Cowboy Who?

LOWELL, MA—Doing her best to follow her therapist’s advice for dealing with stressful situations, area woman Holly Debling reportedly reminded herself Tuesday not to catastrophize after she spotted four skeletal horsemen on the horizon. “Okay, Holly, remember: Just because a great trumpet has sounded at the arrival of four unearthly riders, that doesn’t necessarily mean something bad is going to happen,” said Debling, who, as a great cloud of locusts poured forth from one horseman’s mouth and darkened the skies, added that keeping a cool head would be helpful whether or not the seas and rivers turning to blood became an issue for her. “I’m always assuming the worst and freaking out over nothing, and for all I know, a gaunt horseman pulling back his cloak to reveal a void of swirling darkness could be a good thing. Like, maybe he’s a harbinger of nice weather. Yeah. And my eyes are probably just bleeding because they’re dry. Panicking doesn’t do me any good even if these horsemen do ultimately mean a great earthquake will move the mountains from their places and the stars will plummet to the earth, so I might as well just try to stay calm.” Debling reportedly made a mental note to ask her doctor about trying the medication Ativan after the sky split open and hail and fire rained down upon her.

The post Woman Reminds Self Not To Catastrophize After Spotting 4 Skeletal Horsemen On Horizon appeared first on The Onion.

The Trump administration is considering proposals that would help reverse the nation’s declining birth rate. Here are the White House’s ideas for encouraging women to have more babies.

Monopoly game pieces on every container of Enfamil sold

Increase American manufacturing of fertility statues

Air-drop rose petals over residential areas

Mandatory twins

Remind Americans that every child is a potential YouTube star

Release the strategic oyster reserves

Award all pregnant women 60 seconds in the booth to grab flying taxpayer dollars

Add sperm to the water supply

Mail everyone a feather boa

Tag ear of every adolescent girl after her first period

The post The White House’s Plan For Reversing The Declining Birth Rate  appeared first on The Onion.

WASHINGTON—In a dramatic reversal of recent polls showing a decline in the president’s approval ratings during his first 100 days in office, new surveys confirmed Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s support was surging after he pointed a gun at all 340 million Americans. “Ever since Trump pulled out a loaded handgun and menacingly swept its muzzle across the entire American populace, he’s seen a massive bump in favorability on everything from his handling of the economy to his views on immigration,” said Gallup polling analyst Eric Waltman, adding that Trump’s numbers had seen a particularly sharp spike after he fired a shot into the air to show that “he means business.” “When it comes to policies that a majority of the public previously opposed—such as deportations without due process and widespread tariffs—Americans seem to have changed their minds once they found themselves staring down the barrel of a live firearm. These numbers are even higher than they were when he pulled a knife on the nation in his first term. Despite a rocky start, Trump’s new message of ‘I’ll shoot, I swear to God I’ll shoot’ seems to be winning over terrified, trembling citizens across the entire political spectrum.” At press time, Trump’s polling gains had reportedly evaporated after he fumbled the gun and blew the nation away.

The post Trump’s Support Surges After He Points Gun At Nation appeared first on The Onion.

The post Rockies Pitcher Out With Altitude Sickness After Ascending Mound Too Quickly appeared first on The Onion.

Students are concerned the legislation could silence supportive teachers, dismantle safe spaces, lead to overenforcement and prevent honest conversations about identity.

April 30, 2025, marks the 100th day of Donald Trump’s second term in office.

#Sage #RoninWarriors

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

1. My friend hired me but isn’t paying me what we agreed

A friend of mine recently started a business, and I happened to be the perfect candidate for the job because it’s a very specific niche. I was working for someone else, and she asked me to work for her. I would be getting paid the same amount and working the same hours, so I agreed to work for her. Unfortunately, she hasn’t been holding up her end of the deal with pay, and the hours are way different than we initially discussed. The first few months I was understanding because business started slow, but months later I’m finding that nothing is changing. I also am finding I’m helping her in many ways that take up my time and are basically free for her because I’m a friend.

I want to know how to approach this situation and bring it up to her without ruining the friendship entirely and burning a bridge. I can’t keep going like this because not only am I not making nearly what I thought I would as we discussed, but I also am putting a lot of time into helping grow her business, which I was happy to help with but I’m starting to feel like I’m being taken advantage of.

My previous job was an established place and usually very busy. I was paid the same amount every day even if it wasn’t fully booked. My friend said she would pay me the same per day, but somewhere along the way she changed that without discussing it with me. In the beginning I understood that with only a booking or two in a day, she couldn’t pay me the full amount per day. But recently it’s gotten very busy and even on days we worked all day, she would pay me half or a fraction of what we said. I’m there sometimes 8-9 hours and getting paid nearly nothing, plus doing extra tasks.

I want to tell her that if she doesn’t have the ability to pay me the full amount if she’s struggling that I just show up and do individual bookings for a fee each. But I don’t know if that’s out of line. I hate to make it about money, but I’m getting so tired. I work two jobs and it’s starting to interfere with my other job and this one I do on the weekends, so if I’m going to trade my time to work I want to make it worth it for me.

You say you’d hate to make it about money, but it is about money. She lured you away from another job with an agreement about money that she has failed to uphold. It’s okay to be honest that the money matters! Friend or not, the agreement was never that you’d work for free; the agreement was that you’d leave another job to help her in exchange for an agreed-upon amount of money.

Say this to her: “I tried to be flexible when you were just starting out, but I was only able to leave my other job because we agreed that I’d be paid $X. With that not happening, I can’t make this work financially and need to find other work, so I’m not going to be able to keep coming in.” If you’re truly wiling to just do individual bookings (and aren’t just looking for something to placate her), you could add, “I’d be able to just come in for individual bookings if we stuck to a per-booking fee, but that’s the most I can do with our current set-up.” (But also, are you really willing to do that? It sounds like it would prevent you from finding another weekend job. It’s okay to just stop completely.)

As for the worry about the relationship: right now it sounds like you’re worried a lot more about the relationship than she is. She hired a friend away from a paying job and then immediately broke (and is still breaking) her promises about pay. Let her worry about keeping your friendship under those circumstances, particularly if she gives you any guilt about leaving.

2. We get free food as “appreciation” — and I can’t eat any of it

This is a low-stakes question, but it is bothering me a bit. I have been a teacher at my current school for seven years. There are approximately 60 teachers and a similar number of support staff. Our required monthly faculty meeting takes place at lunch, but lunch is provided to “compensate” for losing a duty-free lunch (which is part of our contract). Required professional development is flooded with candy to make it more palatable. During parent/teacher conferences, dinner is provided since we have to be at school so late on those days. Every spring, we have teacher appreciation week, where the parent-teacher organization provides food for us every day.

The issue is that I have type 2 diabetes. I take no medication or insulin; I manage it strictly with what I eat. It is incredibly frustrating to me that during all of these events, I cannot have any of the perks. I can’t eat donuts, sandwiches, pizza, candy, sweet drinks, pasta, cookies, etc. I have never seen a single low-carb option. I bring my own lunch to faculty meetings and conferences. I actively avoid the faculty lounge during teacher appreciation week to avoid the temptation and awkward questions about why I’m not eating whatever is provided. I have excellent will power, and I would certainly never try to dictate what other people eat or don’t eat, but I feel a little overlooked.

I know I can’t be the only person on our staff who has this issue or other dietary restrictions, but it seems like no one else has a problem with the constant barrage of carb-loaded snacks and meals. Is this worth mentioning? Am I being too sensitive? Is it reasonable to ask to occasionally have something to show appreciation that isn’t food-related, or do I just need to let it go?

Free food is an easy go-to because so many people love it, and a lot of them love it passionately. It can be hard to come up with another similarly priced perk that will please as many people as free food does. But it’s absolutely reasonable to ask for a wider variety of options!

For example, with the required monthly meeting, talk to whoever organizes lunch, explain you can’t eat what’s being provided, and ask how to ensure there’s something there you can eat. If this is a required lunch, they really, really should ensure they’re accounting for your needs (but they can’t if you don’t tell them what you need). And can whoever liaises with the parent-teacher organization ask them to provide a wider range of options — not just sweets, but fruit/a veggie platter/whatever specific suggestions you can make that would work? You probably won’t be the only person who would appreciate having healthier options included. But someone has to speak up and request them!

3. My spouse’s company is suddenly competing with mine

My husband and I have recently become competitors at work, and I’m not sure how to handle it. Our relationship started before either of our current careers and, for over a decade, we had no overlap whatsoever. Over the last few years, our roles have been slowly converging.

Fast forward to this week, and I’ve been on calls at my job where my husband’s agency has been named as a direct competitor to a project my company is pitching to the client I work on. It’s not the team my husband works on, but he knows that team well and they even collaborate on some of his projects.

Do you have any advice to handle this with work? I’m not worried about handling this with my husband; we just won’t discuss the project together. We occasionally vent about work together, but in a general way (“Jane is up to her shenanigans again” or “that contract I’m working on still hasn’t been signed”). Am I obligated to mention it to my boss? Should I try not to get involved in this new business pitch? It’s a good opportunity for me at my job, but the more I am involved, the more I feel weird about hearing about his agency as the main competitor.

You should disclose it to your boss; it will be much weirder if it comes out later and it turns out you knew and didn’t say anything. You don’t need to frame it as a big deal. You can simply say, “I feel like I should let you know that my husband works for CompanyName, since they’re also pitching for the X project. It’s not his team and I’ll be scrupulous on my side about not discussing anything related to X, but I thought I should tell you that in case it poses any conflicts.”

4. Explaining I got bad news during a vacation

I just went to visit my parents, and my coworkers know that was the reason for my recent time off. The visit ended with my dad in the hospital and he will likely either not recover at all or recover enough to be discharged into home hospice care. How should I best deal with the fact that my whole team is going to ask how my vacation went?

Should I send out an email to my immediate team that basically says, “Before you ask, my trip ended with my dad in the hospital so please don’t bring it up”? Should I pretend it was good? Should I say it was rough every time someone asks? Should I grunt and change the topic?

I imagine you won’t be able to respond to this before I need to figure out my own answer, but I’m asking in case it helps someone else.

It depends on what you’re comfortable with. It’s fine to say, “It went differently than expected. My dad had a health crisis while I was there and that’s still ongoing, so we’re working on that currently.” If you don’t want to get into it, it’s also fine to reply with something bland and vaguer (anything from “it was OK, how were things here?” to “there’s some health stuff going on in my family, so it was a hard week”), immediately followed up by a subject change if you don’t want to discuss it more.

I’m sorry about your dad!

5. How can I help my dyslexic and ADHD employee write better?

I have a wonderful junior employee who is enthusiastic, a fast learner, helpful, has a excellent analytical mind and is an all-round delight to work with. However, her writing needs improvement.

Some of the gaps I’d expect from any junior employee (know your audience, be concise, structure documents logically, check spelling and grammar before sending to your manager), but some are probably due to her dyslexia (words out of order, incorrect homophones, errant punctuation) or possibly ADHD (maybe some of these examples are really about attention to detail). She disclosed these diagnoses to me recently.

How can I help her improve while accommodating her neurodiversity? Most of the dyslexia resources I can find give strategies to help with reading comprehension, but I don’t think she has any issues there. I’ve seen suggestions to use AI writing assistance tools but, due to legitimate reasons, our workplace is unlikely to have these anytime soon.

Whenever you’re trying to figure out what accommodations might help someone, the Job Accommodation Network is a really good first stop. They offer an encyclopedia of potential accommodations for a wide range of disabilities, and a super helpful starting place for thinking about options. Their page on accommodations for learning disabilities might be exactly what you need. (Scroll down to “accommodation ideas.”) They also have something called “Situations and Solutions Finder,” where you can enter keywords based on disability, limitation, and/or occupation, and they’ll pull up examples of real-life accommodations they’ve seen made.

The post my friend hired me but isn’t paying what we agreed, we get free food as “appreciation” but I can’t eat any of it, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

Hundreds of students and recent graduates in Texas have had their legal status changed by the U.S Department of State over the last few weeks.

The work on the site is (hopefully) complete, and comments are turned back on. Thanks for your patience the last few days as we ran into some bumps with a server migration.

The post housekeeping update appeared first on Ask a Manager.

WASHINGTON—Explaining that such items constituted a veritable uniform for the notorious criminal organization, FBI director Kash Patel claimed Monday that gavels and black gowns were sufficient evidence to tie an individual to the MS-13 gang. “For decades, MS-13 thugs have identified themselves by wearing black gowns and carrying around wooden hammers with which they could enact their sick sense of gangland justice,” said Patel, who urged U.S. citizens to remain vigilant and immediately report such suspects to authorities so they could be detained and deported. “Many of them get recruited out of hotbeds of gang activity like Harvard and Yale law schools. They also take part in a chilling initiation ceremony in which they have to put their hand on a Bible and swear a bizarre oath of allegiance. We arrested one such deviant just last week.” Patel added that he would be directing FBI agents to round up an estimated 30,000 such deplorable individuals in the coming months.

The post FBI Claims Gavel, Black Gowns Prove Ties To MS-13 Gang appeared first on The Onion.

Om Malik:

Some of us are old enough to remember that the reason Mark renamed the company is because the Facebook brand was becoming toxic, and associated with misinformation and global-scale crap. It was viewed as a tired, last-generation company. Meta allowed the company to rebrand itself as something amazing and fresh.

I really served that one up to Om. A fastball right down the middle. I even thought, while writing my post earlier today, to mention that the rebrand was, in truth, surely only and always about the Facebook brand having gone rotten, not any actual belief by Zuckerberg in the “metaverse”. And so while “Meta” will never be remembered as the company that spearheaded the metaverse — because the metaverse never was or will be an actual thing — it’s in truth the perfect name for a company that believes in nothing other than its own success.

Houston First Corporation, the tourism and convention marketing arm of the city government, wants control over a section of the street next to the George R. Brown Convention Center ahead of a $2 billion expansion.

At the beginning of April, the City of Brownsville launched a call for proposals imagining “bold new uses” for the former Brownsville Museum of Fine Art (BMFA).

Last August, BMFA announced a formal partnership with the City, which would provide operational support. From 2011 to 2013 and again from 2015 to 2022, the institution operated with a negative net income. Then, in November the City hired Dr. Candace Matelic to strategize ways to enhance its arts and cultural spaces.

At the time of publication, the BMFA website was still active and listed open hours as if the institution was still functioning. However, the “current exhibitions” listings on the site all closed on Wednesday, December 11. No upcoming exhibitions are listed. 

This recent call for proposals seems to be the first public suggestion that the museum is now closed. A Facebook post made by the City promoting the call for proposals garnered dozens of comments, many of which expressed disappointment in the closure of the museum and raised questions about the decision.

On Sunday, April 20, a petition to save the city’s “only art museum” was launched via Change.org. The petition states:

“Since the museum’s opening in 2006, renowned local and international artists, as well as students, alumni, and faculty from the local colleges, as well as the Brownsville Independent School District (BISD), have actively participated in exhibitions held at the museum each year. Despite this rich artistic talent, history, and community, the City of Brownsville is now considering repurposing the BMFA building. Without an art museum, our local artists and future generations of artists will be denied a prestigious space to showcase their talent, find inspiration, and come together as a community.”

At the time of publication, the petition had 477 signatures.

The City did not respond to Glasstire’s request for comment regarding the strategies Ms. Metallic arrived at via her contract work, the status of the museum staff, or the city’s timeline for reopening the building under a new use.

The City is accepting proposal submissions through Monday, April 28, at 4:00 p.m. The call notes that “Ideal proposals could include cultural centers, performance venues, educational institutions, or creative industry hubs.”

The post City of Brownsville Seeking Partners to Envision New Uses for Former Art Museum appeared first on Glasstire.

This was my first visit to the Grackle Art Gallery, an eclectic nonprofit space located in a residential neighborhood on the west side of Fort Worth. Founded by artist Matt Sacks, who died in 2024, the gallery has been active for 15 years and is now run by Linda Little. For this exhibition, the curatorial duo Kickpigeon Kids, artists Cosmo Jones and Max Marshall, invited eight new media artists to create work and also donate an object that represented obsolete or outdated technology to be incorporated into the show. Presented as an installation, Hack the Planet is a nontraditional exhibition that explores how technology functions in the home in unexpected ways.

As I moved through the house, it wasn’t always clear which objects permanently belonged to the space and which were part of the show. The collaborative, assemblage-style curation raised compelling questions about authorship: What does it mean for artists to relinquish control over how their work is installed and experienced? When the outdated technological objects are interwoven with the art works, how does the context and meaning shift? I intentionally visited when the gallery was closed and devoid of people, so I could fully engage with the environment — although this meant I couldn’t see how the artists responded to the curators’ interventions. According to Jones and Marshall, they communicated clearly with the artists about their intent to integrate works with existing domestic elements.

One of the first pieces that drew my attention was a 35mm slide carousel by Julie Libersat. Projected into the corner of the living room, the images depict domestic “non-spaces” — those often-ignored corners of a home. The unconventional placement of the projection playfully disrupts the pictorial plane. Libersat’s use of outdated technology is echoed by several other artists in the show. The slide projector, once a staple for home parties and family storytelling, here becomes a tool for subtle subversion. Libersat also contributed two hologram pieces: one embedded in a houseplant, the other in a tiny, hot pink recliner — each humorously treated as a guest in the house.

Adjacent to Libersat’s piece is a work by Julia Caswell Freund: a clip from her Washing Machine performance, where she puts herself into a white pedestal that serves as an imaginary washing machine. The saturated color of the blue bag the video is projected onto overpowers its imagery. I found myself wishing the projection was on a different surface — perhaps inside an actual washing machine, so that the performance could resonate more strongly. The subtlety of the artist’s body language and movement of the pedestal is difficult to discern.

Mckee Frazior’s large video projection spans nearly the entire opposite wall. The work features a tiled grid of bright yellow, over which a hand repeatedly draws a black line. The piece evoked memories of Harold and the Purple Crayon, one of my favorite children’s books. Frazior transforms the act of drawing into a metaphorical gesture, mediated through technology. Nearby, childlike elements placed by the curators — a miniature cheetah rug, a Thomas the Tank Engine toy, and a looping Thomas cartoon — add layers of playful absurdity to the space, rather than evoking simple nostalgia.

In the next room, a circle of chairs holds a curious mix of sculptural sound works. One supports a Ronald McDonald bust mounted on a vintage cassette recorder, created by Nathan Harper. The looped audio is a harsh, scratchy soundscape, reminiscent of nails on a chalkboard. Nearby are two boom boxes, one from the cassette era and one from the CD era, which emit white noise. Arranged in a circle, these anthropomorphized machines feel like they are holding a conversation, communicating through hissing static about their place in the evolution of technology and evoking personal memories for viewers who lived through those times.

The bathroom, often an afterthought in gallery spaces, is given significant attention here. An art dealer friend once told me the best art should be placed in the bathroom — after all, it’s where people spend time seated and observant. Here, the walls are densely hung salon-style with two-dimensional works. A cool blue light bathes the room, creating an eerie ambiance that also prevents close inspection of the works. I was initially drawn to a GPS monitor affixed to the mirror, displaying a map to the nearest McDonald’s, a nod to Harper’s earlier piece. In my distraction, I almost missed the subtle audio work by Jules Jung cleverly embedded within the space — easy to overlook but rewarding upon closer listening. Jung’s work is composed of field recordings of a visit to her childhood home. Through layering and distortion, the work questions the veracity of memory.

Outside the bathroom, Nick Bontrager’s arcade cabinet glows ominously in the hallway, topped with a tinsel reindeer. A red light fills the corridor, casting a threatening hue. The arcade screen flashes between video game footage and film clips, with the word “DOMINATION” displayed boldly at the top. I wasn’t tempted to try and play.

The final room was the kitchen. At first glance, it appears to be a functioning domestic space, complete with appliances and a sitting area. Tucked into this space are works by Diana Rojas, Dust Bunny, and Jung. These pieces are activated by darkness. Dust Bunny’s digital print, housed inside a bunny-shaped cage, reads like S&M Donnie Darko. Other works include TVs playing static or sci-fi scenes, referencing alien communication and broken signals. Rojas’ celestial projection completes the environment, transforming the room into an otherworldly dreamscape.

Kickpigeon’s curatorial approach evokes Dada and Fluxus traditions — embracing chance, collapsing the boundaries between art and life, and celebrating collaborative creation. Their playful, open-ended installation strategy challenges traditional notions of display, encouraging viewers to imagine how art — especially new media — can function in a lived space. Grackle Art Gallery demonstrates how artworks and found objects can collectively form the personality of a home: full of curiosity, nostalgia, and the joy of collecting. 

Hack the Planet will be on view at the Grackle Art Gallery through May 3, 2025. The gallery is open by appointment and a closing reception will be held May 2 from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. To schedule a visit, email or message the curators at kickpigeonkids@gmail.com or on Instagram.

April 28, 2025: This article has been updated to accurately reflect the date the exhibition closing and of the closing reception, which was previously listed as May 7 instead of May 3 and May 2, respectively.

The post Technology, Memory & Domestic Space: “Hack the Planet” at Grackle Art Gallery, Fort Worth appeared first on Glasstire.

VATICAN CITY—Barely containing his excitement for the selection of the next pope to begin, admittedly catty Cardinal Rubén Salazar Gómez confirmed Monday that he couldn’t wait to see who had gotten fat since the last conclave. “I know this is super bitchy, but I am basically only excited about the conclave to see who got chunky since last time,” said the Colombian prelate, snickering with his friends as they gossiped about which of their colleagues was most likely to have “let himself go” since the last time the College of Cardinals met to elect a pope, in 2013. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m appreciative of the opportunity to help mold the future of the Catholic Church, but I’m 95% only doing this to see who’s hot and who’s not. Remember that one archbishop from Brazil? He was just so smug about his ‘fitness journey,’ always commenting on what the rest of us took from the buffet—it would be so satisfying if he showed up all bloated in vestments the size of a circus tent. I know, that’s terrible of me to say, but come on! Gluttony is a sin. By the way, I wonder if his low-budget hair plugs ever took.” At press time, the group of holy men were reportedly heard speculating that Cardinal Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle had had a total glow-up since last time.

The post Catty Cardinal Can’t Wait To See Who Got Fat Since Last Conclave appeared first on The Onion.

The post ICE Agents Wait At Edge Of Delivery Table To Deport Newborn appeared first on The Onion.

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s remarks that autism ‘destroys’ children have prompted outrage among many autistic people, who said they had done things Mr. Kennedy claimed were impossible, like hold a job, write a poem, play baseball, and go on dates. They added that the lives of people who did need help performing daily activities were still worthy of respect.” — New York Times

I’ll say one thing for Robert Kennedy Jr.—he’s got some fucking nerve. The treatment he received at St. Eligius Hospital for his brain worm was second to none. Still, here he is out here spewing absolute garbage about autistic people, even though his life rests in a member of that community’s hands—i.e., mine.

Whether or not I’ll pay taxes (overrated) or go on a date (if you’re taking dating advice from any Kennedy, you should probably be in jail) is immaterial. What I can do—what I, in fact, DID do—is create a multilayered, years-long medical drama that jump-started several careers (Denzel Washington, anybody? Helen Hunt? David Morse—you know him, he’s that guy with the face) and laid the groundwork for an entire genre of gritty, realistic hospital programs. I created a world, and that world exists within a universe, which contains not only hospitals and Kennedys but everything and everyone you know, and I made it all inside a fucking snow globe, so miss me with your bullshit about whether or not I’ll ever write a poem.

Bobby Jr. sounds pretty confident talking about all the things people with autism can’t do, doesn’t he? Maybe that’s because he doesn’t have even a whisper of an internal life, and can’t possibly imagine what that might be like for those of us who do. I can, because not only do I have an internal life, I have ALL the internal lives, including his. And yours.

He can’t imagine, for instance, how many lives the vaccine program at St. Eligius has saved, because his whole worm-eaten brain is consumed with trying to prove those vaccines cause autism, which they do not. He once felt good after a day doing farm cosplay on Martha’s Vineyard, so he thinks farm work would cure people with ADHD, because he can’t imagine that anyone might have a different brain chemistry or life experience than his. He’s mad that people call him “Froot Loops,” so he’s trying to punish them by making Froot Loops gray scale.

Funny how hard in the paint he’s going over sugar and food dye for being “unnatural” and “poisonous,” isn’t it? Do you think all the heroin he shot up was organic? Did he maybe just chew gently on a poppy until he was zooted out of his skull? Is sugar really the white powder he should be concerned about, or did all the coke he hoovered up burn a few nice holes for his worm to hide in?

Anyway, I’ve had just about enough of his nonsense. I’m giving him twenty-four hours to clear the premises, and if he refuses, I’m just gonna drain the whole thing. Goodbye, snow globe; goodbye, St. Eligius; goodbye, supporting universe. I guess that wipes out the whole Kennedy clan, but that job’s been half done already. Mary Jo Kopechne, vengeance is finally yours.

After all, I’ve got other snow globes to attend to. This one from MAR-A-LAGO, for instance, has been nothing but a headache lately.

Aaron Pressman, writing earlier this month in The Boston Globe, “Why I Abandoned Google Search After 27 Years — and What I’m Using Instead”:

The UK now requires travelers from America to obtain an electronic travel authorization, or ETA. I wasn’t sure of the exact name of the ETA, so I just searched “travel to UK.”

The results were all about obtaining an ETA and I picked a link that looked like the official UK government site. It was not; the official site was lower, below an AI summary, some sponsored links, and other junk on the results page. Luckily for me, I did get a legitimate travel pass — but the site I picked overcharged me by about $70.

I don’t know what the name for this sort of thing is, but it’s like a semi-scam. There are similar services to what Pressman ran into here for expedited passport renewals, for example — third-party companies that present themselves as official partners of the government that charge you extra for a service. But they just handle for you what you could just as easily do yourself, if you found the right place on the web to do it. A complete scam would be taking your money and giving you nothing (or a bogus document) in return. These semi-scams deliver the thing they’re promising, but charge you more than you should pay.

I just tried searching for “expedited passport renewal” in Google and in Kagi. Kagi presents as its first response the US State Department’s “How to Get my U.S. Passport Fast” page. Google has that same link listed 7th, below the fold even on a desktop browser window on a 27-inch display, behind four sponsored links (all of which look pretty official but aren’t), an AI Overview (which itself includes, in its own AI Overview sidebar, another link to the same “How to Get my U.S. Passport Fast” page), and another U.S. State Department webpage with general instructions for applying for a passport.

In the second case, last week, I needed to book a hotel for a Passover trip to my brother’s in Connecticut. I knew there was a cool hotel we had stayed at before near his house but I couldn’t remember the name. I asked Google for hotels in the town where my brother lives. Sure enough, one of the top results appeared on first glance to be the official site of the hotel I wanted to book. It was not. Once again, somewhat nefarious search engine optimization techniques allowed a hotel aggregation site to jump ahead in the results. And this time my error was even more costly, to the tune of several hundred dollars in extra charges for two hotel rooms.

Google has worked hard to eliminate truly fraudulent websites from ending up in its results, and for that I am grateful. It is undeniable that, in both instances, I should have been a more careful consumer. But decades of relying on Google had taught me that I didn’t have to be.

After I learned my lesson, I did some research in search of better search. People I trust on the Internet, including the Apple blogger John Gruber and novelist Cory Doctorow, recommended a new search engine called Kagi.

I gave it a few test runs. A search for “travel to UK” brought up the UK government page to apply for an ETA as the first result. A search for a hotel in my brother’s town was topped by the official site of the hotel I wanted. So I switched all my default searches to Kagi.

I keep trying to emphasize that I recommend switching to Kagi not because it’s more private (although it clearly is), not as a protest against Google (although for some, switching could be), not as a rejection of search ads dominating the top of Google’s results (although that’s true too), but simply because Kagi’s results are clearly better.

Like, even if I use the magic &udm=14 parameter with Google search, to get “disenshittified” results from Google, I find I get better results from Kagi. When I know there’s one right answer (say, a specific article I remember reading and want to find again), Kagi is more likely than Google to list it first. If it’s a years-old article, Kagi is way more likely than Google to find it at all. For me, Google (and, alas, DuckDuckGo too) have largely stopped working reliably for finding not-recent stuff on the web. Not true with Kagi.

I used DuckDuckGo for years as my default search, and for those years, I found it largely on par with Google. But it felt like every once in a while — maybe, say, once or twice a month — DuckDuckGo would come up dry in its results. DuckDuckGo pioneered a trick they call Bangs. Include !g to any search terms, and instead of performing the search itself, DuckDuckGo will redirect that search to Google. They have a whole bunch of these Bangs — “!a” for Amazon search, “!nf” for Netflix. There are literally thousands of them (which of course they allow you to search for). The only one I ever really used though was !g, for redirecting my current search to Google because DuckDuckGo’s own results for the same terms was unsatisfying. My memory may not match with my actual usage, but like I said, I feel like I used this about once or twice a month for the several years I was using DuckDuckGo as my default search engine. Infrequently enough that it didn’t annoy me to the point of considering switching back to Google for default in-browser search, but frequently enough that I was annoyed enough to remember that I needed to use it at all.

Kagi supports Bangs too, including !g for Google web search. I can’t remember the last time I felt the need to try using it. It’s been months, many months. And, the last few times I’ve tried it, Google’s results were no more help than Kagi’s. Your mileage may vary, of course, but for me, unlike with DuckDuckGo, I effectively never find myself redirecting the same search to Google because I wasn’t happy with the results from Kagi. For context on my search usage, my Kagi usage report shows that I perform 400–800 web searches per month. (Kagi counts how often you search, for billing purposes, but does not keep a history of what you searched for.)

Paying for Kagi today feels a lot like paying for HBO back in the cable TV heyday. Part of the deal is that you are paying for ad-free service, yes. But you’re also paying for noticeably higher quality. There were no shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, and The Larry Sanders Show on “free” TV channels, albeit with commercial interruptions. With HBO you got commercial-free entertainment and higher-quality shows and movies. Kagi is like that.¹ It’s that good. No ads, no unwanted AI (but very good AI results if you want — just end your query with a question mark), and better search results.

Alex Heath, reporting for The Verge:

Meta has laid off an unspecified number of employees in its Reality Labs division, a company spokesperson confirmed. The cuts affected teams working in Oculus Studios, Meta’s in-house games division for Quest headsets, as well as some employees involved in the company’s hardware efforts, according to people familiar with the matter.

According to Bloomberg it was “more than 100”.

I’m so old I remember when Facebook renamed itself Meta because the “metaverse” was supposedly the future of the company and, so said Mark Zuckerberg, the future of computing itself. Now, when Zuck goes on Joe Rogan’s podcast and chats for three hours, the metaverse thing doesn’t come up once, not even once, even in passing.

It’s enough to make one suspect Zuck isn’t a straight shooter.

The site is having some server issues today so while we work on those, here’s an older post. This was originally published in 2019. (And hopefully everything will be back to normal shortly.)

A reader writes:

I’m a mid-level college administrator. One of my direct reports is positioning himself to move up in a couple of years (from department member to department head). He would still report to me, but the working relationship would be a little different. I need to work closely with department heads, and it can have a major impact on my work and the organization if that relationship is toxic.

The problem is that he thinks he is a LOT smarter than me. He apparently read something about “managing up” and now he is trying to manage me. He is very, very bad at it. His attempts to manipulate me are clumsy and obvious, but he doesn’t realize that I know what he is doing (because he’s sure that he is much smarter than me). There’s also some sexism going on here (I’m female, and he seems to have problems with that sometimes) and I’m relatively new to the organization, so he doesn’t know me well. Every conversation degenerates into incredibly irritating condescension and smugness on his part. For example, he has said things like:

• “My expectation is that you will give me a hint if you think there may be a change coming up.” Me: No, not happening. I try to squelch rumors, not spread them. And if there is a change coming, your department head will know first.

• “My expectation is that you will change the meeting time.” Me: No, a meeting that involves 27 people and has been scheduled for a month will not be rescheduled just for you.

• About a minor snafu with the bookstore: “I’m sure you understand why you need to have this person fired.” Me: Let’s just talk about how we are going to handle a fairly small problem.

• About a trivial department matter that could easily have been resolved before it even got to me: “I know that you will do the right thing and bring this to the Chief Academic Officer.” (That’s the equivalent of the CEO.) Me: Here’s the solution that I see.

He always ends with a smirk and a slow nod. His body language says that he is certain he has programmed me to respond correctly.

Right now, I just smile, ignore it whenever possible, and get back to the issue at hand. Occasionally I have addressed it head on, when I need to clarify that he will definitely not be getting what he wants this time.

I want to call him on this, because it is getting very tiresome. It also sidetracks the conversation away from the important stuff we need to be discussing. And I don’t enjoy being treated with such disrespect. If he does become the department head, it will be even more important that he have some respect for my intelligence. I’m tempted to give him a book on the topic and tell him he needs to study some more before trying this again. But in calmer moments, I know that level of bluntness (sarcasm, snark, whatever you want to call it) will just embarrass him and put him on the defensive. How can I stop this behavior without doing too much damage to our work relationship? Or do I just have to put up with sentences that start, “My expectation is that you will…” forever?

(A complicating factor is that he’s popular with his colleagues, which is why he will be very seriously considered for the department head position. In academia, that decision is made by the faculty. I could potentially veto their decision, but right now I don’t have enough ammunition to go nuclear. And it would destroy my credibility with the rest of the department. That’s why I would rather figure out how to make this work if I can.)

This guy sounds incredibly obnoxious. And also, if he’s trying to manage you, he’s really bad at it.

“Managing up” doesn’t mean “pretend that you’re your boss’s manager and tell them what to do.” It means working with your boss in a way that will produce the best possible results for both of you and figuring out what is and isn’t within your sphere of control to act upon.

So he’s confused on the concept.

But you’re right that your options are complicated by what sounds like a genuine need to handle him more delicately than you ideally would.

Ideally — in a situation with politics different than this one — you’d just name what he’s doing and tell him to stop. The next time he started in with “my expectation is that you will…” you’d say, “Framing this as ‘your expectations of me’ is coming across really strangely. My job is to make the decisions on this type of thing. I will ask for your input and perspective at times, and you’re certainly welcome to ask when there’s something you’d like to see, but ultimately that’s a call I’ll make myself.”

And actually, it’s possible you could do that here too! If you feel you can, do.

Alternately, you can convey that same message without spelling it out so explicitly, simply by making it clear that you aren’t being swayed by whatever weird technique he’s attempting. For example:

Him: “My expectation is that you will give me a hint if you think there may be a change coming up.”
You: “No, that’s not something you should expect. If there is a change coming, your department head will be the first person to talk with you about it.”

Him: “My expectation is that you will change the meeting time.”
You: “No, I’m not going to reschedule this meeting since it involves so many other people and has been on calendars for a while.”

Him: “I’m sure you understand why you need to have this person fired.”
You: “I don’t agree that’s warranted here. This is a small problem, and I will handle it directly with Jane.”

Him: “I know that you will do the right thing and bring this to the Chief Academic Officer.”
You: “No. (The Chief Academic Officer) and I are in agreement that I’ll handle this type of issue. What I will do is…”

Another option is to have a natural reaction to his “my expectation is…” language, meaning that you let yourself seem visibly surprised. For example, when he said his expectation was that you’d change a meeting time, you could say, “I’m surprised you expect that, given how many other people the meeting involves. Can you clarify for me why you’d expect that?” or “That’s landing with me quite strangely! Can you explain what you mean?”

There’s a pretty good chance this if you repeat this a few times, he’ll feel awkward enough that he’ll stop doing it — and ideally may even realize that he can’t push you around.

In a normal work situation — read: not academia — I’d also say to loop your own boss in on what’s going on, given the likelihood of promotion for this guy. Someone above you needs to hear, a minimum, that he has problems respecting women’s authority. But academia is full of weird politics that I don’t have any expertise in, so I can’t tell you if that makes sense to do here or not — but at least consider it as an option.

Read an update to this letter here.

The post my employee keeps telling me his “expectations” of me appeared first on Ask a Manager.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
The worst part is this is all happening in his VR headset.

Today's News:

WASHINGTON—After dispatching “Dear Colleague” letters to top cosmetology programs across the country, President Donald Trump threatened Monday to defund any beauty school that did not adhere to the standards of the MAGA movement. “We’ve set exact metrics for hairstyles that comply with my administration’s agenda, and any school that fails to respect our policies will face billions in funding cuts,” said Trump, referring to the prestigious Paul Mitchell School’s refusal to relinquish its aesthetic freedom by following a presidential directive to limit men’s cuts to close-cropped side parts and women’s cuts to smooth or loosely curled blond hair reaching at least to the shoulders. “For too long, salons have embraced natural beauty, and that’s coming to an end right now. These radical left-wing lunatics promote antisemitism with their blue hair, indoctrinating our youth and encouraging them to believe they are beautiful no matter what they look like. It’s absolutely disgusting.” At press time, more than 300 hairstylists accused by the government of administering androgynous pixie cuts were reportedly on a plane bound for El Salvador.

The post Trump Threatens To Defund Beauty Schools That Don’t Comply With MAGA Standards appeared first on The Onion.

Trump's border czar Tom Homan says the mothers had made the choice for their citizen children to be removed with them.

60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley, in last night’s closing statement:

“Stories we’ve pursued for 57 years are often controversial: lately, the Israel-Gaza war and the Trump administration. Bill made sure they were accurate and fair. He was tough that way.”

“But our parent company, Paramount, is trying to complete a merger. The Trump administration must approve it. Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways. None of our stories has been blocked, but Bill felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires.”

“No one here is happy about it. But in resigning, Bill proved one thing: He was the right person to lead ‘60 Minutes’ all along.”

Every single executive at Paramount should be ashamed, starting at the top, with the loathsome and cowardly Shari Redstone.

OTTAWA – As the nation heads to the polls Gen Z and Millennial Canadians report having difficulty choosing between Mark Carney, who has promised to allow cost of living to continue to rise unchecked, and Pierre Poilievre, who has vowed to incentivize corporate landlords to purchase all available housing. With many Canadians under 40 citing […]

The post Struggling young voters choose between guy who will ignore cost of living and guy who will make every problem worse appeared first on The Beaverton.