Cowboy Who?

The U.S. sued Texas to remove a policy that helped undocumented students pay for college. Texas declined to fight the suit.

Five years ago, during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, the board voted to change the high school to Legacy High. On Tuesday, it reversed course.

I’m really spoiling you with all these Super Derek pictures. You’re finally getting the measure of the character, even in this subtly altered form. Let’s hope this doesn’t mean he fully manifests in Solver at a later date.

The post So pleasant and trustworthy! appeared first on Bad Machinery.

EJ Antoni's comment raised new alarm about the future of an agency that tracks how the economy of the world's richest country is faring.

That Hume Cronyn is one versatile actor.

President Donald Trump has selected E.J. Antoni, chief economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, to be the next commissioner at the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics. Antoni's nomination was quickly met with a cascade of criticism from other economists.

AOL has officially announced it will discontinue its dial-up Internet service after more than three decades, ending support for the technology synonymous with the early days of the internet. What do you think?

The post AOL To Discontinue Dial-Up Internet appeared first on The Onion.

Katherine Blunt, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (main link is a paywall-puncturing gift link; also on News+):

Artificial-intelligence startup Perplexity on Tuesday offered to purchase Google’s Chrome browser for $34.5 billion as it works to challenge the tech giant’s web-search dominance.

Perplexity’s offer is significantly more than its own valuation, which is estimated at $18 billion. The company told The Wall Street Journal that several investors including large venture-capital funds had agreed to back the transaction in full. Estimates of Chrome’s enterprise value vary widely but recent ones have ranged from $20 billion to $50 billion.

Perplexity apparently also told the Journal that the story was theirs exclusively, despite the fact that they also revealed the stunt offer to Bloomberg as well. Prefixing a headline with “Exclusive:” is irresistible catnip to business/investor-oriented publications. The Journal, at least, had the good sense to raise a skeptical eyebrow at the premise in its headline (“Perplexity Makes Longshot $34.5 Billion Offer for Chrome”¹). Bloomberg, not so much (“AI Startup Perplexity Makes $34.5 Billion Bid for Google’s Chrome Browser”).

The whole premise is ludicrous. Start with the fact that Perplexity is only valued at $18 billion. Add to that the fact that Perplexity is almost certainly overvalued at that price. I don’t know anyone who uses Perplexity, and Perplexity doesn’t develop or run their own LLMs.

But all of this stuff about Google possibly being forced (as a remedy in the US v. Google antitrust case they lost) to sell Chrome doesn’t consider that Chrome, on its own, divested from Google and thus disconnected from Chrome users’ Google accounts, is likely worth little to nothing. I wrote about this at length back in April. Chrome is tremendously valuable to Google. It has very little value on its own. Chrome generates no revenue on its own — it simply serves as an outlet for Google to show its own lucrative search ads without paying traffic acquisition fees to a browser owned by someone else (like, say, Apple or Mozilla or Samsung). Chromium is open source. Microsoft Edge is forked from it. Brave is forked from it. Opera (remember them?) forked from it over a decade ago. Perplexity (or any actually credible would-be buyer of Chrome) could just start their own fork.

There are two things Chrome has that other Chromium browsers don’t: billions of users, and integration with Google account services. Chrome has those billions of users because of the Google account integration. Severed from Google, Chrome users would lose those essential features — possibly including Google Search — and they’d likely begin switching away in droves.

I wrote just last week that Perplexity looks like a scam. Someone is spreading rumors that Apple is sniffing around at buying them, despite the fact that the two companies are an absurdly bad cultural match. I think what’s happening is that the LLM chatbot field is maturing (exemplified by OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT 5 last week), and Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas is getting increasingly desperate. Desperate moves to seek an edge in product, and desperate moves to seek publicity that Perplexity’s product can’t garner on its meager merits.

Whoa-ho-ho! #CowboyWho

Spencer played Dee, the smarter, more serious younger sister who offered a steady stream of deadpan roasts of her big brother and his friends. The show, set in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts, was among the first on television to focus on the lives of Black teenagers.

OTTAWA – In what is being called “a tsunami of words,” Prime Minister Mark Carney is still answering a reporter’s question posed to him at a press conference six weeks ago. Liberal MPs and staff are scrambling to keep the government running as Carney shows no signs of arriving at his point anytime soon. “Honestly, […]

The post Mark Carney still answering question reporter asked 6 weeks ago appeared first on The Beaverton.

President Donald Trump’s Health Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., also described political violence as “wrong” and said his job is to protect employees.

Swimming in the Seine is an increasingly popular tourist attraction in the French capital, and a must-do for Parisians themselves.

The Malian military government on Monday started returning home the historic manuscripts of Timbuktu.

A Republican lawmaker in South Carolina has resigned from the House while awaiting trial on charges of distributing child sexual abuse material.

Police say more than 500 shots were fired at the Georgia campus, where a police officer was killed.

A reader writes:

I work for a small organization in middle management. Our CEO has asked two of our young male staff members, who are early in their careers/at the bottom of the hierarchy, if they would like to try her breast milk, more than once. Once one said, “That’s inappropriate” and she laughed. I don’t supervise either young man, but they confided in someone I supervise, who told me. They told the person I supervise that they feel targeted and like she wants them to feel scared/off-kilter.

We do have an external HR person and a board of directors. In the past, HR reports among staff have been very badly handled by the CEO (think breaking confidentiality, obvious favoritism), so there is obviously even less faith about how she will handle a complaint against her.

I perhaps made a mistake, but I reached out to the external HR person with vague details to find out the protocol for what would happen if these coworkers reported it and who they could report to, because I wanted to understand and be able to advise them on next steps (maybe through the person I supervise). HR said they could report to HR, the CEO, or directly to the board, but there is no guarantee of confidentiality and that we “must act” if I’m aware of harassment.

I’m not sure what to do next. Obviously our CEO is not a very trustworthy person, and our board has had some pretty major issues over the years and many are close friends of the CEO. I feel like I made a mistake reaching out to HR. It’s unclear if the impacted employees wanted to pursue any report at all. I want them to feel comfortable at work, and I also want our CEO to be accountable for her actions, but I know both of those things are outside of my control and I worry I bungled both through my info seeking. I’m also in such a crazy work environment that I’m questioning if it is “even that bad” — it is, right? Pretty uncool for a grandboss to offer young staff members breast milk?

Just when I think I have heard about all possible brands of office dysfunction, someone manages to surprise me.

YES, it’s incredibly weird and inappropriate for someone to offer colleagues their breast milk, let alone when there are power dynamics mixed in. And more than once?!

And this is even weirder because the employees she offered it to got the sense that she was trying to make them feel off-kilter! It would be problematic enough even if the vibe were different (maybe joking around or something, I don’t know) … but she made them feel like it was an attempt to Intimidate Via Breast Milk?

Something very odd is going on in your office. Somehow it’s not surprising that this isn’t the first time this CEO has caused a problem.

As for what to do … the external HR person is right that if a manager in the organization is aware of a potential harassment issue, they have an obligation to report it. She’s also right that the organization can’t guarantee confidentiality in such a case, because they would be obligated to investigate it and you can’t always do that without disclosing information about what was reported and where it came from. The options she gave you for reporting — to HR, the CEO, or the board — are also the standard ones I’d expect her to offer when she didn’t have more details, since it sounds like she didn’t know the complaint is about the CEO. (You always need multiple avenues for people to make a complaint in case it’s about one of those people, and so an alleged perpetrator isn’t investigating themselves, and it does sound like those multiple avenues exist here, at least in name.) So everything the external HR person told you sounds right so far.

I do think you’d ideally go back to her again and this time lay out what the actual situation is and ask for guidance on how to handle it. She should then involve the board — because the board is the only entity with authority over the CEO — and HR could take the lead on coordinating that.

But if you’re reading this and thinking the two affected employees wouldn’t want you to escalate it and would be upset that you did that in their names without even talking to them, especially in a context where people don’t particularly trust the board to be impartial … well, again, as a manager you do have an obligation to act. That said, the specifics of this are weird enough that as a first step in this particular set of circumstances, you could go to them and say, “This sounds like it could be sexual harassment to me, and if you feel that way too, here are our options for how to handle it.”

The post the CEO keeps asking young male employees to try her breast milk appeared first on Ask a Manager.

Here are three updates from past letter-writers.

1. My horrible old coworker is a customer at my new job and keeps lying about me (#2 at the link)

Ironically, almost immediately after I posted about my situation, K decided to double down with my manager and even tried to submit a few applications for bankers who could replace me. I was a senior recruiting consultant with my previous company, so it might not seem that off to a casual observer, but I was sitting right there at my desk, 4 feet from them, as it all unfolded.

I think I heard something snap in my head; I think it was my last F to give. What did I ever do to this person to deserve this? She must have forgotten that when her dad died and she needed help I lent her a not-small amount of money to help with the funeral costs. My ex-husband, at my request, helped with cleanup after a storm knocked a tree down in her yard. She asked that I proof her work before she submitted it, and, awful person that I am, I willingly did it.

I decided to employ a technique I like to think of as “weaponized support.” Any time K needs help? Leave it to me, I got this.

The first time I interacted with her after she tried to replace me was something I’ll never forget. I answered the phone, sweet as sugar, and she asked for my manager. I politely informed her that she had just stepped away from her desk but offered nothing else. She then asked if any of my coworkers were available, all of them by name. “Unfortunately, I’m the only one available right now.” K then asked if anyone would be in later that day. “It’s just me today, but I can help you.” She literally swore on the phone. I had to stifle my laughter. After hanging up, I am not kidding when I say I doubled over laughing.

Now? I love it when she calls or stops in. I don’t know if she’s still trying to sabotage my career, but I think she’s too uncomfortable to try anymore. As a nice bonus, my manager has even praised my problem solving skills to her boss. I feel like this is a win.

2. My coworker has a horrifying WWII artifact at home

Content warning if you click through: this letter was upsetting.

It turns out Gertrude has a history of speaking inappropriately on a variety of topics and this is being addressed on levels above me. When I texted her outside of work to offer some suggestions for the doll, she told me she had called a Holocaust Museum at which she had previously volunteered (!!) and would be sending it to them. I do still have to work with her but I have disengaged as much as possible and I’m moving states in the fall anyway so I’m just going to deal until then. Thank you for your advice and attention.

3. Should I apologize for past mistakes? (#3 at the link)

I really appreciated your response and the comments from readers. There is a little more context to my question that I left out for the sake of brevity but definitely influenced my update: I had mentioned a change in leadership in my original question, which included my direct manager. He was a friend/previous colleague of our new VP and was hired fully remote multiple time zones away from our office. He would regularly ignore my messages/emails and cancel our 1-on-1s with little notice. When I could get him on the phone, he would be encouraging and apologetic, but had zero follow-through when it came to addressing any of my concerns. I had very little support from this new manager; as one of the few holdovers from the previous team I was expected to handle not only a huge amount of work, but also managing a lot of interpersonal relationships with other “old guard” members of the department (including the stakeholder my original question was about). This meant communicating decisions made by the new leadership, many of which I did not agree with.

Long story short, I ended up leaving the company a month after the project went live (3 months after I wrote to you). After a year of feeling overworked, not listened to, and taken for granted I was experiencing a textbook case of burnout. I wound up accepting an offer working under an old manager, who had seen the writing on the wall about a year and a half before I did and left for greener pastures. I am so much happier at my new role. I did take a small pay cut but I feel respected, interested in the work, and like my life is no longer consumed by work stress and anxiety.

In regards to the issue with the stakeholder, I wrote a long letter I never ended up sending to her. I did have a call with her when I told her I was leaving the company where I spoke to some of my regrets from the original project and reiterated my respect for her and our working relationship. She had very kind things to say to me and expressed dismay about me leaving the company. In retrospect, I think the precipitating incident where she vented her frustrations was a result of poor communication from leadership throughout the project, and her concerns being given lip service at levels above me (a feeling I deeply resonated with). I do feel a sense of peace and closure from that conversation. Based on the updates from my former team members who stayed I also feel validated in my decision to move on from that company. Several others left the department not long after I did.

The post updates: the horrifying doll, the awful coworker who’s now a customer, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

Kasee Baldwin runs her hand-stamped pencil business out of her house in Spring, Texas.

Pecan growers are facing rising farm-related costs while hotter average temperatures stress trees, and prolonged drought means less water for irrigation.

With the help of software I created, I made some surprisingly long palindromes that actually sound really coherent. You can download the palindromer tool from my GitHub here: https://github.com/HackerPoet/Palindromer

❤️ Support ❤️
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🎶 Music (CC By 4.0) 🎶
HoliznaCC0 - Make Funk
1st Contact - Calm Stride
Lite Saturation - Fast Epic
4D Golf OST - Astral Vibes

It raised new alarm about the future of an agency that tracks how the economy of the world's richest country is faring.

I think it’s important that we know where we are and whether or not we have control of the ship, which, by the way, looks terrific!

“President Donald Trump said on Monday he was deploying 800 National Guard troops to Washington and temporarily taking over the city’s police department, an extraordinary assertion of presidential power in the nation’s capital.” —Reuters

A tourist standing to the left on a Metro Center escalator

The line at Call Your Mother on a Sunday morning

The price of one beer at Nats Park

Someone eating a granola bar on the metro

A Virginia driver trying to navigate Chevy Chase Circle

Steak ’n Egg closing

A tourist pronouncing it “DuPONT”

Seeing a movie where a character takes the metro to Georgetown

Overhearing someone say they were flying out of “Reagan”

Illegal immigrants everywhere (spotted lantern flies)

The humidity in August

Realizing the zoo is about to close, but you are all the way at Amazonia with two children and a stroller, and you took the metro here

The price of a three-bedroom row house in Adams Morgan that needs a gut renovation

Off-leash golden doodle at Petworth Farmers Market

When someone tells you they “grew up in DC,” but they are from Fairfax

Undesirables from seedy underground locations making lots of noise at night (cicadas)

How much a Mall vendor tries to charge you for one chocolate ice cream before you explain that you aren’t a tourist

Preferring Rehoboth over Bethany

Diners being accosted by strangers while eating outdoors past 8 p.m. on H Street (rats)

Not knowing to visit Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens, truly one of the most beautiful, serene, and interesting locations in the city that is often overlooked by tourists and locals alike

A man swimming in Rock Creek Park (RFK)

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
The main problem with the Erotic Ballet is that it's hard to politely clap with only one hand.

Today's News:

Get your copy of A City on Mars signed in person in Charlottesville, VA on August 23rd!

President Donald Trump stretched an outdated homicide rate into an inaccurate blanket statement.

Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said 30-year-old Patrick Joseph White also recently verbalized thoughts of suicide, which led to law enforcement being contacted several weeks before the shooting.

The nation’s capital is "becoming a situation of complete and total lawlessness," President Donald Trump said at an Aug. 11 press conference. Many of the details he cited do not stand up to scrutiny.

5-Day Uncertainty Track last updated Tue, 12 Aug 2025 14:50:03 GMT


Wind Speed Probabilities last updated Tue, 12 Aug 2025 15:22:07 GMT

Purple is one of the most unruly colors in painting, and it might be the most elusive. Shapeshifters, a show of works by Payton McGowen and Greg Piwonka at Martha’s Westside Market space in Austin, pulses with lavenders, plums, and red-tinged indigos. Unified by a deep palette of irreverent compositions, these projects are, at first glance, so oddly similar that they feel as though they were ripped out of a B-movie: twins separated at birth. 

McGowen creates drawings in which colored pencils bleed across the page so convincingly that they appear to be watercolor. She has a confounding ability to transform the hard material — each pencil distinct in color — into soft, flowing structures, imitating the striking illusion of fluidity. A subtle sleight of hand that reveals itself only up close — where the waxy markings intermingle.

In Kiss (2025), a poppy-colored bloom fills most of the paper, while an arching form slinks in from the right. The two meet at the top of the petals, and McGowen has rendered the distinct blush of concentrated pigment as it pools into water, echoing the flow of liquid. There is a corporeal exchange at this point — a slow, organic seepage. A violet blossom sits squarely at the center of Champ (2025), its leaves flexing in confidence, and its step-stone corolla glistening against the yellow and blue background, as if still damp from its creation. These are steeped in wonderfully unnecessary labor and material invention, both celebrating and subverting the act of drawing at once. 

While McGowen holds a coy distance from her material, Piwonka is a painter’s painter — his large, thickly brushed creations resonate with their making. His paintings exist within a closed system of color relationships. In T.P.B.O.T.W.C. #24 (2025), one enters directly, landing on a clumsy bolt of iris blue that rests in a charged expanse of coarse but polite shapes. These forms interlock and adapt, leaving just enough space to activate perceptual interplay. Upon closer inspection, figures begin to emerge from the composition — forms evolve into an alert dog, a child’s rendering of a brontosaurus, and a playful boot stepping into the corner. 

His canvases evoke contemporaries like Stanley Whitney or Jason Stopa, whose work hinges on careful orchestration — where color is both structure and subject. While Whitney and Stopa work with established motifs, Piwonka’s contours slither and push each other’s boundaries. His paintings are both static and responsive, a microworld of configurations perfectly out of sync. In T.P.B.O.T.W.C. #2 (2025), broad red lines tether the elements together — an arterial framework that unites the eccentric components as they flow up and out of the picture. 

The two artists share an affinity for soft, bloated forms: Piwonka’s response to external pressure keeps them distinct, while McGowen’s intermingle and diffuse into one another. Both previously made quasi-autobiographical works that explored the tensions of human relations — to one another and nature. This dynamic continues in their new bodies of work, though now the exchange is confined to abstraction. In this friction, there is a distinct, clumpy harmony, building a deeper unity that shapes those who engage with it. 

 

Shapeshifters is on view through August 23, 2025, at Martha’s Westside Market location.

The post Clumpy Harmony: “Shapeshifters” at Martha’s, Austin appeared first on Glasstire.