Trump Mobile maintains the gold smartphone will be made in the US, despite the changed wording on its website.

See Part Two now! https://go.nebula.tv/philosophytube
Support the show on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PhilosophyTube

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Aristotle, De Caelo
Aristotle, On Generation and Corruption
Amir Alexander, Liberty’s Grid
Hakob Barseghyan, Nicholas Overgaard, & Gregory Rupik, “Chapter 8,” in Introduction to History and Philosophy of Science
John Brinckerhoff Jackson, “Jefferson, Thoreau, and After,” in Landscape in Sight: Looking at America
Robert C. Bosanquet, “Greek and Roman Towns I,” in Town Planning Review
Rene Descartes, Principles of Philosophy
Rene Descartes, Meditations
John Dunne, “Measuring Locke’s Shadow”
Matthew H. Edney, “Review of Liberty’s Grid,” in Imago Mundi
John Henry, “The Mechanical Philosophy,” in The Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern Science
James E. Lewis, “Review of Liberty’s Grid,” in William and Mary Quarterly
John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding
John Locke, Two Treatises of Government
Isaac Newton, Principia
Steven Shapin, “On Gods and Kings: Natural Philosophy and Politics in the Leibniz-Clarke Disputes,” in Isis
Dan Stanislawski, “The Origin and Spread of the Grid-Pattern Town,” in Geographical Review
Martyn Thompson, “Locke’s Contract in Context,” in The Social Contract From Hobbes to Rawls
James Tully, “Rediscovering America”
James D. Walsh, “Everyone is Cheating Their Way Through College,” in New York Magazine
Wil Williams, “The Video Essays That Spawned an Entire YouTube Genre,” in Polygon

MUSIC:
https://www.ninarichards.co.uk/
Nina Richards - Happy String Drone
Nina Richards - Albedo

#philosophy #history #geography

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM – In addition to signing a strategic partnership with the European Union, Prime Minister Mark Carney has brokered a far more important deal allowing Canada to finally take part in the Eurovision Song Contest. Carney brought Canada and Europe closer as he signed a strategic defence and security partnership with the European Union, […]

The post Canada signs deal with EU on defence, entry to Eurovision appeared first on The Beaverton.

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I'm just saying, if you subscribe to my patreon, anything could happen. Probably just book reviews and early updates, but YOU NEVER KNOW

Today's News:

To call the administration’s “worst of the worst” claims a ruse is to give this administration too much credit. It’s not clever enough to run a con. Going after criminals was never the point during Trump’s first term. And mass deportation was the platform Trump ran on to get back to the Oval Office for this term.

Given the expectations, ICE was always going to fall short of arrest quotas if it restricted itself to actual lawbreakers. That’s why it’s casting a wider net, one that not only removes anyone looking vaguely Hispanic, but also people who happen to disagree with Trump or his policies.

And that’s why most of ICE’s high-profile raids have targeted businesses. This administration is creating a labor crisis with its shotgun approach to deportation, something that’s only going to aggravate current financial problems created by the administration’s shotgun approach to perceived trade deficits.

Who are we ejecting from this country at the rate of dozens of people per day? Hardworking, law-abiding migrants who’ve done nothing more than seek jobs, pay taxes, and carve out a better life for their loved ones. The government knows what it’s doing. After all, it already has all the evidence it needs to show its mass deportation program has nothing to do with making this nation safer or more secure.

David Blier has dug into the data for Cato, and here’s the upshot of this mass forced exodus.

As of June 14, ICE had booked into detention 204,297 individuals (since October 1, 2024, the start of fiscal year 2025). Of those book-ins, 65 percent, or 133,687 individuals, had no criminal convictions. Moreover, more than 93 percent of ICE book-ins were never convicted of any violent offenses. About nine in ten had no convictions for violent or property offenses. Most convictions (53 percent) fell into three main categories: immigration, traffic, or nonviolent vice crimes.

The pretense of making America safer has been discarded. America won’t get any safer, just as surely as it won’t get any greater under this president. For years, it’s been known that migrants commit fewer crimes than natural-born citizens. But with arrest numbers flagging after an initial, more-targeted surge, the administration made it clear it was time to hit the streets and round up any foreigners ICE might come across.

This shift in policy resulted from White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller’s meeting at the end of May, when he ordered ICE to start arresting more non-criminals. “What do you mean you’re going after criminals?” he said. “Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7‑Eleven?” 

ICE did indeed go to Home Depot. And for that, it’s now dealing with multiple weeks of unending protests, with the focal point being the Home Deport raid that occurred in Los Angeles.

It’s nothing more than a racist purge — something that can be ascertained even with incomplete data. As Blier points out, it’s difficult to get a complete picture on deportation efforts, now that the job has been split up between ICE, CBP, and the Border Patrol. But just looking at ICE’s numbers, it’s easy to see this isn’t about ejecting criminals. It’s about getting rid of non-white people.

Since the beginning of this year, ICE book-ins based on ICE arrests have increased nearly sixfold, from a daily average of 215 to over 1,100 per day.

As that number has exponentially increased, so has the percentage of migrants without criminal convictions, who now make up nearly three-quarters of all ICE detainees. And yet, many of these people will be routed to whatever hellhole might take them, whether it’s being stacked up in repurposed shipping containers in South Sudan or forced into general population at El Salvador’s CECOT.

And we possibly haven’t even seen the worst of this.

The White House has ordered ICE to meet an unreasonable quota of 3,000 arrests per day, a target they were nowhere near achieving as of June 14. 

Trump’s anger has been re-lit by incessant protests and an extremely low-energy birthday party. On top of all but declaring war on “Democrat” cities, Trump has ordered ICE to increase its deportations. At some point, the demands will outstrip the supply. That unavoidable fact — along with the administration’s blood lust for cruelty — increases the odds that actual citizens will be treated like disposable foreigners by people too busy to do the job right and too removed from any form of accountability to care.

A reader writes:

A while back, I conducted a reference check for a candidate we were interested in hiring.

We use a candidate management system that asks for references up-front, and I called the number this applicant had listed for their most recent job with a city government in a neighboring state. After a few rings, a guy who was obviously at a loud sporting event picked up, didn’t understand me, and hung up on me. I figured that the candidate had listed her former boss’s cell number and I caught him at a bad time, so I googled the local government office to find the office number, planning to call and leave a message.

The weird thing is, another guy picked up, affirmed that he was the person I was looking for and then gave a glowing review. I thought it was weird but we moved forward with the candidate and she started training shortly thereafter. About two weeks after she started training with me, she quit suddenly via email.

I haven’t been able to shake the weirdness with the reference. Who was the person at the first number? Did she provide a fake number to give a good review? Why would she bother if her actual employer would give her as good a reference as he did? Did I do something wrong in the vetting process — undervalue the reference weirdness?

I answer this question — and two others — over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.

Other questions I’m answering there today include:

• My coworker throws tantrums and expects women to soothe him
• Emailing on the weekend when you don’t expect a response before Monday

The post did a candidate give me a fake reference? appeared first on Ask a Manager.

It’s the Thursday “ask the readers” question. A reader recently shared this story with me:

I got written up for buying colored file folders (with my own money) because “it looked too extravagant and sent the wrong message.” I worked for a small nonprofit that generally had multiple projects at different stages underway at the same time. It was my job to interview and track dozens of applicants for each project, so I asked if I could get color-coded file folders to more easily distinguish between the three projects. My request was refused because it was “too expensive and wasteful,” so I bought my own folders — for under $12, mind you. My boss then wrote me up because “it looked extravagant to have colored file folders and we might lose donations because of it.” This finally escalated to the board of directors, who sided with me because, yes, color-coding was more efficient. I still don’t regret it, and I used those folders over and over.

Using that as our starting point, what’s the weirdest thing you’ve gotten scolded for at work?

The post what’s the weirdest thing you’ve gotten scolded for at work? appeared first on Ask a Manager.

I’m comin’, Elizabeth!

Dear Everyone Telling My Daughters They Can Be Anything They Want,

Please stop.

I agree with you in spirit, but telling my five and four-year-old daughters they can be anything they want only gets their hopes up, which you’re forcing me to dash. I’m already the bad guy at bedtime, dinner time, and any time that interrupts screen time.

Practically, they can’t be anything they want. For example, as both have requested, neither can become a penguin, an apple tree, or, apparently, the President of the United States. Also, my wife and I are both under 5’5", so a successful basketball player, house painter, and shelf stocker are likely out of the question too. Jockey, you say? We don’t have horse girl(s’) money!

Guess who gets to break the news to my daughters that they can’t intern with Santa? The same person who had to explain that the tooth fairy is a lifetime appointment and no, they’re not currently requesting résumés.

No one wants to destroy the glimmer of hope and magic in a young girl’s eye. Unveiling society’s historic and contemporary limitations on women is already super uncool. Thankfully, Virginia Woolf did that for all of us, but A Room of One’s Own isn’t exactly kindergarten reading material. So in the meantime, I get to explain the lack of gender equity while you’re telling them we’ve already conquered that mountain.

Here are just some of the things my daughters have noticed that fly in the face of “girls can do anything”:

SOPHIA (4): Why do girls always have to wear shirts and boys don’t?

ELLIE (5): Can girls be doctors? [Male schoolmate] told me only dads can be doctors (Note: Ellie’s mother is a doctor).

SOPHIA: Can I be a mermaid?

ELLIE: Boy baseball is boring. Can we watch girls play baseball?

SOPHIA: Why can only girls do gardening?

ELLIE: Do I have to wear those big shoes all the time like Minnie Mouse?

SOPHIA: Why can’t I be a mermaid?

ELLIE: I’m going to be an artist and live in a big house and have lots of kids and …

SOPHIA: [watching videos of Simone Biles compete] I can do that.

And it doesn’t stop when they’re kids. “Pursue a career in whatever makes you happy,” you will affirm to my one-day multi-AP class-taking teens. Everyone somehow forgets that once a woman turns thirty-five, she must have two and a half children and abandon her career to care for them or be pestered by relentless, personally inappropriate questions. (Note: I was an unemployed stay-at-home dad, and my wife was asked all the time when she was going to quit her job.) Fast forward thirty years, my daughters are saddled with student loans, a stunted career, and a BA in Art History because someone told them at an impressionable age they can be anything they want.

What my daughters could use is earnest support and encouragement from a society that won’t punish them for trying to be anything they want. Hell, I’d settle for even one piece of legislation hinting at real childcare assistance, widespread rebukes of Andrew Tate and tradwives, and for people to level with them. Some brave and focused women are out there doing the best they can to pave the way for my daughters to be assistant vice-presidents of something or other. Thank you for your service.

To the rest of you people brainwashing my daughters into believing they can be anything they want, I turn it over to you. They look forward to your answers and clarifications on why they can’t parade around topless, speak in meetings without being interrupted, or make an honest run at the highest office in the land. I hope your responses are more robust, practical, and grounded than the platitudes typically espoused in their direction.

Until then, I’ll just keep being the man explaining that girls can be mostly anything.

Thanks a lot,
Andrew

The bill garnered bipartisan support after a state study found remote work didn't decrease productivity. The law goes into effect Sept. 1.

In brief: The Atlantic should be calm over the next week, though there’s a low chance of something to watch next weekend off the East Coast. The Pacific gets active again this weekend. Heat winds down and by next week a less noteworthy pattern dominates the U.S.

Atlantic dust but a little something next weekend

On the Atlantic side of the coin, things continue quiet for the next 7 days. The entire central and eastern Atlantic is basically smothered in Saharan dust right now.

The dust indicates the presence of dry air, which is easily seen when you look up about 10,000 feet in the atmosphere at the relative humidity across the Atlantic.

The only hint of anything right now for the next 7 to 10 days will be off the Southeast coast late next week or weekend. Models have been fairly consistently showing the potential for a disturbance to emerge there and likely scoot out to sea. Model support for this is across the board from traditional to AI models. We’ll keep an eye on that, but at this time, there’s no support for anything of concern to the Florida, Georgia, or Carolina coasts.

Pacific back in action soon

Look for the Pacific to wake up from its short late June slumber soon. A disturbance off the coast of Mexico will have about an 80 percent chance of developing by this weekend.

While the general model consensus currently keeps this system just off the coast of Mexico, some of the more reliable guidance does keep this thing awfully close to the coast, so it’s possible that impacts, at least indirectly, will be felt from about Oaxaca north to Baja as this lifts up the coast. It seems unlikely that this would be a major storm due to proximity to land, but something fairly well organized could emerge from this for a time. Worth continuing to monitor for those in Mexico.

Evolution of the heat wave from here

The Eastern U.S. heat wave is beginning to slow down now. However, it won’t completely disappear. Look for a gradual wind down in temperatures over the next several days, especially in the Midwest (though Friday looks quite cool in the East). Severe weather risks will continue around the periphery of things, including the northern Plains and Upper Midwest. But as you can see from the map below, it’s not until next week that we see some troughing begin to develop in the East, which should deliver some cooler weather.

Meanwhile, you can see a big ridge pop up in the Pacific Northwest or western Canada. Next Tuesday looks especially hot with mid-90s in Spokane, 80s in Seattle, and near 100 in Boise. But at least for a moment, by the time we get to the middle of next week, the overall pattern across the country looks fairly standard with nothing too spicy.

In brief: In today’s post we discuss the ongoing rain chances for today and through the weekend, as well as the arrival of a new round of Saharan dust. We also are happy to share the news that we think we have finally tackled the notification issue on the Apple version of our app.

Yes, we think app notifications are finally fixed

As many users of our Space City Weather app installed on Apple devices know all too well, notifications on that platform have been broken. After installing, they’ll work for a couple of weeks and then stop. This has been annoying for you and a giant pain in the butt for us. We tried several things to fix it, only to have the problem return.

Now, we think—all fingers and toes crossed!—that we have solved it. Hussain Abbasi, our developer, initially wrote the app in a Microsoft coding tool that lost support this year. Meanwhile, Apple changed the way app notifications are handled, but Microsoft didn’t update its older tool to account for that. Once Hussain realized this, he began the painful process of recreating the app in the new version of Microsoft’s coding tool that does use Apple’s latest notification system. What at first appeared to be a minor bug fix turned out to be, as they say, a heavy lift.

We released the app a few weeks ago, quietly, to see if it indeed fixed the problem. And it appears to have done that. There are still a few bugs in the new version, which is to be expected since it’s essentially a rewrite of the app. We hope to have some bug-fix updates coming in the next few days and weeks. In the interim, you may notice that weather data loads a little slowly at first. And some iPhone and Mac users are reporting the app crashes upon launch, but that appears to be rare and the cause has been identified.

If you have updates set to auto-install on your device, you already have the new version. If you haven’t updated and want notifications back, feel free to download it. (it might help to uninstall the old version before installing the new one.)

Note that this only applies to users of Apple devices. The Android version is, for now, unchanged, but our upcoming releases will address some issues there, too, including the occasional crash on, weirdly, Pixel 9 phones only. Go figure.

Thanks for using our app! We’re working to make it better for you.

Thursday

The atmospheric setup supports another day of variable shower activity today, with some areas likely to pick up 1 inch of rainfall and other locations seeing only dark clouds and distant lightning. Overall rain chances are about 50 percent, with the most likely time for showers from late this morning through the early evening hours. The proximity of rain will help keep high temperatures in the vicinity of 90 degrees for most locations. And yes, while this is fairly warm, I’d remind you that it is but a taste of what is coming in terms of summer time heat for Houston. (i.e. see the forecast for next week). Rain chances will slacken for the overnight hours, with low temperatures falling into the mid- to upper-70s.

Friday and Saturday

These days will be similar, with partly to mostly sunny skies and high temperatures of around 90 degrees, or just above. They will also be subject to hit-or-miss showers, but I expect coverage to be less, perhaps 30 percent daily. Winds will generally be light, from the south, at 5 to 10 mph. Beginning Saturday or Saturday night we might being to see some hazy skies due to an increase in Saharan dust.

Sunday and Monday

Sunday, and possibly Monday, will bring another shot of decent rain, perhaps 50 percent daily. Accumulations don’t look overly impressive, but some locations may quickly pick up half an inch of rain. Highs on Sunday may top out around 90 degrees, but we should climb into the lower 90s by Monday.

Next week

As high pressure builds nearby we are going to see mostly sunny weather. Temperatures will start out in the mid 90s (coastal areas will be a bit cooler) with highs likely approaching the upper 90s toward the end of next week. Skies will be mostly sunny, but the lingering presence of Saharan dust should help moderate dewpoints slightly. So very hot, and quite humid—but not sizzling humid maybe. We’ll still have a daily chance of shower activity along the sea breeze, primarily during the afternoon hours, but these chances are likely on the order of 20 percent. Basically, it’s going to feel very summer-like out there.

The post Critics Praise Benson Boone Album As Finite appeared first on The Onion.

welcome to Metacity 5

...

Deb brings to the counter all the items Puffy requested.

Deb: "This should be everything. I even found the MilTek-Atheros Mini PCI wifi module... Now look, I don't exactly picture a desert hermit mage to walk around with Mata Tokens, but - there are a lot of good hackers in this city... Kids who keep the torch you once carried aflame.

They don't need ancient hardware, they need come from the -"

Puffy interrupts her: "Girl! The Bag."

Girl is going through the comic section of the store, reading ACTRON by stanley lieber.

Girl: "Coming!"

She empties her backpack on the counter. It's dozens of dozens floppy disks, cd roms and zip drives.

Deb examines them. Things like OpenSSH 43.2, Game of Trees, etc..

Deb: "These are all..."

Puffy: "Recent. Get it to anyone you can."

https://analognowhere.com/_/ietcou

• archive
• support/store

If you’re within striking distance of Macclesfield in Cheshire, why not some and see me at MACC-POW 2025? I’ll have books for sale, I will be drawing as well as I know how, and I will sign books you purchased in even the dim and distant past. I’ll sign them if you don’t want me to sign them. It’s a really nice, laid-back event and last year was a lot of fun.

The post I’ll be at Macc-Pow on Saturday June 28th appeared first on Bad Machinery.

The 33-year-old democratic socialist would be the first Muslim to lead the nation's largest city if elected.

The development in Manor taps into the natural heat deep underground to run heating and cooling systems for the planned 7,500 homes and commercial buildings.

Roughly 150,000 people celebrate Diwali across the greater Houston area.

#CowboyWho

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. Should I tell my boss he’s taking on too much?

My boss is overworking himself. He is the executive director of our small team (only three of us, including him, but we serve a pretty large school district) and has been in the position for three years. He is constantly complaining that he is behind on work, has too many emails, has too much to do, etc. Understandable, EDs have a lot of responsibilities. He often works late and on weekends.

However, he keeps signing up for more and more professional organizations and events outside of what is required for our work. Earlier this week he had to MC an online event, not for our school district but for one of his professional organizations — taking time away from his work day. He chose to sign up for evening classes about AI use, which takes up even more time in his day.

Not to mention, he has a very high-maintenance dog and a high-maintenance house and he’s single, so he doesn’t get very much help with that.

I am concerned because it’s impacting both his health and his work. He has had several sick days in the past few weeks with symptoms that (to me, at least) are pretty obviously stress-related. From a distance, what I see is that he’s overcommitting himself to the point where he’s making himself sick. On the work side, emails are going unanswered for weeks because he doesn’t have time to get through them all.

I think the worst part is: he thinks this level of work is normal. He’s worked this hard all his life and has been exploited by previous employers. (He did not realize that until I explained that withholding wages for being late is illegal. He thought it was normal.)

Should I bring this up to him? Should I bring it up with HR? Should I bring it up at all? I’m getting kind of sick of hearing “I’m too busy” when he’s doing it to himself.

No — he’s a grown man in a position of responsibility, and if he can’t figure out on his own that an obvious solution to being really busy is to take on fewer optional things, you’re not likely to get through to him. And since he’s your boss, you don’t have the standing to sit down with him and say, “You need to stop this.” The power dynamics run in the opposite direction.

However, you can raise any pieces that affect you, like if you’re not getting responses from him in time or if work is getting bottlenecked with him. Just address it rom the perspective of “this is preventing me from being able to do my job,” not “you are overworking yourself and making yourself sick.”

Some advice on addressing the pieces that do affect you:

my boss is so busy that I can’t get any time with him
my boss is impossible to reach when I need responses
my boss is unavailable and it’s driving us all mad

2. Should I mention my concerns about an impossibly slow coworker?

I have a colleague who was hired about 18 months ago in the same role as me, and I’ve now had many opportunities to work with them. They’re a very friendly and easygoing person and a joy to spend time with socially speaking, but performance-wise, I have serious concerns. They are exceedingly slow while completing even the most basic of tasks (it’s like watching a movie on 0.5x, it’s bizarre to observe), have next to zero problem-solving skills, and seem to just be … well … mentally “out of it,” for lack of a better term. For example, if they needed to tie a rope to a tree, they’d take at least 5-10 minutes to do so with much of that time consisting of blank stares. The final result might be a mess of rope wrapped around itself but nothing actually resembling a knot that will hold. One can patiently provide explicit instructions or suggestions over and over and over again, only to met with a blank expression followed by doing something completely different and insufficient instead. It’s as if the lights are on, but nobody’s home. I feel terrible saying so, but it’s an apt description.

We work in a technical scientific role, in often very remote locations and in potentially dangerous situations where one needs to be able to think and take action quickly. Failing to do so could lead to a dire outcome for either member of the two-person crew. I’m highly doubtful this coworker would be able to even recognize such a situation early enough to take action, let alone be able to decide what to do and act on it in a timely manner. I’m becoming increasingly worried for their safety and the safety of those assigned to work with them, especially as they will be sent on increasingly more challenging assignments in the future. I’ve also found myself (normally a very patient person) beginning to lose my temper out of sheer frustration because they’re so wildly inept, not to mention the stress of a far bigger workload and much longer shifts that results from working with them. Something just isn’t right. I’m not sure if it’s drugs, a serious learning disability, or a health issue, and it’s not my place to speculate but I’m not the only person on the team who has noticed the concerning behavior. After a situation yesterday where they put me in a physically dangerous situation by carrying out a task entirely differently than we’d (extensively!) discussed and agreed on beforehand, I feel I need to say something. What should I do?

You should speak up! You have serious safety concerns about this person’s work, so you have an obligation to talk to your manager and share your concerns.

Even without the safety concerns, I’d suggest talking to your manager to explain that your coworker is struggling significantly with the job and needs more training or supervision. But with safety in the mix, it’s not even a question. Talk to your manager today and explain what you’ve seen.

3. How can I get management experience when my job doesn’t include any managing?

I’m an individual contributor in a team of two (just me and my boss) in a niche department at a nonprofit. I love my job, but I don’t see myself working here forever. The issue – and I realize how privileged this is to say – is that in the context of my niche field, my salary would indicate I’m a manager. This obviously isn’t a problem right now, but when I think about changing jobs in 5-10 years, it seems like it’s going to be an issue! To keep as close to my current salary as possible, I’d need to move into middle management. But I have no management experience and my current job has no opportunity to gain any. My boss oversees the interns, we have no volunteers, and the leadership positions I’ve held in my non-work life don’t involve managing people either.

I can’t see a workplace giving an outsider with no management experience a chance at a manager position, but maybe I’m wrong? Is this a non-issue and I’m just catastrophizing? Could you give any tips on gaining management experience when your job description doesn’t allow you to manage people?

Well, first, do you want to manage people? If you’re doing it just for the money, it very often goes badly. But assuming it’s something you want to do, can you talk to your boss about your long-term goals and whether she’d be willing to help you find ways to get management experience without leaving your current role? For example, would she be willing to let you manage an intern or a cross-departmental project? In particular, managing interns is a lot of work and she might be delighted to unload some of that.

You might worry this is like saying “please help me prepare to leave,” but it’s really saying “please help me stay here longer by collaborating on ways my role could evolve.”

Related:
how can I get a management job without management experience?

4. Am I supposed to save all my questions for the end of the interview?

As the interviewee, I’m curious when it’s most appropriate to ask questions during an interview. Are you supposed to wait until the end? Or is it appropriate to slot them in at (what seem like) natural points in the conversation? I always wonder if I’m making myself at home by jumping in with a question in minute 5. It happens naturally but I do hope it shows I’m interested in the job … with the added bonus of taking up time!

The best interviews feel like real conversations, where it’s natural to ask questions of your interviewer as they arise. But many interviews are more structured than that and/or you can tell you have an interviewer who’s going to stick tightly to their list of questions and will want you to hold your own queries until the end.

That said, in all but the most highly structured interviews, it’s nearly always fine to ask your own question if it arises organically in the conversation (like “I was surprised you asked about X, since I didn’t realize that was a significant piece of the job — can you tell me more about that?” after they ask you about your experience with X or, after talking about your experience using software Y to do Z, asking what software they’re using to do Z).

5. Do more women write in than men?

Do you have a feel for if more women write in with questions vs men? I know you can make a somewhat educated guess based on the first name, but was curious if you formally tracked this metric and/or took it into account when crafting an answer.

I don’t formally track it, but yes, far more women write in with questions than men. That tends to be true of advice columns in general; they’re just generally a medium that attracts more women. Maybe it’s like the old stereotype of men not going to the doctor as much as women do … but I suspect it’s that women are simply socialized to talk about interpersonal problems more.

Interestingly, when I first started Ask a Manager, I noticed that sometimes women would write in on their male partner’s behalf (like this or this) but men never wrote in with questions on their female partners’ behalf. That has changed dramatically over time, and it’s much closer to equal now.

Also, not really related but still interesting, I remember Jolie Kerr of Ask a Clean Person telling me that when she started a cleaning advice column aimed at men, she found men really liked to ask about cleaning their couches, a topic that didn’t come up with nearly the same frequency from women.

The post my boss takes on too much, an impossibly slow coworker, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

Louis Brizuela says managing the microfiche digitization center for Democracy’s Library gives him a sense of pride. “I feel like I’m making a difference,” said the 28-year-old who lives in the Bay Area. “We’re scanning and preserving all this really cool content.”

Brizuela and his six-person team are currently digitizing U.S. Supreme Court case documents and government records from Canada dating back to the 1930s. The documents are stored on microfiche cards, a flat, film-based format commonly used from the mid-20th century for preserving and accessing paper records, which requires a specialized reader for viewing—making the information contained on the cards difficult to access. “It’s useful for law students or anybody – and it’s free to use without borders,” he said. “Also, it’s valuable for the sake of archiving so information doesn’t get lost.”  Next, Brizuela said he’s looking forward to receiving a donated collection of microfiche with images of Sanskrit Buddhist tablets. 

Anyone can watch the crew in action on a livestream of the microfiche scanning operation (https://www.youtube.com/live/aPg2V5RVh7U). Activity occurs Monday–Friday, 7:30am-3:30pm and 4:00pm-midnight U.S. Pacific Time (GMT+8)—except U.S. holidays. Mellow lo-fi music plays in the background during working hours and continues with various video and still images from the Internet Archive’s collections rotating on the feed when the digitization center is closed. 

During the livestream, one camera is focused on an operator feeding microfiche cards beneath a high-resolution camera; another other provides a close-up view of the material. Each page is processed, made fully text-searchable, and added to the Internet Archive’s public collections. Researchers and readers can easily access and download the documents freely through Democracy’s Library.

Brizuela said the staff has embraced the public window on their work. He joined the Internet Archive in February and hired people who were willing to be on camera and understood the potential benefit of the exposure. “It’s not like ‘Oh, Big Brother is watching’,” he said, noting the employees have fun with the situation. “We’re not robots. We do show our characters. We’re human.”

The team is leaning in, Brizuela said, suggesting they dress up in costumes for Halloween and maybe wearing elf hats at Christmas to add a festive touch to the project. They also answer questions in a live chat with viewers. 

Brizuela comes to this position from a varied career working in the military, medical fields, retail and web development. He’s long had an interest in photography, particularly shooting and developing his own 35mm film. So, Brizuela said, it was not hard to pick up how to operate the custom-built scanner and oversee the digitization process.

Every morning, the team huddles up in the small digitization center to talk about the previous day’s completed pages and map out the upcoming work. Brizuela watches over and QA’s the scanning done by the team. Depending on the type of collection, each scanner can scanhundreds of cards a day.

Brizuela describes the vibe in the microfiche digitization center as pretty relaxing, with staff members chatting and interacting while they work. Often, they have headphones to listen to an audiobook or podcast. “If they are listening to music, sometimes they bust a dance move, or bob their head to get in the groove. People enjoy seeing that,” Brizuela said. 

[Learn about details of the set up from Sophia Tung, who engineered the livestream https://blog.archive.org/2025/05/29/meet-sophia-tung-the-creative-force-behind-internet-archives-microfiche-scanning-livestream/]

Brizuela added: “If you’re curious about what microfiche is, tune in and you’ll see the process of scanning—and learn a little bit about history.”

Experience a heart attack while working in the herb garden.

Wonder what its middle school bully is doing now.

Show up to court in a white linen suit.

Drape itself face down over an ottoman in a fit of ennui.

Adjourn to the study for brandy and cigars.

Yearn, long, or pine.

Suspect that something evil has happened in this very room.

Fall for Doreen.

Lose its sense of time in a Hudson News and miss its flight.

Have a least-favorite roommate.

Cultivate a neglectful-dad-type mystique.

Admire the voluptuous nature of a cloud.

Climax in unison with its lover.

Hunt down the nautical animal that took its appendage.

Obtain a meditative state and lose it.

Extend a too-firm handshake to its daughter’s boyfriend.

Swiftly transition from self-loathing to acceptance at the sight of its dead and unwatered fig plant.

Twirl a little parasol and play hard-to-get with the boys at the race track.

Rid itself of the feeling that this yoga retreat is a scam.

Chug this Modelo in front of everyone.

Become shy about its weird areolas.

Give it all up for Doreen.

Continue feeling shame for something it did in fourth grade.

Weep over sins that are not its own.

Tokyo Drift a shopping cart around the grocery store.

Mope effectively.

Fight back basketball-induced tears.

Surrender to the currents of the great unknown through the steady brown eyes of Doreen.

Ride a desert horse atop the high mesas, leaving behind a red cloud of dust and a dark past.

Disarm itself of its own accord for Doreen.

Avoid eye contact with the one student who has accurately pegged its flaws.

Pace.

Flail.

Sashay.

Get down on one knee in a hot-air balloon for Doreen.

Understand and respect pure charisma.

Reassess its sexuality after watching a video of a rug being steam cleaned.

Learn more about itself through the years with Doreen.

Appreciate a well-tailored pleat.

Absorb the embarrassment of Buffalo Exchange rejecting all of its used clothing.

Forget how life was before Doreen.

Lean against an office window sill that overlooks the Manhattan skyline and wonder what it’s all for.

Internalize that it is older than anyone else in this room.

Try and fail to have a child with Doreen.

Wake up in a driveway.

Sense that something has been off lately with Doreen.

Instantly perceive the libidinal atmosphere of a California crystal shop.

Forget the names of everyone who works with Doreen.

Worry that the friend group they are meant to have is somewhere else.

Look at her tired eyes across the breakfast table and realize it can never really know anyone, not even Doreen.

Employ a diet that is maintained through persistent self-hate.

Jointly try a new hallucinogen to reignite what may have never been there for Doreen.

Suffer from seasonal unease.

Succumb to an ice-cream bar.

See that no combination of useless words will bring back Doreen.

Attempt an unreciprocated goodbye hug with Doreen.

Watch as her face, a good face, dissolves back into the crowd.

Disarm itself of its own accord.

Disarm itself of its own accord.

Go to the club.

A Republican proposal to penalize states that regulate artificial intelligence can move forward without requiring approval from 60 senators, the Senate parliamentarian decided on Saturday. But the moratorium on state AI laws did not have unanimous Republican support and has reportedly been watered down in an effort to push it toward passage.

In early June, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) proposed enforcing a 10-year moratorium on AI regulation by making states ineligible for broadband funding if they try to impose any limits on development of artificial intelligence. While the House previously approved a version of the so-called "One Big Beautiful Bill" with an outright 10-year ban on state AI regulation, Cruz took a different approach because of the Senate rule that limits inclusion of "extraneous matter" in budget reconciliation legislation.

Under the Senate's Byrd rule, a senator can object to a potentially extraneous budget provision. A motion to waive the Byrd rule requires a vote of 60 percent of the Senate.

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The Supreme Court just gave the Trump administration a green light to traffic humans to random countries around the world—including war zones where migrants face torture, slavery, or death. And they did so while offering literally zero explanation for why this is legal or constitutional.

In a shadow docket ruling yesterday, the Court stayed a lower court order that required basic due process protections for people being shipped to third countries. No analysis of the complex legal issues. No acknowledgment that they’re rewarding the Trump regime for repeatedly violating court orders. Just: “go ahead and traffic people to Libya.”

This isn’t hyperbole. We’re talking about the US government grabbing people—some who entered legally seeking asylum—and shipping them to countries where they’ve never been, don’t speak the language, and face credible threats of violence. Some of those destination countries are actively selling migrants into slavery.

This non-ruling will go down in history as one of the most shameful and horrific rulings from the Supreme Court. We’re talking Dred Scott/Plessy v. Ferguson/Korematsu bad. An obviously horrific decision that attacks human rights and basic due process for no reason… and totally without explanation.

There is a righteous dissent from Justice Sotomayor that excoriates the majority for just how evil this decision is, and I was tempted to just post all of that as this post, but I fear this one requires some explanation.

The Background: How We Got To State-Sanctioned Human Trafficking

The legal backdrop makes this even more shocking. Just last month, the Supreme Court (for the second time) told the Trump DOJ it had to provide some level of “reasonable” due process to those being shipped to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act. For a brief moment, it seemed like even the conservatives recognized Trump’s lawlessness.

This case is a bit different. It involves people already deemed deportable. The question: can the US ship them literally anywhere in the world? Under existing law, the answer was yes—but with many limits and with guaranteed basic due process. Specifically, people facing “third country removal” had the right to a “reasonable fear” hearing where they could explain why being shipped to whatever random country the US picked might get them killed. And such removals were only supposed to take place if it was impossible to send them to countries they actually had a connection to.

This is actually important. While the issue of the US trafficking Venezuelans to El Salvador has been well covered, that was a deal with the Salvadoran government. There’s a separate issue of the US randomly shipping off people to a long list of dangerous countries, places where the people being shipped likely know no one, don’t know the language, and may be thousands of miles from anyone they do know. And some of those countries that the US is shipping people to are either war zones or engaged in selling migrants into slavery.

Even if you think immigration violations justify deportation, shipping people to countries where they face torture or slavery sounds like a crime against humanity. And many of these people entered legally seeking asylum—Trump has simply been revoking their status, another move the Court blessed a few weeks ago.

The Case: Government Defies Court Orders, SCOTUS Rewards Them

In this case (DHS v. D.V.D.), District Judge Brian Murphy had ordered DHS to provide basic due process before shipping people around the globe. The government’s response? It ignored him. Repeatedly. Remember Judge Murphy getting annoyed that DHS was shipping men to South Sudan? That was in violation of this restraining order. When he caught them lying about their removals, they kept lying.

Judge Murphy worked diligently to protect constitutional rights. The government thumbed its nose at him. And now the Supreme Court has rewarded that lawlessness.

The government not only gets away with ignoring Judge Murphy’s earlier order, it gets to effectively continue doing so. With no explanation as to why. This isn’t just horrific for due process and the people being trafficked this way, it’s a fucking insult to Judge Murphy who worked diligently to protect rights in this case.

Sotomayor’s Blistering Dissent Calls Out The Majority’s Cowardice

In matters of life and death, it is best to proceed with caution. In this case, the Government took the opposite approach. It wrongfully deported one plaintiff to Guatemala, even though an Immigration Judge found he was likely to face torture there. Then, in clear violation of a court order, it deported six more to South Sudan, a nation the State Department considers too unsafe for all but its most critical personnel. An attentive District Court’s timely intervention only narrowly prevented a third set of unlawful removals to Libya.

Rather than allowing our lower court colleagues to manage this high-stakes litigation with the care and attention it plainly requires, this Court now intervenes to grant the Government emergency relief from an order it has repeatedly defied. I cannot join so gross an abuse of the Court’s equitable discretion.

Basically, the government is doing something really obviously horrific and evil here, a lower court—somewhat heroically—stepped in to help, and the Supreme Court is saying “oh no, go ahead with the evil stuff.” It’s fucking crazy.

Sotomayor notes that these kinds of “third country removals” (i.e., to a country not of their origin nor where they have connections, but only “is willing to accept people the US removes”) are quite “burdensome” on the individuals involved and therefore extremely limited by law. That is, Sotomayor (unlike the majority of the court) recognizes that Congress has put significant conditions on such human trafficking, which the Trump regime is gleefully ignoring.

Noncitizens facing removal of any sort are entitled under international and domestic law to raise a claim under the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Dec. 10, 1984, S. Treaty Doc. No. 100–20, 1465 U. N. T. S. 113. Article 3 of the Convention prohibits returning any person “to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.” The United States is a party to the Convention, and in 1998 Congress passed the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act to implement its commands. The Act provides that “[i]t shall be the policy of the United States not to expel, extradite, or otherwise effect the involuntary return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture, regardless of whether the person is physically present in the United States.” §2242(a), 112 Stat. 2681–822, codified as note to 8 U. S. C. §1231. It also directs the Executive to “prescribe regulations to implement” the Convention. §2242(b), 112 Stat. 2681–822. Those regulations provide, among other things, that “[a] removal order . . . shall not be executed in circumstances that would violate Article 3.” 28 CFR §200.1 (2024).

The Pattern of Lawlessness

Sotomayor then details how DHS repeatedly ignored court orders not to send men subject to deportation to specific countries where they faced credible risks of significant harm. Sometimes it appeared to just outright ignore them. Other times it played games with courts, such as claiming that a temporary restraining order (TRO) against DHS removing someone to a certain country didn’t apply because the Defense Department, not DHS, handled the removal to that country.

As she notes:

The Government thus openly flouted two court orders, including the one from which it now seeks relief. Even if the orders in question had been mistaken, the Government had a duty to obey them until they were “‘reversed by orderly and proper proceedings.’” Maness, 419 U. S., at 459 (quoting United States v. Mine Workers, 330 U. S. 258, 293 (1947)). That principle is a bedrock of the rule of law. The Government’s misconduct threatens it to its core.

So too does this Court’s decision to grant the Government equitable relief. This is not the first time the Court closes its eyes to noncompliance, nor, I fear, will it be the last. See Trump v. J. G. G., 604 U. S. ___ (2025) (per curiam). Yet each time this Court rewards noncompliance with discretionary relief, it further erodes respect for courts and for the rule of law.

The sum total of the Roberts Court’s legacy is going to be “he completely wrecked any respect for the judiciary and the rule of law by making a mockery of it.” Each lawless move like this just makes and more people see the courts as illegitimate. And that’s doubly embarrassing after all of the effort Judge Murphy went through at the district court to make things work properly, despite a defiant Trump regime.

Emergency Relief For Whom?

And this raises the big question: the Supreme Court’s emergency docket is supposed to be used to put an immediate stop to something where there is imminent harm if they don’t. But here, the Court is doing the opposite. The irreparable, and possibly catastrophic, harms are being allowed to move forward, with no evidence of any real harm to the US. As Sotomayor notes:

In light of the Government’s flagrantly unlawful conduct, today’s decision might suggest the Government faces extraordinary harms. Yet even that is not the case. Rather, following a recent trend, the Court appears to give no serious consideration to the irreparable harm factor. See, e.g., id., at ___ (slip op., at ___); SSA v. AFSCME, 605 U. S. ___ (2025). Without a showing that a stay is necessary to avoid irreparable harm, however, this Court’s midstream intervention is inexcusable.

Besides the facially absurd contention that the Executive is “irreparabl[y]” harmed any time a court orders it temporarily to refrain from doing something it would like to do, see Application for Stay of Injunction 37, the Government has identified no irreparable harm from the challenged preliminary injunction.

The DOJ tried to claim irreparable harm because Judge Murphy told the government it could (voluntarily!) conduct the reasonable fear interviews in Djibouti (where the plane carrying some of the men was forced to land). Yet, as Sotomayor points out, that particular issue wasn’t even appealed by the DOJ and it was an option granted to the government after it requested it as an alternative to bringing the men back to the US (which it should have been forced to do because flying the men to South Sudan violated the existing TRO):

Instead, the Government locates the source of its injury in the District Court’s efforts to provide relief to the class members in South Sudan. Id., at 37–39. That argument is misguided. First, the District Court’s remedial orders are not properly before this Court because the Government has not appealed them, nor sought a stay pending a forthcoming appeal. Second, the court adopted the narrowest possible remedy, allowing the Government itself to choose whether it would return the class members to the United States or provide them with process where they are held. Finally, the Government is in every respect responsible for any resulting harms. Had it complied with the preliminary injunction, no followup orders would have been necessary, nor would the Government have faced a “sudden need . . . to detain criminal aliens” abroad. Id., at 39. It does not face such “need” today, as it can return the noncitizens it wrongfully removed at any time. No litigant, not even the Government, may “satisfy the irreparable harm requirement if the harm complained of is self-inflicted.”

But the plaintiffs in this case clearly face very real and immediate harms:

For their part, the plaintiffs in this case face extraordinary harms from even a temporary grant of relief to the Government. A. A. R. P. v. Trump, 605 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 4) (recognizing detainees’ interests against removal are “particularly weighty”). The Government has made clear in word and deed that it feels itself unconstrained by law, free to deport anyone anywhere without notice or an opportunity to be heard. The episodes of noncompliance in this very case illustrate the risks. Thirteen noncitizens narrowly escaped being the target of extraordinary violence in Libya; O. C. G. spent months in hiding in Guatemala; others face release in South Sudan, which the State Department says is in the midst of “‘armed conflict’” between “‘ethnic groups.’” N. 2, supra. Only the District Court’s careful attention to this case prevented worse outcomes. Yet today the Court obstructs those proceedings, exposing thousands to the risk of torture or death.

When put that way, it feels like the kind of thing a Supreme Court is supposed to stop, not reverse a lower court on without explanation.

Sotomayor then points out the pure insanity of this decision:

Given its conduct in these proceedings, the Government’s posture resembles that of the arsonist who calls 911 to report firefighters for violating a local noise ordinance.

The Legal Arguments Are Nonsensical Too

Even worse, she notes, if you get past the procedural stuff, the merits argument by the government is nonsensical as well. She calls out some of it as “absurd.”

Ultimately, the Government says, the plaintiffs in this case object to their removal. So, they should bring their challenges in a petition for review of an order of removal. Yet the Government also claims that it need not issue or reopen any orders of removal before deporting someone to a third country. That is part of the problem plaintiffs seek to remedy: Without an applicable order of removal, they have no way to raise their claims under the Convention. In the end, then, the Government’s view is that the only way to challenge its refusal to provide orders of removal is to appeal those (nonexistent) orders. That is absurd.

Even worse, under the government’s argument, these plaintiffs get no due process rights at all—which would also be a totally absurd scenario:

Even if the Government could establish that its enjoined actions (of providing no notice or process) are integral to the “operation” of §1231(b), that in turn would raise a “‘serious constitutional question.’” Webster v. Doe, 486 U. S. 592, 603 (1988). That is because, as the Government reads it, §1252(f )(1) threatens to nullify plaintiffs’ procedural due process rights entirely. Recall that the Government claims it may remove noncitizens in the space of 15 minutes. See supra, at 4. Such noncitizens cannot practicably file individual lawsuits to vindicate their due process rights. After all, they will not know of the need to file a claim until they are on a bus or plane out of the country. Nor will their counsel, whom the Government refuses to notify. The Government can hardly expect every deportable noncitizen to file a pre-emptive lawsuit. Thus, if §1252(f )(1) precludes classwide vindication of the right to notice and due process under these circumstances, then it effectively nullifies those rights.

It is that kind of lawlessness that the Supreme Court blessed yesterday.

WITHOUT EXPLANATION.

Then there’s the Administrative Procedure Act issue, where Sotomayor again points out that the government’s interpretation of the law effectively wipes out large segments of the statute:

That leaves, finally, the merits of plaintiffs’ underlying APA and due process claims. Begin with the statutory and regulatory scheme governing removal. In the Government’s view, once a noncitizen has been found removable, she can effectively be removed anywhere at any time. That view would render meaningless the countless statutory and regulatory provisions providing for notice and a hearing. See, e.g., 8 U. S. C. §1229(a)(1) (“In removal proceedings under section 1229a . . . written notice . . . shall be given . . . to the alien or to the alien’s counsel of record”); 8 CFR §1240.10(f ) (2024) (in removal hearing, the Immigration Judge “shall . . . identify for the record a country, or countries in the alternative, to which the alien’s removal may be made”); §241.8(e) (when a removal order is reinstated after a noncitizen illegally reenters the country, noncitizen who “expresses a fear of returning to the country designated in that order” must be given an interview (emphasis added)); 8 U. S. C. §§1228(b)(1)–(3) (noncitizens determined removable due to felony conviction must be given notice under §1229(a) and 14 days “to apply for judicial review”); 8 CFR §238.1(b)(2) (requiring notice to noncitizens removable due to felony convictions).

The Government asserts that it need only comply with these provisions once, for the first removal proceeding, and can disregard them afterwards. The consequence of that view is that what happens in removal proceedings simply does not matter. The Government could designate any location in its initial order, lose before the immigration judge, decline to appeal, and promptly thereafter deport the noncitizen to a country of the Government’s choosing. Indeed, that is precisely what happened in O. C. G.’s case.

In other words, the Trump regime is deliberately defying the law:

Where did the Government find the authority to disregard Congress’s carefully calibrated scheme of immigration laws? It does not argue the third-country removal statute provides it. See Application for Stay of Injunction 13. Instead, the Government simply falls back on the Executive’s implied authority in this field. Yet “the President must comply with legislation regulating or restricting the transfer of detainees” even in “wartime.”

But, Sotomayor points out, you can’t just ignore the law like that:

It is a “‘cardinal principle of statutory construction,’” moreover, that statutes should be construed so that “‘no clause, sentence, or word shall be superfluous, void, or insignificant.’” TRW Inc. v. Andrews, 534 U. S. 19, 31 (2001). Here the Government construes the statute’s lack of “a particular process for carrying out” third-country removals, Application for Stay of Injunction 13, as conveying near-unlimited power to the Executive, rendering the remaining statutory scheme “‘void . . . or insignificant.’” TRW, 534 U. S., at 31. To make this claim is to ignore the clear statutory command that notice and a hearing must be provided. See supra, at 15. The Government cannot show a likelihood of success on plaintiffs’ statutory and regulatory claims, nor can it defend the lawfulness of its no-notice removals.

Even if Trump can ignore Congress, Sotomayor wonders how the Supreme Court can possibly bless his regime ignoring the Fifth Amendment’s promise of due process:

Turning to the constitutional claim, this Court has repeatedly affirmed that “ ‘the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law’ in the context of removal proceedings.” J. G. G., 604 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 3); A. A. R. P., 605 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 3). Due process includes reasonable notice and an opportunity to be heard. Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co., 339 U. S. 306, 314 (1950). Of course the Government cannot avoid its obligation to provide due process “in the context of removal proceedings,” J. G. G., 604 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 3), by skipping such proceedings entirely and simply whisking noncitizens off the street and onto busses or planes out of the country.

[….]

The Government barely disputes these basic principles. Instead, it obfuscates the issue by asserting that some (perhaps “many”) members of the class should be treated as if they never entered the United States. Application for Stay of Injunction 33–34. Yet even if that were true as to some class members, it could show at most that the class might be too broadly defined, not that the Government is likely to succeed on the constitutional merits.

As she concludes, due process is a core component of the rule of law. And here the majority is tossing it in the wood chipper with nary an explanation.

The Due Process Clause represents “the principle that ours is a government of laws, not of men, and that we submit ourselves to rulers only if under rules.” Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U. S. 579, 646 (1952) (Jackson, J., concurring). By rewarding lawlessness, the Court once again undermines that foundational principle. Apparently, the Court finds the idea that thousands will suffer violence in farflung locales more palatable than the remote possibility that a District Court exceeded its remedial powers when it ordered the Government to provide notice and process to which the plaintiffs are constitutionally and statutorily entitled. That use of discretion is as incomprehensible as it is inexcusable.

Some of the plaintiffs in the case quickly asked Judge Murphy for a new TRO and—interestingly!—he quickly responded that such an order is not necessary because (as Sotomayor noted above) the specific orders regarding the men illegally shipped towards South Sudan, and currently held in Djibouti, was not appealed! This ruling may apply to others, but the current order regarding these men stands:

The Court’s May 21, 2025 Order on Remedy, Dkt. 119, remains in full force and effect, notwithstanding today’s stay of the Preliminary Injunction. DHS v. D.V.D., No. 24A1153, slip op. at 12 (S. Ct. Jun. 23, 2025) (Sotomayor, J., dissenting) (“[T]he District Court’s remedial orders [were] not properly before [the Supreme] Court because the Government has not appealed them, nor sought a stay pending a forthcoming appeal.”).

I imagine the DOJ will challenge that, and tragically the Supreme Court may be on their side.

What This Means Going Forward

The Supreme Court just taught the Trump administration—and every future administration—a valuable lesson: you can ignore court orders with impunity as long as you appeal to the right justices. Why bother following district court rulings when you know the Supreme Court will bail you out without even requiring an explanation?

This isn’t just about immigration. It’s about the fundamental principle that government officials must follow court orders until they’re properly overturned. By rewarding DHS’s blatant defiance, the Court has opened the floodgates. What’s to stop Trump from ignoring the next judge who tries to block his policies? Or the judge after that?

And that shouldn’t take away from the fact that the human cost will be immediate and devastating. Right now, people are sitting in detention centers knowing they could be shipped to Libya, South Sudan, or any other country the administration picks—with no meaningful chance to explain why that might get them killed. Some will disappear into war zones. Others will be sold into slavery. And five or six justices couldn’t be bothered to write a few paragraphs explaining why this is legal.

This decision completes the Roberts Court’s long-term transformation from a judicial body into a partisan enabler of authoritarian rule. Each time they reward lawlessness with their assent, they make clear that the rule of law only applies to those without political connections to the right people.

Judge Murphy tried to do his job. He followed the law, protected constitutional rights, and demanded basic due process. For his efforts, he got a Supreme Court that essentially told him to shut up and get out of the way while the government traffics humans around the globe.

That’s not justice. That’s not law. That’s just power protecting power while people die.

The statewide survey also found that Texas Republicans are closely divided on the issue.

Earlier this month, we talked about summer interns, and here are 12 of my favorite stories you shared. (Note that we are laughing with these interns, not at them. We have all been this young and inexperienced at some point.)

1. The disappearance

We had an intern go missing in a large U.S. City, away from home office. FINALLY got a hold of him after upteen voicemails/ texts. Turns out, he used our trip to meet up with a girl he knew in high school. We told him he either flew back with us, or forfeited his ticket home and was on his own. He chose to stay.

2. The nap schedule

One year the interns accidentally (?) published a company-wide public Microsoft Calendar of their nap schedule to take naps in the nursing mothers/meditation room.

While it was happening, no one could figure out why no one could access that room during the day. Until the calendar was found.

3. The expanding foam

I’ve only known one intern to get outright fired.

He was helping the facilities engineers with some maintenance on an industrial expanding-foam injection gun; imagine a much larger, stickier, denser version of the “Great Stuff” style foam you would use to seal gaps around a door frame.

The real engineers had to divert to an emergency call before the job was done, and told Intern that the tool was very expensive and complicated and that he should wait for them to return and should absolutely not touch it while they were gone.

He decided to ignore this and impress everybody with his Gumption! and brilliance by continuing to tinker with the equipment himself.

The end result was a ball of expanding foam the size of a Volkswagen, with the injection gun buried somewhere in the middle of it.

4. The Halloween decorations

Not an intern, and not exclusively in the summer, but an undergrad student working in an academic lab (which is the academia equivalent of an unpaid intern, I suppose).

She was very enthusiastic about holidays and wanted us to be more “festive” in decorating. Near Halloween, she showed up to the lab with a carved pumpkin and a candle to spruce the place up. She was very miffed that she couldn’t a) light a *real* candle in a lab chock-a-block full of flammable chemicals and b) leave a slowly rotting gourd in our very much indoor lab for multiple weeks…

That, along with some other lab safety issues, meant that she was shuffled off to another lab in the department that dealt with significantly lower chemical hazards than us. Everyone was much happier with that arrangement!

5. The fabrication

From the academic side of internships. I helped create an undergrad major that a semester long internship junior or senior year that had a heavy academic component, e.g., in the field four days and then on Friday seminars where they linked their experience with the subject matter of their program and created integrative papers, and projects which were eventually presented to a wide audience. They also kept analytic journals where they applied reflective steps to what they were doing.

One student fabricated it all: the journals, the examples for analysis, etc. They only caught them when the director of the program ran into the person running the nonprofit where the student interned and commented on the terrific experience they were having. The director had never met the student. Further investigation showed they were in fact fabricating everything. And this was before AI made this even easier.

Obviously there should have been contact between college and agency routinely, but the person supervising had been reading and discussing the experience with the student and did not undertake that step.

6. The improvement

We had an intern who informed us with great confidence that the ERP system the university used wasn’t very well written, and he’d put together something that should work better, so who would he talk to about replacing SAP with the javascript app he’d cobbled together in a week.

7. The streaks

Maybe six or seven years ago, weird, dark streaks appeared on a couple different walls in our office. Each streak was maybe a foot tall, but nearly two feet long. The streaks appeared out of nowhere, but grew darker and more pronounced over the course of the summer. Near the end of the summer, staff scrubbed away the marks — but not before we realized the cause.

An intern had been handling newspapers and print publications, and his hands were grimy. He would just … rub his hands along the length certain (random?) walls as he walked by. Over and over again. All summer. The height/length of the marks depended on how close he was to the wall and how long he would drag his ink-stained hands across the surface. Wash your hands, people!

8. The dress code

My old company’s one and only intern had to be told not to wear mini skirts and extremely high heels to the office. She tried to argue this, her argument was “But I look really good!”. A few weeks later she showed up in PJs. Her argument was “I sit in the back row, no one is going to notice.” She was extremely grumpy about being sent home to change that day.

9. The disappearance, part 2

We invited our new intern to join our annual planning workshop at company headquarters, which was a short flight to a large U.S. city. Intern left our group dinner on day one and we never saw him again. Someone overheard him on the phone saying he was excited to meet up with a childhood buddy that night. He sent a text the following morning that he was sick and would join midday. He never showed up or communicated with us again. We had a small hope he would at least be at the airport for the return flight three days later.

Our manager was told by HR she needed to stay in company HQ city so we could ensure that this kid got back safely since we were obligated to get him home. After day five, she was able to hand over responsibility to someone at HQ and return home.

HR notified his emergency contact per protocol. When we inquired about notifying the police, HR said the intern had been in contact with his brother and was posting to social media so there was no reason to believe he was in danger. I believe he is still living his best life partying it up in Minneapolis four years later.

To this day, every trip to HQ gets the comment that “Maybe you’ll run into Joey on the train/bus/coffee.” Oh and interns are not allowed to travel with us anymore.

10. The birthday

My intern works part-time, two full days and Friday is a half day. Since Thursday was his 21st birthday and we’re in the U.S., I told him if he wanted to shift those hours to the afternoon, we could do that as a little birthday treat. He, having spent most summers with the European half of his family and feeling he’s familiar with drinking, said he would be fine. He underestimated the power of an American 21st birthday.

On Friday, I heard from him about 2 pm. He apologized profusely via text — he got home at 7am and was still unwell and he thinks his mom might have called? From what I can piece together listening in to him and some junior team members since then, he woke up on a friend’s lawn at daylight, in that fun still-drunk-but-also-now-hungover state, then stumbled home to continue suffering in bed.

I spoke with him his first day back, and we agreed that the lessons learned were not to over-drink, and either plan the birthday party for a Friday night, or take the day after off work preemptively. Luckily he is an intern, so all it means is he’ll have to deal with gentle ribbing all summer while he repairs our impression of him. But he’s already doing work a bit more advanced than we thought we’d get out of him, so as long as he lays off the midweek parties, he should be fine.

11. The wooden ball

I worked for a childcare center located at a large university for staff, professors, admins, grad students, etc. Over the slow summer months between semesters, we hired interns from the school of education on campus to work as assistant teachers. Most of them were amazing, loved kids, and were just thrilled to get experience and mentorship in a real classroom, but there were always a few … outliers, shall we say.

One summer, I had an intern so unenthusiastic and disengaged, Rachel, that I sometimes wondered if she had a pulse. I honestly considered asking her why she was pursuing education at all, as she seemed both uninterested and unfamiliar with children and how they work, as evidenced by The Wooden Ball Conundrum of 2021.

We had a ramp set with wooden golf-ball sized balls that the kids loved, but required a fair level of supervision from adults. They were HARD and if thrown, could really do some damage. One busy morning, I noticed a child ominously tossing one of the wooden balls around, dangerously close to his peers’ heads and to our glass tank full of hermit crabs. My spidey sense was tingling for potential disaster. I was managing 15 other things, so I called to Rachel, “Hey, please go tell J to give you that wooden ball because it belongs in the block area for safety.”

She sighed heavily and ambled over to him. A minute later, she came back to me, empty-handed. I asked her where the ball was and she said, “He said no.” With a shrug. I was baffled and I think I said something like, Wwhat??? You’re the adult and it’s a classroom rule?”

Of course he said no! Kids often say no! All the time! Unreasonably! It’s your job to keep them safe anyway! You cannot let a four-year-old outwit you! She also fell asleep every day during nap time, alongside the kids. I hope she changed majors.

12. The hero

I was the notorious summer intern.

Years ago, I was an intern in the compliance department of a massive company in the manufacturing industry. While I was waiting to catch a ride home, I saw a guy clearly struggling with PowerPoint. I offered to help, and he took me up on it—but every time I fixed the issue and walked away, he messed something else up and hollered “Hey, intern!” across the open office to get me to come back.

After about the fourth round of this, I turned and said, “You’re acting like a real asshole. I’m a human being and deserve to be treated with respect.” I told him this was the last time I was going to fix it and that if he wanted it to keep working, he needed to turn around and walk away from the screen.

Cue silence. Turns out he was a Very. Important. Executive. And to make things worse? My dad worked in management at the same company. Everyone, including the exec, started calling my dad to gossip about the event. I still can’t visit without someone telling this story.

Thankfully, everyone agreed the guy had always been a jerk. He was told, more or less, that if he didn’t like being called out by a tiny teenage girl, maybe he should change his attitude.

Fast-forward a year: he was not-so-politely asked to leave the company. I was the lucky intern assigned to pack up his desk and ship the boxes overseas—to the only place that would still hire him.

The post the completely fake project, the company-wide nap schedule, and other stories of summer interns appeared first on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

A month ago, my coworker had a heart attack at work. As a woman, her symptoms didn’t fit the standard “clutch your chest, and your left arm hurts.” Her vision suddenly doubled out of nowhere. I offered to walk her to the ER (we work next to a hospital), and she declined. I set a timer and told her that if her vision didn’t improve by the time the alarm rang, we were headed to the ER immediately.

The timer dinged, and she told me everything had more or less returned to normal. I realize now she was probably downplaying her symptoms.

With my encouragement, she contacted her doctor, who scheduled an urgent appointment for her later that day. It wasn’t until a week later, after testing, that she learned she had a minor cardiac event. Looking back, my coworker displayed symptoms for two weeks prior, but she attributed them to something else: anxiety over the political attacks on higher education and research; tiredness from doomscrolling; tightness in her chest from the aforementioned anxiety.

A few days ago, she came into work complaining that her chest felt tight. I told her to go straight to the ER. She declined; she thought it was a medication she’d taken, and she felt better after she took a second medication to counteract the first. I again told her the ER was the best place for monitoring. She said she’d think about it.

She did go eventually, and she was correct thinking that the second medication would fix the issue the first medication caused.

I’ve kept the knowledge of her heart attack quiet from my boss at my coworker’s request. It’s my coworker’s health issue, and I do feel that she has the agency to keep that information private. (Ironically, I coached my coworker through how to tell my boss about her health issue without actually using the words “heart attack,” from past advice you’ve given.)

Now, after her second health scare in as many weeks, I’m wondering if I should ignore my coworker’s request and let my boss know anyway. Right now, the boundary I’ve drawn for myself is that if anything else happens at work, I’m telling my boss immediately. The first incident came out of nowhere, and my coworker’s own doctor failed to recognize what was happening at the time. This last time, I felt my coworker acted irresponsibly, knowing that she just had a heart attack. I’m caught between wanting to respect my coworker’s wishes and frustration that she’s not taking this as seriously as I think she should.

Err on the side of respecting your coworker’s wishes, because she should get to control information about her health.

That would be the answer regardless, but it might be easier if you remember that now that she’s been through the initial heart event, she presumably has guidance from her doctor on how to know if she needs to act with more urgency in the future. She also happened to be right about what to do during the second scare, which indicates that she has some degree of knowledge about how to manage her condition. I can understand why it rattled you, but she’s better positioned than you are to know if her actions were irresponsible or not. They might not have been.

I do think it’s reasonable for you to say to her, “This is serious enough that I’m really uncomfortable being the only one at work who knows it happened, and I want to be transparent that if it happens again, I wouldn’t feel comfortable staying quiet about it.” Be aware, of course, that that may just result in her not telling you if something else happens! But that’s her call to make; the part that’s yours is to tell her what you are and aren’t comfortable doing in the future.

But I would also push a bit on why you think it’s so important that your boss know someone else’s health info, to the point of considering going over your coworker’s head to share it. I’m guessing you’re thinking that if more people at work are aware of your coworker’s history, they’re more likely to spot it if she has worrisome symptoms in the future and can push her to address it … but that’s pretty squarely your coworker’s decision to make, rather than yours. I also suspect that the recency and the fact that it happened at work are both playing a role here, and that if she told you she’d had a heart attack two years ago or at home, you wouldn’t be having the same strong sense that her boss needs to know — even though you’d still have a coworker with a cardiac history. (For what it’s worth, you probably do have other coworkers with scary health histories; you just don’t know theirs.)

Telling your boss also isn’t guaranteed to fall into “this action will save my coworker’s life” territory; it could fall into “this action could wrongly affect my coworker’s job and also not result in anything that helps her” territory, and that’s another reason to default to respecting her privacy.

The post should I tell my boss about my coworker’s heart attack at work? appeared first on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I am working with HR to let someone go. The person is directly involved in a number of active cross-functional projects.

Typically terminations in our organization are communicated post-event, but I feel like I will be blindsiding several team members. The termination shouldn’t be a major surprise as this individual has had performance issues, including interpersonal issues.

Would you ever recommend giving select team members — potentially managers and project managers — a heads-up that this event is coming so they can somewhat prepare? I thought about communicating it vaguely, e.g. “change is coming that may affect this project,” but that would just create more confusion and paranoia. Or, do I just sit tight and deal with the teams after the deed is done?

I answer this question — and two others — over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.

Other questions I’m answering there today include:

• Text-speak at work
• Keeping in touch with a coworker who got laid off when I didn’t

The post should I give people a heads-up before their coworker is fired? appeared first on Ask a Manager.

GILLIGAN!