U.S. women's rugby sevens center Ilona Maher has dominated the Olympics, both on the pitch and on social media. Here's what to know about the rising star — and the rising sport.
Donald Trump falsely questioned Kamala Harris' racial identity Wednesday, saying that in the past she only promoted her Indian heritage until, he said, "she happened to turn Black."
Sofia Nelson — a former friend and law school classmate of JD Vance — has made public dozens of email and text exchanges with the vice presidential candidate.
2. I’ve done the same routine over and over for years.
3. I wear a nerdy windbreaker.
4. One of my most important goals is getting as much gold as possible.
5. People suspect I’m a different age than I say I am, but no one’s been able to prove it.
6. It takes a lot of product and an almost bizarre number of pins to keep my hair where I want it.
7. At this point, I’m pretty unabashed about picking my wedgie.
8. I have a complicated relationship with bars.
9. I’m always concentrating really hard on not falling.
10. Sometimes it’s the bars that make me fall.
11. I never score as much as I want.
12. There’s a lot of tape on various parts of my toes and feet.
13. The skin on my hands is dry and chalky.
14. Most of my smiles are fake.
15. Anyone who witnesses me exercising on the floor feels nervous, anticipating everything that could go wrong.
16. I have random pain all over my body.
17. Part of my mind is always preoccupied with the next vault I have to clear.
18. I’m constantly bending over backward for everyone.
19. I shoplift candy bars from CVS to feel alive and then, as soon as I get out to my car, shove them all in my mouth at once while sobbing about my newfound invisibility.
20. You don’t know exactly when, but you can be sure I’m going to flip.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was formally declared the winner of his country’s disputed presidential election a day after the political opposition and the entrenched incumbent both claimed victory in the contest. What do you think?
The U.S. women are bringing home the country’s first medal in rugby sevens. In a dramatic finish, the U.S. defeated Australia, 14-12 to win the bronze medal.
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Sofia Nelson, a former close friend of vice presidential hopeful J.D. Vance, about how he's changed from the person she knew for more than a decade.
Campaigns don’t often reach out to male voters as men. At least on the Democratic side, that changed when Kamala Harris became the party’s likely nominee.
The issue of border security is one of Vice President Harris' biggest vulnerabilities in her campaign. On Tuesday, she tried to use his signature issue against former President Donald Trump.
When President Joe Biden announced just a week ago that he would not accept the Democratic nomination for president, he did not pass the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris.
He passed it to us.
It is up to us to decide whether we want a country based on fear or on facts, on reaction or on reality, on hatred or on hope.
President Joe Biden called for sweeping changes to the Supreme Court, including a constitutional amendment that would limit immunity for presidents, impose term limits for justices, and stipulate an enforceable code of ethics. What do you think?
This Windows application has stopped responding to the system.
* Press ESC to cancel and return to Windows.
* Press ENTER to close this application that is not responding.
You will lose any unsaved information in this application.
* Press CTRL+ALT+DEL again to restart your computer. You will
lose any unsaved information in all applications.
The text for this message was written by Steve Ballmer. (He didn’t write the code to display the message; he just wrote the text that goes into the message.)
Could not continue running Windows because of paging error.
C:\>_
Next is the Windows 95 kernel error, which you could consider a “blue screen of death”, although Windows 95 lets you ignore the error, so it’s not a true death. (Then again, there’s no guarantee that ignoring the error will return you to a usable system.)
Windows
An exception 0D has occurred at 0028:80014812 in VxD CONTOSO(03) + 00000152. This was called from 0028:80014C34 in VxD CONTOSO(03) + 00000574. It may be possible to continue normally.
* Press any key to attempt to continue.
* Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart your computer. You will
Restart your computer. If this message reappears, do not restart.
Contact your system administrator or technical support group, and/or
peripheral device vendor.
This is a true “blue screen of death”: The system is unrecoverably dead at this point.
So we have the following table:
OS
Author
Release year
Windows 3.1
Steve Ballmer (text)
1992
Windows 95
ends with me¹
1995
Windows NT
John Vert
1993
¹ I did not write the early version of the Windows 95 blue screen message, but I was the one who brought it to its final form.
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WASHINGTON—Figuring a wardrobe update would play well with voters, Vice President Kamala Harris reportedly rushed to Marshall’s Tuesday to buy nicer work clothes. “It’s time I finally invested in a decent blazer,” said Harris, who flipped through the racks of discount merchandise, picked up a pair of stretchy black…
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Coworker’s retirement email took credit for our full product line
I received an email from a coworker who is retiring next month. The worker, let’s call him Carl, announced his upcoming retirement and then bragged for a long paragraph about his integral design accomplishments for an important product line. The email includes a smiling photo of Carl standing next to nine products, as though he was the program manager who was responsible for the team of engineers who developed the products for the world to use!
Carl is a draftsman, who followed directives from engineers. The program manager and the engineering team worked long and hard on each product design before meeting with drafts people for drafting implementation (blueprints, CAD, etc.). During weekly reviews, and sometimes more often, Carl reported to an assigned engineer and the two of them worked out any possible glitches or changes for design alterations that we other engineers made.
I believe in team work. Every job is important because every job has different functions when developing and manufacturing products. Working together, we all provided necessary input for each product. I can’t understand how or why Carl believes the product line is his. Worse, I can’t understand why he sent this self-applauding company-wide.
My engineering colleagues are privately laughing at Carl’s email, mostly because they never heard or saw such brazen nonsense. I have to say that it’s the oddest retirement email I ever got. Is sending pictures of your so-called accomplishments (or of your real accomplishments) a new thing? I find it icky, not to mention a morale buster for everyone else on the product team. How should we react publicly to Carl’s news? We aren’t motivated to give him a party because we aren’t going to enable his delusion. We don’t want to mock him, either, because, well, that’s not nice.
Eh, I think you and your coworkers are being a little mean-spirited about it! It doesn’t sound like Carl is trying to take credit for being the product manager; it sounds like he’s saying he’s proud of the projects he’s worked on, and here they are. You want employees to feel ownership and pride in the work they do, whether they’re the ones calling the shots for it or not. Was it a bit much in this context? Maybe! But I don’t think it warrants denying the guy a retirement party.
If I’m wrong and he explicitly took credit for things he didn’t do, that’s different. In that case, laugh away, or roll your eyes, or so forth. Although even then, I don’t think it rises to the level of “no retirement party for you” (unless Carl has generally been a jerk to work with; if he has, feel free not to put any special effort toward celebrating him).
2. Can I take my shoes off behind the counter?
I work at a gas station (overnight shifts 6pm – 6am). During my shift I’m usually behind the counter. During slow nights, I’m sitting at the work computer on my phone between customers. It’s a casual setting and the manager is pretty chill, but I’m curious … being behind the counter so often, can I take off my shoes for a bit during my shift? I usually put them on if I’m going anywhere other than behind the counter, but would it be wrong to let the dogs breathe for a few minutes or till a customer arrives?
The more practical question is whether anyone would know. If no one but you will know, that’s between you and your feet. Just make sure there’s nothing you could step on, for safety/comfort reasons.
But if anyone might see, keep your shoes on; a barefoot attendant isn’t usually the look businesses are going for. (For that reason, “usually” putting your shoes on if you come out from behind the counter really should be “always.”)
3. My coworker won’t help in our shared job
I work in security in a large hospital (we print the ID badges for numerous contractors to have access throughout the hospital), and I work in an open office environment. I’ve worked there almost two years now, and really like my job.
People approach our long desk where my coworkers and I sit, facing the public. There are three of us who do the same job, and we are all cross-trained to do everything that’s needed to get these people badged. That being said, two of us carry the brunt of the work. The third person, Martha, has a serious problem with playing on her cell phone ALL THE TIME. When people approach the desk, they approach Martha’s seat first. She doesn’t acknowledge their presence most of the time, because she is so engrossed in her cell phone, leading to me or the other coworker greeting and helping the person almost every time. The phone rings, and she can’t/won’t answer it, because she is either on her cell phone or talking to her daughter or husband on her business phone.
She always asks why I haven’t asked her to help with anything instead of doing it myself. I don’t feel like it’s my job to delegate work; we are equals in position and she knows what needs to be done. I don’t like confrontation, so I don’t say anything most of the time, leading to resentment because I am literally doing everything. I have said things in the past, yet here we are again. I don’t feel like it’s my place to keep saying things. My boss has a lot of health problems so is hardly ever present to be able to address the issue. I don’t know what to do, as I am running extremely short on patience with this problem. I don’t want to scream and make a scene, but I am done playing these games with her. I need help!
Martha sucks here, but you’re also writing off the only things that will help. Talk to her! I know you said you’ve tried that in the past, but I’m curious how direct you’ve been. Ideally, the next time it’s happening, you’d say, “Could you please not be on your phone when customers come up? When you are, Jane and I end up doing more than our share of the work, because you’re not acknowledging customers when they approach.” You’ll probably need to say this more than once, but that’s not confrontational or out of line; it’s a normal conversation to have about how workload is distributed. It’s not about assigning work to her; it’s saying, “I am doing more than my fair share and I need your help.”
And if you’re at the point of worrying you’re going to scream at her, it’s far kinder to have a calm conversation with her first.
Assuming this doesn’t solve it, though, then you do need to talk to your boss. You say she’s not there much, but the next time she is there, ask to meet in private, explain the problem, and say you’ve tried speaking to Martha about it directly but it’s continuing to happen. (That’s the other advantage of talking to Martha directly first: when you escalate it to your boss, you want to be able to say you’ve tried that.)
4. How to ask a coworker to stop watching me work
The least favorite part of my job is being shadowed. I absolutely hate having people following me around staring at me, and this summer it has been constant, and with multiple people. At one point I had so many people silently watching me working, I came closer than I ever have to walking out on my job. It’s almost over, thank god, interns and assistants have been gotten rid of and/or are going back to school.
However, we have a new receptionist who likes to come back and watch the “fun” procedures, standing around and getting in my way while I’m trying to work. It’s not “fun” for me, it’s my job, and I’m trying to do 100 things at the same time. I’ll admit I don’t particularly like this person and I’m a bit … on edge, due to the near constant aggravation of the last couple of months. I don’t want to be an ogre about it, but her job is at her desk doing her job, not watching me do mine.
Our manager has been missing in action at work lately due to personal stuff, so there’s no use trying to talk to her. Is there a way to nicely ask this person to go do her job and let me do mine? The best I can come up with is some version of, “Hey, I really don’t like being watched while I work, would you mind?” but I’m afraid it will come out through clenched teeth.
That’s actually fine to say, as long as you say it in a reasonably warm tone and not through clenched teeth. Alternately: “I find it distracting to be watched while I work and I am pretty burnt out on being shadowed the last couple months.” Tone is the big thing here — make sure it’s conveying “I like you, just not this specific activity.”
She may very well think you don’t mind being watched, since she’s seen so many other people shadowing you. Let her know you prefer she not.
But also: why have so many people been shadowing you? Is it truly necessary for their training, or is it more optional? Given that you’ve almost been at the point of walking out over it, is there any room to cut back on how much of it falls to you? If I were your manager, I’d want to know if something was happening that had you this on edge.
5. My employee passed their PIP — now what?
I have had an employee, Alex, on a PIP and for once it has done exactly what I hoped: improved performance! I’ve never had that happen before (I’ve done two, and one employee quit and I fired the other). I’m delighted that Alex accomplished what we set out in the PIP; maybe it was the wake-up call they needed.
So, what comes next, when a PIP works? How do you ease back on the PIP-related pressure of Succeed NOW, while also not risking a PIP-slack-PIP cycle? I feel like if we get to the final action date and I tell Alex, “Hey, you’ve done great doing what I asked; if you fail to keep doing that, I’m just going to fire you instead of going through this whole PIP again,” it would be the same as having a perpetual PIP. It doesn’t give Alex a chance to keep doing the job correctly now that they’ve really learned how; it’s just a sword hanging over their head all the time and that feels like a terrible way to work.
What is an effective strategy for after the PIP, when it’s not letting them go?
Ideally when you’re first writing the PIP, you include language like, “If you fulfill the requirements laid out here, you will no longer be on a formal improvement plan but will need to maintain that level of performance over time.” Or, “I need you to demonstrate this improvement in the next X weeks, and then sustain it going forward.”
If you didn’t do that, or in addition to it now, when you’re having the “you passed the PIP!” conversation, you can say, “You’ve done a great job doing XYZ. We do need to see this level of performance sustained over the long-run, and if the problems recur, we would not go through this process all over again. But based on how well you’ve done the last X weeks, I’m confident that you can do that.”
Enlarge / Converting this street from two lanes in either direction to one lane in each direction with a turning lane in-between would make it much safer. (credit: Getty Images)
Although driving is a privilege, some Americans treat it more like a right. This entitlement leads them to get upset with policy proposals that try to increase road safety by prioritizing vulnerable road users over the wants of drivers. But a new study suggests that a common complaint—taking away lanes from cars makes emergency response times go up—about traffic calming isn't actually true.
This is where road diets come in—they're a relatively cheap and simple way to slow traffic and significantly cut the accident rate along a stretch of road. You take a four-lane (two-way road) and repaint it so there are now three lanes for cars: one in each direction, with a center lane in the middle for turning. The remaining space on either side becomes bike lanes (physically protected ones, please).
SAN FRANCISCO—Pointing out that most of them don’t even own a professional sports team, local billionaire Felix Stacey gave his millionaire friends credit Monday for keeping him humble. “It’s easy to become out of touch when you have billions and billions of dollars, but I can always count on my millionaire friends to…
WASHINGTON—Providing long-awaited insight into the attempted assassin’s mental state, a report released Monday found that gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks googled “How to be an enigma” before trying to kill former President Donald Trump. “After reviewing the shooter’s browser history, we have discovered several searches…
PARIS – Following the decision by FIFA judges to punish the Canadian women’s soccer organization for illegally surveilling their opponents’ practice, the International Olympic Committee has also awarded the two coaches gold medals in the 600m Illegal Drone Spying event. “While we do not condone using high tech drones to spy on the practice tactics […]
HILLSBORO, OR—Lambasting the verdict as “cruel” and “brash,” 3-year-old Ian Tobler reportedly vowed Monday to appeal his parents’ decision to keep his newborn baby brother. “I am deeply disappointed by my parents’ decision to bring Mateo home from the hospital, and I will continue to fight for justice,” said Tobler,…
NEW YORK—Maintaining his silence in the wake of sudden tragedy, new hire Will Rorke told reporters Monday that he was not yet comfortable enough to mention that he had seen a man die on his way into the office. “I wish I knew my coworkers well enough to open up about how I just witnessed a stranger drop dead from a…
