 70% for the first time in two decades, forcing the FBI to estimate results for many jurisdictions.
The FBI’s crime trends report also includes new law enforcement safety data. Sixty-four officers were feloniously killed in the line of duty in 2024, 43 officers were accidentally killed and 85,730 officers were assaulted.
Although the FBI’s 2024 report is a year behind, it aligns with other crime trend reports. The Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, recently found that homicides and other serious offenses, including gun assaults and carjackings, fell in the first half of 2025 across 42 major cities compared to the same period in 2024.
Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.
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