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Around 2 billion years ago, life had plateaued in complexity, ruined the atmosphere, and was on the verge of self-annihilation. But then something strange and potentially extremely lucky happened that enabled endless new evolutionary paths. The first eukaryote cell was born. This may also explain why there are no aliens.
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Canada Post is currently scheduled to go on strike beginning May 22, for the second time in about six months. In order to prevent in-transit product shipments to Canada from being stranded mid-shipment if a strike occurs, BMOW is temporarily suspending some shipping methods. UPS shipping options to Canada will remain available, but shipments via the regular postal service as well as our “economy express” service have been suspend until the strike situation is resolved. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for your understanding.
I work on a small marketing team and have one direct report. A couple of times a year, our team is required to attend industry conferences to staff a booth. These events typically require air travel and are part of the job expectations, outlined in the job description. We rotate travel assignments so the same people aren’t always on the road.
Earlier this year, after some high-profile plane incidents, my employee disclosed that she has a fear of flying and said she wouldn’t be able to attend an upcoming conference. In that case, it was fine — we had plenty of coverage.
My question is: if this becomes an ongoing issue, do I need to accommodate her fear of flying long-term, even though travel is an established part of the role? I’m trying to balance compassion with fairness to the rest of the team, who would have to take on more travel if she opts out.
The answer is actually very similar to last week’s question about an employee with social anxiety who kept calling out on the days they were expected to assist at conferences: your obligations under the Americans with Disabilities will depend on whether the law would consider these trips a marginal function of her position or an essential one. (It would also depend on whether the fear of flying rises to the level that it’s covered under the ADA, but generally it’s wise to proceed from the assumption that it likely is — and regardless, in this case I’d argue that your ethical obligations align pretty well with the law, whether or not the law is in play.)
If this only comes up a couple of times a year, and it’s split among team members when it does, the law would probably consider it a reasonable accommodation to excuse her from the trips, but that’s going to be very fact-specific and so you’d need to talk with a lawyer to find out for sure. Another option: can any of these trips be done by a travel method other than flying (like driving or taking a train)? If so, assigning her only to those would be a reasonable accommodation as well.
2. I am Poopfoot
Whispers had been going around the office about someone called “Poopfoot.” My coworkers made it sound like someone had stepped in dog or cow poop and was tracking it all over the office. I would only hear about Poopfoot in passing, so I was confused and thought it was just some weird in-joke.
That is, until I overheard someone say in a hushed voice, “I’m pretty sure it’s LetterWriter. I recognized her shoes from under the stall when she lifted her foot.” Another woman replied, “Oh, it’s definitely her. She was wearing those glittery cat socks, and I saw them under the stall, too.”
I was shocked and confused, and I finally gleaned what was happening from listening to the rest of their conversation: Poopfoot wasn’t someone who was tracking poop. It was someone who was flushing the toilet by lifting their foot to push the lever — which is something I’ve been doing since I was a kid. (And yes, her description of my Friday socks was correct.)
My mother taught me ever since I was a little girl that since restrooms are dirty, touching as few surfaces as possible on top of regular hand-washing was most hygienic. She taught me to use my foot when flushing the toilet to not touch the handle.
But when I heard my coworkers grimacing with each other, I googled the opinions on using your feet to flush the toilet. The general consensus seems to be that your hands are meant to be washed, but since nobody ever washes the bottoms of their shoes, you’re essentially tracking whatever was on the toilet lever everywhere you walk.
I feel so embarrassed and self-conscious since my entire reasoning before learning this was based on optimizing hygiene, but I’ve been doing the opposite. I’m going to use my hands from now on, but now what? Should I tell my coworkers that I know that they know that I am Poopfoot? Should I apologize to anyone? Is there a way I can talk about the issue without making it weird(er)?
Your coworkers are the ones making this weird. You are not the only person to flush a public toilet with your foot, and while it may not be the most hygienic choice, it’s hardly worthy of an office nickname, discussion, or scandal. This is not shocking behavior.
Part of me likes the idea of you embarrassing them by saying, “Hey, I heard you talking about me flushing the toilet with my foot. In my family it was considered more hygienic, but I’m going to stop doing it since it bothers people” … but you don’t owe them that, and it’s not necessarily in your interests to have to deal with any ensuing awkwardness. You don’t need to apologize to anyone, and you can just let it hopefully die off on its own.
3. Is my former boss too close a friend to be a reference?
In my previous role I had the good fortune to work for a boss I really liked. While I worked for her, we were friendly but professional.
She left that job 18 months ago and we kept in touch, eventually progressing from an occasional coffee to a real friendship. (We are women of a similar age and interests.)
I am now actively job hunting and she is my strongest referee — has an excellent reputation in our industry, oversaw me on challenging projects, etc.
A few months ago, she hit a life crisis — think divorce, health crisis, etc. — and I, along with a couple of her other friends, stepped up to help. She has expressed that she is very conscious that she is asking a lot and feels indebted to us — but she really needs the support right now.
Last Monday, after I had done some tasks for her on the weekend (for which she thanked me profusely) I had to let her know that a hiring manager would be contacting her. And that felt a bit … icky. She would say good things about me either way, and I of course would help her through this hard time either way but is there a point where a friendship compromises the referee role? I don’t want to give up either thing, so I am hoping you say no but would welcome your thoughts.
You’re fine continuing to offer her as a reference, but if you feel weird about it, you can always check to make sure she still feels comfortable doing it.
If I were the reference-checker, I might not put as much weight on the reference if I knew it was coming from someone who was now a good friend, but the fact is, she was your boss and she’s presumably giving a reasonably honest assessment. You’re not obligated to disclose the friendship or jettison her as a reference just because the relationship has evolved. (If you became romantically involved with her, that would change things — at that point the bias and other dynamics are too weird — but a boss who became a friend? You’re fine.)
4. Who gets the paid day off?
I manage a very small staff and just got a unique situation across my desk.
Office policies for context: We close on major holidays and it’s paid if you were scheduled to work that day. Only one employee can take PTO per day.
Situation: Two employees, Adam and Beth, work four days during the five-day work week. Adam usually has Friday off, and Beth usually has Monday off. An upcoming week has a holiday on a Friday.
Adam wants to switch days off for that week (this is allowed) with Beth. But the switch would make Beth not be “scheduled” for the Friday holiday she would have gotten paid for if they didn’t switch.
Who gets the paid holiday? Do we consider the switch a “covered shift” instead, so that Beth doesn’t get screwed out of a paid day off since Adam is the one wanting something? It doesn’t seem right that Adam gets the day off he wants (Monday) plus another day off that is paid (Friday), when Beth would lose the paid day off. Adam cannot use PTO to miss the day he needs off because a different person is already off that day.
Leave it up to them! If Beth doesn’t mind making the switch — and realizes it means that she will lose a day of holiday pay — that’s her call. Make sure she does know that, though.
5. How to talk about my bereavement in interviews
I was laid off 10 months ago. Shortly after I began my job search, my mother’s dementia took a sudden turn for the worse, and after six months of decline, she passed away. My sibling was her main caregiver, but I traveled to help as much as I could. After her death, there were additional duties related to her estate.
The problem I’m running into as I reactivate my job search is when screening interviewers ask, “What have you been doing since the end of your last position?”
I do need some explanation for why I have nearly a year with no work, volunteering, education, or other skill-building pursuits. But if I tell them what I just told you, things get very awkward. And I fear marking myself in the screener’s mind as “that one with the death.” How would you recommend handling this?
“My layoff happened to coincide with a health crisis in my family, so I’ve been spending time attending to that, but I’m ready to return my focus to work full-time.”
There’s an old adage in poker: If you look around the table and you can’t tell who the fish is, that means you’re the fish.
If you’re surprised at how this publicity stunt from Epic has turned out, especially if you’re a reporter and ran a piece accepting Tim Sweeney’s word that Fortnite was — not might be, but was — coming back to the US App Store as a fact, then you are Tim Sweeney’s fish.
Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was diagnosed Friday with an
aggressive form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones,
his office said in a statement on Sunday.
The diagnosis came after Mr. Biden reported urinary symptoms,
which led doctors to find a “small nodule” on his
prostate. Mr. Biden’s cancer is “characterized by a Gleason
score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone,” the
statement said.
“While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the
cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective
management,” according to the statement from Mr. Biden’s office,
which was unsigned. “The president and his family are reviewing
treatment options with his physicians.”
Terrible news about a good man. But, man, does it feel like forever ago that he was president. It was only 118 days ago.
Month-old news but I’m cleaning up tabs today. I love everything about this pickup except the fact that it doesn’t have a speaker system built-in. No one wants to put a Bluetooth boombox in their cabin and, worse, isn’t that sort of an obvious safety hazard? You get in a crash and now there’s a boombox flying around inside. Just put a simple bluetooth speaker system in.
But the aesthetics of this are chef’s-kiss good. It’s a beautiful little truck. It gets everything right that the Cybertruck gets wrong.
However, I have some questions about how real this is. You pay $50 now to get in the queue for pre-orders, but pre-orders haven’t even started. Deliveries are supposed to start in “late 2026” but Car and Driver is cautiously describing it as a “2027 truck EV”. I’m rooting for them but at this point it’s a promise not a truck.
A quarterly column from Carrie Brownstein, who is better at dispensing advice than taking it
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Q: About a year ago, my friend asked me to start sharing my real-time location with her. At first, the layer of forced transparency made me anxious. What if I want to reschedule our plans, but I’m just sitting at home? What if I’m running late because I can’t figure out what to wear, and not because I’m stuck in traffic? But here I am a year later, getting ready to meet up with Location-Sharing Friend, and I’m the one who’s abusing my power. I just checked her location to see how far away she is—a habit I’ve formed, and something I do even when we have no plans. She’s five minutes away. What’s your opinion on location sharing? Is it a sign of intimacy, or just downright invasive?
Ella M. Location not found
A:I don’t mean to sound alarmist or paranoid, but I’m definitely going to. Location sharing is largely a scam and should be used sparingly. Such as in emergencies, or when you’re headed into potential and—this is the crucial part—actual danger. Because otherwise, all you’re doing is surrendering to surveillance capitalism, forfeiting autonomy, and weakening resilience. Ironically, many of us will fight for bodily and political autonomy, support safe spaces, respect privacy, and abhor trespass and violation, but are boundaryless when it comes to technology (even when it’s the nefarious, untrustworthy sort), willingly making ourselves susceptible to manipulation and behavior modification at the hands of our devices. And while it might be too late to reverse this ontological shift, or the merging of the virtual and the actual, we must resist where we can. The more we allow our likes and habits, our bodies and minds, to be available and porous to tech, the more we cede not just control but awareness, a sense that it knows more about us than we know about ourselves. Tech isn’t augmenting us, but the other way around.
And if that doesn’t scare you, let me appeal on a more personal level. Location sharing with your friends forms nothing more than an illusory connection. It’s the opposite of closeness, tethering people to their devices, not to one another. It’s an example of tech gamifying personal dynamics: My friend is a dot on a map that I can follow. I invent narratives based on their whereabouts, and judge accordingly. Higher value is placed on being in a certain place at a certain time. Being in the wrong place is a value deduction. No wonder you are anxious! This relationship is now quantifiable and transactional, but moreover, it’s exhausting! It’s starting to make sense why everyone is in avoidance mode and canceling plans these days.
My advice for you is to stop sharing your location and start sharing the things that help maintain and nurture a friendship: your time; your capacity for listening; your compassion, patience, and understanding.
As a sidenote: If I go missing, it’s probably because this answer makes me a target of the Tech Overlords. Too bad there’s no way to ensure that help could find me…
Q: I met a friend online, and at first we really hit it off. But lately she’s been crossing some boundaries. She’s started reaching out to all my friends, trying to get close to them, and organizing events that always involve me—sometimes without even asking if I’m free. It’s becoming overwhelming, and her voracious social appetite is a serious energy drain.
I’ve never had to confront a friend about something like this before, but I need some breathing room. How do I set boundaries without hurting her feelings or making things awkward?
Selena E. Seattle, WA
A: Setting boundaries is a difficult task, but I agree you need to set some guidelines with this friend. As opposed to, say, doing the easier thing, which is to break up with not just her but your entire friend group, so that you never have to see her again or confront the problem. Or maybe move cities entirely. While I’m sure you’ve thought about doing both, I’m confident you can ask for breathing room without jeopardizing your friendship.
Here’s what to do: Be kind but firm, use clear and concise language, and above all else, don’t apologize for asking for what you need. Start with what you like and appreciate about her as a friend. Then tell her your needs, plain and simple, without hedging or qualifying. Explain what a balanced friendship feels like to you, and ask what she looks for in a friend. Perhaps through the process of clarification and transparency, she’ll understand why you’ve been uncomfortable, and you’ll gain a better understanding of her actions. She might be operating out of insecurity and not maliciousness, but she needs to see how it looks from your end. Additionally—and maybe this is the hard part—accept that her feelings might get hurt. (I suspect it’s thinking we’re responsible for everyone else’s feelings that makes boundary setting difficult in the first place.) So allow for her feelings, and don’t try to mollify them in the moment. Her anger, confusion, discomfort, whatever it may be, is temporary.
Even if she doesn’t do so immediately, I think she’ll appreciate the honesty. If she isn’t able to accept your needs, I hear Boise, Idaho, is nice.
1. Am I obligated to use my personal network for my job?
I work for a nonprofit in a general admin role that involves some development as well (we’re very small, so it’s kind of all-hands-on-deck). From the start, I have been urged by the executive director (my direct boss) to send our fundraising appeals to my own friends and family, and he’s very pointedly asked me about any wealthy people/possible donors I might know. I mostly managed to wiggle out of that one by making it clear that I don’t have any wealthy friends. However, as we move into our big fundraising season I’m being asked to use my personal network to procure things like prizes for auctions/raffles. I have (decidedly non-wealthy) friends who own small businesses in the area, and my boss has asked me to approach them for in-kind donations, etc.
Here’s the thing: I have been actively looking to leave this job for months. I’m about two seconds away from rage-quitting without a safety net, and currently just attempting to hold on until I can get another job lined up. I have a lot of problems with this organization, including my incredibly micromanaging, pushy boss and a larger creeping worry about the way our money is spent.
I have no interest in (what I see as) exploiting my friends to support a nonprofit I do not believe in. My job description does contain some development work, but it’s mostly the administrative side of fundraising — logging gifts, sending acknowledgments, running reports. It does not list gift solicitation as one of my responsibilities. I am not a schmoozer; I’m a behind-the-scenes spreadsheet-maker, and I would not have accepted this job if making these asks was listed as one of the core job components.
I am sure that more of these requests will be coming in as we enter our busy season, and I’m unsure how to say “no” when my boss asks me to dog my friends for auction prizes. Am I really expected to mine my personal network in this way? For what it’s worth, I’ve worked at a variety of nonprofits, sometimes as part of a development team, and have never been so aggressively pushed to use my personal connections for the benefit of the organization. I’d love your take on what I could say to my boss to make this clear without making the (hopefully short!) remainder of my time here more miserable than it is.
If it comes down to it, I’m prepared to just say “no,” even if there are repercussions. I have written off this boss as a possible future reference because he has very little professional decorum and I think he’d reflect badly on me, even if the reference he gave was overall positive. People find him very off-putting and he has a tendency to ramble and talk constantly about how hard he works. So I’m extremely prepared to burn this bridge, was just wondering if there’s any way I can set this boundary without doing so.
It’s not unusual for staff in nonprofits, especially small ones, to be encouraged to fundraise among their own networks (including for things like auction donations), but it should be left to your judgment about who to approach and how to do it, including whether to do it at all. And you’re not obligated to do it if you prefer not to.
As for how to handle it, do you want the easiest way or the stand-on-principle way? Because while you’re proposing the stand-on-principle way (saying no), the easier way to just say you’ve asked and they can’t help (without actually asking them). Your boss isn’t entitled to a full and honest accounting of what you’ve tried in response to an inappropriate request like this; you can simply use your own judgment, decide your friends would say no, and report that they said no. If you want, feel free to add in, “They seemed uncomfortable that I asked, and I think it would harm the relationship to request anything else.”
2. Stakeholder going beyond bounds of their scope in feedback
Let’s say I work as a project manager in teapot design and production. I send designs to a handful of stakeholders for input and approval based on their subject matter expertise. Most people know to speak to their area of expertise and know that I’m not asking them for their personal opinion on the designs themselves.
One stakeholder is only supposed to weigh in on whether her area’s social media team would be interested in engaging with the designs on platforms when they’re finalized and ready to start marketing. I do not need this person’s opinions on the designs themselves. This does not stop this person from asking me if the curve of the handle can be deeper because it’s ugly as is, or if we can add more filigree to the lid border, or things of that nature — basically applying her personal taste to the actual designs when that’s not her role on this project, or any project we consult with her on. It doesn’t help that it takes her several days beyond when I ask to have comments back by, so this is not the only issue I encounter with her.
I’m not especially close to or familiar with this stakeholder, but I do want someone, whether that’s me or another party, to level-set with her on exactly what feedback I’m asking for in the review phase. I was put in touch with her because of the account manager, and I wonder if Accounts might be the better party to manage expectations with her. For what it’s worth, the account manager and I are very aligned on what feedback we need from this person.
Any advice on how to do this warmly, but directly? I want to be collaborative and maintain a good relationship with her since I can’t just go to a different person, but I don’t need a dozen stakeholders turning into creative directors when that function is covered elsewhere and that’s not the feedback I need from them.
The next time you send her something for review, be very, very explicit about what input you are and are not asking for. For example: “I’m seeking your input on ABC, but not on the design itself (things like the lids and handle are being handled elsewhere).” It’s possible that simply spelling it out clearly will solve the problem, but if after that she again sends you feedback outside the scope of what you need, you should reply, “I’m incorporating your input on ABC, but we aren’t looking for feedback on the design at this point (and have different stakeholders charged with that). I want to make sure you know that so you don’t spend time on design feedback in the future.” If it still happens after that, give her a call or talk in person the next time you have something to send her. Say basically the same thing, and frame it as, “I don’t want you to spend time on input we can’t use, so I want to explain exactly what we are and aren’t looking for.”
If that fails, you could involve the account manager, but with most people this would be something you could solve with the approach above.
3. My manager tells me to solve everything myself, even when I need her help
I’m seeking a sanity check on a situation with my manager and my current role.
I have spent most of my time supporting a single department. For years, I’ve been told that no senior positions would be offered, so I never expected any upward mobility. However, recently, my boss posted a senior position for the department without notifying anyone internally or offering it to someone within the team, and instead hired someone externally.
When I reviewed my goals for the year, I asked my boss what steps I needed to take to get promoted. She said I should come to her with the plan for my own promotion. This is a recurring pattern: every time I bring up a roadblock or an issue, she tells me that I should be coming to her with a solution, even though I only approach her once I’ve exhausted all my available options. For example, when I needed another person for a project, her response was that she didn’t have anyone available, and I should either be creative with my time or propose another solution.
I’m finding this (and many other things) to be really frustrating. It seems like she’s not offering much support or direction for our goals. She sat in a meeting with a new executive about metrics and then told us to come up with metrics without sharing any of the information she got from the meeting. I’m wondering if this is a new kind of management style — possibly the opposite of servant leadership. I don’t mind taking initiative, but at some point, it feels like I’m being asked to solve problems that should involve more collaboration or guidance from her.
Am I missing something here? Is this just how modern management works now, or is there something off about this approach?
This isn’t a new management style; it’s just plain old bad management, which has been around as long as there have been managers. She just sucks at her job and is trying to outsource it to you, despite you not having the tools or authority to do the things she’s asking you to do.
“Come up with a plan for your own promotion” could mean “think about what skills you need to build to move from X to Y and propose work you can do to build those skills” … but given everything else you described about your boss, combined with the fact that she’s told you for years there would never be a path to promotion (if I’m interpreting that correctly), I’m skeptical that that’s what it meant. You could certainly try approaching it that way anyway and see what happens, but this really should be a conversation between the two of you where she offers feedback on what it would take to move to the next level and you collaboratively discuss what a path there could look like.
She just sounds like she sucks as a manager, unfortunately.
4. How much communication should I have with my teenager’s manager?
My 16-year-old will be starting her first job soon, and I wanted your take on what is an appropriate level of communication between her manager and me. For example, should I introduce myself to them? Should I ever contact them to be sure my daughter has informed them of any scheduling conflicts? When I was a teen worker, I kind of viewed my manager like I did my teachers or a coach; an adult who was in charge of me, but I could be wrong here, and that’s why I’m seeking your advice.
You shouldn’t have any contact with your teenager’s manager unless it’s an emergency and you’re calling to explain she’s too sick to call out herself. You do not need to introduce yourself to them (you of course can if you happen to meet them one day, but you shouldn’t go out of your way to do it otherwise), and you definitely shouldn’t contact them to make sure your daughter told them about her schedule; the latter is for her to handle on her own.
You do have a role, though! It’s to coach her from behind the scenes. You can teach her how to communicate with her employer, as long as she is the one doing the communication. Learning to do that (and probably stumbling her way through some of it) is part of the advantage of having a job in high school. (Money is the other advantage, obviously, but learning to deal with her managers on her own is a big advantage to working, too.)
NEW YORK—After months of closing in on the former news anchor’s legendary record, Michael Strahan surpassed Diane Sawyer on Friday as Good Morning America‘s all-time sack leader. “Throughout his career on GMA, Strahan has led the show in tackles, forced fumbles, interceptions, and, most importantly, sacks,” said producer Greg Emerson, adding that Strahan’s speed, strength, and ability to penetrate the offensive line and rush the passer had also earned him the title of ABC’s Defensive Anchor of the Year. “Many people said Diane Sawyer was, and always would be, the undisputed queen of the blitz. But despite suffering a pectoral injury and being put on the IR broadcasting list, Michael Strahan was able to recover, tackle George Stephanopoulos during an in-studio cooking segment, and beat Sawyer’s long-standing record of 140 career sacks.” At press time, Strahan had reportedly been traded to CBS Mornings in exchange for CBS all-time pass rusher Gayle King and CBS return specialist/backup wide receiver Nate Burleson.
WASHINGTON—Sitting in the front row and snapping his fingers in time to the 1980 musical’s overture, President Donald Trump rehearsed his Cabinet for a Kennedy Center performance of Les Misérables amid an escalating boycott by the show’s usual cast, sources reported Friday. “Marco, I want you in there as Jean Valjean, and give us your full energy on ‘Look Down’—remember, chest voice, not head voice! You’re a prisoner, for goodness sake, not Patti LuPone,” said the visibly anxious president, who, after glancing at a list of Broadway actors who had departed from the production out of protest, turned to JD and Usha Vance, telling the vice president and second lady to don bicorne hats, scarves, and aprons for the roles of Madame and Monsieur Thénardier. “Relax, JD! ‘Master Of The House’ doesn’t need you to hit any high notes. Just keep up that bawdy energy of yours, and you’ll win over the audience. Now, places people! We’re going to nail the choreography on the barricade sequence if it kills me.” At press time, Trump was overheard ordering a weeping Attorney General Pam Bondi to take ‘I Dreamed A Dream’ from the top and to please stay in tune this time.
NDIANAPOLIS—In an effort to curb unauthorized traffic to adult websites within the state, Indiana lawmakers passed new legislation Thursday requiring all potential viewers of online pornography to register as sex offenders before they could access sexually explicit material.
“This law will ensure that no resident of Indiana encounters harmful, X-rated content on the internet without first providing proof that they are legally considered a sexual predator,” said bill co-sponsor Sen. Liz Brown (R-Fort Wayne), explaining that under the new measure an unclosable pop-up window would send users to a third-party website where they would be prompted to verify their permanent status on the sex offender database, waive their right to a trial, and submit to a mugshot before any graphic content could be displayed.
“This is merely a fail-safe to ensure the only individuals accessing mature material online are those on record as being a depraved person in the eyes of the law,” Brown continued. “In addition, the community at large will be alerted to the presence of these perverts who regularly view pornography for their own pleasure. Similar measures have proven successful in Texas and Oklahoma, where internet users are required to go door to door and announce themselves as sex criminals to their friends and neighbors every time they wish to navigate to a website that may show genitals, kissing, or a woman’s nipple.”
Brown went on to state that users would need to register as repeat offenders for each additional category of pornography they intended to view.
CHICAGO—Insisting that a demonstration of the form was necessary to display its full force and power, elderly salsa instructor Hector Moreno announced his plan during a Thursday evening introductory class to dance with your girlfriend. “No, no, no—you must do it with passion, great passion,” said the 83-year-old man, who reportedly placed a hand around your long-term girlfriend’s back and began skillfully gliding her across the ballroom floor to the tune of the Fania All Stars’ “Quiero Saber.” “See?” he continued. “You must understand your partner deeply, closely. As if she were your own heart. Keep your eyes locked on hers. Look, she dances so well! Follow my hips now, beautiful. One-two-three, back, center, back. Five-six-seven, front, center, back. Marvelous! Marvelous!” At press time, the octogenarian had announced his intention to dance with you, as well, so you could master your enchufla turns.
TORONTO – A frustrated Maple Leafs fan threw their jersey onto the ice during a crushing 6-1 playoff defeat to the Florida Panthers, which the Leafs promptly allowed to slide past them and into their own net. “And that’s another goal given up by Toronto,” the play-by-play announcer said, as the Leafs milled ineffectually around […]
Lottie genuinely has no idea who Beate is. But I am sure that all Solver readers know that “I Accuse” is the expansion of Émile Zola’s “J’Accuse” letter by German author Richard Grelling. It might still have been called “J’Accuse” in the German edition but as literary experts you will forgive me the transposition here. You don’t get these kind of references in [cruelly insert name of other comic here but John do remember to punch up not down so you don’t get cancelled].
Back before the LaserWriter and PostScript (it’s an all InterCaps
day here at ANIAT) made resolution independence commonplace, most
printers were of the dot-matrix variety, usually at a fairly low
resolution. The original ImageWriter had a higher resolution than
most: 144 dpi. And this led to the interesting feature.
You may have noticed that the 144 dpi resolution of the
ImageWriter is exactly twice that of the Mac’s 72 dpi screen. The
ImageWriter printer driver on the Mac took advantage of that. If
you were writing a document using a 12-point font, and your Mac
had a 24-point version of that font, the Mac would send the
24-point font’s bitmaps (all Mac fonts were bitmapped in those
days) to the printer so it could render smoother text.
The upshot of this was a very slight breaking of the WYSIWYG
principle. On the screen, your Geneva 12 document would appear
with curly ys, but when you printed it out, it would have
straight ys. A fun idiosyncrasy that disappeared when PS fonts
and Adobe Type Manager took over.
I used ImageWriters a lot when I was using Apple II’s, but almost never from the Mac. When I got my first Mac in 1991 it came with a StyleWriter, a rather dreadful inkjet printer. (At the very least it was dreadfully slow.) But I do remember this curiosity with the different style y glyphs when printing text set in Geneva to an ImageWriter. The 144/72 DPI thing was perhaps Apple’s first @2× “double resolution” trick.
Here’s a copy of Apple’s 227-page (!) user manual for the ImageWriter II from 1985, which includes copious examples of source code in both Applesoft BASIC and Macintosh Pascal. It even contains instructions for designing your own custom bitmapped character glyphs.
Bonus points to Drang for including a screenshot illustrating that you chose font sizes from the Style menu (in a separate section underneath the actual, you know, styles) in early versions of MacWrite.
For the last hundred years or so, the prevailing dogma has been that copyright is an unalloyed good, and that more of it is better. Whether that was ever true is one question, but it is certainly not the case since we entered the digital era, for reasons explained at length in Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available). Despite that fact, recent attempts to halt the constant expansion and strengthening of copyright have all foundered. Part of the problem is that there has never been a constituency with enough political clout to counter the huge power of the copyright industry and its lobbyists.
Until now. The latest iteration of artificial intelligence has captured the attention of politicians around the world. It seems that the latter can’t do enough to promote and support it, in the hope of deriving huge economic benefits, both directly, in the form of local AI companies worth trillions, and indirectly, through increased efficiency and improved services. That current favoured status has given AI leaders permission to start saying the unsayable: that copyright is an obstacle to progress, and should be reined in, or at least muzzled, in order to allow AI to reach its full potential. For example, here is what OpenAI’s proposals for the US AI Action Plan, which is currently being drawn up, say about copyright:
America’s robust, balanced intellectual property system has long been key to our global leadership on innovation. We propose a copyright strategy that would extend the system’s role into the Intelligence Age by protecting the rights and interests of content creators while also protecting America’s AI leadership and national security. The federal government can both secure Americans’ freedom to learn from AI, and avoid forfeiting our AI lead to the [People’s Republic of China] by preserving American AI models’ ability to learn from copyrighted material.
Balanced copyright rules, such as fair use and text-and-data mining exceptions, have been critical to enabling AI systems to learn from prior knowledge and publicly available data, unlocking scientific and social advances. These exceptions allow for the use of copyrighted, publicly available material for AI training without significantly impacting rightsholders and avoid often highly unpredictable, imbalanced, and lengthy negotiations with data holders during model development or scientific experimentation. Balanced copyright laws that ensure access to publicly available scientific papers, for example, are essential for accelerating AI in science, particularly for applications that sift through scientific literature for insights or new hypotheses.
Although developments in the world of AI are giving companies like OpenAI and Google an opportunity to call into question the latest attempts to strengthen copyright’s intellectual monopoly, they are not the only voices here. For example, some of the biggest personalities in the tech world have gone even further, reported here by TechCrunch:
Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter (now X) and Square (now Block), sparked a weekend’s worth of debate around intellectual property, patents, and copyright, with a characteristically terse post declaring, “delete all IP law.”
X’s current owner, Elon Musk, quickly replied, “I agree.”
It’s not clear what exactly brought these comments on, but they come at a time when AI companies, including OpenAI (which Musk co-founded, competes with, and is challenging in court), are facing numerouslawsuits alleging that they’ve violated copyright to train their models.
Unsurprisingly, that bold suggestion provoked howls of outrage from various players in the copyright world. That was to be expected. But the fact that big names like Musk and Dorsey were happy to cause such a storm is indicative of the changed atmosphere in the world of copyright and beyond. Indeed, there are signs that the other main intellectual monopolies – patents and trademarks – are also under pressure. Calling into question the old ways of doing things in these fields will also weaken the presumption that copyright must be preserved in its current state.
There’s another important way in which copyright is losing its relevance. It involves AI once more, but not because of how today’s AI systems are trained, but as a result of their output. The ease with which generative AI can turn out material has had a number of important knock-on consequences. For example, as a post on the Creative Bloq site explained:
Some designers who use stock image libraries to source photos, illustrations and vectors for their projects are finding that they have to wade through more unusable [AI-generated] content to find an image that suits their needs, adding more time to their workflows.
The same is happening in other fields. An article on the NPR site last year explored the growing problem of “AI-generated scam books”:
“Scam books on Amazon have been a problem for years,” says Mary Rasenberger, CEO of the Authors Guild, a group that advocates for writers. But she says the problem has multiplied in recent months. “Every new book seems to have some kind of companion book, some book that’s trying to steal sales.”
Deezer, the global music streaming platform, is receiving over 20,000 fully AI-generated tracks on a daily basis. It equals over 18% of all uploaded content, an increase from the previously reported 10% in January, 2025, when Deezer launched its cutting edge AI-music detection tool.
These AI-generated images, books and music tracks have one thing in common: they are probably not protected by copyright in any way. This is an evolving area of law, but a recent report by the US Copyright Office seems to confirm that material generated purely by AI, with minimal human input — for example, in the form of prompts — is not eligible for copyright protection:
Copyright law has long adapted to new technology and can enable case-by-case determinations as to whether AI-generated outputs reflect sufficient human contribution to warrant copyright protection. As described above, in many circumstances these outputs will be copyrightable in whole or in part—where AI is used as a tool, and where a human has been able to determine the expressive elements they contain. Prompts alone, however, at this stage are unlikely to satisfy those requirements.
Assuming this approach is confirmed both in the US and elsewhere, the net effect is likely to be that vast swathes of AI-generated text, images and sounds found online today are in the public domain, and can be used by anyone for any purpose. Once people understand this, and start using AI-generated outputs that they find online freely, without any fear of legal action being taken against them, there will be important knock-on effects. First, people may well seek out such AI-generated material, since it is legally unproblematic compared to complicated licensing schemes for copyright material, assuming the latter are even available. And secondly, people will as a result grow increasingly accustomed to re-using anything they find online, to the point that they simply ignore copyright niceties altogether.
TORONTO – In the wake of the Leafs discovering a new playoff performance low point even lower than their previous playoff lowpoints, fan Martin Scheffel advised that he takes comfort in the fact that one day the Leafs won’t be able to cause him any more pain, and that will be when he is dead. […]
OTTAWA – Newly-appointed Minister of Artificial Intelligence Evan Solomon reportedly spent his first day asking ChatGPT “Hi there, my name is Evan Solomon and I’m Canada’s Minister of AI. What should I do?” “Since I’m the first ever Minister of Artificial Intelligence, I thought I’d see what ChatGPT has to say,” explained Solomon to reporters […]
“In the Quebec riding of Terrebonne, Liberal MP Tatiana Auguste was declared the winner by just one vote. How calmly do you think Quebec is taking this?” Dive into this week’s news with guest host Ian MacIntyre and the Panel (Clare Blackwood, Nile Séguin, and special guest Kat Angus of the podcast I Hate It […]
