At a public event last week, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said higher ed would get less funding if they don’t “kick DEI out of their schools,” a few weeks after lawmakers proposed a massive cut to public universities.

I was honored to be invited to cover a plaque unveiling and dedication ceremony celebrating ABC13 KTRK Houston Anchor Emeritus Dave Ward’s outstanding service and dedication to the greater Houston area during his legendary 50-year career with the Disney Entertainment Television station.Ward did not know this honor was coming his way.  His wife, Laura, who planned the event, told him they

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

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

1. My boss told me to bring my sick four-year-old to work with me

I want to start off by saying I am the absolute backbone of our store and everyone, including my boss, knows it. My boss has the flu right now and my four-year-old has been sick. She woke up crying, feverish, snotty, etc. I texted my boss at 4 am (I was scheduled to open at 10:30 am) explaining that my child’s sickness had taken a turn for the worse and asked if there was a possibility that anyone else could cover. She responded that there was no one besides me who could work and I would just have to bring my sick daughter with me. I’d been up all night with my child as well, which I also stated to my boss.

I don’t feel like this is fair. My sales are the highest, I feel I work the hardest, and I’m often told how great I am. Even corporate has reached out to me about my amazing sales. Am I overreacting?

No, you’re not overreacting. It’s not reasonable to expect to you bring a sick child to work (nor would customers be likely to appreciate it).

I think where you erred, though, was in asking if you could take a sick day. If we had a time machine, I’d send you back in it to instead say, “Jane is very sick and I’ve been up all night with her, so I won’t be able to open the store today.” Don’t ask, which implies you’re open to hearing “no” — say you wouldn’t be there and why (just like you’d presumably do if you yourself were throwing up or in the ER or so forth). There are some situations where you simply cannot come to work because of sickness, period. In those cases, it’s better not to cloud the situation by presenting it as optional.

2. My coworkers saw porn on my phone’s lock screen

I graduated from college last May and got my first office job. I have my work iPhone and my personal phone. I only ever use my work phone for work things, of course, but my problem came from my personal phone.

I downloaded something on my personal phone so that every time I turn on the screen, the lock screen background is an AI porn pic. A new pic comes up every time. Aside from obvious benefits, this motivates me to never take out my phone at work. I won’t even check my phone until I get to my car. (The reduced phone use was my New Year’s resolution, and it has made me noticeably mentally sharper.)

But today, my phone was ringing from my backpack while I had three coworkers in my cubicle talking about a project. I usually keep it on silent but forgot this time. It kept ringing, and one of them asked if I needed to get it. I said no, and tried to turn my phone on silent with my hand still in the backpack while I peeked inside it. One asked why I didn’t just take my phone out, and I said it was fine. But I was struggling to hold the backpack and unlock my phone at the same time, and the backpack slid down and fell on the floor with my phone still in my hand.

The porn was only there for a split second, but everyone there saw it. Everyone went dead silent, and they were looking between me and each other. I put the phone away immediately and tried to start up the previous conversation again, but everyone was giving minimal answers. The meeting ended shortly after that. After half an hour of silently panicking in my cubicle, I said I was sick and left to work from home the rest of the day.

I’m working from home the rest of the week. I have no idea what to do. I hate how everyone is judging me for something that is not deontologically bad, but I never would’ve shown it at work. Everyone is looking at me like they think something’s wrong with me, and I’m terrified it will get to my manager. Will I lose my job? Does everyone hate me? What do I do now!?

First and foremost, you should take the porn off your phone’s lock screen. Yes, you didn’t intend to have it out at work but, as this experience showed, there are ways that can still happen and the consequences are too severe if it does. Moreover, even if you never intended to bring your phone out while you were there, you were bringing pornographic material into your workplace! Find another way to reduce your phone use. (That’s before we even get into the reality that as you go about your non-work life and are using your personal phone, you’re probably exposing other people to pornography against their will, which really isn’t okay to do.)

As for work … all you can really do is to make a point of being scrupulously professional from here on out. It’s unlikely that people hate you, although some of them might feel a little icky around you for a while until that impression gets overridden. You’re probably not going to get fired (although you might get spoken to about what is and isn’t appropriate to have at work). But yeah, you made people really uncomfortable because you exposed them to something sexual against their will! Demonstrate through your actions that it was out of character and that you’re professional and respect boundaries, and it shouldn’t be impossible to live down.

3. Can my out-of-office messages say that emails sent while I’m out will be deleted?

I am going on vacation for just over two weeks with my husband — our first decent holiday since before the pandemic. Given the amount of emails I normally receive (about 100 daily), I want to leave an out-of-office that will politely say that I will not be reading my emails and therefore they will effectively be deleted. I will give details of a team member who can handle urgent requests (which she is happy to do) but beyond that I would just want to ask people to resend anything non-urgent on the date after my return. I have seen OOO emails along these lines but sometimes they come across as a bit aggressive. What is your advice on how to word this? This will be the first time in 17 years I haven’t taken work or my laptop away with me and I so need the break. And also not to come back to several hundred emails to wade through!

There are jobs and companies where you could do this and jobs and companies where you couldn’t, so the first thing to figure out is whether this will be okay in your job and in your company. In some jobs, this would be seen as off-putting to clients (since it puts the burden on them to remember to contact you again in X days, which won’t necessarily be seen as reasonable or client-friendly) and/or out of sync with your company’s culture, or it might result in you missing things you really needed to know (if someone doesn’t bother to resend later as instructed, which is highly likely in some cases, especially since a lot of people don’t pay attention to the actual content of OOO messages).

So you really need to know if it’s going to be been seen as reasonable in your office. If you’re not sure, ask your boss.

But if you’re confident it’s fine in your particular context, then I’d word it the message way: “Emails sent to this address March 10-21 will not be read. For anything urgent during that time, please contact X at Y. Otherwise, please resend your message after March 21.”

Related:
my colleague’s auto-reply says she might never answer your email

4. Using an inhaler during a job interview

For reasons I won’t go into, my employer is in the process of downsizing. I am currently a full-time, salaried employee, but within the next month I will either be changed to a part-time hourly employee or let go. I am actively looking for a new full-time role, and my employer is supportive of my job search.

My issue is that recent cold winter weather, work stress, and other stressors have caused my asthma to flare up. Currently, it is difficult for me to speak more than a few words before I start wheezing. My doctor’s advice has been to continue my daily medication and use my rescue inhaler as needed, which I have been doing. This is a flare-up, it will eventually pass.

Do you have any tips on how to navigate job interviews when I will likely start wheezing and need to use my inhaler in the middle of the interview? Is it appropriate to let the hiring manager know ahead of time via email that I’m okay, I’m healthy, I’m just having a temporary flare-up and they shouldn’t be alarmed if I have to use my inhaler during the interview? At the level I’m at in my career, interviews could easily last up to an hour.

You can absolutely let them know that. At the start of the interview, you could say, “I’m having a temporary asthma flare-up from the weather. It’s nothing to worry about, but I might need to use my inhaler at some point while we’re talking and I don’t want you to be alarmed if that happens.” People will generally take their cues from you on this kind of thing, so the more your vibe is “I have this under control,” the more likely they are to take it that way.

5. Should my resume have an objective at the top?

I am applying for an internal department director position at my organization. I’m doing a redesign of my resume since it’s been a while. Is it appropriate to put “Objective” at the top? I’m seeing this in a lot of templates, but it seems like overkill to me – I mean, the objective to get the position, is it not?

Objectives at the top of resumes were outdated 15 years ago, and it’s bizarre that they’re still showing up in resume templates. You do not need one, and should not use one. They’re unnecessary, take up valuable real estate that’s better spent on something more important, and will look dated.

OAKVILLE – Kevin Walker’ seemingly thoughtful gesture for his girlfriend’s birthday on Sunday was obliterated when she noticed her gift was purchased from the discount chain, Dollarama.  The gift in question – a bath bomb set called “The Lavender Luxury Collection” – was initially well received, until his girlfriend, Julie Emerson, saw the $3 green […]

The post Thoughtful gift thwarted by Dollarama price tag appeared first on The Beaverton.

Police in the small town northwest of Houston said the flowers were tested and no foreign substances were found. They described it as a "good deed meant to show an act of kindness" by the unnamed man who gave out the roses.

The north Houston school district is one of many public school districts in Texas to be faced with a funding shortfall as the state legislature has not increased the per-student allotment since 2019.

It's the first death from measles in the U.S. since 2015.

It’s a very quiet week nationally, weather-wise, so let’s discuss hurricane season. It’s the time of year where some outlets in the infantile battle of “who called it first” begin releasing seasonal hurricane outlooks. I say that somewhat derisively, but sometimes it does seem like a never-ending battle we fight in this field: First and loudest vs. most prudent.

Did the sizzle fizzle?

Anyway, the pre-hurricane season season is here now. WeatherBELL, the outlet that said last season would be a “season from hell” is back for 2025, though striking a less foreboding tone. They call for about 15 to 19 named storms, 7 to 9 hurricanes, and 2 to 3 majors. Their idea of a less hostile season is rooted in the cooling of sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic. And indeed, if you compare the most recent available data from February 23rd to the same time in 2024 (with a few additional days added on either side), you can see things have cooled rather considerably between Africa and the islands, or the Main Development Region (MDR).

While we may say “Oh, that’s good, 2025 is way cooler in the MDR!” the reality is that those water temperatures would still be at record levels had we not had 2024 and 2023 happen.

Has the Atlantic’s fever broken? It’s probably too early to speculate a whole lot on that, as what caused it to happen in the first place is still a little bit debatable. So I would refrain from making any grand proclamations about what’s happening out there. Those of us that follow sea-surface temperatures in the tropics closely in the run up to hurricane season know how quickly things can change.

The Gulf and Caribbean are still at or near records, however, which gives anyone living on the Gulf Coast or in the Southeast a little bit of pause. I certainly don’t want to undersell what’s happening there, but it’s only February 26th. A warm Gulf in spring has not been uncommon in recent years. In fact, if you compare the March through May sea-surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico over the last 10 years (2015-2024) versus the 10 years prior (2005-2014) to that, you can see a notable warming.

Some of this is likely related to climate change, some of it related to whatever is happening presently with respect to warm global water temperatures, and some of it could be internal variability. The Gulf is slowly warming overall, but no season sees this trend happening more substantially than spring. Most other seasons are averaging about 0.25 to 0.5°C warmer, whereas spring is clearly 0.75° or warmer. My point here: While this is troubling, it’s also not guaranteed to continue at this record amplitude into the meat and potatoes of hurricane season.

So, our Atlantic SSTs are cooler in the MDR, warmer in the Gulf and Caribbean, and much warmer in the northern Atlantic versus 2024.

What of La Niña?

We are currently in a low-end weak La Niña event. Historically, this will end up near the bottom (or “least cold”) of the list of La Niña events since 1950.

Will we end up seeing a flip to El Niño this summer? Well, your guess is as good as mine. When we look at the EU’s Copernicus program chart of multi-ensemble forecasts for El Niño, we see the several hundred members skew toward an average near zero, which would keep us generally close to ENSO neutral (La Nada) conditions heading into spring. If you want to squint, you may be able to see a 55/45 split toward El Niño over La Niña but that may be presumptive.

Remember, La Niña was expected last summer, and those cooling events in the tropical Pacific are extremely highly correlated to active Atlantic hurricane seasons. That, combined with the raging warm water temperatures led to the catastrophic forecasts last season. This year we are unlikely to have La Niña during hurricane season, though we may end up with limited signal from the tropical Pacific overall. We will still have very warm water temperatures, but they won’t be as doomsday looking as last year.

So putting those points together: Cooler Atlantic SSTs, a weakening already weak La Niña trending to neutral, and I think you have a recipe for what should be above average hurricane season outlooks from anyone issuing them in the coming weeks. However, they will not be anywhere near last year’s numbers. Is that good? Bad? I don’t know; this meteorologist tends to think seasonal hurricane outlooks are not particularly valuable. But the appetite for them is insatiable. Last year’s hurricane forecasts mostly just snuck into the lower end of the verified ranges and the worst-case seasonal forecast outcomes were not even close to being realized. But it ended up being the third costliest hurricane season on record in the Atlantic. So were the forecasts wrong? Or were they right because it did end up being such a bad year even though the numbers weren’t realized? Does it even matter?

Whatever the seasonal forecasters say in the weeks ahead, our messaging here remains consistent: You should prepare for every hurricane season the same way, as if that will be the year the storm comes to you. And as we’ve learned on more than one occasion in recent years, even “weaker” storms can cause dramatic damage. Prepare for the worst, and hope for the best. Much more to come in the weeks ahead on the upcoming season.

“The golden age of America begins right now.” — President Donald Trump, during his inauguration speech.

We promised that, if elected, we would return America to “a golden age.” And by God, we did it. We delivered on that promise.

Admittedly, it’s not the golden age you were expecting—the one when stuff was affordable, employment was high, traditional industries were booming, weather patterns were still basically predictable, and a sense of national pride coursed through the healthy, fluoropolymer-free veins of every man, woman, and child in the land. If you were hoping for a golden age like that—a gilded era of health, wealth, and prosperity—we can’t really help you. But you can’t blame us for that. Because that’s not the golden age we were talking about.

You assumed. And that’s entirely on you.

But don’t worry, because the golden age we’re bringing back is a real humdinger. We considered loads of options: the Golden Age of Piracy, the Golden Age of Portuguese Navigation, the Golden Age of Islamic Architecture—all solid contenders. But in the end, we passed on all of them. Too complex. Too costly. Too obscure. Would the Islamic stuff fly with our base? Does anyone still actually navigate anymore? And while the idea of re-introducing roving bands of pirates to our shipping lanes sounded cool, we just couldn’t see the point of needlessly implementing an antiquated barrier to free trade that ultimately benefits no one. Except for tariffs, obviously.

No, in the end, we settled on something classy. A golden age that everyone could get behind. And, more importantly, one that we could claim to have ushered in without really having to do much work. And so, without further ado, it’s our great pleasure to officially announce the return of a golden age to America—the Golden Age of Dutch and Flemish Painting.

Trust us, people. The good times start now.

You may have already noticed a change in the air. Maybe you woke up this morning with a sudden, overwhelming appreciation for the little things. Like how the light falls across the earthenware jug of homemade corn wine sitting on your kitchen table. Or the whimsical glint in the eye of the rosy-cheeked peddler selling rustic, artisanal loaves by the road. Perhaps you felt an inexplicable desire to go off and fight in the Eighty Years’ War. Or a sudden aversion to the Habsburgs. In any case, you’re going to start noticing windmills. Hundreds and hundreds of windmills. And not the big metallic ones that kill birds. We’re talking about the charmingly ramshackle ones with no discernible purpose aside from looking great in a still life.

Make no mistake—this is the dawn of a glorious new chapter in our nation’s history. And it’s not just the countless masterpieces we’re going to produce. Going by past metrics, the next century could conceivably see the United States emerge as one of the great shipbuilding nations of post-Reformation Europe. Yes, the wealth will be concentrated among a tiny minority of Flemish merchants and Amsterdam guildsmen. But on the plus side, we’re going to see an absolute shitload of Calvinist churches.

Obviously, there will be some teething troubles. You don’t go from a nation in decline to one of the most vibrant cultural hubs in the Low Countries overnight. To kickstart the new golden age, we’ve had to ship in a few hundred thousand Dutch painters, astronomers, wealthy merchants, lute-playing rural bumpkins, girls with pearl earrings, clergymen, and a handful of bawdy chambermaids. Given that one of our main campaign promises was a major crackdown on immigration, this might upset some people. But fear not—we’re going to balance it out by pursuing a ruthless program of colonial exploitation and bringing back the spice trade.

Let’s face it—bringing back the golden age you actually voted for would be a massive hassle. We’d have to start drafting complex economic policy. By bringing back the Golden Age of Dutch and Flemish Painting, all we need to do is abolish electric lighting and start wearing wide-brimmed black felt hats. The ruff could make a big comeback, too.

Life in this new golden age will be like a stroopwafel—short and sweet. Sweet, because of all the florins pouring in from our shipbuilding monopoly. And short, because of the bubonic plague. Oh, and like all decent golden ages, there won’t be any vaccines. So that one stays.

WASHINGTON—Cautiously optimistic that the trend would continue to arouse no suspicions from readers, executives at AARP reportedly wondered Wednesday whether anyone would notice that Kathy Bates was appearing on the cover of the nonprofit’s bimonthly magazine for the ninth time in a row. “I don’t even think we need to change the photo—this one is good,” said Bob Love, editor-in-chief of AARP: The Magazine, referring to the smiling portrait of the 76-year-old Oscar winner, who has graced the cover of every issue for more than a year under a headline that alternates between “Kathy Bates Makes A Scene” and “Matlock Is Back!” “I really don’t think anyone will notice or care. I mean, everyone loves Kathy. Plus, I really think she still has a lot more to say about how her sense of self has changed with age.” According to reports, Love later decided to hedge the publication’s bets by putting Jon Bon Jovi on the cover of the issue after this one and then returning to Bates for the next six issues after that.

The post AARP Wondering If Anyone Will Notice Kathy Bates On Cover For 9th Issue In Row appeared first on The Onion.

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

A reader writes:

Recently, my company hired someone who was extremely racist. He worked with me on his first day, where he dropped an awful racial slur six times. I was shocked so did a little social media sleuthing and found his horrifying Twitter page full of xenophobic and racist tweets and posts. We fired him.

However, after speaking to a friend who is in HR, she said we couldn’t simply fire him for being racist. Now, obviously our lawyer and HR rep disagreed with that because he was fired. But what say you? Are racist posts and hate speech enough to fire someone? She seems to think we should have put him on an improvement plan first. I think at that point it’s too late and having a racist employee puts our employees of color at risk unnecessarily. I am proud of the way the company handled it, but she thinks we opened ourselves up to legal liability. She said his racism was apart of his “political opinion” and you can’t fire someone over their political opinion. But “racist” is hardly a political opinion, it’s hate speech. So, I won’t ask if we were “wrong” to fire him, but could we have potentially opened ourselves up to legal issues by firing him based solely on racist tweets and his racist comments said to me but directed at other people?

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

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

A reader writes:

I just got feedback from my manager that I need to work on communication with a coworker. I think it’s mainly about tone not content, and I agree with the feedback — I have admittedly been pretty short. I’m irritated and it’s coming across. Where I’m getting stuck, though, is that it’s coming from a place of frustration and I’m not sure how to solve it without doing something about the underlying frustration.

Let me give more context. My coworker Petunia and I are a two-person team. For the sake of anonymity, let’s say we do llama support; she is more junior and provides, say, llama food, and I am more senior and provide llama training and enrichment and also work as a team lead. We have separate managers. We both receive a potentially large bonus based on how much the llama farms we work with use our services.

The challenge is that Petunia keeps dropping balls. She’ll, say, forget to order food for a set of llamas. We have a lot of clients and we all miss things sometimes, so I’ve tried to be understanding, but it happens pretty frequently with Petunia. The last time she took a week-long vacation, I reminded her on the day before she left that a farm’s order was overdue and to make sure it got ordered before she left — and she still forgot it. On at least two occasions when I have trusted her to own a large complicated project, she messed up in a massive way that caused the owner of the farm to get involved, and since I’m the team lead, my manager held me responsible for messing up the partnership. Please trust me that it’s nothing fireable, but it’s a lot of missed due dates, leaving early, and occasional big errors.

Petunia knows she is dropping balls and keeps promising that she’s going to buckle down, does so for a week, and then goes back to normal. I have tried looping in her manager, Sam, but every time I do that, Petunia has expressed displeasure with me for not going to her first. But some of the things I go to Sam about, I just don’t feel like I have the standing to complain to Petunia directly about. It’s not my place to dictate her work hours, for example, and I guess I could respond when she says she’s too busy with Llama A to do Llama B in a timely manner by suggesting she work until 5 like all the other llama food specialists, but I can’t figure out how to say that without sounding passive-aggressive.

It’s compounded by the fact that Petunia has some objectively difficult things going on in her personal life; initially, I gave her a lot of leeway and was willing to take on extra work, but it’s now been going on for nine months, and my patience is clearly getting low. I agree with my manager that this kind of frustration isn’t productive at work, and I want to communicate better, but I’m having trouble with how to be empathetic when I get looped into an urgent food ordering issue that Petunia has left behind but gave me no context on before leaving for a long weekend.

I feel like I can’t just drop the rope because I make thousands of dollars based on how much these farms want to work with us.

I generally respect Petunia’s manager and it’s possible that he is working with her on performance issues. But — as is fair — he’s not giving me status updates. So I feel like I’m out here on my own, trying to do my own job and half of Petunia’s job while overseeing the other half, but also managing Petunia’s emotions so she doesn’t feel micromanaged because she’s complained about that, and now I have to do it all while smiling. Please help me come up with a plan. I don’t want to be a jerk.

Go back to your manager and say this: “I thought a lot about your feedback, and you’re right: my tone with Petunia has been short. I’ve been sounding irritated when talking to her, and that’s not okay. In thinking about how to fix this, I’ve realized I need to address my growing frustration with not being able to get what I depend on her for. It’s never okay to be short with a colleague and I am committed to fixing that, but I also want to talk to you about the issues I’ve been encountering and see if we can resolve them.”

And then lay out what you laid out here: Petunia keeps dropping important balls, she regularly makes commitments that she doesn’t meet, and you can’t rely on her to do her job without extensive oversight and involvement from you. When you’ve talked with her about it previously, she gets better for a week, then goes right back to messing up. At this point you’re having to do your own job plus half of hers, plus making sure she doesn’t feel micromanaged even though there’s no way around that.

Say that you’ve tried looping in Sam, but Petunia gets upset when you do.

And then ask for your manager’s help on what to do next. You don’t have the authority to solve the problem yourself, so you need to escalate it to someone who does.

If your manager doesn’t help, have this conversation with Sam instead. If Petunia objects to that, that’s okay! You can tell her, “Sam needs be part of this, because you and I have talked about it previously and the same issues are still coming up. Since you and I haven’t been able to resolve it on our own — and there may be context I’m not aware of since I’m not your boss — I’d like him to be involved.” Don’t let her guilt you into not talking to Sam about what’s going on; it’s perfectly appropriate for you to loop him in and ask for his help.

And then going forward, if problems with Petunia continue, keep raising with them with Sam and with your own manager every time. Right now it’s become your problem to handle — even though you don’t actually have the tools or authority you need to be the one handling it, which is where your frustration is coming from — and you need to push it back on the people whose job it is, every time.

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Land of the Primordial Machine p.3-4

vehicular carnage

Bird is cannibalizing a dead screen. It hears a noise. It is ran over by a.. car?

The car is speeding through the desert. The deck is filled with various computers and radios. Two beeps go off and a printer spits out a message:

MT_OB_emergency
>transmitting on
>all libre
>frequencies:
HELP HELP HELP
HELP HELP HELP
HELP

The driver talks to the passenger seat.

Driver: "Sounds like a damsel in distress scenario! Trace the signal, MB!"

There is a depressed Mata_Bot head in the seat.

Mata_Bot: "...fine"

Driver: "Good bot."

Mata_Bot: "sigh."

https://analognowhere.com/_/uleult

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

A reader writes:

I have worked in nonprofits for the entirety of my career (~15 years). I’m a highly mission-driven person, so I am generally a lot happier in my work when I feel strongly connected to the nonprofit’s aims. As an example, I’ve worked at both a public library and a private college, and I was much happier at the library even though the hours were longer, the pay less, and the work more menial — just because I felt like my work was contributing to a better cause.

I was recently hired at a very small nonprofit that, on paper, seemed to tick all the boxes for me. However, having been there for a few months now, I’m growing increasingly uncomfortable with the way it operates.

It’s a little difficult to describe while maintaining anonymity, but I think the best comparison would be a soup kitchen (very similar in terms of the services we provide and overall “goodness” of the mission). If you look at the hard data — which in my comparison would be organization budget vs. people served — the overall impact becomes … not very impressive. When you do the math, it’s like it costs our soup kitchen $50 for each individual meal served. (Again, this is not exactly what we do, but this is the best analogy I could find. We do not have any additional programs that could be justified as part of the expense while having a nebulous hard-data result, like educational programs.)

I don’t think there’s any fraud going on. I’ve seen the budget sheets and everything seems to be accounted for; the director and founder does not pay himself an exorbitant rate (it’s actually fairly low, in my experience — in fact, identical to the other staff salaries, which are good for the area we live in but definitely not luxurious). I honestly think it’s just bad management (it’s a very recently founded nonprofit and the director had no prior experience in nonprofits) and, mostly, a giant blind spot where the director doesn’t seem to have recognized that the math ain’t mathing. I think when the org was first founded, the numbers were a little better, but he’s added staff over the years at a rate that our actual output doesn’t match.

In addition to just making me unhappy, this disparity is affecting my work. Part of my job is applying for grants and other funding, and we are very often rejected. I can’t be sure, but I am assuming that the budget-to-services ratio is turning off a lot of funders. (Why would you give us $1,000 to feed 20 people a single meal, when the average meal cost in our state should mean that could feed 250 people?) It’s definitely obvious to anyone who pays a little attention; I have a good friend who works in a nonprofit of similar size and she pointed it out in casual conversation: “Wow, that’s like $X per person served.”)

So I suppose I have two questions:

1. Is there any way possible to point this out to the director in a way that is constructive? Fixing it would require a complete overhaul of the entire organization, which isn’t my purview — but as I said above, it’s affecting the results I get for the work I do. I’m afraid I’m going to just blurt it out defensively if the director continues to moan about the fact that we get rejected for grants I’m applying to. No matter how eloquently you write, a lot of funders want the hard numbers.

2. Does this reflect poorly on me? Should I just get out? I very much get the vibe that this organization is just an outlet for our director to feel good about himself — he comes from money, and has never had a real job where he wasn’t working for family, so this essentially allows him to LARP as a do-gooder without making any real difference. If I do depart, is it worth mentioning in an exit interview, or would that just be seen as a cheap parting shot?

I am grateful for any advice you might have for me. This job ticks a lot of boxes for me in terms of salary, commute length/hybrid work, and the actual tasks I’m doing, so I don’t know if I should just plod ahead while ignoring the giant elephant in the room.

Nah, you should get out.

You want to work for a mission-driven organization that’s making a real difference, and this isn’t that. This sounds very much like, as you said, a chance for the director to play at charity work without the accompanying results that make charity work worthwhile.

You want to work somewhere that’s effective. This organization isn’t.

If you were someone who just wanted a paycheck, it might not be a problem to continue on there. (Even then, it still could be a problem, depending on where the org’s funding is coming from; at a certain point there are ethical issues with working for an ineffective organization that’s taking funds away from more worthy recipients … although one can certainly argue that it’s incumbent upon funders to do enough research to see when that’s happening.) But you are someone who wants work where you have a real impact on the world, and you’ve seen enough to know this doesn’t check that very important box for you.

Moreover, this job risks holding you back professionally, especially as a fundraiser. When you’re applying for your next job, employers will want to hear about the successes you had in this one, and if you can’t point to any, that’s going to be a problem! (Perhaps less so if you don’t plan to stay in fundraising, but even then you’d still want to be able to point to a pattern of results and this job doesn’t sound like it’s positioning you well to do that.)

As for pointing out your concerns to the director, you’re actually situated very well to do that! As the person who applies for grants, it’s part of your job to know what funders are looking for and it’s entirely consistent with your job to explain that funders want to see a better budget-to-services ratio. Hell, if you really want to put effort into helping him see that, you could even try to arrange a few conversations with potential funders to get them to comment on either the org’s weakness in that area or what metrics they look for generally, so that you can then relay that back to your director. But even if you don’t do that, there’s lot of material out there that you can reference about what expenses are and aren’t considered reasonable when applying for grants. You’d be doing this not necessarily because you expect the director will overhaul the entire organization in response to it (he probably won’t, although who knows) but simply to try to break through the blind spot that he appears to have. If he’s moaning about being rejected for grants, this is a conversation that absolutely should happen.

And yes, you can mention it in an exit interview too. It’s not a cheap shot to say, “As someone who’s in this field because I want to have an impact, I ended up being disappointed by the results we get for the money we invest, and would like to see a higher effectiveness rate as measured by X.”

More than 120 people across nine counties have been infected during the largest Texas outbreak in 30 years.

In brief: Tuesday brought gorgeous weather into the region, and if you missed it fear not, there is more to come. We’re going to see continued mild conditions and sunny skies through much of the weekend as spring marches into Houston and hangs around for awhile.

Wednesday

There is less widespread fog this morning, but it is still present in some locations so take a little extra care on roadways. Beyond the fog, we’ll see sunny skies today with high temperatures likely in the mid- to upper-70s. Winds will come from the south at 5 to 10 mph with moderate humidity levels. So basically, really really nice outside. Lows tonight will fall to around 60 degrees in Houston, with slightly cooler conditions further inland.

Thursday

A modest front will sag into Houston beginning Thursday morning, and pushing into the city by around noon. This will be most noticeable with the increased cloud cover. Although I cannot rule out some light showers, I don’t think most of us will see any rain. Highs Thursday will be in the low- to mid-70s, with drier air arriving in time to push lows on Thursday night down to around 50 degrees in Houston.

Friday

This is going to be a splendid day, with high temperatures around 70 degrees, low humidity, light winds, and lots of sunshine. This could be a top-10 day in terms of weather this year in Houston. Friday night will again see lows near 50 degrees in Houston.

Saturday

For those who like conditions a little bit warmer, Saturday will also be excellent, with plenty of sunshine and highs in the upper 70s. Winds will again be light, but as they shift to come more from the offshore, Saturday night will be warmer, with lows only falling into the mid-50s or so.

Sunday

We’ll see some clouds on Sunday, which may help limit highs in the mid-70s. It will also feel a bit more humid out. Lows on Sunday night will only fall into lower 60s for most, so a bit of a warmer night.

Next week

Monday and Tuesday look warmer, with partly sunny skies and highs near 80 degrees. We’ll also flirt with some Houston-like humidity on Tuesday. However, a front arrives later on Tuesday or Tuesday night, and this should usher in some cooler weather for the rest of the week. The front may also deliver some showers, but the signal for this is not overly strong.

CLEVELAND—Bemoaning the exhausting pattern into which his existence seemed to have fallen, local man Matthew Taylor told reporters Wednesday that he felt like his whole life was just an endless cycle of working, eating, sleeping, getting abducted by aliens, and then going to work again. “Pretty much every day I roll out of bed, eat breakfast, head to the office, get beamed aboard the Kluforian mothership for medical analysis, and then go home—like, is this the rest of my life?” said Taylor, who sighed as he imagined the decades slipping away with week after week of drinking his morning coffee, leaving for the office grind, getting anally probed during his lunch break, sitting in on sales meetings, and then falling asleep after a few hours of bad TV and possibly more anal probing if the Grand Katarka Simblian Vinaroon demanded it. “It’s just this endless rigamarole of getting stuck in traffic, making small talk with coworkers, waking up on a table as a hooded extraterrestrial peels open my abdomen with a plasmoid scalpel, heating up another lousy frozen meal, and shoveling it in my face. Sheesh. At some point you have to ask yourself: What does this all add up to?” Taylor concluded that his only hope was that his existence served some higher purpose that he was unaware of, but that the invading Garacean-13 galactic fleet understood perfectly.

The post Man Feels Like Whole Life Just Endless Cycle Of Work, Eat, Sleep, Get Abducted By Aliens appeared first on The Onion.

RALEIGH, NC—Breathing a sigh of relief as the pair of new acquaintances talked each other’s ears off without any extra input, the rest of the people attending a party Thursday reportedly thanked fucking God that the two guys who liked etymology had found each other. “I’m so glad Ian [Hawes] overheard Rob [Agundez] telling me where the word ‘quarantine’ comes from, because if I had to hear the goddamn term ‘proto-European’ one more time I was going to die of boredom,” said party guest Vikki Engel, who described how the two linguistics enthusiasts had cordoned themselves off from everyone else and gotten progressively louder and more animated as they debated whether the word “posh” came from the first-class accommodations on early English cruise liners or not. “It doesn’t matter how many times you try and switch the topic to movies or local restaurants or whatever, because no matter what you talk about they are going to home in on some word you use. We’re all just over here joking around about Minnie’s shitty coworkers and counting our blessings that we don’t have to know the symbolism of chrysanthemum or whatever the fuck… Oh shit, it looks like Ian just stormed off and Rob is headed back this way.” At press time, reports confirmed a half hour had passed since Engel had told Agundez she needed to get home to feed her dog, and he was still talking about the larger working canine breeds that had given rise to the word “dog.”

The post Rest Of Party Thanks Fucking God 2 Guys Who Like Etymology Found Each Other appeared first on The Onion.

Republican Senator Mitch McConnell announced that he won’t seek reelection next year, ending a decades-long tenure as a power broker who championed conservative causes but ultimately ceded ground to the fierce GOP populism of President Donald Trump. What do you think?

The post Mitch McConnell Won’t Seek Reelection In 2026 appeared first on The Onion.

Greatest Generation: People born between 1901 and 1927 who lived through the Great Depression and definitely never made a TikTok of themselves jumping into a kiddie pool full of nachos.

Second-Greatest Generation: “My Generation” by the Who.

Silent Generation: People born between 1928 and 1945 who came of age at the start of the Cold War and are called “silent” because they’re quietly miffed about not being named the Greatest Generation.

Loud Generation: Boomers at Chili’s who have just been told that their coupon for free popcorn shrimp expired seven months ago. And also, it’s for TGI Fridays.

Participation Generation: See “Millennials.”

Cremation Generation: Most of the Greatest Generation, plus Gen Zers who did the Tide Pod Challenge.

Baby Boomers: People who took to the streets to protest the Vietnam War, hosted sit-ins to protest Jim Crow, and hijacked their family’s Facebook feeds last Tuesday to protest the fact that their millennial daughters forbade them from kissing their grandbabies on the mouth during flu season.

Maybe Boomers: Gen Xers who type on their phones using a single pointer finger.

Gen X: The first latchkey kids who were blessed to grow up watching MTV before 16 and Pregnant.

Generation Twitter: People who refuse to call it X.

Millennials: The last generation to have a childhood partially without the internet and the brutal, merciless killers of the diamond, fabric softener, and paper napkin industries.

Zillennials: People on the cusp of the Millennial and Gen Z generations who have never printed out MapQuest directions to the nearest Blockbuster but also have never used “vibe” as a verb.

Perennials: Boomers who drive south to their Florida condos for the winter and return each spring.

Generation Y: Another name for Millennials, as in “Y don’t they buy paper napkins anymore?”

Elder Millennials: Millennials born in the early 1980s, now in their forties, who will kick you out of their AOL chatroom if you say they’re “too old” to be Millennials.

Generation Z: People born between 1997 and 2010 who have never known a childhood without the internet, which they use to spew vitriol against skinny jeans, ankle socks, and anyone who tells them not to eat Tide Pods.

Sandwich Generation: People who struggle to care for both their children and aging parents, especially when they have to travel to Chili’s to de-escalate their parents’ popcorn shrimp situation, then immediately be called to their Gen Alpha kid’s school because they flooded the bathroom trying to make a real-life Skibidi toilet.

“A Hot Dog Is Not a Sandwich” Generation: People who like to get into arguments that don’t actually matter, like whether you should call it X or Twitter.

Zoomers: Another name for Gen Z.

Zoomers: Millennials lucky enough to be cast members on the live-action children’s TV show Zoom.

Zoomers: People who begrudgingly attended virtual bridal showers, algebra classes, and forcibly cheerful St. Patrick’s Day–themed office happy hours during the pandemic.

Zoboomafoomers: Millennials who won’t shut up about how great the TV shows were when they were kids.

Generation Alpha: People born between 2011 and 2024 who have never experienced a world without social media and kiddie-pool-nacho-bath TikToks.

Generation Gamma: Boomers who insist on having a “cool” grandparent name.

Generation Beta: People born in 2025 and beyond, who will most likely cover themselves in Satanic tattoos, wear clothing that’s simultaneously too tight and too baggy, and implant themselves with virtual reality brain chips that will turn them into drooling Cocomelon-worshipping hippie racist snowflakes who are completely antisocial (but somehow are also having too much sex), and will surely drive the world into madness with their degenerate, corrupt ways, as all young people do. Oh, and they’ll make skinny jeans cool again.

The Worst Generation: Every generation that’s not yours.

Issues with Medicaid coverage, including long wait times, abrupt loss of coverage and lack of political will to expand it, have contributed to Texas’ high uninsured rate for children.

Here’s how federal courts help determine the fate of controversial issues, such as immigration laws, in Texas and beyond.

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

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

1. My boss is great in some ways but is he crossing lines?

I’m trying to figure out if my manager is interested in me as more than a coworker, or if the lines he crosses are just a part of his personality. I’ve been with my company as a general manager for eight months, hired into a lower position and immediately promoted by this man. He is always kind and funny with me. He calls me awesome, amazing, sunshine, tells me how funny I am, tells me I’m tough, and that he wants to make my life easier. And these are just the things he regularly says. He is never sexual, and mentions his wife casually in group conversation we are both involved in. He is very stern with other people, but still outgoing and friendly. He isn’t stern with me. He makes sure I’m set up for success in every situation he can.

Now to the parts that are a bit on the fence, so to speak. He often asks me to come and see things on his laptop at a hightop table; I’m 5’2” and he is about 6’4″ and he keeps the laptop in front of him, even if asking me to type something for him, which leads to very close contact. While we speak, he keeps non-broken full eye contact the entire time. He often stands so closely behind me that when he breathes deeply, I feel his chest as he inhales. Other people claim he is “different” with me.

He is an extremely extroverted person, who in my opinion is usually more openly friendly with others than with me. But he makes sure we speak every day, even if one or both of us is off. Flip side, he visits other locations more often than mine. He brags on others more openly than he does me. But something has gotten strange. Does this seem like normal extroverted behavior? Could I just seem like a child to him, paternal affection type stuff?

I just don’t know if maybe I’m misreading and it’s just that I have the best boss ever, not a potential issue.

You have alarm bells going off for a reason; don’t talk yourself out of it.

I don’t know exactly what’s up with your boss, but standing so close that you can feel his chest when he breathes is not normal behavior, and is in fact very creepy. The laptop thing could be simple lack of consideration or it could be pervy, I don’t know — but in combination with standing practically against you, it alarms me. In both these situations, you should feel free to create more physical separation between you. When he’s standing behind you practically touching you, move away! You can do that without announcing it, or it would also be fine to say, “Oh, let me move so we’re not so crowded.” With the laptop, you can say, “I can’t easily reach it from where I am, let me move it closer to me if I need to type” and then move it somewhere where you can access it without leaning into his lap (or whatever is going on in this configuration that he’s arranged).

I suppose it’s possible that you have an otherwise good boss who is remarkably oblivious about physical space issues, but I doubt it. Is he breathing all over male colleagues? If he does it to everyone, regardless of gender, perhaps he simply has no sense of physical boundaries. Otherwise, he knows what he’s doing, which moves him solidly out of “good boss” territory (and, frankly, into “not a good person” territory, too).

2. Coworker injecting medication at their desk

I work in a small office with about 15 people. One of my colleagues has diabetes and has to regularly monitor their blood sugars, which is of course of absolute importance. However, this colleague regularly pulls up their shirt to inject themselves in the stomach while sitting at their desk, and has once or twice done this in front of clients. I completely understand that this is a medical issue that they have to act on urgently, but part of me wonders whether it’s appropriate to ask them to do this in a private space. I’m not weirded out by injections, but some people can be, and I don’t necessarily want to see so much of my colleague’s skin on a regular basis. I have a feeling that this is a me problem and I should just ignore it, but any advice on how to appropriately support my colleague would be gratefully received. (To note, this is an early professional job for my colleague, who is still learning business norms, and helping them learn these is part of my role.)

I’d leave it alone. You’re right that people can be squeamish about needles but there’s no way for you as a colleague to know how urgent the situation might be and they need insulin to live. So it makes sense to err on the side of assuming that if they’re doing it at their desk, it’s because it needs to happen right then (and they might feel a public bathroom isn’t a particularly sanitary place to inject something into their body).

To be clear, if your coworker were the one writing to me, I’d tell them that if they’re able to avoid doing it in front of clients, that’s preferable (with the caveat that it might not always be optional). But as a colleague, I’d stay out of it.

3. Reference for an employee who didn’t perform well

I’m in a situation where I may have to respond to reference checks about a mediocre employee.

My direct report was with us for about nine months. In that time, I quickly discovered some of her basic skills were not as good as her resume or her small test had revealed. I invested a solid chunk of time in training her, and I saw a trajectory of improvement that was slower than I’d have liked, but still reasonable.

However, she recently made a few egregious mistakes. I gave her very serious feedback in the moment and also discussed the situation with my manager and HR. We decided a formal PIP was needed to more formally codify what she needed to fix and improve, and how soon. We all agreed that she had the potential to get there, and this was not a performative PIP where you go through the motions because you want to fire a person. We had not finished drafting this plan and communicating it to her when, for entirely unrelated reasons, many people on our team, including her, were laid off. I was not involved in the decision-making, but it made sense to me given the circumstances of our organization.

She has mentioned that in her job search, she’ll be asking me to be a reference. I don’t feel like I can recommend her without reservations. She has potential, but it was a lot more work to bring her along and train her than I expected or think should have been necessary. If I receive a reference call, how do I respond? Despite my feedback in the moment, I’m not sure she’s fully aware of the pattern of errors she was making, because I was expecting to emphasize that during our PIP discussion that never happened.

Do I talk with her about this? Refuse to be a reference? Act as a reference but be up-front about her strengths and weaknesses? She’s a good person, and I don’t want to be careless and damage her chance at a new job. But I don’t want to give a great recommendation that makes people doubt my judgment, either.

Talk to her and let her know so she can decide whether she wants to offer you as a reference or not. I’d frame it this way: “I want to be transparent that the reference I’d give would be mixed because of what happened with X and Y. The layoffs cut off our discussion about those issues, but otherwise we would have needed to move a formal improvement plan because those concerns were such serious ones. In a reference I’d be able to share that I saw A and B as strengths, but would need to be honest that I wasn’t seeing what I needed in C and D. I want to be up-front with you about that so you can decide whether it makes sense to share my name as a reference or not.”

On my first read of your letter, I was going to add that it’s really important to be giving feedback all along so that the person isn’t blindsided by something like this if it comes up later. But in this case, the way things unfolded made it more understandable that you didn’t: you thought she was coming along, just more slowly than you’d expected, and then when things became more dire you were preparing to address it, but then the layoffs cut you off just as you were about to. It’s not ideal but it sounds like that’s largely a consequence of the layoff timing, not a mistake on your end.

4. Are the federal layoffs causing layoffs at private companies?

I was discussing the federal layoffs with a coworker and she said her in-laws who work at (a) a big private financial services company and (b) the Bezos space company have all seen layoffs recently. Is this in reaction to the federal layoffs? I had thought my and my husband’s jobs in the private sector were safe for now, but now I’m worried.

I can’t speak to the layoffs at those specific companies, but in general, yes, there will be layoffs at private companies as a response to the federal government cuts. Loads of private companies have contracts with the government and so will be affected by the cuts there. And then it’s likely to trickle down further; heavy job losses in any large sector will start affecting other businesses because people will begin restricting their spending (either out of necessity because their households have less or no income or out of caution at what’s happening around them and uncertainty about what’s to come). It’s all intertwined, so what’s happening federally is likely to affect a lot of people in the private sector as well.

5. Alternative to Facebook for discussion groups

I am hoping you can put this out to the readers of AAM for some solutions. I work in payroll for the movies and run a couple of Facebook groups for people doing payroll for both film and television. Not to get too political, I would like to move my group off of Facebook, but I have no idea what other options are out there. I’m Gen-X so comfortable with computers but not so much with social media that isn’t mainstream.

Could someone direct me to a site where a group can have discussions, share files/documents, and limit access to members only? Basically, FB without the political ramifications.

I’m happy to throw it out to suggestions from readers, but take a look at Discord.

Today I’m happy to share a long-overdue new product announcement, as well as a firmware update for the BMOW Floppy Emu disk emulator.

The new product is an updated Macintosh ROM SIMM, the Mac ROM-inator II Carbon, which has replaced the ROM-inator II Atom. The Carbon has already been in the BMOW store for several months, but I never got around to formally announcing it until today. Like all versions of the ROM-inator II, the Carbon offers a great upgrade for the the Macintosh SE/30, IIx, IIcx, IIci, IIfx, and IIsi, offering a bootable ROM disk, 32-bit cleanliness, HD20 hard disk support, and more. The Carbon has twice as much memory (4 MB) as the previous ROM-inator model, which enables the storage of a substantially larger compressed ROM disk. The Carbon’s ROM disk contains a full version of System 7.1 along with a suite of recovery/diagnostic utilities that have proven useful. Compared to the Atom, the Carbon has a larger selection of utilities and games, and the System folder is more amply populated.

Version 250225A of the Floppy Emu firmware addresses a bug that affected some WOZ disk images for Apple II computers, causing them to fail to load correctly, and making it difficult or impossible to format WOZ images. I only became aware of this bug a few days ago, but determined that it’s been present since November 2022! I am scratching my head over how it could have been broken for so long without me or anyone else noticing. Probably we all chalked up any WOZ problems we encountered to other issues, and didn’t notice that disks that worked in 2021 and early 2022 firmware versions did not work under later firmware versions. If you use WOZ disk images frequently with your Floppy Emu and Apple II, you’ll definitely want to get this update. The Macintosh/Lisa version of the firmware was not affected and has not changed. Apologies for letting this issue go undetected for so long!

“The Trump administration’s pick for FBI deputy director is Dan Bongino, a former U.S. Secret Service agent-turned-conservative commentator whose fiery support of President Trump has earned him a massive following — and seen him banned from YouTube for promoting misinformation.” — NPR

For years, the United States government hired people for all the wrong reasons. It filtered candidates based on integrity, experience, and diversity of perspective. The new administration is replacing this approach with a better, fairer system: hiring whoever yells the loudest.

The problem with the Biden administration was that they hired based on partisan and arbitrary criteria like “has experience doing this type of work” and “hasn’t been credibly accused of sexual assault.” That’s how we ended up with a deep state full of leftist cronies hell-bent on pursuing Marxist priorities like stopping companies from dumping toxic sludge into the water supply, preventing planes from crashing in midair, and making sure people don’t get murdered by domestic terrorists.

Thankfully, Donald Trump, with the help of Elon Musk, has come up with a much better system: having the candidate yell into a device that Elon calls the Shout-Yell Calculator of Patriotism, Heterosexuality, and Nationalistic Tendencies. Or SYCOPHANT.

Using the SYCOPHANT is easy. When the candidate comes in for the interview, the interviewer simply has them scream into the SYCOPHANT at the top of their lungs about the topic of their choosing. In addition to assigning a score based on decibel level, the machine awards points for things like:

• Making an argument that immigrants were responsible for famous unsolved crimes like the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist.
• Espousing promising new conspiracy theories, like the FBI replacing their agents with artificially intelligent humanoid robots in the late nineties.
• Using the word “crooked” followed by the name of any Democratic politician
• Giving specific and detailed compliments about either Donald Trump’s or Elon Musk’s physical appearance
• Number of racial slurs used per minute (RSPMs)
• Voicing support for Christian values. But not hippie Christian values like kindness, forgiveness, and charity. Real Christian values like “Now is the perfect time to start a holy war”
• Pitching any product that could make the Trump family a quick buck, including but not limited to MAGA meme coins, Trump-branded M4 assault rifles, or light therapy wands that increase men’s testosterone levels by shining infrared beams at their nuggets

Bonus points are awarded if the candidate has previously made similar remarks on Fox News, OAN, YouTube, or their podcast.

Unlike Joe Biden’s DEI hiring, the SYCOPHANT’s scoring system is fair. While DEI takes things like race and ethnicity into account, the SYCOPHANT is totally race-neutral. Just because the SYCOPHANT awards points for being racist doesn’t mean it gives preference to candidates of a particular race. It’s totally possible to be racist against your own ethnic group. Just ask Marco Rubio.

So if Trump’s government ends up being made up almost entirely of vein-popping-angry middle-aged white guys and a few extra-huffy white women, it’s just because they were best suited for the job.

And don’t worry, when food is no longer safe to eat, children are regularly dying from nineteenth-century diseases, and you can’t get disaster relief for your hurricane- and fire-ravaged home until you bribe the right guy at FEMA, we’ll still find a way to blame it all on minorities.

The state lawsuit comes as more women athletes are being physically scrutinized to determine if they are transgender.

Conservative state officials have previously accused the residential community north of Houston of being a safe haven for people in the country without legal status. It was not immediately clear Tuesday whether the reported number of arrests were made this week or as part of ongoing enforcement initiatives.

Who is this winsome little bug? She seems very nice. Why have we gone backwards in time? Maybe it’s just fun to look back, sometimes. To remember how things used to be.

The post Mutti and Vatti appeared first on Bad Machinery.