This week on Lost Terminal: Seth builds a system, Yeshi has a realisation, and Nia gets to work. Lost Terminal will return next week! đ Free transcript: https://www.patreon.com/posts/123377795 đľ Today's SIGNAL is: https://soundcloud.com/namtao/qrm 𦣠Mastodon https://namtao.com/@lostterminal đ Tumblr https://lostterminalpod.tumblr.com đď¸ Recorded using a RODE NT-1 v5 USB in 32-bit float, edited with REAPER on Linux đ CREDITS - Credits narrated by Lucy Stringer   â¤ď¸ Thank you so much to everyone who supports me, but especially my Patreon Producers: - Ada Phillips - Kit - Jade Felicity Bilkey - Jack L - Stephen McCandless - Mike Schneider
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
A reader asks:
One of my employees is positioning himself to move up in a couple of years. He would still report to me, but the working relationship would be a little different, and it could 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 âmanaging upâ and now he is trying to manage me. He is very, very bad at it. His attempts to manipulate me are clumsy, but he doesnât realize that I know what he is doing (because heâs sure that he is much smarter than me). Thereâs also some sexism going on here (Iâm female, and he seems to have problems with that sometimes). Every conversation degenerates into incredibly irritating condescension and smugness on his part. For example, he has said things like:
⢠âMy expectation is that you will give me a hint if you think there may be a change coming up.â 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.
⢠âMy expectation is that you will change the meeting time.â 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 another team: âIâm sure you understand why you need to have this person fired.â Me: Letâs just talk about how we are going to handle a fairly small problem.
He always ends with a smirk and a slow nod. 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 donât enjoy being treated with such disrespect. Iâm 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 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, âMy expectation is that you willâŚâ forever?
A complicating factor is that heâs popular with his colleagues, who will be the ones considering him for the promotion in a few years. I could potentially veto their decision, but it would destroy my credibility with the rest of the department so I would rather figure out how to make this work if I can.
I answer this question over at Inc. today, where Iâm revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.
After taking the oath of office, presidents historically have only a short time to achieve their major policy goals before midterm elections and shifts in public sentiment catch up to them. Here, The Onion takes a deep dive into the likeliest milestones in President Donald J. Trumpâs first hundred days.
Day 1: Pull big red lever labeled âDeportâ
Day 3: Get new red marker for crossing names off enemies list
Day 9: Install secret junk food fridge that RFK Jr. canât find
Day 17: Imprison Stormy Daniels in pornographic terrarium
Day 23: Get JD Vance to stop staring at him
Day 45: Take time to appreciate gutting the little things
Day 61: Check out changes to D.C. restaurant scene
Day 79: Imprison all 6,978 Americans named Jack Smith, just in case
A married couple on a flight from Australia to Qatar said they were forced to sit next to a dead womanâs body for four hours after a fellow passenger exited the restroom, collapsed, and died in front of them. What do you think?
âI feel bad the dead lady was stuck sitting with a couple.â
Freddy Clifton, Valet Coordinator
âOne time I got seated next to a dog, so I guess itâs hit or miss.â
Alfred Yunis, Luggage Designer
âThatâs why I always pop a Klonopin before I sit next to a dead body on a flight.â
The Pitt, a new medical drama series on Max, has received an outpouring of praise for its realistic, hour-by-hour portrayal of a shift in a busy Pittsburgh emergency room. Here is everything you need to know about the show before tuning in:
Q: Is it an accurate depiction of what itâs like to work in an ER?
A: They have toned down the sex.
Q: Are the actors believable as medical professionals?
A: No, real-life doctors are much hotter than that.
Q: Whatâs the most realistic part of the show?
A: Watching patients in the ER waiting room scroll on their phone for several hours.
Q: Where does The Pitt take place?
A: Build 3, Stage 11, 4000 Warner Boulevard, Burbank, California.
Q: Whoâs in it?
A: Noah Wyle leads a cast thatâs full of performers who would have gotten kicked off their SAG health insurance next month without this gig.
Q: What genre is this show?
A: Prestige anxiety dream.
Q: Whatâs the most high-stakes, life-saving procedure pulled off so far on The Pitt?
A: Rescuing Noah Wyle from basic cable.
Q: Whatâs the theme song?
A: Whatever the Frayâs putting out nowadays. â¨
Q: When does it take place?
A: After your girlfriend has sat through the good seasons of Game Of Thrones.
The peculiar moniker of artist Tenant of Culture comes from The Practice of Everyday Life by French cultural theorist Michel de Certeau. The book is about people individualizing the larger hegemonic systems they live in and how they ricochet and resist within these structures. De Certeau refers to overarching and general culture as it exists in various discrete societies, but Tenant of Culture brings the same ideas into a critique of the global fashion industry. The artistâs name emphasizes an inherent transience, eschewing ownership and permanence. She is a guest in her own work, honoring the discarded garments she sources to make her soft sculptures. Her materials have entire lives and histories unknown to both artist and viewer, and their transformations into her sculptural works mark single steps on longer journeys. Tenant of Culture is a tenant to the forms she inhabits, those of old boots, foam linings, and out-of-fashion activewear.Â
Installation view of âHost: Tenant of Culture.â Photo: Alexander Boeschenstein
On display in the artistâs current exhibition at the Contemporary Austin , are many such materials in the process of shedding their original destinies to live new lives as contemporary art. Many works on view act as material studies, assemblages of like materials salvaged from recycled and off-trend garments. A leather boot is piled with leather belts with buckles attached, leather straps from handbags, and leather label charms shaped like hearts. Another boot sculpture is a collection of foam, a patchwork of chunks and tidbits of fillings forming an elegantly curved Victorian silhouette. Within the accidental proximities of discard, the artist sorts and organizes by likeness, stripping each garment down to scrap parts.
A work by Tenant of Culture. Photo: Alexander Boeschenstein
Despite the diverse materials, every work on view is a shoe, save for two large swooping curtains that bisect the space. Each shoe is displayed on its own pedestal, occupying the place of perhaps an historical bust or luxury good for sale. The sweeping curtains add to this adjacency, giving the exhibition the air of a department store showroom or dressing room. The resemblance is fitting in more than one way: the original untouched garments would have been displayed and sold in such environments and presented to potential customers. Further, art is itself a luxury good, and though the Contemporary Austin is not in the selling business, the works are similarly offered for examination and attention. Both are bids for the viewerâs consideration.
A work by Tenant of Culture. Photo: Alexander Boeschenstein
The curtains are made of immaculate and mostly identical synthetic garments, perhaps windbreakers. Tenant of Culture often references her materials as en route to obsolescence before her rescuing interference. She does not fish things from the trash; instead, she scours thrift stores and resale sites and receives donations. Some of her items have past lives of use, like the scuffed and broken-in leather shoes, but others never had lives at all. They come to her as consumer refuse: unworn clothing rendered unsellable due to the fickle and cyclical whims of trends. This is the reality for growing numbers of garments, especially those mass produced: deliverance from factory to landfill. The work is small-scale upcycling, the artistâs own efforts at diverting this wasteful trajectory.
Tenant of Culture, âDry Fitâ detail, 2022. Photo: Kristien Daem
The boundaries of avant-garde fashion and fashion-based art are increasingly blurring, and this exhibition falls somewhere new between the two. Tenant of Cultureâs work calls to mind experimental fashion labels such as boundary-defying Commes des Garçons and Maison Margiela, both famous for deconstructed, collaged garments. In the art world, she shares an affinity with Womenâs History Museum, a duo selling their wearable work alongside sourced vintage finds in both galleries and luxury department stores. Each of these projects subverts or questions the forms of the clothes we wear, each falling somewhere on the spectrum between art objects and quotidian garments, embracing the fashion world and creatively critiquing it. Tenant of Cultureâs works are unwearable but are also not transformed beyond recognition. Like most contemporary art, they can be collected, as well as serve a decorative function. Luxury fashion also occupies this space: multi-thousand-dollar handbags and shoes are collected much in the same way, often protected from wear and tear to preserve value, to be recouped in a future resale. Tenant of Culture seeks to repopulate this way of understanding precious objects with what we collectively perceive as disposable: unfashionable clothing. Perhaps the edges of fashion and art are not barriers at all but instead overlap. Like art, commonplace garments have complex provenances; the difference is that we do not value them.
Â
HOST: Tenant of Culture is on view at the Contemporary Austin through August 3.
CHICAGOâPacking as closely together as possible to avoid losing their spots on the platform, passengers at the Chicago Transit Authorityâs Clark and Division station reportedly rushed to an arriving trainâs doors Friday like rat babies nursing at their motherâs teats.Â
Sources confirmed that as the riders gathered before the slowing trainâs doors, they instinctively huddled in place as if they were pink, hairless pups clambering onto their motherâs breasts for nourishment. Several reports indicated that as they jockeyed to the front, the stronger passengers secured themselves a spot inside the crowded train, much like the healthiest newborn rats securing themselves plentiful, nourishing rodent milk. However, bystanders revealed that weaker customers were swiftly pushed to the side in the manner of blind starvelings left to expire out in the cold due to their failure to feed.Â
Witnesses later confirmed the subway doors were repeatedly closing in the faces of the riders like an exhausted rat mother batting away her hungry offspring in an attempt to get some time to herself.
BELMONT, MAâHis tolerance pushed ever-higher from decades of listening to the folksy radio program, desensitized A Prairie Home Companion fan Ira Hawthorne told reporters Thursday that he had recently been forced to seek out gentler and gentler material.Â
âMy systemâs gotten so acclimated to the wry observations and Midwestern charm of the âNews From Lake Wobegonâ that I can barely even feel it anymore,â said Hawthorne, adding that years of binging mild-mannered skits like âThe Lives Of The Cowboysâ and lighthearted tunes like the âPowdermilk Biscuit Themeâ had led him down a dark road of desperately chasing increasingly tame material. âThese days, Iâve got to binge a whole season of [CBC radio show] The Vinyl Cafe just to get half as sedate as one Guy Noir segment used to make me. And who knows what itâll take once Iâm numb to that? I just wish Iâd seen A Prairie Home Companion for what it always was: a gateway to ever more soft-spoken and homespun slices of American life.âÂ
At press time, Hawthorneâs eyes had reportedly rolled back in ecstasy after he took a big hit of Marshall Dodge and Bob Bryanâs Bert & I stories about Down East Maine.
In brief: Todayâs post reviews the winter that just ended in Houston, and assesses how well the forecast did. We also look ahead to the (slight) possibility of storms on Tuesday before a pleasant spring-time week takes hold in Houston.
A review of winter 2024-2025
From a climate standpoint, winter runs from December 1 through the end of February. From a practical standpoint, winter in Houston roughly lasts from that period as well. This year, it almost certainly does, as winter is effectively over in Houston. Iâm highly confident the region will not see another freeze this season, and reasonably confident that low temperatures are unlikely to dip into the 30s again for most of the metro area.
So now that winter is over, letâs take stock in what went down. The average temperature (the daily high and low, divided by two) over the last three months has been 56.8 degrees. This is above the historical mean of 55.2 degrees, and this winter ranks 31st of out of 133 years of records. If we look at the long term trend in the average temperature, it looks like this:
Now letâs dig into each of the three months a little bit more closely to see what we can see. As you may recall, December was quite warm. The month finished with an average temperature nearly 6 degrees above normal. The second half of the month did not feel winter-like at all. Do you remember our muggy Christmas weather?
January started out warm as well, but then conditions turned much cooler. During the second half of the month Houston experienced its first Arctic outbreak of the season, with temperatures plummeting all the way down to 20 degrees on one night. As a result of this colder weather, Houston finished January with an average temperature for the month 4.4 degrees below normal.
All of which brings us to February. The first third of February was exceptionally warm. We broke or tied four daily records for high temperatures in Houston, and some of our nights saw record warmth as well. But then the middle of the month was defined by the seasonâs second Arctic outbreak, with a few nights in the 20s. Despite this colder weather, February still ended with an average temperature a little more than 2 degrees above normal.
How did the forecast do?
We issued our winter outlook four months ago. We forecast a relatively mild winter, with temperatures above normal. However, we included this caveat:
Howeverâand thereâs always a but in meteorology, it seemsâthere is one caveat to this forecast. Because of the way this pattern sets up, it will block much of the colder Arctic and Canadian air from the lower United States for most of the winter. But that does not exclude the pattern breaking one or two times. If that happens, and it probably will at least once this winter, there will be a large pool of much colder air available to dip down into the southern United States, including Texas
Essentially, thatâs what happened. Houston had a mild winter punctuated by a couple of strong bursts of very cold weather. And now, weâre on to spring.
Monday
After days and days of sunshine, weâre seeing mostly cloudy skies today. Despite a warmer overall flow, these clouds should help limit high temperatures to the mid- to upper-70s for most locations. We will also see a slight chance of light showers throughout the day, but mostly skies will just be gray. As on Sunday, weâll see some gusty southerly winds, likely picking up to 25 mph or so this afternoon. Lows tonight will only dip into the upper 60s.
There is a slight chance of severe weather northeast of Houston on Tuesday. (NOAA)
Tuesday
As a front approaches, weâll see increasing rain chances after midnight, and throughout the morning hours on Tuesday. By around 8 to noon we may see a broken line of showers and thunderstorms develop and push through the area. Although we cannot entirely rule out the possibility of some severe weather, the dynamics favoring strong storms are more favorable to the northeast of the region, where there is a slight risk of storms. Most of Houston will likely pick up a few tenths of an inch of rain. Any lingering rains should end by around noon, with much drier air moving in behind. Temperatures will be in the 70s.
Beginning tomorrow, weâll have daily forecasts for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, but my main concern is northerly winds. They may gust up to about 30 mph on Tuesday afternoon and early evening before settling down. So, quite literally, hold on to your hat. Lows on Tuesday night will drop into the 50s.
Wednesday and Thursday
These will be a pair of sunny and mild days. Weâre talking highs generally in the mid-60s. Expect lows on Wednesday night in the 40s, and on Thursday in the 50s. We should have zero weather concerns during the middle of the week.
Friday
We should see the return of some clouds along with a warmer flow on Friday, with highs in the mid- to upper-70s.
Saturday, Sunday, and beyond
The weather on Saturday will be determined by the timing of a cool front, which likely will push through during the daytime. This may produce a slight chance for some showers, but I expect mostly sunny skies with highs in the 70s. Sunday looks to be sunny, and cooler, with highs in the upper 60s maybe. Most of next week looks mild, with highs in the 70s and lows in the 50s, so the watch word is âmild.â
ST. PAUL, MNâMaking an impassioned plea to his colleagues in an effort to inspire concrete action, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota publicly called on his fellow Democrats Monday to return his Tupperware at once. âTo the esteemed members of the Democratic PartyâI implore you to stand up for whatâs right and give back any pieces of my Tupperware you have yet to return,â said the former vice presidential candidate, calling on House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and other top Democrats to set a good example of kitchen container etiquette. âFor too long, this party has sat back and watched as my casserole dish goes without its corresponding lid. We as a country, as well as my famous green bean hot dish, deserve better than freezing leftovers in ziplock bags when perfectly good freezer-safe Tupperwares are going unreturned. It is therefore our duty as defenders of the Constitution to see to it that loaned out containers are properly washed and handed back to their rightful owners in a timely mannerâpreferably with something tasty that you made inside.â At press time, Walz had urged Democratic voters to keep calling their representatives to demand his vintage Anchor Hocking dishware be returned.
âDo you mind me shouting at you like this, or would you prefer I let you pass without shouting at you?â
âIâm a medical doctor who just looked at your health records, and good news! Youâll never get cancer!â
âYour parents were wrong to name you that!â
âYour name is NOT my name too! I just like shouting at people I donât know, because I am a small, empty garbage person! Iâm gonna stop right after this!â
âHow can I make your life easier!?!â
âWhat does that song even mean!?! Is it just about two guys with the same name? It doesnât make any sense! Whoâs the main character in the song? You or the person who is singing? Is someone walking with you with that name or does the whole world have the same name as you? You donât have to answer! These questions are rhetorical!â
âIs it okay if I throw you a bag with enough money in it to pay off all your credit card debt?â
âHey! I have a picture over here that definitively proves who shot JFK, if you want to come see!â
âI understand how all this constant shouting must be a living nightmare for you!â
âI canât believe how well you have done for yourself given the terrible name you were saddled with!â
âI know itâs not as easy as just legally changing your name to avoid all this nonsense, and I trust that you have tried all the things to make this daily torture stop!â
âAll things considered, youâre doing great!â
I get a special pleasure from citing Milton Friedman. I like to imagine that as I do, he groans around the red-hot spit protruding from his jaws, prompting howls of laughter from the demons who pelt him with molten faeces for all eternity.
If you're lucky enough not to know about Friedman, here's the short version. Friedman was a kind of court sorcerer to Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Augusto Pinochet, and other assorted authoritarian, hard-right leaders who set us on the path to the hellscape we inhabit today. But before Friedman rose to prominence and influence, he was a crank. Specifically, he was a crank who dedicated his life to rolling back all the progress of the New Deal and re-establishing the Gilded Age:
In his crank days, people were justifiably skeptical of this project. "Milton," they'd say, "people like New Deal programs. They like the minimum wage, the 40-hour work-week, and the assurance that they won't be maimed, poisoned, burned alive, or otherwise killed on the job. They relish a dignified retirement, quality education for their children, and the assurance that no one is starving to death in their country's borders. People like national parks! They like Medicare! They like libraries, museums, and reliable weather forecasts! How, Milton, do you propose to convince the vast majority of people that they should settle for being forelock-tugging plebs, groveling before their social betters for the chance to scrub their toilets?"
Friedman had an answer: "In times of crisis, ideas can move from the fringe to the center in an eyeblink. Our job is to keep good ideas lying around, in anticipation of that crisis."
When the oil crisis hit, when prices spiked in the USA and abroad, Friedman seized his opportunity. The years following the oil crisis saw a violent political revolution in which organized labor, social justice movements, and the political opposition to oligarchy were crushed under police batons and the guns of Pinochet's thugs. The world was transformed. Left parties like UK Labour were remade as austerity-pilled neoliberals (not for nothing did Margaret Thatcher call Tony Blair "her greatest accomplishment," and it took Bill Clinton to pass a welfare "reform" bill that was too extreme even for Reagan to get through Congress).
Friedman was a monster.
But.
He had a hell of a theory of change.
When prices spiral, when people can't pay their bills anymore, when their retirement savings are wiped out, anything is possible. The oil crisis wasn't Jimmy Carter's fault, but the voters still delivered a Ba'ath Party-style Republican majority in 1980. The covid shocks weren't the fault of the world governments that presided over pandemic inflation, but they were creamed in the ensuing elections.
Let's talk about Trump's tariffs here. Trump's goal is to force a re-shoring of the American industrial capacity that was shipped to low-wage, low-regulation corporate havens around the world after the Reagan revolution. The pandemic provided a vivid lesson about the problems with long, brittle supply chains where all the slack has been extracted and converted to dividends and stock buybacks. That kind of system may work well â at least to the extent that it keeps Walmart's shelves full of cheap goods â but holy shit did it ever fail badly. Re-shoring is a good idea, as are other forms of pro-resiliency industrial policy.
But re-shoring doesn't happen overnight. As we saw during China's covid lockdowns, when one supplier ceases to ship goods, other suppliers can't spring up overnight to take up the slack. China itself became a manufacturing powerhouse thanks to extensive state support and planning, and it took decades. That kind of patient, long-run, planned process is the best-case scenario (and it still caused wrenching dislocations to Chinese society). Simply throwing up tariff walls and demanding that industry figure it out â amid the resulting economic chaos and the political instability it brings â isn't a plan, it's a disaster.
Redistributing the means of production around the world is a necessary and urgent project, but it won't be advanced through Trump's rapid, unscheduled mid-air disassembly of the global system of trade. Tariffs will cause breakdowns in neoliberalism's fragile supply chains, and the ensuing chaos â mass unemployment, shortages, political rage â will make it even harder for countries (including the USA) to rebuild the productive capacity vaporized by 40 years of neoliberalism.
This is our oil crisis, in other words: a moment in which a belligerent superpower's ill-considered monkeying with the underpinnings of global production will cause chaos, the crisis in which "ideas can move from the periphery to the center" in an eyeblink. If Steve Bannon can call himself a Leninist, then leftists can call themselves Friedmanites. This is our opportunity.
Or rather, it's our opportunity to seize â or lose. Governments are defaulting to retaliatory tariffs as the best response to Trump's tariffs. This is political poison: making everything your country imports from the USA more expensive is a very weird way to punish America for its trade war. Remember the glaring lesson of pandemic inflation: a government that presides over rising prices will be destroyed by the electorate.
There's a much better alternative, one that strikes at the very roots of American oligarchy, whose extreme wealth and corrosive political influence comes from its holdings in rent-extracting monopolies, especially Big Tech monopolies.
Tech giants are the major factor in US economic health. Take Big Tech stocks out of the S&P 500 and you've got a stagnant market punctuated by periods of decline. Superficially, US tech companies have different sources of extraordinary profit, but a closer look reveals that they all share the same foundation: Big Tech makes the bulk of its money in the form of monopoly rents, backstopped by global IP treaties.
Apple and Google take a 30% cut of every dollar spent in an app, and it's a felony to jailbreak a phone to make a new app store with the industry standard 1-3% transaction fees. Google and Meta take 51% out of every ad dollar, and publishers and advertisers are locked into their ecosystems by abusive contracts and technological countermeasures. HP charges $10,000/gallon for the colored water you put in your printer, and third-party ink and refills violate the anti-circumvention laws the US has crammed down the throats of every country's legislature. Tesla makes its fattest margins by renting you features that are installed in your car at the factory, from autopilot to the ability to use your battery's whole charge, raking in monthly fees from you and anyone you sell your car to â and the reason your mechanic can't just permanently unlock all that DLC for $50 is the IP laws that your country agreed to enforce in order to trade with the USA. Mechanics pay $10k/year per manufacturer for the tools to interpret the error codes generated by your car, and the only reason no one is selling a $50/month universal diagnostic service is â once again â US-originated IP laws that came in a parcel with trade agreements that gave your country's exporters access to US markets. Farmers pay John Deere $200 every time they fix their own tractors, because the repairs won't work until a technician comes out and types an unlock code into the tractor's keyboard â and bypassing that unlock code is a crime under the laws passed to comply with international treaties.
These aren't profits â they're rents. It's money Big Tech gets from owning a factor of production, not money it gets from actually making something. The app maker takes all the risks, but Apple and Google cream off 30% of their gross income. Big Tech's profits are almost an afterthought when compared to its rents, the junk-fee platform fees and farcically expensive consumables. For tech firms, capitalism was a transitional phase between feudalismâŚand technofeudalism:
America's robust GDP figures are a mirage, artificially buoyed up by the monopoly rents extracted by US Big Tech, who prey on Americans and foreigners:
But foreigners don't have to tolerate this nonsense. Governments around the world signed up to protect giant American companies from small domestic competitors (from local app stores â for phones, games consoles, and IoT gadgets â to local printer cartridge remanufacturers) on the promise of tariff-free access to US markets. With Trump imposing tariffs will-ye or nill-ye on America's trading partners large and small, there is no reason to go on delivering rents to US Big Tech.
The first country or bloc (hi there, EU!) to do this will have a giant first-mover advantage, and could become a global export powerhouse, dominating the lucrative markets for tools that strike at the highest-margin lines of business of the most profitable companies in the history of the human race. Like Jeff Bezos told the publishers: "your margin is my opportunity":
In times of crisis, ideas can move from the periphery to the center in an eyeblink. Many of us have spent decades organizing and mobilizing against these extractive, dangerous, destabilizing abuses of technology, where the computer-powered devices we rely on for everything are designed to serve their manufacturers' shareholders, at our expense. And yet, these technologies have only proliferated, infecting everything from insulin pumps and ventilators to coffee makers and "smart" TVs.
It's time for a global race to the top â for countries to compete with one another to see who will capture US Big Tech's margins the fastest and most aggressively. Not only will this make things cheaper for everyone else in the world â it'll also make things cheaper for Americans, because once there is a global, profitable trade in software that jailbreaks your Big Tech devices and services, it will surely leak across the US border. Canada doesn't have to confine itself to selling reasonably priced pharmaceuticals to beleaguered Americans â it can also set up a brisk trade in the tools of technological self-determination and liberation from Big Tech bondage.
Taking the margins for Big Tech's most profitable enterprises to zero, globally, will strike at the very heart of American oligarchy, and the hundreds of millions tech giants flushed into the political system to put Trump into office again. A race to the top for technological liberation benefits everyone â including Americans.
Truly, it would be a rising tide that lifted all boats (except for oligarchs' superyachts â those, it will swamp and sink).
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html
This work â excluding any serialized fiction â is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.
Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.
As the City of Austin prepares to demolish and rebuild its convention center, it has deaccessioned four public art pieces within the building and intends not to pay for the removal of the works. If they are not removed, the pieces will be destroyed upon the buildingâs demolition.Â
The Austin Convention Center websiteâs Visual Art Collection page has not been updated to explain the future of the works in the building. In part, it states, âIn keeping with the City of Austinâs Art in Public Places Program (AIPP), several iconic pieces were commissioned as part of the capital improvement budget for the original construction of the Austin Convention Center and subsequent additions. In addition to the public art collection, the Austin Convention Center Department began acquiring additional works by some of the regionâs most accomplished artists, which can be found in various spots throughout the facility.â
Rolando BriseĂąo, âMacro/Micro Culture,â 2002
The website lists 21 works of art as part of the collection, including a mural in the 2nd St. parking garage. Among the pieces listed on the website are prints, photographs, paintings, sculptures, and murals. One item on the agenda of the January 30, 2025, City Council meeting was to approve the deaccession of eight AIPP works, including four located at the convention center. These four works are Margo Sawyerâs Index for Contemplation (2002), a site-specific sculptural installation; Rolando BriseĂąoâs Macro/Micro Culture (2002), an installation of giclee prints, which are permanently affixed to the walls; John Yanceyâs Riffs & Rhythms (1996), a mosaic mural built into the structure of the wall; and Damion Priourâs Waller Creek Shelves (1996), a sculptural installation.
A detail of Damion Priourâs âThe Waller Creek Shelves,â 1996, limestone, glass, and found objects
During the City Council meeting, various community members spoke up in support of the artists. Many questioned the need to demolish the convention center, which they categorized as âperfectly functional,â simply to rebuild a larger facility. Others questioned why the $1.6 billion budget for the structure did not include funding to support the removal of the artistsâ works. Â
Former Council Member Ora Houston remarked, âDr. Yancey is a one of a kind artist whose work elevates and celebrates African American heritage and pride. Thatâs why, years ago, the city commissioned Riffs & Rhythms⌠Please ensure that his mural is safely removed and properly stored and protected so it can be prominently displayed in the new convention center. We are on the verge of Black History Month â allowing the destruction of a Black artistâs mural would be, in my opinion and the opinion of many others in our community, very disrespectful and embarrassing.â
John Yancey, âRiffs & Rhythm,â 1996, broken ceramic tile mosaic
Mr. Yancey, a renowned artist and Professor Emeritus of Studio Art at the University of Texas at Austin, said at the meeting, âShortly after moving to Austin, I was commissioned to create and install the work titled Riffs & Rhythms at the then-newly-built convention center. With color and vibrant presence, this work celebrates the multicultural phenomenon of the various genres of Texas music. For 30 years, it has greeted millions of the attendees to South by Southwest and countless conferences and conventions⌠Iâm here to ask the City Council to do three things: pause, assess, and preserve. I urgently request that you pause the accession because the current policy is obsolete and not applicable to current realities, it states, in the case of deaccession, the artist can reclaim the work at his or her expenseâŚâ
The insistence of the City that the artists reclaim their work at their own expense contradicts some of the artistsâ contracts for their convention center commissions. The contract Mr. Yancey signed in 1995 states, ââŚIf the City shall at any time decide to dispose of the Work by means other than sale or trade, it shall by notice to the Artist offer the Artist a reasonable opportunity to recover the Work at no cost to the Artist except for an obligation of the Artist to indemnify and reimburse the City for the amount by which the cost to the City of such recovery exceed the costs to the City of the proposed destruction.â
By contrast, Ms. Sawyerâs 2001 contract states that if the artwork can be removed from a building or structure without damaging either the work or the building, the artist can remove it âat her sole expense.â
Regarding the artists taking on the removal expenses, Mr. Yancey continued, âThis policy is unrealistic and unreasonable. In most cases, artists cannot possibly afford to hire the conservators, expert crews, and [pay for the] heavy equipment at their own expense to reclaim their work as stated in the outdated policy. Moreover, it is very possible, the current deaccession policy and the proposed act of deaccession before you today, may be in violation of the federal Visual Artist [Rights] Act of 1990, or the VARA act of 1990.â
While VARA protects artists from the âdestruction, distortion, mutilation, or other modificationâ of their work, which would âharm his or her reputation or honor,â it does waive these rights when âa work cannot be removed from a building withoutâ such alteration.
During the meeting, Council Member Anthony Seger, Interim Director of the Economic Development Department, stated the City had three companies come out to assess each of the works in the convention center, and in regards to Mr. Yanceyâs mural each said they couldnât move it due to its size. Council Member Seger recounted the companies added that the work â[wouldnât] be the same even if you were to try to salvage it.â
Glasstire reached out to Jaime Castillo, the AIPP Manager, and Sue Lambe, the former AIPP Director and current public art consultant for the Austin Convention Center, for comment about the companies the City contacted to assess the potential removal of the works, and the money allocated for new art in the convention center budget.Â
A spokesperson for the City responded and declined to share information about the specific vendors who assessed the work. However, they noted that in November 2024 AIPP requested evaluations of the four artworks slated for deaccession, and two of the three vendors provided cost estimates for the works, excluding the mural by Mr. Yancey. The spokesperson said, âThe vendors indicated that [Mr. Yanceyâs] artwork was permanently affixed to a site wall with mortar, making removal infeasible without significant damage and reassembly impossible.â
Regarding the budget allocated for new art in the to-be-built convention center, the spokesperson shared, âThe project includes a $17.7 million public art investment, the largest in Austinâs history⌠While the budget prioritizes new artwork integration, [the Austin Convention Center Department] contributed funds to support the deaccession process, including documentation and assessments of removal feasibility. However, site-specific constraints and cost estimates ultimately determined that removal was not feasible for certain pieces.â The Cityâs statement did not specifically respond to Glasstireâs question of why some of the budget for the new convention center could not go toward the deinstallation of the artworks in the current building.
Donna Carter, an architect who was on the team that drafted the original AIPP ordinance in 1985, spoke at the City Council meeting. She commented, âDespite a decade of redevelopment discussions and over a billion dollar budget, the fate of these public works was addressed less than a year before scheduled demolition, the city identified four pieces they deemed, not a conservator, they deemed were not salvageable. They provided no assessment, cost, estimates, or conservatorâs view on how they could salvage [or] essential steps in any preservation effort. This lack of planning contradicts the very spirit of a permanent connection, and this is a failure of leadership.â
Martha Peters, the former Director of Public Art at Arts Fort Worth who served as an administrator for Austinâs AIPP program from 1991-2003 (during the time these works were commissioned), spoke with Glasstire about national best practices around deaccessioning public art. She pointed to the Fort Worth Public Art Master Plan Update (2017), which states, âDeaccessioning should be cautiously applied only after an impartial evaluation of the artwork to avoid the influence of fluctuations of taste and the premature removal of an artwork from the collection. Prior to the deaccession of any work, the Art Commission must weigh carefully the interests of the public⌠and the interests of the scholarly and cultural communities.â
Ms. Peters went on to say, âFor me, the issue is not about whatâs âlegal,â but what is truly in the best interests of the City of Austinâs public art collection (all of the works being deaccessioned are of outstanding quality and have withstood the test of time) and these local artists, who were carefully selected to create site-specific works that reflects Austinâs diverse arts community to convention center visitors. I feel that the city is missing an opportunity to incorporate these works (or modified versions of the larger installations) into the design of the new convention center, or, at the very least, relocate the works to other city buildings so they can remain on public view.â
Ultimately, during the City Council meeting, City Council members voted to approve the deaccessioning of the artworks, with only Mayor Pro Tem Vanessa Fuentes voting against the agenda item. Additionally, Council Member Zohaib âZoâ Qadri noted the concerns brought by community members, but indicated that if the agenda item was not passed, the artists would not have an opportunity to reclaim their work.Â
He explained he would be voting yes for that reason, but went on to say, âIâm committed to working with my colleagues and City staff to explore solutions to address the challenges that have resurfaced⌠I look forward to collaborating on meaningful steps to support and sustain our creative community and in the upcoming weeks [and] months, weâre going to put pen to paper and get something done.â
Last week, a month out from the council meeting, Glasstire reached out to Mr. Qadri to follow up on what solutions may be in the works. At the time of publication Mr. Qadri had not responded to our inquiry.
Margo Sawyer, âIndex for Contemplation,â 2002, powder-coated steel & aluminum and yellow zinc-plated steel
Regarding the removal of her work, Ms. Sawyer, who is the niece of Harlem-Renaissance artist Aaron Douglas, told Glasstire, âI was never invited to have a discussion with AIPP, or the committee who had the discussions on what art to keep and what not to deaccession⌠The Convention Center only reached out when it was too late. No consideration for the importance of the art. No consideration for discussion and input until it was too late.â
Ms. Sawyer pointed to shifts in the AIPP leadership over the last two years as a potential cause for the lack of communication around the decisions about the artworks. Ms. Lambe stepped down as Director of AIPP in January 2022. Following her departure, Constance White served as Manager of AIPP from July 2022 until July 2024, when Mr. Castillo stepped into the role.Â
Ms. Sawyer told Glasstire that she first learned in the summer of 2023 from a news article about the plans to demolish and rebuild the center. At the time she reached out to AIPP and her contact did not know about the plans for her art. On July 28, 2024, she received an email informing her that her work would be deaccessioned and that she could remove it at her own expense.Â
Ms. Sawyer noted that she will work with a team to remove her work at a personal cost of $16,000. While the amount may seem small in comparison to the Cityâs budget for new art in the Convention Center, Ms. Sawyer explained that in order to make the removal possible, she is pulling money from her retirement funds to remove and store the work.
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
Itâs five answers to five questions. Here we goâŚ
1. How do I give 360 feedback to my clueless coworker?
I have been asked to complete a 360 review for the junior staffer on my team. In general, I would like to only be positive in these, as thatâs what I want in return! And I have never expressed these feelings to this coworker.
But he is like a little baby in the outfit of a 26-year-old man. He doesnât have the general sense at work youâd like someone four years into their career to have â as an example, he scheduled our boss to meet with board members, assigning them a meeting time without asking them for input on their schedules. The problem is just basically that all the time â he is not supposed to be so entry-level but his work problem-solving skills are like me at 20, in my first internship. Heâll also do things like answer questions in a group setting that were clearly directed to someone with authority/experience.
What is a nice way to put this? Iâd love to just say âBob is eager and kind, but could really benefit from more training in Xâ but I donât know what X is, because itâs not project management or tone or anything, itâs just having a clue.
The complicating factor here is that I am only one year older than him and not a supervisor, though my role is more senior, and my tenure with the organization is longer. But I am worried about overstepping by correcting his behavior in the moment. And Iâm worried I may have bitch-eating-crackers syndrome with him, because Iâm annoyed that he constantly says âThank youâ instead of âsorryâ as weâre all taught to do â but sometimes, his incompetence has resulted in hours of extra work for me and he thanks me âfor my leadershipâ! It probably doesnât help that when I held his role, I was paid two-thirds of what he earns now.
What should I say in the review? Is there a succinct, kind way to describe the problem?
âBob is eager to learn and kind, but could benefit from more coaching in problem-solving and political awareness (for example, checking board membersâ schedules rather than simply assigning them a meeting time, or recognizing when questions in a group are being directed to someone with more authority or experience).â
That said, is there more to it than just problem-solving and political awareness? If his incompetence is causing hours of extra work for you, that sounds like there might be an issue with basic skills as well â so whatever that issue is, make sure you name it and provide a couple of examples to illustrate it too.
If youâre uncomfortable putting this in writing, another option is to talk to Bobâs boss and say, âHere are the things Iâd like to give feedback on. Iâm not sure how to put this in writing without being more blunt than Iâm comfortable with since I donât have any supervisory authority over him, so I hoped to get your advice on how to frame it / wondered whether I could share the feedback with you informally as areas for you to watch / wondered whether you could synthesize this into the overall feedback you share with him.â
2. High school career counseling is using ChatGPT
My high school student received an email from an employee of the school district advertising âChatGPT Interview Prepâ and âNLP for Interview Confidence,â supposedly teaching them how to craft strong interview answers from ChatGPT.
Iâm surprised by this. I do think kids should learn interview prep, but maybe not this way. When I interview people, we can tell if they are only good at giving pre-planned answers that donât go in depth; typically when we debrief, weâve all noted they had the right answers but lacked depth/examples, didnât get deeper on a line of questioningâŚ
My high school kid also had to create a LinkedIn profile (not sure what why) and it is clear she used ChatGPT. I feel like itâs a lot of the same buzz words on LinkedIn, but using the words âreinforcing client relationshipâ in a job description for babysitter is funny.
What are your thoughts on a high school âcareer officeâ offering an interview prep workshop that teaches kids how to use ChatGPT to craft answers? Would you ask the school about this or weigh in with your professional opinion as a person who interviews job candidates? Should I be concerned about my districtâs standards?
I assumed ChatGPT would be crap at interview prep, but to test that out I asked it to generate likely interview questions for a couple of jobs, and it actually did a decent job both of suggesting questions you might receive for those positions and of describing the sorts of things you should build your answers around. It would be terrible at suggesting actual answers (since those need to be based on your own experiences and expertise) but it was pretty good at explaining the types of things your answers should cover. So, depending on how the school is using it, itâs not the worst idea in the world, as long as theyâre stressing that sometimes it ends up being wildly off-base.
However, the LinkedIn thing â no. Iâm skeptical that most high school kids need LinkedIn profiles at all, and anything that results in describing babysitting as âreinforcing client relationshipsâ is teaching them the absolute wrong lessons. And thatâs of course part of the problem with ChatGPT; the person using it needs to have enough expertise to know if what itâs suggesting is good or not. A high school student wonât know what a good LinkedIn profile looks like, so might not spot it when ChatGPT suggests something insane.
Frankly, Iâm not a huge fan of high schools teaching âinterview prepâ at all; theyâre often bad at it, or the lessons center around the types of interviews kids arenât likely to have until years down the road. But youâd need to know more about exactly what theyâre doing to know if thereâs something complaint-worthy here or not.
3. My boss keeps giving me conflicting instructions
My job involves compiling information into a short, standardized document. My manager reviews every document I turn in and frequently gives me feedback that contradicts previous feedback he has given me. For example, today he told me âwhen you describe Regulation 1, always include parts A, B, C, and D,â when in the past he has said âonly include the part of Regulation 1 that pertains to this document, Part A.â The circumstances are exactly the same for the two cases, and this happens constantly. My instinct is that constantly redoing things to different standards is just part of my job and I should say nothing. Am I right?
With a decent boss, the right thing would be to say, âI want to make sure Iâm handling these correctly. When I turned in the X document, youâd said I should only include the relevant part of Regulation 1, which was Part A. How do I know when I should include A, B, C, and D even if only one part is relevant, and when I should only include the relevant part?â Itâs possible thereâs some piece to this that would make it make sense â like that the first document had a different audience than the second, or some other reason that youâre not currently spotting â and so heâll be able to give you helpful guidance on spotting that yourself in the future. Or maybe he just changes his mind every other day, who knows. But a reasonable boss would want you to ask.
If heâs a terrible boss â if heâs a tyrant whose whims of the day determine whatâs correct more than reality does, or someone who reacts poorly to having it pointed out that heâs giving you conflicting instructions â that would change things. But otherwise, start by assuming you should ask.
4. Iâve been getting all my colleagueâs meeting invites ⌠for 10 years
Iâm hoping you can help me on something that has been plaguing me for years. When I started at this large company, I was an admin assistant and my duties included managing the calendar of our director, so he added me as a delegate to his calendar in Outlook. Eventually I got another job at the same company, but I continued to receive all of his meeting requests. I reached out to IT many times and to the director, who always shrugged and said heâd ask IT.
No one ever resolved this, so I made an Outlook rule and sent all the meeting invites to a folder that I would occasionally mass delete. Over the years, twice I have tried to reach out to IT (but I was in a different department at this point) saying, âHey, this started happening again.â Theyâd respond to say they would look into it and Iâd check back but they hadnât spoken to the director, and eventually they just stopped responding. Iâve just lived with this, thinking the director will retire long before I do.
Now there has been some reorganization and the director is in my department! Iâve also grown in my career a bit, and my circle and his has more overlap than before. This is a regular reminder that I have a folder of his meeting invites, and Iâm starting to feel weird about it. Do I try to reach out to our joint IT person about it and pester it until itâs fixed? Iâm worried that Iâll get in trouble for having had access to these invites for so long, but I truly donât pour over the details or have any context for any of it. I was just an entry-level employee and it was an annoyance that I lived with, but now Iâve been here almost a decade and itâs starting to gnaw at me that I could get in trouble for this. What should I do?
Youâre not likely to get in trouble for it; you asked them to fix it many times! But yes, reach out to IT now and say, âThis is still happening, I really do need it fixed, how do we make that happen?â This time, follow up every few weeks until itâs dealt with. Itâs ridiculous that itâs still happening.
5. Should federal workers state the obvious when writing cover letters?
Should federal employees applying for jobs in the private sector mention that theyâre applying due to the decimation of government jobs, or would that be gauche?
Iâm finding myself applying to jobs at a company I worked at for years and years that I had just left recently for the stability of a fed role. Clearly that did not work out! Should I address that elephant in the room in my cover letters, or assume the hiring manager can figure it out and just write a normal letter?
Just write a normal letter. They know whatâs going on, and if for some reason they donât and are curious about why youâre leaving, theyâll ask.
WASHINGTON D.C. â Following a contentious meeting where US President Donald Trump failed to convince Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to sign a deal giving America access to Ukraine minerals, Trump received an from Russian President Vladimir Putin with the header âWhat did you do for me last week?â Trump, who spent much of the weekend [âŚ]
Every social link story arc has a point where the character goes through some manner of rough time and needs their ol' pal Protagonist to set things right. They just have to hope it doesn't happen right before a new game mechanic gets unlocked, or else their problems are never getting solved.
WASHINGTON D.C. â Following an explosive White House meeting that saw President Trump berate the visiting Ukrainian president and push Russian talking points, Zelenskyy opined that the entire dishonourable spectacle could easily have been an email. After flying ten hours from Kyiv to Washington D.C. only to be confronted on live television by Kremlin propaganda [âŚ]
A Texas health authority is warning against "measles parties" as the outbreak in West Texas grew to at least 146 cases, with 20 hospitalized and one unvaccinated school-age child dead. The outbreak continues to mainly be in unvaccinated children.
In a press briefing hosted by the city of Lubbock, Texas, on Friday, Ron Cook, chief health officer at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock, offered the stark warning for Texans in his opening statements.
"What I want you to hear is: It's not good to go have measles parties because what may happen isâwe can't predict who's going to do poorly with measles, be hospitalized, potentially get pneumonia or encephalitis and or pass away from this," Cook said. "So that's a foolish idea to go have a measles party. The best thing to do is make sure that you're well-vaccinated."
How large of a grid can you make if every row and column needs to be an English word? I made a simple solver to fully solve the question when using the scrabble dictionary.
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