Cowboy Who?

A National Security Council spokesman said in a statement the reported chat "appears to be authentic"

What was discussed in the top-secret group that a journalist was accidentally added to?

The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg talks about what he witnessed in the Signal group chat.

The town hall will take place from 6-7:30 p.m. Thursday at the Fort Bend County Fairgrounds in Rosenberg, which is about 40 miles southwest of Houston. It's being hosted by Powered by People, a grassroots volunteer organization founded by O'Rourke that aims to register new voters.

In brief: Houston faces a couple of warm (almost hot?) days before clouds and rain chances increase to end the week. The period of Thursday night into Friday looks to be the wettest time, and there is the potential for several inches of rainfall, especially south and west of Houston. To that end we are instituting a Stage 1 flood alert for areas along and south of Interstate 10 on Thursday and Friday.

Tuesday

Take a little extra time as there is a fair bit of fog this morning on roadways. It should clear out by mid-morning at the latest, leaving sunny skies. This combination of sunshine and a warm flow will allow high temperatures to spike this afternoon into the upper 80s, with some west and southwest parts of Houston likely reaching 90 degrees. This will be aided by dewpoints in the upper 50s, so while it will be quite warm, it won’t be super humid by Houston standards (that’s dewpoints in the 70s). Given the calm winds, there is also the potential for high ozone levels in the atmosphere today. Low temperatures tonight will drop into the mid-60s for most locations.

Wednesday

Expect a healthy chance of fog again on Wednesday morning. As moisture levels in the atmosphere increase, we’ll see more clouds on Wednesday. This should help to limit high temperatures in the mid-80s, with another warm night.

Thursday and Friday

We are continuing to watch an evolving situation with the potential for heavy rainfall to end the week. And I know many of you are as well, with the Texas Children’s Houston Open golf tournament at Memorial Park Golf Course running from Thursday through Sunday. The good news is that, I think, the weekend should be OK. But what of Thursday and Friday?

An upper-level disturbance will lift into the area beginning Thursday and find high atmospheric moisture levels to work with. This is a fairly potent system in that it has the potential to drop 6 to 10 inches of rain somewhere in Texas later this week. However, at this time the majority of our guidance now indicates that the best chance for the highest amounts will be southwest of Houston, near the Matagorda Bay area, or perhaps further south. But that does not mean the Houston area is out of the woods as uncertainty remains.

Rain chances will start to increase on Thursday, but the potential for heavy rainfall appears to be highest on Thursday night and Friday. As for our expectations in Houston, my best guess at this point is that we will see widespread accumulations between 1 and 4 inches, with higher isolated totals. The chances for higher accumulations appear to be greater closer to the coast. For that reason, we are instituting a Stage 1 flood alert for areas in Houston along and south of Interstate 10 on Thursday and Friday. Please note we may continue to modify this as better data becomes available.

The bottom line is that you should prepare for the possibility of some disruptive rainfall on Thursday night and Friday, but it is by no means a certainty. Expect temperatures in the 70s, with cloudy skies when it is not raining, and plenty of humidity.

Saturday and Sunday

As the upper low lifts north of the area, rains should end on Friday night or Saturday morning, and we should be left with partly sunny skies for the weekend. Expect highs both days in the low- to mid-80s with a fair bit of humidity. So if you have outdoor activities, at this point, they look fine. Nights will be warm and muggy, in the upper 60s for most locations.

Next week

Most of next week looks fairly warm and muggy as well, with highs likely in the 80s somewhere and warm nights as we get into April.

SAN FRANCISCO—Touting the move as a minimally intrusive and private way to keep its sexual health medications available to a wide customer base, Hims announced Tuesday that erections provided by the company would soon feature ads. “In an effort to provide better service and keep our industry-leading sex chews affordable, users of our lower-tier medication plans will begin seeing 15-second ads playing on their erections,” said Hims spokesperson Clara Montoya, who said the targeted ads from partners like Factor and Better Health would play every 30-seconds unless a customer paid $24.99 to upgrade to a higher-tier erection. “We also offer flexibility for customers who prefer a cheaper option, so there is a middle-tier $14.99 upgrade that will play one ad at the onset of arousal before transitioning into a seamless ad-free erection. In the unlikely event the ads are slowing down your erection speed, simply call customer support and they will talk you through the process of debugging your penis. Please note we are trying to cut down on the sharing of Hims plans with friends and family members, so you’ll now need to pay for additional users if you want anyone besides the account owner to interact with the erection.” Montoya added that Hims would also be offering a top-tier Hims Premium experience that allows users to skip the erection entirely and jump right to ejaculation.

The post Hims Announces Erections Will Soon Feature Ads appeared first on The Onion.

PROVO, UT—In a crushing blow to the team’s hopes of winning the NCAA men’s tournament, star Brigham Young University player Mihailo Boskovic was reportedly suspended Tuesday after testing positive for coffee. “Upon detecting the illicit substance on Boskovic’s breath before a game, we ordered an immediate test and confirmed the presence of performance-enhancing hot drinks in his system,” said BYU head coach Kevin Young, adding that the six-game suspension stood despite Boskovic’s claim that he had unwittingly mistaken the coffee for a cup of flat root beer. “Our school takes violations of the Word of Wisdom very seriously, and we maintain that coffee is not for the body or belly. As such, we’ll be starting periodic testing of all players and coaching staff to ensure this never happens again.” At press time, BYU announced that it had expelled Boskovic after photos emerged of him snorting matcha powder.

The post Star BYU Player Suspended After Testing Positive For Coffee appeared first on The Onion.

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

Last week we talked about weird hills to die on — people who became so strongly committed to a minor fight that they lost all sight of logic and decorum — and here are 10 of my favorite stories you shared.

1. The newsletter

Our Fortune 500 company hosted a weekend company-wide softball tourney, which was won by a team led by a guy known around the office as Hothead.

Monday morning arrives and the company-wide daily email goes out with important company announcements. One of the items included was the results of the previous weekend’s softball tourney. Hothead was livid about the fact that it included only the team name (not individual team members) and that it also included the team name of the runners-up.

He sent a scathing email to the comms person responsible for the newsletter about their “failure to recognize exceptional individual achievements” in the newsletter and demanded they send out a second email identifying each team member of the winning team. The comms person said no, so he made a nasty post on the company’s internal bulletin board; the posting was so snarky that it got removed within a couple of hours of posting it.

That made Hothead even more incensed so he skipped several levels of management and brought “the glaring omission” to the attention of the VP of Comms, head of HR, and a couple of C-level execs via email. He got a call from HR and ripped them a new one. He was brought in immediately for an in-person meeting with HR — with security present — and ordered to undergo anger management therapy. He refused, escalated his behavior, and was escorted from the building. Security cleaned out his desk for him.

2. The pinstripe suits

Many years ago, I worked for a very conservative smaller bank. The CEO was very old school, with a rigorous dress code. For decades (literally), the bank bought all staff four nicely tailored suits every two years. For the men, two were navy pinstripe, two were navy solid, and there were five company-supplied approved ties. For women, they were the same navy, and women could choose skirts or pants. This was described in the employee handbook. The solid suits were to be worn on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, the pinstripe suits on Tuesday and Thursday. I’m not kidding.

Toward the end of my tenure there, they decided to stop buying pinstripe suits. All four suits were the same dark navy. One older gentleman in our mortgage department was livid that they got rid of the pinstripe suits, and threatened to quit unless the decision was changed. He literally sent a resignation letter to the CEO (who he had known for decades).

Eventually a compromise was reached. It was added to the company handbook specifically that while we were not buying new pinstripe suits, if an employee had a pinstripe suit brought by the company, that as long as it was in good shape and looked professional, the employee was allowed to wear it on Tuesday or Thursday.

3. The supplies

When everyone was sent home for Covid, there was a lot of discussion about reimbursement for things like printer ink and other supplies.

But one group got all up in arms about three specific items: paper towels, hand soap, and, of course, toilet paper. On the argument that they got these items for free while working at work, so their at home usage went up for all of these things. They were livid that they were not going to be reimbursed for the toilet paper they had to use while working from home. And since we use the giant industrial rolls, they couldn’t just take some home.

There are a couple of them who still sneak extra office supplies home to “make up” for the injustice of having to provide their own essentials during that time.

4. The walking track

I run a senior center. Our building is laid out in such a way that our internal hallways can be used as an indoor walking track, which many people do utilize. Since we opened the facility, everyone seemed to all walk in one direction: counterclockwise. This went on for about a year, when we had some requests from patrons to switch directions. Not only to shake things up, but also so walkers could better enjoy some large murals we had had installed.

We announced the change at the start of the new year, and you wouldn’t believe the backlash. I had people telling me and my team that they were “never going to come back again!” I had folks telling us, “You can’t make me walk that way! I won’t do it!” and I had one person crying about how this change was too big and too dramatic and he would find somewhere else to walk.

After a week of this, we decided to hang up mirrors at the corners and tell people to walk whichever way they want and just not bump into each other. My colleagues and I still laugh about how we ruined everyone’s lives by changing the direction of the walking track; it still comes up years later in department head meetings.

5. The fancy espresso machine

My office was making plans for renovations, and the director got it into his head that we should have a big lounge area with couches where we could all bring our laptops and work together socially whenever we wanted.* My department head suggested we should get some sort of fancy espresso machine for this space, which the director roundly shut down as an unforgiveable extravagence. Department head was not to be deterred. He brought the espresso machine up at every meeting – department meetings where none of us could do anything about it, all-staff meetings, department head meetings where he reportedly got into arguments with the director each time. Finally he retired (possibly in part because of the espresso machine). We have an annual party where we invite our recent retirees back to make nice speeches about them and hear them make a speech too. He used his speech to bring up the espresso machine.

* This is its own issue but let’s just say not many people were enthused at the prospect of leaving their private offices with dual monitor setups to balance a laptop on their knees on a couch. In the end, the renovation was much more mundane and mostly involved expanding the boardroom so all the staff could fit in it at once.

6. The microwaved fish

I’m sure I’m not the only person who’s seen office drama over fish in the microwave, but a few years back it got to a ridiculous level. We had two microwaves in our cafeteria and someone (don’t know who, we were a decent amount of people in the office at the time) would microwave fish regularly. One day HR put up signs on the microwave doors saying “please don’t microwave foods with strong smells.” Well, the fish cooker must have taken it personally because they lost it. They first wrote a note in red on the sign to protest, then stuck up printouts from websites explaining the benefits of eating fish, all the while continuing to heat up their fish.

7. The pages

I have worked as a graphic designer for various nonprofits (often the only designer on staff). One department head at a library where I worked was adamant about maintaining her own preferred formatting/layout in design pieces that included work from a lot of other departments too (think annual report). So while everyone else was satisfied for me to take their images and text and use everything to make a nice cohesive design, this woman had to have “her pages” just the way she wanted — meaning multiple exclamation points (in a row, like “!!!!!”) and tiny pictures often arranged in an arc with WordArt titles.

I did push back, my boss pushed back, but because she was a department head it didn’t go anywhere. Eventually I just ended up exporting her original submitted Word docs as a PDF and plonking the whole thing into the annual report rather than trying to recreate her bananas layout ideas in InDesign. So if you were perusing our annual report, you’d get through about 20 pages of nicely-designed content, then suddenly a couple pages that looked like a 12-year-old made a flyer in Microsoft Word.

She was happy. I was not, but I was tired.

8. The title

Between college and law school, I took an unpaid internship with a local district attorney’s office. I was hired on full time at the conclusion of the internship as a research and writing assistant for the attorneys, which made the office manager who supervised me lose all her marbles in spectacular fashion. She pulled me out of meetings with the attorneys to do things like move boxes, rearrange files, and sweep floors. When one of the supervising attorneys told her off for it, she retaliated by ordering me office-branded notepads with my name and the title “temporary assistant district attorney intern.” You better believe I still have a few of those notepads hanging around and still laugh at them some 20 years later!

9. The start-up software

Someone in my company’s IT has decided the hill they are dying on is that Adobe Creative Cloud must automatically load every time we log into our workstation. On our already slow work computers that’s connected to an even slower virtual desktop using firewall software known to lag, it means a 15-minute start-up sequence on a good day. There have been many complaints and we’ve begged them to just change the startup settings so CC isn’t a startup app but they refuse to budge. No one knows why.

Every time someone requests this be changed, IT sends an email reply with the subject line “Why Adobe Creative Cloud Will Remain A Startup App” that is a long manifesto over the importance of Adobe CC in computing history without actually explaining why it needs to be in startup. There is not one single CC app we need for our jobs and we’re not even allowed to use Acrobat for PDFs.

10. The dress code

This isn’t mine, but my father’s. I am still proud of him for it, actually.

He was a high school history teacher from the 60s into the 90s. Very well-respected, wrote many textbooks, loved by his students. What he hated – and I mean hated – was having to wear formal clothes while he was teaching. The students could wear jeans, why couldn’t he? He actually organized a rebellion among his fellow teachers who were also sick of having to get dressed up every day – suits, dress shirts, ties, pantyhose, dresses, heels for the female teachers, dress shoes for the men, etc. – so they were quite willing to follow my dad’s lead. He fought with the assistant principal. He fought with his department head. He fought loudly with the principal. He went up against the school board. He declared he would quit over this if they would not relent. Finally, he organized a day of resistance. He got as many teachers as possible to come to work dressed in jeans. I think about 60 teachers did. The principal couldn’t send them all home, so he acquiesced.

From that day forward, teachers could wear jeans. There was much rejoicing. And I think, cake.

The Signal messages show the inner workings of the president's team and how his Vice-President JD Vance disagreed with him.

EDMONTON – Following a Breitbart podcast interview where Danielle Smith recalled requesting the Trump administration pause tariffs in order to help Pierre Poilievre’s campaign, the Alberta Premier insisted this did not amount to foreign interference, “or at least it won’t count once Canada joins the USA”. While many political observers are decrying Smith for attempting […]

The post Danielle Smith insists Trump helping Poilievre not foreign interference once we become 51st state appeared first on The Beaverton.

Early in President Trump’s first term, McSweeney’s editors began to catalog the head-spinning number of misdeeds coming from his administration. We called this list a collection of Trump’s cruelties, collusions, corruptions, and crimes, and it felt urgent to track them, to ensure these horrors—happening almost daily—would not be forgotten. Now that Trump has returned to office, amid civil rights, humanitarian, economic, and constitutional crises, we felt it critical to make an inventory of this new round of horrors. This list will be updated monthly between now and the end of Donald Trump’s second term.

This list, along with everything McSweeney’s publishes on this site, is offered ad-free and at no charge to our readers. If you are moved to make a donation in any amount or subscribe to our website’s Patreon, please do. This will help support this project and our other work.

ATROCITY KEY

– Constitutional Illegalities, Collusion, and/or Obstruction of Justice
– Environment
– Harassment, Bullying, Retribution, and/or Sexual Misconduct
– Lies and Misinformation
– Musk Madness
– Policy
– Public Statements and Social Media Posts
– Trump Family Business Dealings
– Trump Staff and Administration
– White Supremacy, Racism, Misogyny, Homophobia, Transphobia, and/or Xenophobia

Last Updated: June 2, 2025

Jump to May 2025

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JANUARY 2025

1. – January 20, 2025 – During his inaugural address at the Capitol Rotunda, Donald Trump proclaimed, “The golden age of America begins right now… From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world.” During the speech, he condemned the Biden administration while President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris sat directly behind him. Trump stated he would reverse “horrible betrayals” and railed against a “radical and corrupt establishment” that he said “extracted power and wealth from our citizens.” On the dais near him sat a few of the wealthiest citizens in the world, including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg.
   
   
   Excerpt from Donald Trump’s inauguration speech. (PBS)
   
   
   
2. – January 20, 2025 – Trump offered unconditional pardons to approximately 1,500 people charged in connection with the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. “These are people who actually love our country,” Trump announced, “so we thought a pardon would be appropriate.” Several January 6 defendants refused to accept their pardons. Mary Hemphill, often referred to as “MAGA Granny,” said, “It’s an insult to the Capitol police officers, to the rule of law, and to the nation. It contributes to their false propaganda—that they continue to gaslight the nation and everyone that it was a peaceful protest.”
   
   
3. – January 20, 2025 – In violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, Trump signed an executive order to end birthright citizenship. Attorneys general from twenty-two states sued in federal court. US District Judge John Coughenour blocked the order, describing it as “blatantly unconstitutional.” “We’re the only country in the world that does [birthright citizenship],” Trump said. Dozens of countries, including Canada, Mexico, and many South American nations, offer birthright citizenship.
   
   
4. – January 20, 2025 – Trump signed an executive order withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement. He described it as “a rip-off.” During his inaugural address, Trump said, “We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it.” Fossil fuel interests gave Trump’s presidential campaign an estimated $75 million. Newly appointed Energy Secretary Chris Wright founded the fracking firm Liberty Energy. In 2023, Wright claimed, “There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition, either.”
   
   
5. – January 20, 2025 – Trump signed Executive Order 14169, which mandated a ninety-day pause on all US foreign development assistance programs. The order, entitled “Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid,” stated, “The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “There will be changes, but the changes are not meant to be destructive, they’re not meant to be punitive.” Abby Maxam, head of Oxfam America, stated that suspending funding “could have life or death consequences” for children and families around the world.
   
   
6. – January 20, 2025 – During a speech at an inauguration celebration, Elon Musk, Trump’s pick to lead his Department of Governmental Efficiency, gave not one but two fascists gestures. “I just want to say thank you for making [Trump’s election victory] happen,” the billionaire told supporters. He then pounded his chest and extended his arm diagonally in the air, very similar to the Nazi Party’s infamous salute. After the crowd cheered, he did it a second time. In recent months, Musk had been increasingly engaging with far-right groups, like Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland. Trump, too, has been criticized for his fascist views, even by his vice president, JD Vance, who once called him “America’s Hitler.”
   
   
   Musk’s fascist salute (The Telegraph)
   
   
7. – January 21, 2025 – Trump introduced Executive Order 14151, aimed at ending diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) policies throughout the federal government. The order stated, “Federal employment practices, and employee performance reviews, shall reward individual initiative, skills, performance, and hard work and shall not under any circumstances consider DEI or DEIA factors, goals, policies, mandates, or requirements.” Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said the government already hires and promotes exclusively based on merit: “The results are clear: a diverse federal workforce that looks like the nation it serves. We should all be proud of that.”
   
   
8. – January 23, 2025 – Trump fired more than a dozen inspectors general in a late-night purge of independent government watchdog officials assigned to investigate crime and abuse. The fired inspectors general received White House emails that stated, “Due to changing priorities, your position as Inspector General… is terminated, effective immediately.” In response to the firings, Trump said, “Some people thought that some were unfair or some were not doing the job.” He claimed that the mass removal of inspectors general was “a very standard thing to do.” The terminations directly violated a federal law that required a thirty-day notice to Congress that included a rationale for the firings.
   
   
9. – January 24, 2025 – Just hours before he visited areas devastated by the Southern California wildfires, Trump blamed California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom and other state officials for the fires. “Look, Gavin’s got one thing he can do,” Trump told Fox News. “He can release the water that comes from the north. There is massive amounts of water, rainwater, and mountain water that comes, too, with the snow, comes down as it melts, there’s so much water.” Water resource and environmental engineering experts said there was no connection between California’s water supply and the deadly wildfires.
   
   
10. – January 24, 2025 – Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, Fox News host Pete Hegseth, was narrowly confirmed after allegations of his past sexual violence, alcoholism, workplace misconduct, and affinity for far-right and neo-Nazi groups came to light. An affidavit by Hegseth’s former sister-in-law alleged that Hegseth, who has a white-extremist symbol tattooed on his chest, regularly made racist comments to his ex-wife while drunk. Upon his confirmation, Trump said, “We have a great secretary of defense, and we’re very happy,” adding, “the important thing is winning.”
    
    
11. – January 25, 2025 – In Chicago, Secret Service agents showed up at Hamline Elementary School and attempted to question an eleven-year-old who had posted an anti-Trump video online. The agents first visited a residence in the neighborhood to investigate a “threat to one of our protectees in reference to the recent TikTok ban.” They then visited the school and showed identification to school administrators, who refused to let them in. Initially, school officials falsely stated that the agents were from ICE, reflecting the community’s growing fears amid heightened tensions over immigration policy. More than 90 percent of Hamline’s students are Latinx and about two-thirds are English-language learners.
    
    
12. – January 25, 2025 – During a phone call with King Abdullah II of Jordan, Trump said he wanted Jordan to welcome more Palestinians from Gaza. “I’d love for you to take on more because I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now, and it’s a mess. You’re talking about a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing.” Jordanian Foreign Affairs Minister Ayman Safadi promptly replied, “Our refusal of displacement is a steadfast position that will not change.” In response to Trump’s suggestion, Senator Lindsey Graham said, “I don’t know what he’s talking about.”
    
    
13. – January 25, 2025 – At a Las Vegas rally, Trump speculated about running for additional presidential terms. “It will be the greatest honor of my life to serve not once but twice—or three or four times.” Just two days later, in a speech to House Republicans at Mar-a-Lago, Trump added, “I’ve raised a lot of money for the next race that I assume I can’t use for myself, but I’m not 100 percent sure,” eliciting laughter from House Speaker Mike Johnson, a former constitutional lawyer. The Twenty-Second Amendment to the US Constitution explicitly bans a president from being elected to more than two terms.
    
    
14. – January 27, 2025 – President Trump signed executive orders banning transgender individuals from serving in the military, eliminating the military’s diversity programs, and reinstating with back pay service members who were previously discharged for refusing COVID-19 vaccinations. The order banning trans service members stated that “adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle” and “is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.” In 2018, the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps chiefs all told Congress that transgender troops did not negatively impact unit cohesion, discipline issues, or morale.
    
    
15. – January 27, 2025 – In an internal memo sent to federal agencies, the White House ordered a temporary pause on federal grant and loan disbursements to ensure compliance with Trump’s recent executive orders. “The use of federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and Green New Deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars,” wrote Matthew J. Vaeth, then acting director of the Office of Management and Budget. A spreadsheet identified 2,600 federal programs under review, showing impacts to foreign aid, homeless shelters, food stamps, college financial aid, disaster reconstruction, Social Security, and senior health care.
    
    
16. – January 27, 2025 – Trump signed an executive order aimed at restricting gender-affirming health care—such as puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgery—for those under the age of nineteen. “Across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions,” the order stated. “This dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation’s history, and it must end.” In temporarily blocking the executive order, US District Judge Brendan A. Hurson said, “This is a population with an extremely higher rate for suicide, poverty, unemployment, drug addiction. [Abruptly stopping health care would be] horribly dangerous for anyone, for any care, but especially for this extremely vulnerable population.” Research shows that gender-diverse minors face increased risks for mental health issues, substance use, and suicide, and that gender-affirming health care improves overall well-being and quality of life.
    
    
17. – January 28, 2025 – In her first White House briefing, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that the Elon Musk–led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had prevented a planned $50 million from going “out the door to fund condoms in Gaza,” a “preposterous waste of taxpayer money.” Musk later reposted a video of Leavitt’s remarks with the comment “tip of the iceberg.” Leavitt’s claim was subsequently repeated and expanded upon by the president: “We identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas. They used them as a method of making bombs. How about that?” No evidence was offered to support Leavitt’s, Musk’s, or Trump’s claims. A federal report published in 2024 and now inaccessible on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) website showed that the agency’s total worldwide spending on condoms in 2023 was only $7.1 million and that no condoms were provided or funded for the Middle East between 2021 and 2023.
    
    
18. – January 28, 2025 – The day after a passenger plane and Army helicopter collided mid-air above the Potomac River in Washington, DC, Trump blamed the deadly crash on DEI. At the time of Trump’s statement, an investigation into the cause of the crash was still ongoing. Trump stated, without evidence, that a “diversity push” by the Federal Aviation Administration had resulted in “hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities.” “We have to have the smartest people,” said Trump, referring to air traffic controllers. “It doesn’t matter what they look like, how they speak, who they are.” When a reporter asked Trump directly whether he believed “this crash was somehow caused as the result of diversity hiring,” Trump responded, “It just could have been.” Sixty-seven people were killed in the collision, the first major US commercial passenger crash since 2009.
    
    
19. – January 30, 2025 – During his Senate confirmation hearing, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee for secretary of health and human services, doubled down on past statements that Black people have stronger immune systems than white people and should receive vaccines on a different schedule. In response to questions from Senator Angela Alsobrooks, who is Black, Kennedy said that a “series of studies” by the Mayo Clinic have shown that “to particular antigens Blacks have a much stronger reaction.” Dr. Richard Kennedy (no relation), a vaccine researcher at Mayo Clinic whom Robert F. Kennedy cited during the hearing, said the health secretary nominee was “twisting the data far beyond what they actually demonstrate.” Studies show that false beliefs about biological differences between Black and white people are associated with racial disparities in medical assessment and treatment.
    
    
    Robert F. Kennedy testifying that Black people need fewer antigens than white people. (New York Post)
    
    
20. – January 30, 2025 – The mass deportation operation spearheaded by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE ) rattled immigrant communities across the country. A recent announcement by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) stated that DHS officials would enter schools and churches to conduct raids. The deportation operation was meant to remove dangerous criminals. Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, admitted to “collateral arrests.” The Trump administration said it had arrested 7,400 people in nine days, and White House and ICE officials highlighted several dozen arrested immigrants on social media. No information in the thousands of other cases was made available.
    
    
21. – January 31, 2025 – The Justice Department fired dozens of prosecutors and demanded a list of FBI employees who had worked on investigations related to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. Emil Bove, the acting deputy attorney general, characterized the initial hiring of these prosecutors during the Biden presidency as “subversive” and concurred with Trump’s description of the Capitol attack investigations as “a grave national injustice.” At the time of the Capitol attacks, Bove worked for the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and directed prosecutors to support the FBI’s investigations. “At no point did I ever hear him or anybody else express concern about these investigations and these arrests that we were making,” said Christopher O’Leary, an FBI counterterrorism official who worked with Bove on the investigations.
    
    
22. – January 31, 2025 – In compliance with Trump’s executive orders eliminating federal DEI programs and requiring the government to recognize only two sexes, numerous Department of Health and Human Services webpages and datasets were taken down, including CDC and NIH pages related to HIV, LGBTQ+ health, STI treatment, and food safety during pregnancy. In response, the Infectious Disease Society of America released a statement, noting that the removal of these online resources was “deeply concerning” and created “a dangerous gap in scientific information and data to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks.”
    
    
    - – -

    FEBRUARY 2025

23. – February 1, 2025 – President Trump signed executive orders imposing tariffs on Canada, China, and Mexico. The tariffs aimed to curb the flow of migrants and fentanyl into the country. He claimed the three countries were allowing “mass numbers of people to come in and fentanyl to come in.” The executive orders sidestepped congressional approval, and Trump acknowledged there could be “some pain” in the form of higher inflation, job losses, and stagnating growth due to the tariffs. The Wall Street Journal called Trump’s plan “the dumbest trade war in history.”
    
    
24. – February 3, 2025 – Trump ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to release 2.2 billion gallons of water from two reservoirs in central California. Local officials scrambled to prepare as communities were threatened of being inundated. On Truth Social, Trump crowed, “The water is flowing in California… and heading to farmers throughout the State, and to Los Angeles. Too bad they refused to do this during my First Term—There would have been no fires!” Neither reservoir was connected to aqueducts serving the southern part of the state. “Those releases had absolutely zero to do with anything in Los Angeles,” said Gregory Pierce, director of UCLA’s Water Resource Group. “This was a stunt purely so Trump could say that he did something.”
    
    
25. – February 3, 2025 – Trump announced the United States would cut aid to South Africa over their recent land expropriation law. On Truth Social, Trump posted, “South Africa is confiscating land, and treating certain classes of people VERY BADLY.” Trump’s talking points mirrored those of South Africa–born billionaire Elon Musk. In 2023, Musk said, “They are openly pushing for genocide of white people in South Africa.” White...

This week on Lost Terminal: Nia moves on, Lyosha has a botonay lesson, Yeshi goes on a mission
Lost Terminal will return next week!
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Credits narrated by Lucy Stringer
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A National Security Council spokesman said in a statement the reported chat "appears to be authentic"

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I work at a small creative business with about 25 employees, Our structure is pretty flat, and there is no traditional HR or processes that come with working at larger organizations. There are three main departments. I run one, and my coworker who I am writing about, Maggie, runs one of the others.

A small thing has become a big issue: While we all have open calendars to make scheduling easier, Maggie refuses to make her calendar open and keeps it entirely private. In addition, her calendar is often entirely booked with meetings, showing no open times to add anything.

As a result, in order to schedule almost anything, the project management team is forced to reach out to Maggie to ask about flexibility on her calendar and wait for her response and/or approval to put something on (often she refuses and says she has no time available). As you can imagine, this creates a bottleneck and a considerable amount of frustration for the PM team, who cannot easily do their work. It also adds a layer that makes it seem like Maggie is the the most senior employee (she is not) and gives her an element of control over all meetings.

To add to the frustration, it has become clear that many of the meetings on her calendar have only her in them and are personal appointments or time blocks to do things like “clean the house.” The PM team knows this because they can see all the other meetings on the calendar, so can see she is not booked with anyone, and more than once Maggie has forgotten to sign out of a shared computer and they have seen meetings on her calendar during work hours (10am-6pm) like “walk the dog,” “pilates,” etc. While we keep a flexible work style with two days home and treat each other like adults who can use their time as they like to get their work done (we all often have things on our calendar like “dentist appt”), this calendar issue has become infuriating for many people in the agency.

Maggie could open her calendar and make any blocks she wishes to private, but she refuses to do this (and has even said she would quit over it). As a result, her calendar has become a source of mockery. The PM team is convinced it’s all fake vs. having respect for blocked times, her relationships are suffering because she is seen as uncooperative, controlling, and sneaky (hiding something), and the vibes are getting more and more toxic.

How would you suggest we move forward with this situation, which is currently at a stalemate? Force her to open her calendar or offer a consequence (no idea what that would be), allow her to quit over it (I would not hate this option), allow her to continue keeping it private and change how we schedule, all make our calendars private (petty but would a point), let it go?

I wrote back and asked, “What has Maggie said about her reasons when asked why she wants to do it this way? And what does Maggie’s boss say about it?”

Maggie refuses to elaborate other than to say that she thinks it’s a violation of her privacy and she wants a private calendar

When the CEO, who is her boss, spoke about it, she told the CEO she would quit if forced to open her calendar.

That was about a year ago, and I don’t think the CEO really understands the implications. This week I spoke to the CEO about it being an ongoing problem and someone else sent the CEO screenshots of Maggie’s calendar to show the scheduling blocks are all personal. So we’ll see if there is action taken but when I spoke to the CEO, she expressed she felt like she had no way to force Maggie to comply.

You have a Maggie problem, but you also have a CEO problem.

Or at least you do if people have clearly laid out to the CEO what problems this is causing — that it’s creating a bottleneck and making the PMs’ jobs harder and that Maggie hasn’t offered any reason for being so committed to not complying with a practice everyone else uses.

If the CEO’s response to that is still that she has no way to force Maggie to comply … then are there any policies or accountability in this organization at all? What would the CEO do if someone stopped coming to work? Refused to meet deadlines? Wanted to walk around the office pants-less? Obviously these are bigger deals than “won’t share her calendar,” but the point is that the only way offices can function is if there are shared agreements around expectations and practices and if people are actually held accountable to meeting those.

But I’m curious about whether the CEO does know how much of a problem this has become. Often when stuff like this gets shared, it’s shared in a sort of shorthand that doesn’t communicate the full extent of the problem. So if there’s any doubt about how much the CEO understands, the next step is to go back to her and describe in detail the specific issues Maggie’s intransigence is causing, and then state clearly that things are at a crisis point and the CEO needs to use her authority to intervene because a year of trying to resolve it with Maggie directly hasn’t worked.

This next part is out of your control, but from there the CEO should talk to Maggie and find out why she’s digging her heels. If Maggie isn’t willing to offer a compelling reason, then the CEO should tell her that this is an expectation of her job like any other, that she needs to comply with it because it’s causing XYZ work problems, and that the CEO is going to check in two days to make sure she’s done it, and that she needs to continue to comply going forward. And then the CEO needs to hold her to that like she would any other work expectation.

The CEO may be thinking “I’m not willing to lose an employee over something as small as their calendar settings,” but this isn’t really about the calendar. It’s about someone insisting they’re going to cause bottlenecks and problems for their colleagues and claiming they feel so strongly about their right to do that that they’ll quit over it without ever explaining why it matters. That’s not about calendar settings; it’s about Maggie’s fundamental willingness to work respectfully and cooperatively on a team.

It also makes me really curious about the rest of Maggie’s work, because I’m skeptical that this isn’t coming out in other ways too.

The Blanton Museum of Art’s latest exhibition, In Creative Harmony: Three Artistic Partnerships, challenges the idea of the lone artistic genius, emphasizing that great innovation is rarely formed in solitude. Showcasing more than 100 works, including paintings, sculptures, and mixed-media pieces, the exhibition highlights the dynamic exchange of ideas between six artists in three pairings. Spanning historical and contemporary works, the show explores the power of collaboration through the partnerships of Mexican printmakers José Guadalupe Posada and Artemio Rodríguez, modernist visionaries Arshile Gorky and Isamu Noguchi, and Pueblo potters Nora and Eliza Naranjo Morse, a mother-daughter duo continuing a lineage of Indigenous artistry. 

To further the theme of collaboration, each pairing was curated by a different curator: Vanessa Davidson, research curator of Latin American art; Claire Howard, former Blanton associate curator of exhibitions and collections; and Hannah Klemm, curator of Modern and Contemporary art. 

“Artists have inspired one another for centuries. In Creative Harmony demonstrates how these exchanges push the boundary of creativity by beautifully weaving together three transformative partnerships,” says Blanton Director Simone Wicha. 

The first pairing features Mexican printmakers born a century apart: José Guadalupe Posada (1852–1913), often called the ‘Mexican Goya,’ and Artemio Rodríguez (b. 1972), whose work is exhibited alongside Posada’s for the first time in a museum setting. “Posada’s life and work have been a profound example and inspiration to me,” Rodríguez shares. 

Both artists blend celebration and satire, using calaveras, the skeletal figures Posada helped popularize, to reflect cultural identity and challenge power structures. Rodríguez’s Mickey Muerto and Supermuerto transform global pop icons into subversive symbols, expanding Posada’s legacy into new cultural and political landscapes.

For Howard, discovering the friendship between Gorky and Noguchi was particularly exciting, especially their shared experiences and the context that shaped their work. “From their grappling with Modernist forerunners to their embrace of biomorphic abstraction, sense of national dislocation, and engagement with Surrealism and nascent Abstract Expressionism, their connection deeply informed their artistic journeys,” she says.

The duo exhibited their work together in 1930s New York, and this showcase highlights rarely seen collaborative drawings. 

“I’m particularly excited to bring together, for the first time since their creation, the three known collaborative drawings they produced with De Hirsh Margules in response to the outbreak of World War II in Europe. Additionally, I’m thrilled to reunite Gorky’s Nude and Noguchi’s Trinity, which were originally shown together in the fascinating Surrealist exhibition Bloodflames in New York in 1947,” she adds.

Mother-daughter artists Nora and Eliza Naranjo Morse, members of the Naranjo family’s long artistic legacy, created a significant body of new work for this exhibition. Nora’s Healers from Some Other Place, sculptures made from reclaimed materials like burlap sacks and Walmart bags, took shape during the COVID-19 pandemic. Created in stages of lockdown, the project became a collaborative effort among women, including elders from Kha’p’o Owenge and other tribes as far as Minnesota, forming a healing community over three years.

The exhibition centers on these burlap Healers alongside We Come With Stories, a series of hand-coiled sculptures crafted by Nora from Santa Clara and micaceous clay. Rooted in Pueblo traditions, they honor ancestral knowledge and Indigenous cultural narratives.

 

 In Creative Harmony is on view at the Blanton Museum of Art through July 20.

The post New Blanton Exhibition Explores Artistic Collaboration appeared first on Glasstire.

Glasstire visited the Satellite Art Show and talked with some of this year’s featured artists.

The post The 2025 Satellite Art Show appeared first on Glasstire.

In brief: Some areas of Houston got hit by Sunday night’s storms, and others did not. We will now experience a few days of calmer weather this week before the chance for heavy rainfall on Thursday and Friday of this week. The details of that forecast remain hazy, but it’s something to watch.

Rainfall needed

For central and northwest areas of the Houston region, Sunday night’s storms brough some much needed rainfall, with one or more inches in an area roughly between Highway 290 and I-45 North. Much of the rest of the metro area got significantly less. That could change during the second half of this week, with the combination of an upper-level system and plenty of moisture in the atmosphere bringing a healthy chance of rain to the forecast. It is still too early to say whether this is a case in which most of Houston receives about 1 inch of rain, or whether some areas are at risk of 4 to 6 inches. We will be watching it closely.

Monday

Last night’s storms were prompted by a weak front sagging into the area, and this has helped push lows down to near 60 degrees this morning for much of Houston. This is likely to be the “coldest” we get for the next week at least. Highs today will reach the lower 80s, with mostly sunny skies and mostly calm winds. The onshore flow will return later this afternoon or this evening, so lows are unlikely to fall below the low 60s tonight.

Tuesday

This will be a warm—borderline hot—day as we see mostly sunny skies and a warm southerly flow. Expect high temperatures in the upper 80s with a few locations possibly hitting 90 degrees. Some slightly drier air (dewpoints in the upper 50s) will help the air warm more rapidly. Winds will generally be light, perhaps at 5 mph from the east. Lows on Tuesday night will drop into the mid-60s.

Wednesday

A few more clouds on Wednesday should help to limit high temperatures in the mid-80s. After Wednesday the region will not see much (any?) sunshine until at least Saturday. Expect another mild night in the mid-60s.

Thursday and Friday

The period of Thursday afternoon through Friday night should bring a high chance of rain as an upper-level system moves into the region. In terms of most impactful rains, with the potential for street flooding, we’re probably looking at late Thursday night into Friday afternoon, but those details will have to wait. These will be cloudy days, with highs mostly in the upper 70s, and muggy evenings. The global models are indicating the potential for a heavy pocket of rainfall, with several inches of rain during this period. However it still is not clear whether this will line up north of the Houston metro area, or more directly over the city and its suburbs. For now I think it’s best to say that we’re going to see some rain during the second half of the work week, and there’s the distinct potential for heavy rainfall and street flooding. We may need to break out the Space City Weather flood scale, but I’m going to hold off on that decision until Tuesday’s post.

Saturday, Sunday, and beyond

At this point it looks like things will begin to clear up by Saturday, so if you have some outdoor plans this weekend all is not lost. Both days this weekend should see partly sunny skies with highs in the lower 80s, give or take. We cannot rule out some showers each day, but the overall odds appear fairly low. A weak front may arrive by Monday, or so, to bring us some slightly cooler nights. We’ll see!

The pair will make separate trips this week, after threats from the US president to take over the island.

" Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick suggested this week that only ‘fraudsters’ would complain about missing a monthly Social Security check, and that most people wouldn’t mind if the government simply skipped a payment. — Axios

People are overreacting that the Trump administration’s planned overhauls of the Social Security Administration could lead to delayed or missed Social Security payments and cause senior citizens hardship. Take my ninety-four-year-old mother-in-law, Barbara—if her check didn’t come as scheduled, she wouldn’t even complain—because she would soon be dead.

Unlike most older people in this country, Barbara doesn’t sit around defrauding the American taxpayer—namely, herself, who paid Social Security taxes her whole life—by living on an income so fixed that if her Social Security check was even a few days delayed it would cause bills to go unpaid, late fees to be assessed, and her entire financial future to depend on the outcome of Wheel of Fortune’s My$tery Wedge 10K Giveaway.

No, she would be totally fine without her check. Barbara is not one of those self-important elderly people who need to eat food to survive. She can subsist solely on quartered containers of yogurt and the knowledge that she is fulfilling her patriotic duty to, as the president said, make sacrifices in the short term that will pay off later. So if she can just forego eating for the days, weeks, or months it will take to undo all of the avoidable mistakes the administration will make in trying to change Social Security, she will certainly be able to afford food again, after she has passed away due to malnutrition.

And she doesn’t worry about running out of medication, either, because she knows she can just ration it for a little while if she needs to, for the sake of the country. If she just has one small stroke per day after she runs out of blood pressure medication instead of one massive stroke on the first day, she may be able to go on living for up to a week before she still dies anyway.

If she can just keep her mouth shut and die, why can’t everyone else on Social Security do the same? It just goes to show that people who would complain about a missed check are fraudsters who feel entitled to Social Security just because it is an entitlement program. What’s next? Older Americans who also feel entitled to affordable health care from the Medicare program just because it is also an entitlement program they have paid into their whole lives?

Barbara is a woman who gets by on her gumption, not by sitting around waiting for a handout. She knows that if someday, probably very soon, her check doesn’t arrive, she could just call up her billionaire treasury secretary son-in-law and ask for some money. And if it turns out she doesn’t have such a son-in-law (sorry, Barb!), then at least she will die knowing her daughter is very happy with a nice man whom she totally doesn’t care isn’t rich.

My mother-in-law is representative of the many older Americans who I am sure will be on the right side of history by falling in line with a corrupt government trying to dismantle a program that is universally popular across party lines, ultimately dying in the process.

As ol’ Barb always says, “It’s shameful to use a made-up story about me to score political points; I never said any of this.”

WASHINGTON—In an effort to restore what he said were traditional American values that the previous administration had attempted to destroy, President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday decreeing that all children born while President Joe Biden was in office would be renamed after Confederate generals. “Parents across the country were shamed by angry liberals into giving their kids ‘woke’ names like Tyler and Justin when they should have been naming them Stonewall and Forrest,” said Trump, claiming that the approximately 15 million children born during the Biden administration were all given names that denied America’s true history. “Biden, he made it illegal to name your kid Lee, he did that, but we’re going to restore all those kids’ names that got taken away. Every last one. So no more Noahs, no more Liams. They are all going to be Beauregard now. These people are ashamed of America. Many of these kids should be named Bragg, but got named Braydon instead, and I’m fixing it. And if you don’t do it, we’ll be picking the name for you. This goes for girls, too.” Trump added that any parents who failed to comply with the executive order would see all federal funding withheld from their state of residence.

The post Trump Orders All Children Born Under Biden To Be Renamed After Confederate Generals appeared first on The Onion.

The post Spray-Painted Penis Only Thing Holding Cybertruck Together appeared first on The Onion.

In the coming weeks, nearly 60% of Americans are expected to travel over the academic vacation period known as spring break. The Onion presents a historical timeline of the wild cultural phenomenon now considered a rite of passage for many college students.

10,000 BCE: First cave art depicting a young woman throwing a punch at a police horse.

1492: Columbus lands in the Bahamas after his spring break cruise got terribly off track.

1940: Winston Churchill delivers his famous “we shall pop top on the beaches” speech to the House of Commons.

1977: The world greets the first human child successfully conceived on a jet ski.

1983: A cardboard cutout of Nancy Reagan wins the South Beach wet T-shirt contest.

1989: Daytona Beach passes a strict law banning sobriety.

2002: The MTV Beach House receives UNESCO World Heritage Site protections.

2006: This one dude outside Sharkey’s throws up directly on some chick’s face. She was fucking pissed, bro.

2020: Covid-19 shuts down spring break in Florida for three full hours.

2030: Thousands of college students barf into warmest ocean water on record.

The post History Of Spring Break In The U.S. appeared first on The Onion.

A thief who swiped a golden toilet from an English palace was convicted along with an accomplice who helped cash in on the 18-carat work of art insured for more than $6 million. What do you think?

The post Jury Convicts Thief Who Stole Golden Toilet appeared first on The Onion.

OTTAWA – Prime Minister Mark Carney has confirmed that April 28th will be the date Canadians finally learn the identity of the 5th unknown man included in photo montages with Carney, Pierre Poilievre, Jagmeet Singh, and the Bloc Québécois guy. “I personally am dying to know,” stated Carney at a recent press conference. “Like, I […]

The post Carney announces April 28th will be the day Canada learns who the hell this guy is appeared first on The Beaverton.

#Ully #Rowen #RoninWarriors

#Cye #RoninWarriors

Hi, I’m Reece! If you’re new here… Wow, I have no idea how you got here, but maybe leave a comment and tell me how! Also consider subscribing to help me grow the blog!

Anyways, I’m a “retired” YouTuber (we are a small group of people!), I didn’t ever plan to be a YouTuber (did anyone born before 2007?), and I think there’s a lot of wisdom I can dispatch on the topic.

I started my YouTube channel in 2016 while studying at university with videos of passenger trains and subways — that was it, and eventually ended up creating content on everything public transit, with videos about cities around the world, and every rapid transit system I could wrap my brain around. In 2019-2020, I made YouTube my full time job as I graduated from school. I had studied Computer Science in university, and while I had a programming job lined up a bank, I correctly (I think) identified that YouTube would be an infinitely more interesting and enjoyable job and went all in.

With a young child, over 800 videos under my belt, and living in a city (Toronto) that has failed at every level to provide its citizens with the public transit system it deserves, I decided at the end of 2024 that it was time for curtain call, and I took on my new full-time job of being a dad (and relearning software development so I can go work in tech), and wrapped my channel.

That all being said, the truth is, I think my time doing YouTube taught me a lot, not least about what YouTube is like as a career, so I thought: why not compile some of those learnings into a blog post? So here goes:

1. YouTube starts as a Volunteer Position and Google always takes a big cut.

People seem really allured by the idea of making money on YouTube from the in-built ads, which you can do once you meet some fairly-low subscriber and viewership metrics. The thing is, hitting those numbers isn’t necessarily trivial, or fast, and until you do you will be working for free. What I think a lot of people don’t realize is that there’s a big period of time when you have > 1000 subscribers but < 50000, when you’ll probably be making money on paper, but it might be a few hundred dollars per month. You’ll be working for a few dollars, or maybe cents per hour. At the same time, no matter how big you get, Google takes a big chunk of your revenue: they are of course hosting a lot of video which isn’t free, but which has gotten much cheaper, and now they’re almost certainly also using your stuff to train AI…

2. People are overly prescriptive in approach

One of the first things you find out if you’re running a YouTube channel and you dare to search anywhere on the web for information about growing it, is that there is an entire YouTube sub-genre and industry based around stroking the egos of people who want a big YouTube channel. There are a lot of people who go into way too much detail trying to engineer videos that get 1% more likes or whatever. I don’t deny that this silly stuff works, but you’re almost certainly better off just making more and better videos instead of trying to figure out what keywords to use and whatnot. People are just really prescriptive, and once you talk to other YouTubers you’ll hear a lot of strong opinions about the right way to do things, which I’m not confident actually exists.

3. Freelance jobs are hard

YouTube as a job is essentially freelancing. Sure, you don’t have to land jobs, but you do need to make good videos. Don’t make good videos and you don’t get paid! If you’ve never worked freelance before, it’s… a trial by fire. You also don’t get your taxes pre-deducted from your paycheque, which takes some off the top as well. Probably biggest of all: there are no benefits, which makes doing things like taking a break a real challenge.

4. The income variability is killer

And even when you are making a solid income on YouTube, your income is always quite variable. YouTube revenue is often heavily dependent on getting external sponsors (for what it’s worth, it never was for me, but it is for a lot of people), which basically comes down to winning a job. Now, regular old AdSense is consistent (assuming your videos are “advertiser-safe”) in the sense that you always get some, but that revenue you get is less consistent than you might think because it’s highly dependent on the broader ad market, which changes by season, by how much exposure your videos actually get, and, well, how many new folks are working for almost free for YouTube. What this all led to for me was feeling like I needed to work extra so I could meet a certain monthly income minimum — rent unfortunately doesn’t come at a discount randomly some months.

5. The work is everywhere

This might seem a bit relatable to the many more hybrid and remote workers out there these days, but you can and will work in all kinds of places and at all times. I found myself working every day of the week, and most hours of the day. Life and work blend into one. That’s encouraged by the general sense of precarity and the variable income. Depending on the type of videos you make, you also might feel the need to make content when you’re just going about your daily life. Then of course there’s the fact that a lot of YouTube just doesn’t work on regular work hours: comments and emails come in at any hour, and video releases can happen at any hour of the day. It’s not healthy.

6. YouTubers talk

Something that is nice is that YouTubers are a diverse and generally pretty pleasant group. Assuming you’ve got a modestly large channel, it’s pretty easy to get in touch with anyone, and I will say there’s a lot of bonding to do over YouTube creator frustrations. Personally, I’ve been in touch with essentially every major YouTube creator in the space I was making videos, and that was very cool.

7. Press-Release Tube

Something you quickly realize if you’re a wonk is how many YouTube channels on technical subjects are just recorded and reorganized press releases, made with varying production value. The amount of “megaproject” videos I have seen on transit projects that don’t even seem to understand them as more than a new subway or railway and have no idea what the critiques are is remarkable. It leads to this weird dynamic where a lot of content on some subjects says more or less the same thing (and nothing more), and then you hear from viewers that they enjoy this and you weep over the fact that people are spending their time listening to press releases turned into videos. The problem here of course being that press releases often don’t provide a lot of insight and sometimes verge on propaganda. This stuff is also super easy for me to identify because anyone who’s into transit is going to compare Crossrail to the Paris RER or German S-Bahns, and yet so many videos covering it which pretend to come from a technical angle do not!

8. College-Class Tube

There’s also a whole class of YouTube channels that feel like they are regurgitating first year University classes on various topics. I think like with Press-Release tube this has a pretty large addressable market because lots of people haven’t gone to university or haven’t taken said classes, but there’s a lot of pretty out-of-touch professors who teach overly simplistic or downright wrong things in first year University classes! I remember hearing for example geography professors talking about BRT like it was the invention of electricity, or saying Vancouver doesn’t have “subways” (it does) because of earthquakes (don’t tell them about Tokyo!).

I think with both of these X Tubes, you just find when covering technical topics on YouTube that a surprising number of people are willing to push out not only totally uninteresting and unoriginal analysis, but that a lot of people who talk like they are experts actually have very shallow depth on a variety of topics. It reminds me of the wonderous Gell-Mann amnesia effect.

9. Comments are bad

That YouTube comments are about as enjoyable as running a cheese grater against your face is well-known (some comments are great of course, but on balance I am not sure they are a positive). But, what I think is underappreciated is just how terrible the YouTube comments system is. There is not a good way to “@” people, there are not easily usable links to comments, and sorting through comments is hard. I actually think YouTube could and probably should have a reply system as sophisticated as Reddit’s, but for over a decade the comments system has basically remained horrible (but hey, now we have cool YouTube membership flags because YouTube is happy to make easy money). What’s funny about this is that if the comments system didn’t suck, I think there would be so much more engagement on the platform. There have been so many comments I almost missed that were great, and so many I left that the creator probably never saw. I think this is all a good reminder that just because you are one of the largest social platforms (and companies) in the world does not mean your product is actually all that great, or on a positive trajectory.

10. Analytics are bad

Perhaps even more surprising than a comment system on a social platform being borderline useless, YouTube’s analytics are also really not great. Funnily enough, they are so bad that many YouTubers (I am not in this group) use poorly-designed browser extensions to try to get a lot of information that YouTube should have just been providing creators for the past decade. There are a lot of things that make the analytics system poor (not a lot of insights provided, a lot of weird deprecated features, data which often seems unreliable, a bad user interface, and no “overlay” on traditional YouTube), but worst of all is that it’s clear that the few analytics features YouTube has added such as the (widely-disliked) “How does this video compare against your last 10?” field, are clearly designed to try to keep you anxious and working late for YouTube’s 30%. What’s perfectly fitting is that it’s not even a useful insight because if you keep putting out poorly-performing videos, the baseline you are comparing against will also fall.

11. Some genres are easier, all are different

There are a lot of genres of YouTube, which is probably its biggest strength. What’s interesting is that all genres are not made equally. As someone who was in a pretty niche part of the platform (public transport), there were pluses and minuses. On one hand, being in a small niche gives you less competition, but that also means a much smaller number of potential viewers (you kind of have to grow your own niche). If you start a tech channel by comparison you have a massive number of viewers to tap into, and a bunch of them are probably looking for something new. I think being in a larger niche where you get to focus on differentiating is easier compared to trying to make people care about a topic which they do not already care about.

12. A lot of YouTubers are unethical

Something you notice pretty quickly once you’re familiar with the brands that often sponsor people, and the things they try to do, you realize that a lot of YouTubers operate in an unethical way. This runs from not clearly stating that something is sponsored, to showing products in videos that you pretty clearly got for free from the company and are not stating as such. This really runs rampant in tech YouTube (I am of course interested in the subject for reasons I talk about here), particularly when it does it’s crossover into lifestyle vlogging where people basically go and humblebrag about their fancy homes and offices, filled with things they were gifted by brands.

13. People don’t respect you

I already mentioned earlier in this post how YouTube as a job is often a 24-hours a day, 7-days a week affair. What’s frustrating is that despite this, a lot of viewers also have unfair expectations from YouTubers and their time. I can’t count the number of rude comments and interactions I’ve had where someone demands a video on X, Y, or Z, and worse still a lot of people will reach out and ask for free work (from someone already grinding for what is often a pretty low wage) — for example, journalists who want you to brain dump onto them and then provide no credit, or students asking for “help” doing a big part of an assignment for them, or people running businesses who want to pay you — a presumably well-known content creator — with “exposure”. And then there is the way that YouTubers get treated by virtue of being a YouTuber, it’s surprising how often people have given me trouble when I tell them that’s my job, or when people working in the industry I’m covering act like somehow by making things online I must be unqualified to speak to them. This is silly because I think the average YouTuber covering a topic is usually at least as qualified as the average newspaper journalist, but YouTube just remains “novel”.

14. I think it’s some of the highest value career and learning experience you can have

Doing YouTube as a job is essentially running a small business: it’s really hard (on average), but you learn a ton. For one, you are more or less single handedly responsible for everything — admin, filming, editing, writing, communication, research, finances, market research, negotiation, strategy, and planning. When running a YouTube channel, there are almost infinitely many ways you can spend your time, and it forces you to think very carefully about how you can create value for your viewers, what matters, and what is table dressing. It also teaches you a lot about the value (or lack of value) in so much of the make-work and process heavy things you spend your time doing in a traditional corporate job. Not having a manager also means you need to be self-motivated: if you don’t make stuff, you don’t make a paycheque.

So, those are some of my big takeaways after almost a decade of doing YouTube, it was a wild ride and I learned so much. Sometimes I’m not sure whether I learned more about and from the topic I was covering as opposed to from the process of making things itself. I’ve long wanted to do a post like this, make sure you’re subscribed because if this one does well I will make a Part. 2!

I’m very sorry that we didn’t get to spend more time with the eccentric jewellery expert, the broken former ski champ, and the political dissident chess grand master. If this had been a proper Bad Machinery case, you’d have got really sick of these people.

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