Cowboy Who?

A major expansion of the Ben Taub Hospital in the Texas Medical Center is set to include the seizure of nearly nine acres of land in Hermann Park, once envisioned as a healing garden for patients and visitors.

The Texas Senate has once again passed legislation that would ban THC. But this time, the sponsor of the bill says he addressed the concerns Gov. Greg Abbott raised when he vetoed a THC ban during the regular legislative session.

PARIS/LONDON/OTTAWA – The governments of France, the UK and Canada have said they will do what’s morally right and recognize Palestine’s right to exist as a nation as early as September, providing some resemblance of it still exists by then. “We believe Palestine has a right to exist, and we will recognize this and work […]

The post Western World to recognize Palestine as a state in September if it’s still there appeared first on The Beaverton.

SUDBURY, ON ― Friends and family of 23-year-old Seamus Bryant are coming together to express their extreme shock and substantially more moderate grief for what they unanimously described as a “perfectly mediocre” young man. Bryant was hit last week while driving home from work. “Seamus was a longtime friend of mine. We weren’t all that […]

The post Local car crash victim remembered as “nothing special, if we’re being honest” appeared first on The Beaverton.

Brandon, MB – While doing some cleaning around her hard drive, local 39-year-old Hannah Greensly has stumbled upon an old zip file containing all her photos from the aughts and is currently taking a trip down memory lane. “Oh my god, I thought I lost these when the modem caught fire!” Greensly said as she […]

The post Elder Millennial opens zip file of cherished memories appeared first on The Beaverton.

From food labels to lawsuit-friendly policies, lawmakers have charted a forceful path for state government. 

The governor plans to go through the Legislature to usher in a map with more Democratic seats if Texas tilts its map to the right, according to a person with knowledge of Newsom’s thinking.

New solid waste trucks are headed to Houston from New Mexico. Mayor Whitmire says some trucks will arrive within two days after the purchase is finalized — but they won’t completely solve the problem.

Housing advocates and community organizers won a major victory Wednesday as Houston Mayor John Whitmire signaled support for a council member’s push to spend more disaster recovery funds on home repairs and housing.

A reader writes:

I work for a 25-person dysfunctional company, heading up a small but important team. Last year, Sasha joined us and has blown the company away with her talent and commitment. She has been unanimously voted the star employee by the board. I don’t think she fully realizes her capabilities and could be earning £10k-20k more elsewhere for far superior companies.

Sasha has requested a promotion, which is rightly due. My company is dragging its heels. I have asked many times for eight months for her to be recognized, and nothing has come of it. I managed to get my manager to agree to a pay raise ahead of Sasha’s annual appraisal, only for them to do a 180 at the last minute and put the raise on hold while finances are worked out behind the scenes. This has now cost Sasha at least two months of extra pay.

I was finally told that if Sasha completed some set milestones, she would receive the promotion. I immediately created a thorough roadmap and detailed job description, along with a proposed salary based on the national average for the role. Straight away, my bosses expressed alarm at the proposal and now want to delay discussions for a few more weeks.

Sasha has also made a request to work fully remotely due to a lengthier change in commute and a need to work in a calm environment. There has been pushback against this with no credible reason, despite the fact that there are already three fully remote employees, and Sasha would have to resign — our star employee! — if the request is denied as the commute would be impossible to do in a day and back.

This is not an issue with Sasha. In the two years I have been here, there has been only one promotion I am aware of. I know through the grapevine that others have expressed dissatisfaction at lack of career growth, and two have just resigned for more senior positions elsewhere. In my appraisal last year, a new job title for me was discussed and nothing has materialized 12 months on. I requested a salary review last December and nothing has happened.

I hate that I can not reward my team member appropriately and deservedly, and instead feel complicit in dangling a carrot unfairly.

At this point, I feel it is the moral thing to do as a mentor to discreetly advise Sasha to job hunt and resign. It is clear my terrible company will not reward her (but they are very quick to punish those who don’t perform, I may add.) It will be a huge loss to my team, torpedo client work, and make my job hellish without her. But she deserves to thrive. Sasha will soon be in a living situation where she will be rent-free and she has completed a side hustle that qualifies her to work in a different type of industry that is well-paying.

What say you?

Yes, please tell her.

She deserves to know that the incentives that have been dangled in front of her are unlikely to come to fruition, and she especially needs to hear straightforwardly that there’s resistance to her request to work remotely, so your company doesn’t string her along for months “considering it” if it’s unlikely to actually happen.

I don’t think you’re obligated to go so far as to advise her to quit, but I do think at a minimum you need to spell out really clearly what’s going on and what she should/shouldn’t expect. And it’s okay if part of that is saying, “As your manager, I very much want to retain you. As a colleague who respects you and wants the best for you, I want to be transparent that — despite my best efforts — your contributions aren’t being rewarded here the way you deserve, and I think you’d likely be snatched up by employers who would treat you better if that’s something you want to explore. I would hate to lose you, but I also hate seeing you not be recognized the way you should be.”

You should also spell out very clearly for your company, if you haven’t already, that you will lose Sasha if they don’t agree to the remote work, and that will mean XYZ for your client work.

And then once you’ve taken care of those conversations, consider whether you should be looking around, too.

The post should I advise my star employee to quit for better things? appeared first on Ask a Manager.

The global campaign to secure digital rights for libraries and memory institutions just gained a powerful new ally.

As explained in a post by Beatrice Murch of Internet Archive Europe, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA)—the leading international body representing the interests of library and information services—has signed the Statement on Four Digital Rights of Memory Institutions, joining more than 130 signatories from around the world who are calling for the legal rights that libraries, archives, and other cultural heritage organizations need to fulfill their missions in the digital age.

It’s such a good initiative. I think as far as we were concerned, when we looked [at] the Four Digital Rights […], we sat down and thought this stuff is obvious, isn’t it? This is just reaffirming the things that libraries have always done. 

These are basic functions that need to be in place, not just to deliver library rights, but ultimately library rights are the rights of the community that depends on libraries to actually get things done, to fulfill their own rights, to fulfill their own potential.

Stephen Wyber, IFLA

In joining the statement, IFLA strengthens the growing international movement to secure the legal foundations for long-term digital preservation and access to knowledge. Their endorsement signals that libraries and archives worldwide are aligned in calling for legal reform on four essential rights:

1. Right to Collect
2. Right to Preserve
3. Right to Lend
4. Right to Cooperate

To hear more from Stephen about why IFLA signed the statement, along with how the effort came about, listen to the latest episode of the Future Knowledge podcast:

Bell bottoms and loneliness are a dangerous mix.

Philadelphia Inquirer subscribers can now access Alison Roman’s Caramelized Shallot Pasta, Marian Burros’s Original Plum Torte, and Sam Sifton’s Oven-Roasted Chicken Shawarma without subscribing to The New York Times.

The Times is venturing into deals with other U.S. news publishers, similar to what it’s doing internationally. The current deal with the Inquirer, for instance, gives new Inquirer premium subscribers the Times Cooking app free for one year, activated via an access code.

Non-news products like Cooking, The Athletic, Wirecutter, and Games are a key element of the Times’ success story. The publication has just over 11 million digital subscribers, according to its most recent earnings report, and over half of them pay for at least two Times products. Nearly a third pay only for a non-news product. Deals with publishers like the Inquirer benefit the Times by increasing awareness of its offerings, potentially hooking people who might not want a subscription to the main paper.

The Inquirer isn’t the only domestic outlet the Times is partnering with. In February, for instance, The Minnesota Star Tribune offered a year of access to NYT Games as a new subscriber benefit, and a Times spokesperson told me that over the last year, the company has “[engaged] other domestic news publishers to offer their subscribers digital access” to Times lifestyle products like Cooking. (Axios reported in January that the Times was working on this.) If you see any more of these deals in the wild, let us know.

In other New York Times news: Amazon is paying it “$20 million to $25 million a year” to license news, Cooking, and Athletic content and use it in AI products, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. That deal had been reported in May, but the amount Amazon is reportedly paying (“nearly 1% of the Times’s total 2024 revenue”) is new info.

Sarah Perez, TechCrunch:

YouTube on Tuesday announced it’s beginning to roll out age-estimation technology in the U.S. to identify teen users in order to provide a more age-appropriate experience. The company says it will use a variety of signals to determine the users’ possible age, regardless of what the user entered as their birthday when they signed up for an account.

Well-intentioned though I think this is, it still feels more than a little dystopian.

Tea remains #3 overall in the US iPhone App Store. Here’s a screenshot of the top free iPhone apps today, and a list of the current top 10, using the full names the apps choose to display:

1. ChatGPT
2. Wingstop
3. Tea Dating Advice
4. Threads
5. Google
6. Google Maps
7. WhatsApp Messenger
8. ParentSquare
9. CapCut - Video Editor
10. TikTok - Videos, Shop & LIVE

I might be forgetting or unaware of previous similar situations, but I can’t recall anything like this before, where an app riddled with outrageous security/privacy vulnerabilities remains virally popular. A Hacker News thread from earlier today debates why the app is even still available on the App Store.

So is it Apple’s place to yank the app? It feels wrong to me that Apple should completely remove Tea from the App Store, but it’s also true that one of Apple’s fundamental pitches for the App Store — and the App Store’s exclusivity for app distribution in most of the world — is that iOS users can trust any and all apps in the App Store because they’re vetted by Apple. But here’s Tea, sitting at #3, providing a service that many women want, and the entire thing is shockingly untrustworthy. (I fully expect more vulnerabilities to be found and exploited.)

Tea, unsurprisingly, has almost nothing on their website about the security violations their users have suffered, nor any mention in their App Store listing. Their only public acknowledgement of the fiasco is a series of three Instagram posts on July 26, 27, and 29 (the most recent of which acknowledges that they’ve completely disabled the DM feature “temporarily”), and this FAQ on their website, that, as far as I can tell, is only discoverable through the “links in bio” on their Instagram profile. Their FAQ only addresses the initial discovery from last week, not the more significant one that 404 Media publicized Monday that included the exposure of DMs.

Also fascinating to me is that Tea, though available on both iOS and Android, is seemingly not popular at all on Android. It’s not even listed in the Play Store’s top free apps. (The Play Store website lists only the top 45, but I scrolled through the entire top 200 on my Pixel.) The current Play Store top 10:

1. ChatGPT
2. TikTok - Videos, Shop & LIVE
3. Threads
4. WhatsApp Messenger
5. Temu: Shop Like a Billionaire
6. Instagram
7. TikTok Lite - Faster TikTok
8. DramaBox - Stream Drama Shorts
9. Cash App
10. Snapchat

More tellingly, Tea doesn’t even crack the Play Store top 200 list for the “Dating” category. (On iOS, it’s in the “Lifestyle” category, but on the Play Store it’s in the “Dating” and “Casual” categories. Perhaps Apple requires apps in the “Dating” category to be full-fledged dating app services, not dating-app-adjacent like Tea.)

I’m not sure what explains the disparity in Tea’s popularity by platform. One assumption is that dating is more of a young person’s game, and young people skew slightly more toward iPhone than the US population overall. But from what I can tell, that skew is only about 10 percent. Also, surveys suggest women are more likely to be iPhone users. But I can’t believe that age or gender demographics alone explain why Tea is #3 in the App Store but doesn’t even crack the top 200 on Android.

I strongly suspect that, although Google hasn’t removed Tea from the Play Store, they’ve delisted it from discovery other than by searching for it by name or following a direct link to its listing. That both jibes with what I’m seeing on the Play Store top lists, and strikes me as a thoughtful balance between the responsibilities of an app store provider. As egregious as Tea’s security exploits have been, removing the app entirely doesn’t seem called for. But delisting it from popularity lists seems like a measured way to discourage new users from trying it unless they’re specifically looking for it. If this is what Google is doing, Apple should follow their lead. (I’ve put in a question to Google’s PR inquiring about this; if/when I get an answer, I’ll update this article.)

Any hippies in the area are asked to contact the genuine hippie at the police station just as soon as possible ... NO NO ... not the police station ... at this show as soon as possible. #CowboyWho

A reader writes:

I want to start off saying I really like my boss — he’s generous, fair, a good manager, and probably one of the best at what he does in the world, and he is supportive and he listens. He works hard to be a good boss and he works hard at his job. He’s a good person to work for.

However, my boss (who is married) and a coworker, one of the directors of the company, are having an affair. I’ve seen absolute, undeniable proof with my own two eyes, unfortunately. I also inadvertently recorded it on my phone. Don’t ask, I didn’t realize I had recorded anything significant until I looked at the video later and saw advanced canoodling occurring in a car. They did not see me.

I’ve suspected it for a while based on multiple coincidences and strange things that have gone on, but haven’t had concrete proof until now. I always hoped I was wrong and every time another piece of information pointed towards an affair, I would just tell myself that I was being dramatic and I must’ve been imagining it or making a bigger deal out of it than it was. I wish!

My mother was the person to first suggest it about six months ago after I told her a couple of things about work that I thought were odd, but I scoffed when she said it and I said there was no way. Then one thing after another happened (they they leave the office at the same time every day or one would leave five minutes after the other, and several very specific things happened that I won’t mention because it will give away a lot about who they are).

I saw the undeniable proof of it last week (passionate kissing, hugging, and unfortunately more). I thought I wanted to know the truth about what was going on, but I didn’t want to find out this way.

I just need to how to erase what I saw from my brain and how to function professionally and normally in the future. I had to work with the two of them the day after I saw all of this. It was just the three of us in the office all day, and it was ridiculous. I just kept thinking, “You two are screwing, you two are screwing, you two are screwing” — while in front of me they were talking about his upcoming family trip with his wife and kids. They were also being overly attentive and jokey with me (separately) and it made me paranoid that they know that I know.

I also adore his wife, and that’s why I kept telling myself it wasn’t true. I am hoping maybe he and his wife are separating and this whole thing isn’t as bad as I think it is.

Anyway, it has me a stressed and it keeps popping into my head and jolting me like anything in our lives that we are bothered by and have no control over. It’s none of my business and I need to move on. But seeing what I did was just … gross. And I’m pissed at my boss and at her.

Sincerely,
A truly regretful observer

A few things, all of which can be true at once:

– You don’t know anything about the state of your boss’s marriage. It’s possible he’s separating, it’s possible he has an open marriage or an understanding, all sorts of things are possible. That doesn’t mean those things are likely, but when you’re trying to get past what you saw, it might help to consider that something like that is possible.

– People can be good managers and good at their work but bad partners in their marriage. And really, it’s always been possible that your boss was kind of an ass at home — that he yells at his wife or refuses to clean up after himself or is a jerk to her parents. For all we know, he might be a terrible neighbor or a horrible brother or an unreliable friend! He can still be a good boss, and it’s okay to appreciate colleagues for what they bring to work, even if they’re not someone you would like or respect if the relationship were a non-work one. People are nuanced, and they can show up differently in different contexts. You’re still allowed to appreciate him as your boss.

– You’re also allowed to decide you’ve lost respect for him — that no matter what kind of understanding he might or might not have with his wife, his sloppiness and indiscretion at work has drawn you into something you shouldn’t have to think about, and is now forcing you to grapple with questions you shouldn’t have to grapple with. If you now feel differently about him as a result of his actions, that’s okay.

– Are they in each other’s chain of command? If so, this makes an affair much more your company’s business. But if they’re not, it’s completely okay for you to decide “none of my business” and try to mentally put yourself in a time machine to go back to before you knew this. It’s also completely okay if you find you can’t do that and it permanently changes how you see him.

You asked how to erase this from your brain. If you’re going to be able to, I think it will come from really committing to “I only know a piece of this, not all of it” and “it’s not my business anyway.” You should also give it time — you might find that after a month of routine work interactions, it’s easier not to think about than right now, when you’re only a few days away from The Car Assignation. In fact, if you’re really committed to getting this out of your head, try going out of your way to find opportunities for Very Normal Work Interactions with your boss to see if the normalcy of those can push out some of the rawness of the parking lot exhibition.

But you also might find out that you can’t — that this is going to stick in your mind and permanently affect how you see your boss, and that’s reasonable too.

The post my married boss and a coworker are having an affair — and I saw it appeared first on Ask a Manager.

Here’s a round-up of advice about how to keep your job search a secret from your current boss.

the basics

how do you hide your job hunt when you’re working full-time?

how to discreetly job search when you have a nosy boss

how to change clothes for an interview during the workday

how to dress for an interview without making it obvious to your coworkers

how to request time off for a last-minute interview

my boss found out I’m job-hunting

what should I say if my manager asks if I’m job searching?

my employer found out that I posted my resume on a job board

should I tell my boss I’m job-searching?

ensuring the places you’re applying will be discreet

can a prospective employer tip off my boss that I’m job-searching?

when a job application asks if your current employer can be contacted

my interviewer wants a reference from my current boss

a person I asked to be a reference is telling people I’m job hunting

can I apply for jobs anonymously?

if you’re the boss

my employee is job hunting — but I didn’t hear it from her

my employee is job-searching — should I tell my manager?

miscellaneous

my employer heard I was interviewing and confronted me

my boss will be angry that I didn’t tell him a coworker was job-searching

The post how to keep your job search a secret from your current boss appeared first on Ask a Manager.

BALTIMORE—Describing the data as good news in an otherwise troubling area of research, a study released Wednesday by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health found a refreshingly low amount of shovel violence across the country. “Despite high levels of shovel ownership in the United States, what we are seeing is an encouragingly low number of violent incidents involving spades or round-point shovels,” said the study’s lead author, Elizabeth Lopes, noting that reports of the tool’s use in smackings, wallopings, and bonkings remained rare. “Even during peak winter season, the chance of a child getting their hands on a snow shovel and accidentally decapitating a playmate was extremely low. There’s still some shovel violence, don’t get us wrong, but what we have found is there are almost zero cases of disturbed individuals going into a school and carrying out mass thwackings over the backs of people’s heads.” Lopes cautioned that while the findings were positive for long-handled garden tools, further research was needed on trowel homicide rates.

The post Study Finds Refreshingly Low Amount Of Shovel Violence appeared first on The Onion.

WASHINGTON—Following reports that the president was “troubled” and “disturbed” by images coming out of Gaza, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Donald Trump was examined by a doctor after he acknowledged the existence of suffering earlier this week. “It’s possible that his statement recognizing starving children in Gaza was just a case of the jet-lagged president mixing up his words,” said Leavitt, adding that Trump was rushed from his meeting in Scotland with U.K. Prime Minster Keir Starmer to a nearby medical facility where a doctor confirmed the president still possessed the cruelty of a 27-year-old Manhattan real estate developer. “Despite what the fake New York Times may say, our president remains as callous as ever. He is currently in excellent condition, denying any compassion for other living beings, and his vitals show he’ll be back to his old rage-filled self in no time at all.” At press time, Leavitt released a contradictory statement dismissing the brief show of empathy as a typical symptom of the president’s dementia.

The post Trump Examined By Doctor After Acknowledging Existence Of Suffering appeared first on The Onion.

COLUMBUS, OH—Finally closing the doors on its last remaining outlet after getting rid of an unwieldy stockpile of variety goods, the discount retailer Big Lots ceased operations Wednesday following a therapy program in which the company’s roughly 30,000 employees confronted their self-destructive hoarding tendencies. “In retrospect, it’s almost funny that I had so many throw pillows,” said Big Lots CEO Bruce Thorn, letting out a long sigh of relief in a now-empty store that was finally free of the dusty, disorganized piles of junk he had been hanging onto “just in case.” “Now I know there’s just no reason to hold onto that massive collection of birdseed, kitchenware, cordless hair clippers, patio furniture, and ladies’ pajama sets—even if it all was an unbeatable deal. During my third month working with my therapist, Dr. Bloom, I had a breakthrough: I realized my mother would always grow distant after offloading boxes of bargain goods she’d acquired from nearby manufacturers’ excess inventory sales. After that session, I was finally able to step back and see I had 901 stores full of stuff I just didn’t need.” At press time, manic Big Lots employees were spotted rushing to dumpsters around the country and insisting they had to keep all of those seasonal decorative wreaths.

The post Big Lots Closes All Stores After Therapist Helps Company Work Through Hoarding Tendencies appeared first on The Onion.

A study published in Frontiers In Public Health found that it’s actually possible to die of a broken heart after the death of a loved one, especially if the grief is overwhelming. What do you think?

The post Study Finds It Possible To Die From Broken Heart  appeared first on The Onion.

In brief: Houston will see one more very hot and sunny day before rain chances return to the forecast. The best odds for rain come this weekend, but even then we don’t anticipate a total washout. Highs remain in the 90s throughout the forecast period, as is typical for this time of year.

Overall pattern

High pressure will hold sway for another day or two before giving way to increasing moisture levels from the Gulf. With the ridge breaking down, the Houston region will be more open to showers this weekend, although we don’t anticipate anything too calamitous. As we get later into August next week, a fairly typical pattern will set in whereby high pressure influences our weather, but there is still the possibility for some afternoon showers and thunderstorms due to the sea breeze.

Wednesday

The high temperature at Bush Intercontinental Airport hit 99 degrees on Tuesday, and we are likely to do the same today, and possibly push into triple digits across some parts of the area. A surge in air temperatures today will be supported by the influx of somewhat drier air from the west. It’s not clear how far this drier air will push into Houston, but we could see some rare dewpoints in the upper 50s today along and west of Interstate 45. It’s still going to be quite hot, but for areas away from the coast it should feel a little less humid. Skies will be sunny, with light westerly winds. Lows tonight will drop to around 80 degrees.

Thursday and Friday

The last two days of the work week will see more moisture streaming in from the Gulf, and this will start to elevate rain chances a bit, perhaps to 30 percent each day. Don’t get me wrong, these will be mostly sunny days, and any showers that develop will likely pass quickly. But the increased moisture should help to limit high temperatures to the upper 90s for most of the region.

Saturday and Sunday

The weekend will bring the highest chance of rain, likely around 50 percent for both days. The odds and accumulations of rain are likely to be higher the closer to the coast you are. For most of us, I expect rain totals in the 0.25 to 0.5 inch range. However, given the tropical nature of this rainfall we cannot rule out some stronger, isolated downpours that briefly flood low-lying streets. Both of these days should still bring partly sunny skies. Highs will depend on the extent of rain and cloud cover during the afternoon hours, but probably will be in the vicinity of the mid-90s with plenty of humidity.

Next week

The first full week of August will likely bring mostly sunny skies and highs in the mid- to upper-90s. Expect some isolated to scattered shower chances daily, but at this point it’s difficult to say more than this. Basically, August will do August things. Which in Houston means pain.

#Rowen #RoninWarriors

Food Town opens its newest store today. The location at 12460 Hwy 6, Santa Fe, TX 77510 replaces a briefly vacant Arlan’s Market, which closed in June. The new store will feature an independently owned and operated bakery, according to comments from Food Town. The store is an important step for both the community and Lewis Food Town. The grocery store represents one of two long-standing sites in the area. The site occupied by HEB ...

The first draft of the lower chamber’s new redistricting map targets Democratic members of Congress in the Austin, Dallas and Houston metro areas and in South Texas.

Ana Yáñez Correa crossed the U.S. border with her mother in May—this time, in the opposite direction from which they came 40 years ago. They're not alone. For the first time in 50 years, the U.S. may experience a net immigration loss, meaning fewer immigrants are coming into the U.S. and more are leaving.

We’ve put a little additive in your food supply to turn you and your little minions into the cast of the smash hit starring Lorenzo Lamas, RENEGADE.

My production company, Knuckle Sandwich LLC, is officially suspending active search operations for the most gangster enchilada in the Albuquerque and larger Bernalillo County area.

Initially, our search was a small film crew conducting a half-day television segment. It was meant to be lighthearted and normal, with a funkalicious twist. Around the four-hour mark, we were off the chain and descending into a financial and existential disaster. Albuquerque Police Department, in coordination with the New Mexico Department of Public Safety and the New Mexico National Guard, conducted a thorough and extensive search of Bernalillo County drive-ins, dives, holes, spots, hideouts, and stops. Our civilian volunteer search party performed two days’ worth of city searches. Upon their refusal to continue, Knuckle Sandwich LLC held what was not originally called a draft, but upon further reflection, was a draft. In conjunction with the Albuquerque mayor’s office, a reverse curfew was put in place: No one was to return home until the most gangster enchilada was found.

The decision to suspend the active search was made by my family, the Albuquerque community, and the United States military. I cannot stress this enough: I do not typically act like this. I was just in Sioux Falls, and I was totally normal. I honestly think it comes down to the fact that I have never once thought about what “gangster” actually means, or how to measure it in a food. So when I said, “Today we are looking for the most gangster enchilada in Albuquerque,” I fucked myself. I fucked my film crew. I fucked the people of Albuquerque.

I would like to express my gratitude to nearly all the citizens, volunteers, and search officials of Albuquerque for your tireless efforts over the past nine days. We did not get the results we wanted, but I appreciate your hard work.

Some people went out of their way to be mean to me. Expressing frustration and being mean are two different things. For example, saying that it’s not rad to pull someone else’s kids out of the local middle schools to perform grid searches is a valid frustration. Screaming that you found the most gangster enchilada, having me run over to you, and then showing me your scrotum wrapped in tin foil is mean. Also, showbiz tip: The more times you do the scrotum enchilada trick, the less funny it gets.

The United States military has told me emphatically that the case is closed. We are no longer looking for the most gangster enchilada in Albuquerque. Also, the reverse curfew has been lifted. That goes without saying, but I was told that we have to say that.

If you want to keep searching, you can. You don’t have to. But I am going to keep searching.