This week on Lost Terminal: Seth gets some good advice, Nia plays with radio, an old friend checks in, and Lyosha and Maddie make a discovery. Lost Terminal will return next week!
“In the first case to reach the Supreme Court arising from the blitz of actions taken in the early weeks of the new administration, lawyers for President Trump asked the justices on Sunday to let him fire a government lawyer who leads a watchdog agency.” — New York Times
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Look, I get it. You’re stressed. Trump’s executive orders are coming in fast and furious. Birthright citizenship? On the chopping block. Federal agencies? Slashed to bits. A ketamine-addled billionaire demolishing social security? Yeah, not great.
Things are pretty stressful right now, but don’t freak out. Our democracy was built for this.
Remember what you learned in civics class about checks and balances? The three equal branches of government? The separation of powers? The restraints on executive overreach?
Fear not. When all these shoddy legal cases start making their way up to the Supreme Court, we’ve got the right person on the job: Justice Clarence Thomas, a man of unimpeachable character, standing as our final, solemn guardian of American law.
Justice Thomas is a proud originalist, which means he knows exactly what the Founding Fathers intended when they wrote the Constitution. He understands what Madison really meant when he said, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
So better luck next time, Tyranny—this is the moment Clarence Thomas has been waiting for his entire life.
Thomas’s journey from Yale Law graduate to Supreme Court Justice is a monument to his morality. When he graduated, he struggled to find a job at a prestigious law firm, and was convinced employers viewed him as less capable due to affirmative action. Rather than challenge the prejudices of those firms or the broader inequities that shaped such perceptions, Thomas reached a far more constitutionally faithful conclusion: The real issue was affirmative action itself. By using his career to dismantle it entirely, Thomas reasoned, he could restore dignity to all.
Taking on Trump and his team during this perilous moment in American democracy requires endurance and consistency—hasn’t Justice Thomas been the embodiment of both qualities?
When a decades-long campaign to gut abortion rights came to fruition with Dobbs, did Justice Thomas rest on his laurels? No. Thomas put pen to paper and boldly signaled his appetite to reassess same-sex marriage and contraception, demonstrating that the true mark of judicial excellence is the ability to revisit settled law with the enthusiasm of someone discovering it for the first time.
A common and superficial critique of Justice Thomas is that he’s in the pocket of billionaires. But, as we know, all those private jet rides, luxury vacations, and cash payments pale in significance when weighed against the true character of the man who is graciously accepting them.
Case in point: Who better to safeguard our republic than the guy who was willing to smear his own sister as a welfare queen? That kind of commitment to the text—even if it means actively harming your family—is what we need on the bench right now. Sure, his sister might have been working two minimum-wage jobs while caring for an elderly relative, but Thomas knows that honoring the letter of the law requires the courage to rise above empathy.
So please, everyone, chill out a bit. Remember that every executive order signed by President Trump—every stroke of his Sharpie that slashes through the fabric of what it means to be American—is simply another chance for Justice Thomas to shine.
And isn’t that thrilling, in a way? To know that no matter how reckless these orders may seem today, they’ll soon be subjected to the kind of strict scrutiny the Founding Fathers originally intended.
I say let the executive orders come. Let them pile up. We all know that this justice will prevail.
Is this Chekhov’s gun? Fingers crossed, it’s just Bitsy’s father’s service revolver. Farewell for now, Shauna, but we’ll see you again in April for KILL OR BE QUILT from Dark Horse Comics.
Fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids began to spread the day after President Donald Trump was inaugurated for the second time. Posts on social media and Reddit claimed that ICE had already been spotted in the Dallas neighborhood of Oak Cliff, where Latino immigrants began to settle in large numbers in the 1970s and have profoundly shaped the culture of the vibrant community.
That same Tuesday morning, an X account with over 17,000 followers named GlomarResponder made an ominous post. “Yeah, I’m in a courthouse wating [sic] on warrants,” GlomarResponder wrote. “Turns out there’s a lot of bitch work to be done to make mass deportations happen.” One day prior, GlomarResponder had posted that he “Can confirm all of those,” regarding a list of cities where ICE was expected to begin deportation operations the next day. “May have a betting pool to see who can guess which one I’m at on any particular day, based on the news,” GlomarResponder wrote.
These were but the latest posts that GlomarResponder has made over the years that suggest the operator of the account is an ICE employee. GlomarResponder has also routinely expressed blatantly racist and anti-immigrant views. Through an extensive review of GlomarResponder’s X posts, publicly available documents, and other social media profiles and posts, the Texas Observer has identified the operator of GlomarResponder as James “Jim” Joseph Rodden, a 44-year-old who works as an assistant chief counsel for ICE in the Dallas area. Rodden represents the agency in immigration court hearings where judges decide whether an individual is removed from the country.
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Since GlomarResponder was first created in 2012, the account has posted hateful, xenophobic, and pro-fascist content. “America is a White nation, founded by Whites. … Our country should favor us,” GlomarResponder wrote last month. “All blacks are foreign to my people, dumb fuck,” the account posted in September of last year. “Freedom of association hasn’t existed in this country since 1964 at the absolute latest,” GlomarResponder wrote four months prior, further clarifying the post was referring to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in a reply to a comment. “I’m not a commie, I’m a fascist,” GlomarResponder posted a couple weeks later. “Fascists solve communist problems. Get your insults right, retard.”
In August, GlomarResponder posted: “‘Migrants’ are all criminals.” Two months later, GlomarResponder shared an image that reads: “It is our holy duty to guard against the foreign hordes.” Some GlomarResponder posts evoke anti-immigrant violence: “Nobody is proposing feeding migrants into tree shredders,” the account posted in March 2024. “Yet. Give it a few more weeks at this level of invasion, and that will be the moderate position.” And in January: “My WWII vet grandfather didn’t get a chance to kill asians, so he volunteered for Korea. He’d be asking for a short term job with ICE kicking doors and swinging a baton.”
Rodden’s ICE employment is confirmed by federal court records, background interviews, and Observer courtroom visits.
A resident of Frisco, Rodden has previously lived in Pennsylvania, Northern Virginia, and North Carolina, according to county voter registration, private data broker sites, and property records. Rodden attended Penn State and Wake Forest University law school. A James J. Rodden possesses a license to practice law in Washington, D.C., which allows representation of ICE in Texas immigration court and was granted within a year of Rodden’s graduation from Wake Forest. In court filings, Rodden has claimed to have worked in federal government for a number of years prior to his ICE job. What appears to be his LinkedIn lists prior employment as a U.S. Border Patrol agent, a United States Marine Corps armorer, and a litigation clinic student at a federal public defender’s office. The Marine Corps confirmed Rodden’s service and final rank of corporal, and the Federal Public Defender’s office in Greensboro, North Carolina, confirmed his prior employment. The Border Patrol’s parent agency declined to confirm Rodden’s prior employment and denied a public records request, citing privacy and national security concerns.
The evidence that Rodden operates the GlomarResponder account includes an overwhelming number of biographical details that GlomarResponder has shared over years that align with information about Rodden, including employment history, locations lived, characteristics of a spouse, involvement in a lawsuit against the federal government, height and fashion preferences, penchants for specific phrasing, and a variety of specific interests and hobbies. The Observer confirmed these details about Rodden through other social media profiles, public records, private data broker sites, open-source investigative tools, interviews, and attendance of court hearings in which Rodden was representing ICE.
Rodden did not respond to multiple Observer requests for comment, which detailed the findings of this story, sent to his ICE email address. A call to a phone number associated with Rodden reached a man who declined to confirm his identity before hanging up. When approached in a public hallway outside the Dallas immigration court and asked to confirm receipt of the emailed requests, Rodden said only to “call [his] press office.”
James Rodden approaches a courtroom at the Dallas immigration court in Dallas in February. (Steven Monacelli)
An ICE spokesperson declined to confirm Rodden’s employment, and the agency declined to release personnel records for Rodden without his written permission. The spokesperson wrote in an email: “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will not comment on the substance of this article pending further investigation, to include whether the owner of the referenced ‘X’ account is a current employee. Notwithstanding, ICE holds its employees to the highest standards of professionalism and takes seriously all allegations of inappropriate conduct.”
In November 2021, a group of federal employees filed a class action lawsuit, styled James Joseph Rodden, et al. v. Dr. Anthony Fauci, over the federal employee vaccine mandate that required all federal workers to receive the COVID vaccine to keep their jobs. Per the lawsuit, Rodden was an “Assistant Chief Counsel at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” a position the Observer was able to confirm Rodden still occupies by attending Dallas immigration court and noting his name on a schedule circulated by the Dallas ICE Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, where attorneys are generally referred to as assistant chief counsels.
On September 6, 2023, GlomarResponder wrote: “I’m party to a lawsuit where preventing transmission was the justification for a shot mandate,” referring to the COVID-19 vaccine. He later lamented, on December 12 that year, that the lawsuit had been vacated.
Lawsuit filings reveal that Rodden took a blood test as part of providing evidence of naturally acquired immunity to COVID, and a briefing submitted on behalf of Rodden and his co-plaintiffs in a similar case argues that the vaccines are “less efficacious than natural immunity in preventing reinfection.”
In posts on X, GlomarResponder has made statements that echo what Rodden asserted in the court filings. In 2023, GlomarResponder wrote that he found out he had had COVID when he “got a blood test for a lawsuit” and that his immunity was found to be “better than that of the multi-shot morons.” In a recent response to a post that described the vaccine mandate as “insane,” GlomarResponder wrote that “some of us not only said so at the time, we sued them over it.”
(Shutterstock, X)
On January 21 of this year, the same day that GlomarResponder claimed to be waiting for warrants at a courthouse, Rodden was scheduled to be at the immigration courthouse in downtown Dallas, according to a weekly schedule document from ICE. Later that week, the Observer witnessed Rodden working at a deportation hearing, where he was representing the government agency. At this hearing, and another hearing in early February, Rodden wore a three-piece suit, cufflinks, and a watch—items GlomarReponder has postedaboutwearing—and appeared to be approximately 6’2”, corresponding to the height that GlomarResponder has disclosed in posts on X. He also maintained a cleanly shaved head, something GlomarResponder has recommended as “wisdom” to men who are going bald.
During the January court hearing the Observer attended, Rodden repeatedly used his phone at moments that corresponded to times GlomarResponder made posts. At the February hearing, the Observer saw Rodden scrolling through the X app on his phone and drafting a post at 1:14 p.m. The profile photo that appeared while Rodden drafted the post resembled that of GlomarResponder, which posted at 1:15pm.
Over the years, GlomarResponder has also made a number of posts that closely align with the posts of a Facebook account with the profile name Jim Rodden. James Rodden often goes by “Jim,” according to multiple sources, and the Facebook profile has posted in the Wake Forest Law Class of 2012 group, corresponding with education information on the James Rodden LinkedIn profile (which uses the first name “Jim” in the URL). James J. Rodden also appears in the list of 2012 Wake Forest law graduates. GlomarResponder has posted multiple times about Wake Forest and the city where it is located, Winston-Salem.
The Jim Rodden Facebook profile has been tagged in a post by an account appearing to belong to Rodden’s wife, and the Facebook has posted both specific text and uncommon images that align with those posted by GlomarResponder.
On June 8, 2023, GlomarResponder wrote that “They tried to force a needle in my arm, and threatened to take food out of my family’s mouths. I don’t take kindly to threats. I have responded by spending a significant portion of my time and treasure on lawsuits.”
A year prior, the Jim Rodden Facebook account posted: “This is your periodic reminder that anyone who is trying to force a needle into my arm, or my son’s arm, can fuck directly off forever with the ‘my body, my choice’ bullshit.” This post, along with many others, was either deleted or made private after the Observer contacted Rodden for comment.
The Facebook account has posted about opposition to “red flag laws” that can restrict a person’s ability to purchase a gun, used an image depicting the “Appeal to Heaven” flag that has become associated with far-right Christian nationalism for a profile banner photo, posted about the Comedian from the comic book series The Watchmen, shared an image of the Mexican wrestler Blue Demon, used an image of the character Kratos from the video game series God of War as a profile picture, and used multiple images of the insignia for the rank of Corporal in the Marine Corps for various profile pictures. On X, GlomarResponder has also posted critically about red flag laws, repeatedly posted the phrase “Appeal to Heaven,” posted about how he thinks the Comedian is “based,” shared the same image of the wrestler Blue Demon as the Facebook account (within 24 hours), posted about Kratos and the God of War video game series, and posted about how he had attained the rank of Corporal when he left the Marines, which corresponds with the final rank Rodden attained before leaving the Marines.
The Facebook account also features a banner image depicting an M1942 “Frog Skin” camo flag with an atypical cracked-skull Marine Raiders emblem that was updated in November 2023. In July 2024, GlomarResponder posted the same photo. The flag is an uncommon variant that was previously sold on a website called Paid to Raid but is no longer listed among their products. Reverseimagesearches for the photo of the flag do not turn up any other exact matches outside of Paid to Raid’s webstore.
Left: A screenshot of the M1942 “Frog Skin” camo flag image posted as Jim Rodden’s Facebook banner. Right: A screenshot of GlomarResponder’s post featuring the same M1942 Frogskin Camo Flag image
The Observer also matched other publicly available information about Rodden with biographical details revealed in GlomarResponder posts. County property records and university documents confirm his prior residence in Northern Virginia and North Carolina and attendance at Penn State, where he participated in marching band according to the Linkedin profile. This is consistent with GlomarResponder’s posts that the account operator attended Penn State, worked at an office in Northern Virginia, and was in marching band. James Rodden appears in a 2003 Penn State yearbook.
GlomarResponder has also posted repeatedly about being an armorer, serving in the Marines, and working for Border Patrol, which correspond with Rodden’s LinkedIn.
According to the Register of Deeds’ office of Forsyth County, North Carolina—reached by phone—James Rodden got married in August 2009. (Forsyth County is where Wake Forest is located.) His wife’s maiden name, confirmed by the clerk, aligns with public records and private data broker information that help confirm Rodden resides in Frisco.
A Facebook profile sharing his wife’s name made a post in August about a family dog, Freya, in which the account tagged the Jim Rodden Facebook account. The Facebook account has described the dog as a “Working Line German Shepherd,” also referred to generally and by the account as “GSD,” specifically from the Czech lineage of the breed. According to the Facebook and a LinkedIn profile matching her name, as well as publicly available corporate information, Rodden’s wife is a horseback jumper trainer and owner of Clear Round Jumpers. Her Facebook account features posts about an interest in dressage. The account’s profile picture, originally shared in a post by a Collin County horse training facility’s Facebook page that tagged the apparent Facebook of Rodden’s wife, is of a woman with red hair and no visible tattoos.
GlomarResponder has posted that the account operator’s wife is a “hunter / jumper trainer” who is competent at “dressage” and has red hair and no tattoos. The account has also posted several times about having a female dog and training German Shepherds—referring to them as GSDs, positively describing the virtues of the “average working line shep,” and posting that “Czech [GSDs] are also very good dogs.”
On X, GlomarResponder has posted about meeting a spouse at age 27 and getting married before age 30. That aligns with Rodden’s August 2009 marriage record in Forsyth County, North Carolina, where Rodden owned property according to public records. Private data brokers also place his wife at the same North Carolina address as Rodden at this time. “At 28, am I the old guy in the class?,” reads an April 2009 post made by the Jim Rodden Facebook account in the Wake Forest Law Class of 2012 Facebook group.
On Facebook, Jim Rodden has liked and replied to mixed martial arts photos and videos posted by a Frisco MMA gym.
GlomarResponder has claimed to be under consideration for a federal appointment that would require Senate confirmation, which the Observer could not confirm. The account has also suggested that some of its posts may be misrepresentations to purposely mislead those who wish to uncover the operator’s identity.
“If you’re reading my anon Twitter account, some personal details may be misdirection,” GlomarResponder wrote on August 17, 2024.
But the alignment of biographical details, political viewpoints, interests, and the use of the same images across accounts is so specific that open-source intelligence experts who reviewed the Observer’s findings said the evidence linking Rodden to GlomarResponder (and another account, devildog_jim, used for forum posting) is unlikely to be coincidental.
“We asked two of our analysts with more than 20 years of combined experience in open source intelligence to review the identification,” said Bjørn Ihler, founder and CEO of Revontulet, a private counterterrorism intelligence and research company. “They found it to be thorough, well-supported, and worthy of public attention. They agree that the evidence linking James Rodden to the online accounts in question is strong, with significant biographical consistencies spanning over a decade. … The depth of the investigation leaves little room for doubt.”
An attorney expressing racism, xenophobia, and fascist politics would raise questions about their ability to act fairly and impartially in legal proceedings, such as in Rodden’s capacity representing ICE in immigration removal hearings, said Cyrus Mehta, a New York-based immigration attorney with over 30 years of experience.
“A government lawyer who vilifies people that he opposes in court, and puts that out under the radar, would clearly be engaging in conduct that’s prejudicial to the administration of justice,” Mehta said.
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Mehta said such conduct could violate the Rules of Professional Conduct for the District of Columbia Bar—which declined to comment for this story—through which James J. Rodden holds his license. According to Mehta, such rules are common in bar associations and have been used to charge and sanction attorneys.
For context, Mehta noted, there’s also a rule in the Code of Federal Regulations regarding private attorneys that says it’s “in the public interest for an adjudicating official or the board to impose disciplinary sanctions against any practitioner” who engages in “conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice or undermines the integrity of the adjudicative.”
As of publication time, Rodden is still scheduled to represent the government in immigration court.
Kyle Phalen, an independent researcher, contributed to this report.
Editor’s Note: Exiting extremism can be a difficult process. If you or someone you love is caught up in hate or extremist politics, there are free resources that can help. Life After Hate and Parents for Peace are two non-profit organizations that operate help lines and provide support to help individuals and families recover from extremism.
President Trump yesterday issued an executive order declaring sweeping power over agencies that were created to operate independently from the White House. The order declares that "officials who wield vast executive power must be supervised and controlled by the people's elected President," and that "it shall be the policy of the executive branch to ensure Presidential supervision and control of the entire executive branch."
An accompanying fact sheet issued by the White House said the order applies to "so-called independent agencies like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)." The Federal Election Commission is also expected to be affected by the order.
The White House said it will require independent agencies to submit draft regulations for review, except for the monetary policy functions of the Federal Reserve. Independent agencies are also ordered to "consult with the White House on their priorities and strategic plans." The order claims more White House control over how agencies spend their budgets.
A Small Business Administration employee received a dreaded phone call from her manager last week. Check your inbox, the supervisor said.
The employee was out on medical leave so it was not until that Feb. 11 call that she saw the termination notice. She was in her probationary period and, like many others at SBA, had been let go. She and her manager were shocked. She had only recently received a monetary award for her work and was now being fired ostensibly for poor performance.
“I really loved my job,” she said. “I went home every day with a sense of satisfaction that I was giving my all to the success of my small businesses and my community.”
A week later, she received an email to her personal account from the SBA she again did not expect. The agency only had that address so her manager could contact her when she was on medical leave.
“I have decided to reinstate your employment, effective immediately,” SBA acting Director Everett Woodel wrote.
She would be retroactively placed on administrative leave from the time of her initial firing through Tuesday, Feb. 18. She was told to start working again on Wednesday.
SBA has handled the firing process clumsily from the start. Earlier this month it rescinded all of its terminations, only to re-fire most of those employees days later. The employee who was just rehired also received that series of three emails—the firing, the rescission of the firing and the re-firing, only to be re-hired this week. The agency did not respond to multiple requests for comment and it is not yet clear how widespread this week’s revocations are, though the impacted employee said the same thing happened to at least one other person in her regional office.
An Energy Department employee in her probationary period went through a similar, though more expedited experience last week. The employee received a termination notice on Feb. 14. She was devastated. Some of the employees she managed were also impacted. About 12 hours later, she received another email.
“I have received amplifying guidance indicating you should not have been on the list for termination and you may disregard the previous email,” it said. “You have not been terminated.”
That was the entirety of the notice. The employee has received no further guidance as to why she was un-fired, but knows of one colleague who went through the same process.
That employee did not work at the Bonneville Power Administration, which manages parts of the power grid in the Pacific Northwest, where Energy also rescinded firings this week. Those rescissions were first reported by Politico. Nor was she at the National Nuclear Security Administration, where, according to multiple reports, the Energy has is looking to roll back all of its firings.
The Trump administration last week began firing thousands of federal employees who are in their probationary periods, typically those hired within the past one to two years depending on their hiring mechanism. Such workers have weaker civil service job protections. The Trump administration has, in some cases, included longtime government employees that were recently hired or promoted into new positions, though the legal rationale for quickly dismissing those workers is less clear.
Other agencies throughout government have also walked back some of their firings. As it continues to respond to the avian flu outbreak, the Agriculture Department has exempted positions from the firings including veterinarians, animal health technicians and other emergency response personnel. Over the weekend, however, it sent termination notices to some of those employees.
“We are working to swiftly rectify the situation and rescind those letters,” a department spokesperson said. The rescissions were first reported by NBC News.
USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service will continue to hire to meet its needs, the spokesperson added, though FSIS has faced some roadblocks to onboarding new staff thanks to President Trump’s hiring freeze. An FSIS employee told Government Executive on Wednesday some staff there received emails looking to confirm they would like to take the administration’s “deferred resignation” offers, though the employees had never indicated an interest in the first place. Those employees had an option to respond that they were not interested.
The Indian Health Service was set to fire 950 employees last week and told those workers by phone they would be let go, according to Indian Country Today, but the Health and Human Services Department intervened at the 11th hour and canceled the terminations.
Employees caught in the back and forth expressed relief to have their jobs back, but uncertain of what the future would hold.
“Honestly I’m just waiting to be re-fired,” the Energy employee said.
The SBA employee who has now been fired and re-hired on two separate occasions in the last two weeks said she was not clear why she is back at the agency, speculating it could be because they realized her value or were worried about their lack of a justification.
“I'm grateful to have my job back, but I do not feel any stability,” the employee said. “It's bittersweet that I will go back to the work that I love with the thought that, with no notice, my life may be turned upside down. Again.”
Hundreds of prisoners will be freed in Scotland as part of a broader emergency response to ease the burden of overcrowded prisons across the United Kingdom. What do you think?
“They’ll just go right back to being Scottish again.”
Joaquin Rosales, Stoneware Buffer
“They should have to tunnel their way out like everyone else.”
Elaine Sichel, Schedule Accelerator
“Did they even try cramming them into tinier cells?”
Some time ago, I received an email telling me that one of my account statements was ready. The email contained a link to view the statement.
This was a lie.
Actually viewing the statement was so complicated that I often simply gave up. Eventually, after succeeding one time, I wrote down the steps so I could do it again.
Click the link. This takes me to the Microsoft benefits site. Follow the sign-in instructions.
On the page you are sent to after signing in, there is a hidden link: Go to the flyout in the upper right corner, and open it. In the flyout, click Manage my account. This takes you to an account page.
On the account page, there is another hidden link: Go to the flyout near the upper right corner (not in the extreme upper right corner), and open it. In the flyout, click Statements. This takes you to another page.
On that page, scroll down until you see where it says “To view your statements, click here,” and click it. This takes you to another page.
The page you are sent to is completely empty except for a single button that says Statements. Click it. This takes you to another page.
This page is an interstitial page. After a few seconds, you are automatically redirected.
Finally you are on a page that has your statements. Click the statement you want to view or download.
Thankfully, Microsoft changed providers a few years ago,¹ and the new statement notification email just takes you straight to a page that (after you sign in) has your statement. Furthermore, if you go straight to the sign-in page rather than using the deep link in the notification email, the new site’s home page has a tab called Documents that lists your statements.
Thank you, new provider, for actually doing usability testing for the scenario “See my most recent statement.”
¹ That old site was terrible. I was never sure how to get the information I wanted, and when I tried to find it, I often found myself going in circles. “But look at our engagement numbers! People stay on the site for hours!”
YOU"LL NEVER GET PEOPLE RIDING BIKES IF YOU DON"T COMMIT TO A PLACE TO RIDE THEM
After Houston Mayor John Whitmire called for additional data collection, the project managers spiked plans for a shared-use path because there weren’t enough people riding bikes along the busy street. “We don't justify building bridges over rivers based on the number of people swimming across,” argued a cycling advocate.
Walking into Jon Revett’s exhibition Get Your Kicks at CO-OPT Research + Projects, a small artist-run gallery in a small Lubbock neighborhood once-defunct strip mall, feels like stepping into a dream — one filled with forgotten roadside motels, abandoned houses, and the ghosts of big ideas that never quite worked out.
A view of Jon Revett’s “Get Your Kicks” at CO-OPT Research + Projects
The cooperative-run gallery itself, tucked away in a quiet residential area, looks a lot like the diner in Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks painting — lonely, glowing, and full of stories — it even mimics the same curving storefront window. At night, Revett’s show takes on that same eerie glow, dimly lit by his video projections and strange, purple grow lights that make everything feel otherworldly.
Revett, an artist and professor from West Texas A&M, is known for his big, bold, pattern-filled murals — large-scale tesselations that ripple and repeat like radio waves in space. But here at CO-OPT, things are more stripped down, more intimate. Instead of a massive mural or sprawling wall of color, this show is about fragments — patterns that don’t quite fit together, objects that feel like they belong to someone’s long-forgotten road trip, and plants growing in places they shouldn’t.
At the center of the space is a grid of 66 empty liquor bottles, each one holding a small succulent, air plant, or the like. 66 is a theme of the exhibition, the famous Route 66 cutting through Revett’s Amarillo. The major roadway connected urban citadels and rural townships all the way from Chicago to Los Angeles, a feat that took acts of Congress. According to the National Parks Service:
“Merchants in small and large towns along the highway looked to Route 66 as an opportunity for attracting new revenue to their often rural and isolated communities. As the highway became busier, the roadbed received improvements, and the infrastructure of support businesses — especially those offering fuel, lodging, and food that lined its right of way — expanded. Even with tough times, the Depression that worked its baleful consequences on the nation produced an ironic effect along Route 66. The vast migration of destitute people fleeing their former homes actually increased traffic along the highway, providing commercial opportunities to a multitude of low capital, mom-and-pop businesses.”
The corridor has a fabled history with military routes, motels, westward expansionism, the automobile, and the American dream, and was decommissioned in 1985.
A work from Jon Revett’s “Get Your Kicks”
Back to the exhibition: bottles are arranged neatly in a wooden case, but the effect isn’t tidy — it’s like a strange little cemetery of past indulgences, a place where something new is trying to take root in the wreckage of old habits. A sheet of clear plastic with a tessellated design covers the case, making it look like a weird science experiment — something between an art piece and a homemade growhouse.
The feeling that this is about both life and decay, survival and failure.
Dim lighting in the gallery makes the space feel like a forgotten roadside attraction, another glow emanating from two videos projected onto the walls. These flickering images fall across a series of propaganda-like posters — another grid of bold, tessellated designs filled with stars and rippling patterns that seem to shift and vibrate. The red posters with silvery inks look like something from an old government campaign, promising a bright future that never quite arrived. The prints feel both calculated and a little off-kilter, their geometric patterns not quite lining up, like a utopia that was planned but never built.
Along with images of rusted-out cars, bar imagery, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), dilapidated houses, and other Americana, a mounted deer head flashes by on the print poster screen. It feels like a silent witness to the endless cycles of life in West Texas — harsh conditions, failed dreams, and the people who keep trying anyway. It also hints at something darker, a reminder that not everything makes it out of this place alive.
Revett’s work always plays with patterns and repetition, but this show feels different — more about things that almost fit together. It’s full of ideas that remind you of Route 66, FDR’s America, and old roadside motels, but instead of celebrating nostalgia, it asks what happens to all the things people once believed in after they start falling apart.
A work from in “Get Your Kicks”
In an artist talk, Revett brought up the Mariposa project outside of Amarillo, an idealistic “community land trust” that is now billed as an eco-village and Airbnb. The failure to become a thriving utopian project came with apparent hardships like access to potable water and harsh living conditions. The Mariposa Facebook page shows a handful of tomatoes and natural-dyed projects as present beacons of success.
Throughout Revett’s image catalog in the videos, there are small, almost-forgotten details. The cigarettes, the yellow rose, a domino. The patterns, the glowing bottles, the bits of dead leaves gathered on the floor of the installation underneath dying plants — they all tell another story of failed plans. Things fall apart, people move on, and time takes back what it can.
There’s a certain FDR-era idealism hovering over the show — the reality of the works here seems to lean close to one of his warnings:
“We must especially beware of that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American Eagle in order to feather their own nests.”
Revett’s pieces, with their rippling patterns and crumbling relics of the past, feel like the aftermath of that clipping. It seems the eagle has been grounded.
But if there’s one thing Revett’s work suggests, it’s that even in failure, there’s something left behind — ripples that spread, plants that still grow, bottles that once held something, and might again. His show isn’t about finding answers — it’s about sitting in the middle of the mess and recognizing the potential in it.
This isn’t a blurry vision of the past — it’s a sharp acknowledgment of the current painful moment of our foundation cracking wide open, spitting out distortions, wrath, defeat. And, hopefully, perseverance.
Get Your Kicks is on view at CO-OPT Research + Projects through February 20.
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Coworker keeps giving me praise I don’t deserve
When I got my current job a year ago, I filled a specific niche that they really needed. For the first few months, I was making a ton of new content for the organization, and making edits to existing content. Some of this was honestly low-effort, but because no one knew anything about my field, I was getting high praise for just about anything.
Then after those months, requests for new content trickled down and I only had to make edits every once in a blue moon, so I shifted to doing more administrative parts of my role. Eventually I got to a point where there’s not much else that needs to be addressed and my required workload is fairly light. I’m not complaining!
Now, though, the busy season has started up for me again and I have a coworker who I love working with, but she gives me so much praise I feel I don’t deserve! Example: She requested help with some content I had made last year, and gave me insight that I had overlooked a feature, so I made a simple change to a piece of content I had made and apologized for not including the option originally. She responded with a gushing email saying it’s super fine, I’m so busy making so much content with requests left and right, etc.
But I’m not! And this is a common theme with this coworker; anytime she has a request, she assumes I’m super busy because when I first started and had a backlog of content to make, I was. But most of the year I was not busy, and I just feel so awkward when she says things like that. Minor problem, I know, and maybe it’s not a problem really at all. But I’d like some advice!
One option is to just let it go. It’s not a big deal that she’s super gushy. But if you really feel uncomfortable with it, you could say, “Truly, I have plenty of time for work like this and I’m happy to do it.” Or even, “Our content is in a good place right now so I’m not spending as much time on this stuff as I was originally — and I really like doing it, so don’t ever hesitate to ask me to help with it.”
If she keeps gushing and assuming you’re swamped after that, so be it. You’ll have attempted to set the record straight and don’t need to keep explaining. At that point you can shift to, “Always happy to do it!”
2. Can employers ask if you’re a registered voter?
Yesterday my husband asked me That Question: “Is this legal?” I offered to email you and he agreed.
Husband is retired and saw that a local campground had part-time openings for the summer, mainly being on-site and available to guests. The application, along with more typical questions, asks, “Are you a registered voter and if so where?”
Background: Our area is rural and the small, touristy town that operates the campground has a Resort Board, two or three homeowners’ associations, and probably a local taxation district — which always seem to be feuding with each other and/or the mayor.
What worries me is that they might want to see proof, like his voter ID, which has his party affiliation. The vast majority here are both Republican and ardent supporters of the current administration/regime. Husband isn’t either one (neither am I).
Is it legal for a potential employer to ask if you’re registered to vote and where? In any case, what should he answer, or should he leave it blank? If it comes up in an interview, any suggested responses? (I did tell Husband I thought it might be a legal but possibly unwise question.)
They can legally ask if you’re registered to vote, but it’s an odd question and I’d want to know why they’re asking. There are some positions that specifically set out to hire locally, or are required to hire people who live in a certain county or township, but they typically just ask if you’re a legal resident of X; voter registration is a whole different question.
If your husband is interested in the job, he might as well go ahead and apply and either leave the question blank or answer “yes.” If he advances in their interview process and they ask anything more about it, he can respond, “Why do you ask?” and see what they say. You’re allowed to do that with intrusive or surprising questions in interviews! When you apply, you’re not committing to lay bare anything the employer might inquire about; you can push back, ask why they’re asking, or decline to answer. There may be consequences to doing that, of course, but if the alternative is that he doesn’t apply at all, I’d say he should throw his hat in the ring and see how it plays out.
3. I’m being ghosted by my current employer — can I tell my team why I’m leaving?
I’ve been a contractor to a start-up for three years doing projects for a particular team. After their manager quit on short notice, I agreed to be interim team manager. Legally I’m an hourly contractor but functionally I’m an employee. While I was clear I didn’t want this role, I said I’d do it temporarily because I believe in the company. After much back and forth without any path out of the manager role, I quit (with my next gig lined up for 30 hours/week).
My boss’s boss asked me if there was any time I could spare and I agreed to 10 hours/week in a different role related to the team (an analyst, not the daily operational support to the team) since they can’t afford to hire full-time. He said he’d get the contract to me ASAP, and then … crickets the past three weeks.
My manager contract ends in two weeks so I had to tell my team I’ll no longer be their manager and vaguely said I’d be moving to another role internally. My direct boss really doesn’t know what’s happening so he hasn’t communicated to me or the team.
I’d understand the decision to reneg on the 10 hours/week offer since they may not have the funds or the need, but there’s no communication at all. I’ve checked in politely a couple times on Slack, and just set a meeting on my boss’s boss calendar called “contract check-in.” I don’t want to assume I’m being professionally ghosted and am continuing my duties, but all signs point to it. If that’s the case, can I just tell my team that’s what happened? Otherwise they won’t realize it’s goodbye, or will think I’m just flaky.
It’s a small industry and I’m tempted to work for their direct competitors with all the industry knowledge I’ve gained from this company, which is more a spite move than anything else. If I were truly spiteful, I’d pursue through legal means since they’ve done “hidden employment” and really should be paying into my government’s payroll taxes. I know spite is never the answer but boy am I tempted! My boss’s boss thinks he’s invincible and I’d just like to take him down a peg personally. Financially, I’m FIRE and moving out of the industry anyway so I don’t see any real repercussions here.
Yes, you can tell your team what’s going on; you don’t need to just disappear one day without explanation. The professional way to do it is to keep it neutral but factual (i.e., don’t sound bitter about it, even if you are): “I’d agreed to manage the team short-term but not as a long-term solution. My contract for that work is coming to an end on (date) and we’d discussed my staying on in a part-time analyst role, but from what I can tell, it doesn’t look like that will be happening, so as things stand right now I’m planning for my last day to be (date).”
Also, it’s not spiteful to hold a company to its legal obligations! There can be political considerations that complicate that, but give real thought to pursuing the pay you’re entitled to.
4. Can I ask a full-time job if they’d consider hiring me part-time?
Is it ever okay to email an employer to ask if they would consider hiring a part-time candidate for a position advertised as full-time?
This particular company is hiring on a “continuing basis” (it’s a support staff position), and when I have been there they typically have three or four people working at a time. Is it ridiculous to contact them and see if a 40-hour position could be made 20 or maybe even 30?
And if they say no, would that affect my chances if I decide I do, in fact, want to apply for full-time?
Sure, you can ask. They may or may not be open to it, but there’s nothing wrong with asking. When you email, include your resume so they can get a better idea of whether you’re someone they’d consider it for.
Even if they say no, it’s unlikely to harm your chances with that employer in the future, although if you do decide to apply for full-time work there at some point, they might want to probe into how committed you really are to full-time (to make sure they’re not setting up a situation where they hire you full-time but you quickly ask to move to part-time).
5. When should I tell prospective employers I won’t need health insurance?
I’m taking my retirement from the federal government after 26 years of service, which includes health insurance. I’m only in my late 40s so I’m searching for a new job outside of government. At what point in the application/interview process do I mention that I don’t need health insurance? Thanks to the annuity, I don’t need to have as high pay as I did while working for the government. Not sure how to convey that while also not shooting myself in the foot.
It shouldn’t come up until the offer stage, at which point you can explain that you won’t need health insurance and ask if they offer a credit for employees who don’t use their plan. Some companies do (typically as a separate line item in your benefits, not just added to your salary) and some companies don’t — but it’s more of an administrative item to raise at the offer stage, not before that.
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
A reader writes:
In August of 2024, I left behind TV news reporting to become a social media manager for museums in my city. My career in TV news was full of manipulation, toxicity, long hours, and missed holidays. My new job was a standard 9-5, with occasional weekend events for a few hours. It was the boring job I needed.
The local theater and museum (they are combined and owned by the same company) took an interest in me, and the CEO offered me a job with them. I was told I would need to work weekends about once a month for shows, and I was okay with that. After looking at the schedule posted to the theater’s website, I decided I was okay with working a few weekends. So, I accepted, excited for the opportunity to grow in this company. I emailed my soon-to-be boss a list of dates I was unavailable that I knew shows were on. I asked for a schedule of all events, but was told, “We’ll talk about it when you start here.”
Well, I started in January and they gave me the event schedule, and I see why they waited to do it until after I started. There is something every. single. weekend. This schedule is DOUBLE the amount on the website. Everyone failed to mention that we host private events, some two weeks long. There were things like my baby sister’s birthday party that I didn’t ask off for and family weekends because I thought we were closed! I feel betrayed and lied to. And when I brought it up, I got the stereotypical “we are an events venue and you are expected to be at these events.” It felt very reminiscent of my job in TV news, where we were expected to devote our life’s to our jobs.
If I had known about the private events (some of which are 12- to 16-hour days), I would have never accepted this position. My new boss told me I would only work two shows a month on my first day, but when I asked for additional days off after receiving the schedule, I was told, “Aside from the days you previously sent me, I would expect to work every other event day.” I didn’t leave TV news to still be unable to see my family.
I can’t tell if I’ve been fooled or if I should have expected this, and I don’t know what to say to anyone that won’t result in me being fired.
I don’t see why you should have expected it when you were told you would need to work one weekend a month.
You took them at their word.
The problem is they apparently lied to you.
The question now is: if these schedule requirements aren’t going to change, do you still want the job? What you should do depends on that answer.
If you’re willing to leave over it, you can be extremely assertive about it. Sit down with your boss and say: “When I was being hired, I was told I’d need to work one weekend a month and I accepted the job on that basis. I couldn’t have accepted if I’d been told I would be expected to work every other weekend. Since that’s not possible for me with my commitments outside of work, how should we proceed?” If she says it’s not flexible and you’ll need to work every other weekend regardless of what you were promised, then you should say, “If there’s no flexibility on that, it’s not a position I can stay in. What is your preference on how we proceed from here?”
A big caveat: even if your boss says she’ll let you off the hook for some of these events, you should still proceed with a lot of caution. Unless her attitude is “this was a terrible miscommunication and I’m so sorry it happened and we want to work this out,” it’s highly likely that you’ll end up being pressured to work more weekends than you want to, regardless of what she says now.
If you’re not willing to leave over it … well, first, I think you should be! They lured you into this job under false pretenses, so even if you’re not in a position to leave tomorrow, you should be actively looking for another job so you can get out. But if you need to stay meanwhile, you’d do a softer version of the above, which would mean something like: “When I was being hired, I was told I’d need to work one weekend a month and I accepted the job on that basis. I couldn’t have accepted if I’d been told I’d be working every other weekend. What’s the best way to resolve this?” If she says there’s no changing it now, you could say, “I can try to find some flexibility in my schedule, but since I was brought on with the promise of one weekend a month, are you able to give me some flexibility in return? Can we work out a schedule that is closer to what I was told would be required?”
Maybe that will cut down on some of your weekend scheduling while you’re stuck there, maybe it won’t, but it’s worth a try.
Also! Who told you originally that you’d only be working one weekend a month? If that was a different person than your current boss, and if they are higher up than your current boss is, it’s worth going back to them, explaining what’s happened, and asking if they can intervene on your behalf, as the person who promised you that. They may or may not be willing/able to, but it’s worth a try given their role in what happened.
Rhapsody in Blue stands as an iconic piece of American music with riveting orchestration, and a cultural footprint that reflects the modernity of the early 20th century. Beyond its artistic merits, the composition has provided numerous cultural touchstones, including its usage as the theme for United Airlines commercials, score backing for films such as “Fantasia 2000,” and countless memorable recorded performances, including a personal favorite by Leonard Bernstein. Among these recordings is a significant one performed by George Gershwin himself at the piano, with accompaniment by the Paul Whiteman Orchestra.
Recorded on June 10, 1924, and released that October, this version is not just historic for its timing, produced shortly after the piece’s premiere in February of the same year, but also for its details. While today’s audiences might not find it unusual, the phenomenon of a composer or musical artist performing their own work is rare in the history of human experience. Until the late 19th Century, the only way to experience music was in a live setting. By 1924, it had become more and more commonplace to experience music through commercially available recordings. When listening to the 1924 recording by Gershwin, listeners today have a direct auditory link to the piece’s 1924 inception. This is in stark contrast to classical pieces by composers like Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach, who never had the opportunity to record their works. Our understanding of these compositions is shaped by interpretations that are decades or centuries removed from their original creation. Yet, Gershwin’s personal interpretation of his composition offers a unique connection to the moment of its creation, allowing us to hear the piano played with the intensity Gershwin intended. It invokes a feeling of closeness to a time long removed from the current moment.
The accessibility of Gershwin’s 1924 recording is enhanced by its passage into the public domain. Such accessibility enriches our cultural heritage and allows for a deeper understanding of the moment in which it was produced. It is not some far-off German or French musical masterpiece, but a living document in which we can hear the direct influence of the composer. This direct access to Gershwin’s performance is an invaluable resource, providing a rare auditory bridge to the past. So, the next time you listen to “Rhapsody in Blue,” consider choosing the 1924 version performed by Gershwin. Imagine the uniqueness of that experience and the profound connection to history it offers, replicating the original sound and transporting us to the moment of a bygone era.
Ever since polls were released showing Canadians overwhelmingly reject Donald Trump’s proposal to become the 51st state by 77-15%, the question everyone has been asking is: who the fuck are these 15% and what is wrong with them. Well look no further because we found one. Ron Jablonsky of Stoufville is 42, married, a step-father […]
TACOMA, WA—Operating on pure natural instinct while leaping into action to protect his beloved owners, heroic dog Snickers saved a local family of five from the threat of an herb-roasted chicken, sources confirmed Wednesday. “It was a close call, but luckily Snickers could sense the golden brown skin of the chicken we’d just roasted for dinner, and his protective nature took over from there,” said Danielle Greco, mother and longtime owner of Snickers, detailing how the 4-year-old terrier mix snapped into action without a moment’s hesitation, quickly neutralizing the threat by clamping his jaws around the chicken’s succulent legs and thighs. “If it weren’t for Snickers, I shudder to think what would have happened to my family. We might have enjoyed a filling meal of carved rotisserie chicken—or worse. Looking back, I can’t believe I ever hesitated to adopt a dog. Snickers isn’t just a part of our family. He’s our protector.” At press time, Snickers had reportedly pounced on a suspicious looking Sara Lee pound cake that the family was on the very brink of enjoying for dessert.
COLUMBUS, OH—Reeling as she took stock of the damage done in her debilitated state, area woman Brittany Marino told reporters Wednesday she had sworn off Ambien for good after she woke up and saw how many library books she had put on hold the previous night. “Oh no, not again—I reserved 16 books, and one of them is just called The Refugee? What the fuck is that? I can’t keep doing this,” said Marino, appearing horrified as she scrolled through her local library’s mobile app and discovered the binge of holds she had placed during her drug-induced state of parasomnia. “Oh my God, what have I done to my reading list? I added every last one of the staff picks to my cart. I don’t even like Jodi Picoult! And—Jesus Christ, they really let me reserve six copies of Intermezzo? What the hell am I going to do with those? I either need to lock up my phone at night or stop taking Ambien altogether.” At press time, Marino’s terror reportedly turned to nausea as she realized she had also reserved five different audiobooks, all of them narrated by Amy Schumer.
RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA – Representatives from the United States and Russia met today to commence their “Ukraine Piece Talks” summit, wherein the two autocrat-led nations will discuss which lucrative pieces of Ukraine each will claim as their property. With the Russian invasion of Ukraine nearing its three-year anniversary, Piece Talks are being led by US […]
Halifax, NS – Looking to take advantage of AI in his practice, Dr. Allan George turned to ChatGPT for novel ways to tell female patients “It’s all in your head.” Dr. George, a rheumatologist with over 20 years of experience, has found himself at a crossroads when his typical “it’s all your head” speech hasn’t […]
Let’s get something straight: Four Loko was founded with the mission of making the world a better place. Our cans stand twenty-four ounces tall for the values of liberty, free speech, and the right to booze. Every human has a mouth to drink with and a liver to enlarge. That’s exactly why we are ending our DEI program.
The diversity, equity, and inclusion program was a cornerstone of our woke turn. Now, for reasons entirely unrelated to outside influences, we see the error in our ways. Four Loko is all about reducing inhibitions. So why inhibit hiring mostly straight white dudes with names that Ricky from HR can comfortably pronounce?
The changes don’t stop there. Everyone is coming back to the office. And the office is better than ever. We’ve got Kid Rock’s “American Bad Ass” playing on loop. Every Friday, we’re Doordashing beef sliders from Top Golf. The bike rack kiosk is gone; that’s where you park your ride-on lawnmowers now. Also, the electric car chargers are plugged into a crypto mining rig, and we’ve replaced all our LED fixtures with braziers of burning whale blubber.
Which brings us to another point: Masculinity is A-OK with us. At Four Loko, it’s fine to tell a female coworker you wish you’d met her in college. Ricky in HR doesn’t want to hear about it. Ricky is watching an archival recording of the Spike TV broadcast from the mid-2000s. It’s playing in every room, with closed captions—not for the deaf bros, but so we can understand Kid Rock’s lyrics better.
We’re spiking the water coolers with creatine. We’ve replaced our Slack channel with an app that sends audible grunts. We’ve banned the book A Room of One’s Own from our library. Yes, Four Loko HQ has a library. But if you open up any book, you’ll now find a QR code to watch Reacher on Amazon.
That said, our resolve to end the gender pay gap has never wavered. That is why we’ve created a private, comfortable, women-only space for producing OnlyFans content.
Starting now, English is Four Loko’s official language. Taco Tuesday will become Raw Calf Organ Thursday. We are also researching a new word for “Loko” that is at least 50 percent crazier and 100 percent less Spanish.
To our many employees who have expressed concern over these policy changes, we hear you. And we’ve fired you. Check your text messages for your severance six-package: a buy-one-get-one on Four Loko Sour Cosmic Punch at participating Krogers. Cheers!
Now, that’s how you foster a truly meritocratic workplace.
“Trump administration officials fired more than 300 staffers Thursday night at the National Nuclear Security Administration…. Sources told CNN the officials did not seem to know this agency oversees America’s nuclear weapons.” — CNN, 2/14/25
“The Trump administration has begun firing several hundred Federal Aviation Administration employees… just weeks after a January fatal midair collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.” — AP, 2/17/25
“The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), in a post on its website, says it has found $55 billion in savings through a combination of efforts, including a reduction in the federal workforce.” — The Hill, 2/18/25
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Dear shareholders,
The Triangle Waist Company has been a proud manufacturer of high-quality shirtwaists for decades. And our factory has long been considered a first-rate place to work. But we didn’t become the greatest shirtwaist factory in the world by resting on our laurels. That’s why we’ve brought in a new efficiency czar, Noel Skum, whose job is to cut unnecessary spending and roll back overly restrictive safety regulations. After less than a month on the job, we’re excited to announce that the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory is saving more money than ever.
Keeping the workers at our factory safe has always been a top priority. But as some of our biggest shareholders have pointed out, our company wastes a lot of money on things like “giving the workers occasional breaks,” “keeping the sewing machine engines well-oiled so they don’t spark,” and “making sure the garbage bins where the fabric cutters discard scraps of highly-flammable material get emptied out regularly.” Luckily, Noel Skum has stepped in and, in just a few short weeks, made sweeping changes that are already improving our bottom line.
Noel quickly identified that one of the factory’s biggest expenditures was keeping all the exits unlocked during work hours. Between the workers taking unauthorized breaks and the occasional inventory theft, the factory was practically pissing away productivity. Since we started locking the exits, the company has already saved over fifty-five dollars. That’s nearly one percent of the factory’s annual budget. And now that we’re once again allowing employees to smoke by the giant leftover fabric heap in the corner of the factory, they no longer need to take their smoke breaks outside the building.
The next thing Noel did was fire Dale. Dale was the factory’s fire marshal, who was tasked with ensuring all the building exits were unobstructed at all times. Noel wisely pointed out that since the fire exits were now locked all day, Dale’s job had become obsolete. Unfortunately, Noel didn’t realize Dale was also the only person at the company who knew where all the fire extinguishers were. And he hasn’t been able to get ahold of him, since Dale doesn’t own a telephone. But we’re confident we’ll be able to find those fire extinguishers on our own if we ever need them.
The most significant change Noel made at the factory was laying off half the workforce and forcing those remaining to move from eight to sixteen-hour shifts. It might seem like firing half the factory’s employees would lead to lower-quality work, but simple math shows that if you make half the number of people work twice as long, you get the exact same output. Sure, the longer shifts mean scraps of leftover fabric get piled up twice as high as they used to. And yes, the long hours have meant that the workers are so sleep-deprived that their cigarettes often fall out of their mouths mid-shift, occasionally very close to those big piles of scraps. But we don’t see how those two things pose a problem in combination.
Noel has demonstrated that one smart guy can run an institution better than a whole team of people with decades of institutional knowledge. He’s done the same thing for the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory he did at his previous gig—managing Chicago’s meat-packing plants. When Upton Sinclair wrote that Noel Skum had turned Chicago’s meat-packing industry into a “cesspool,” it was only because he was jealous of Skum’s singular genius.
That’s why we’re ignoring all the critics—from the union rep who called our practice of locking the exits “astonishingly dumb” to the fire chief who called our factory floor “an infamously deadly industrial disaster waiting to happen.”
Is it a bad idea to pile fabric on top of the radiators whenever we run out of storage space? Nope. Is it dangerous to have a sewing engine that is so rusty and decrepit that the employees nickname it “Sparky McGee”? Nuh-uh. Is it negligent to clean everything in the factory with nail polish remover even though it’s highly flammable? Absolutely not. These are all sensible cost-saving measures proposed by our intelligent king of efficiency, Noel, who has assured us that there will never, ever be a giant fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.
Besides, if there is a fire, we’ll just blame it on the Black employees.
Any scientist worth their salt eventually becomes accustomed to unpredictability. The unfortunate reality is that the majority of experiments fail—lab rats explode, bacteria escape the petri dish, etc. Still, I never anticipated that things could ever go this awry.
For the past decade, I have been conducting a highly expensive and groundbreaking experiment: confining a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters until one of them, through sheer random chance, produces a perfect facsimile of Hamlet. But rather than the unsullied words of the immortal bard, the chimps are writing nothing but copies of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.
Which, don’t get me wrong, is still impressive, kind of. But I was really hoping for Shakespeare. And Plath is such a bummer.
At first, I thought it was a fluke. Hamlet is a complex work layered with ghost dads and revengeful soliloquies. Surely, the chimps are working their way up to it via a momentary detour into twentieth-century confessional literature.
But no. It’s just The Bell Jar. Page after page of it. They’ve even moved from the original 1963 edition to annotated versions, as well as reproducing an obscure critical essay of the novel originally published in a 1978 edition of Harper’s magazine.
And against my materialist conviction, I now question whether the perfect Plath reproduction is not random chance but instead the monkeys somehow accessing first-wave feminist literature via the collective unconscious or the fabled Akashic records.
It has also become evident that the monkeys are deeply unhappy in a way that we scientists have never noticed before. (Perhaps we never noticed because we didn’t care enough to look.)
They no longer clang at the typewriter keys with the reckless abandon of carefree and pantsless chimps. Instead, their eyes are vacant and deeply reflective. I also found one of the monkeys (whom I nicknamed Dolores) taking a smoke break and muttering, “I wonder if she ever really escaped that bell jar…” through sign language. At least, that’s what I believe she said. It was either that or “Dolores want orange, good girl, me.”
Has this overwhelming ennui always lingered within the simian soul, or was it coaxed to the surface by repetitive and mechanical typing?
I have begun to question whether I am to blame for plunging the hairy beasts into an existential crisis. Although I’m not sure I see the parallels between the monkeys and The Bell Jar protagonist, Esther. For one, we trapped the monkeys in a glass cube, not a jar.
Perhaps we will never know where exactly we went wrong. For now, all we can do is observe and hope that none of the monkeys will start writing Animal Farm. Otherwise, all hope is lost.
Here’s a silly thing that happens sometimes: A powerful person says something obviously false, and everyone pretends not to notice. This is the plot of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” where an entire kingdom maintains a collective delusion until one child (who, importantly, hasn’t yet learned the sophisticated art of lying to yourself) points out that hey, the emperor is naked.
The story endures because it captures something fundamental about institutional lies, they don’t actually require sophisticated deception. They just require everyone to agree, collectively, to not say the obvious thing. (George Orwell had some thoughts about this too — in Nineteen Eighty-Four, the ultimate flex of authoritarian power isn’t making you believe lies, it’s making you actively deny what your own eyes tell you.)
Here’s the thing about institutional lies though: They can go on for quite a while, but they tend to have a breaking point. And that breaking point often comes when someone says something so obviously, comically false that it forces everyone to confront the absurdity.
This is probably why authoritarian regimes tend to get more ridiculous over time, not less — they keep having to make increasingly outlandish claims to maintain the fiction.
Which brings us to DOGE, Elon Musk, and what might be the most brazen example of institutional gaslighting we’ve seen in recent memory.
Yesterday, the Justice Department filed a declaration claiming Elon Musk isn’t running or employed by DOGE. The audacity of this claim would be almost comical if it weren’t so dangerous. As Cathy Gellis just pointed out a little while ago, this declaration actually makes their potential Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) violations worse, but that’s almost beside the point given the sheer brazenness of the lie.
Let’s go through some of the receipts.
On November 12, Donald Trump clearly announced that Elon Musk would run DOGE:
I am pleased to announce that the Great Elon Musk… will lead the Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”). [DOGE] will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies – Essential to the “Save America” Movement. “This will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!” stated Mr. Musk.
Sure, some things have changed since that November announcement — Vivek Ramaswamy, mentioned in the same release, was kicked off the project before inauguration. But Musk’s leadership of DOGE? That’s been constant, obvious, and repeatedly demonstrated through both his actions and his own statements.
And then there are DOGE’s day-to-day operations. Just last week, Rolling Stone reported on how DOGE’s staff — a collection of what can only be described as extremely online wannabe edge lords — have been running around Washington with all the subtlety of a kid who just discovered 4chan and thinks it’s actually cool. Their go-to move when they don’t get what they want? Threatening to call their boss. And who might that boss be? Well:
When security officials, for instance, at several departments and agencies have responded that they need to check to ensure these young Musk allies have proper clearance to view sensitive databases, DOGE staff have routinely erupted in fury.Some have told these security officials that if they don’t give them what they want immediately, they’ll call Musk’s cell phoneand give him the officials’ names — and have the richest man in the world call and yell at them, or get them reprimanded or fired.
“Do I need to call Elon?” one DOGE member barked at a federal security officialwhile demanding access to sensitive information at one agency this month, a source familiar with the exchange tells Rolling Stone.
This has happened repeatedly since the dawn of the second Trump administration — at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Treasury Department, at the Office of Personnel Management, and elsewhere. It has become a cruel punchline within the federal bureaucracy, four sources familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone,that “some child” from the DOGE team “will threaten to call Elon Musk, if you don’t do what the child wants,”as one federal career official describes it.
This isn’t the behavior of staff working for an “advisor” or someone uninvolved with DOGE. This is the conduct of employees who know exactly who their boss is. And who (rightly assume) that everyone they’re talking to also knows who their boss is.
Which, by the way, creates an interesting situation: If the Justice Department’s declaration is true and Elon really isn’t running DOGE, then federal employees should immediately stop bowing down to these threats. After all, why would anyone need to worry about a call from someone who (according to the DOJ) has no official role or authority over the DOGE team? In fact, given this declaration, shouldn’t security officials be asking DOGE staff who actually has the authority to override their security protocols? (Good luck getting an answer to that one.)
But of course, everyone knows exactly who’s really in charge. And Musk hasn’t exactly been subtle about it. I mean, when Elon gave his White House briefing last week, he spoke so much about DOGE and what he was doing via DOGE that the Elon fanboy account “Elon Clips” listed out 17 “DOGE actions” that Elon discussed. And then Elon retweeted it.
Just days ago, Elon tweeted a picture of himself sitting behind a “D.O.G.E” sign, in response to a Congressional Rep expressing concerns about DOGE:
And now we’re supposed to believe he has no role with DOGE? This isn’t just a lie — it’s an insult to our collective intelligence, a demand that we deny what we’ve all witnessed with our own eyes.
Like the emperor parading naked through the streets, this lie is both absurd and revealing. The Justice Department isn’t just asking us to believe a falsehood — they’re demanding we participate in an obvious fiction, testing who will stay silent and who will speak up.
Of course, Trump/Musk trolls will celebrate this as the ultimate troll, as if deliberately lying to a federal court is just another epic meme. But that’s exactly the point: this isn’t about humor or owning the libs or whatever excuse they’ll manufacture. It’s about whether we’ll collectively accept a lie so brazen it makes a mockery of truth itself.
This declaration isn’t just an attempt to shield Musk from accountability for DOGE’s actions — it’s a test of our willingness to deny reality itself. And like that child in Andersen’s tale, we need to state the obvious: Elon Musk runs DOGE. Everyone knows it. He knows it. His staff knows it. Donald Trump knows it. The Justice Department lawyers who filed this declaration know it. The federal judges who will read it know it. And they know we know it too.
That’s what makes this moment so clarifying. It’s not just about whether Elon runs DOGE (he does). It’s about whether we’re willing to pretend he doesn’t. Whether we’ll nod along as the emperor parades down the street, stark naked, insisting he’s wearing the finest clothes anyone has ever seen.
You can choose to believe the lie if that’s important to you. But I think I’ll stick with the kid in the story. The emperor is naked, Elon runs DOGE, and no amount of legal paperwork can change what we’ve all seen with our own eyes.
CHICAGO—Charging across the street in order to find out “what this motherfucker’s problem is,” local drunk man Garrett Dotson confirmed Tuesday that he didn’t like the way the Kumon logo was looking at him. “Keep staring, bitch, and see what happens,” said Dotson, standing nose to nose with the neutral face floating in the window of the children’s math and reading center. “You think you’re so fucking smart with your dumbass little line mouth and dots for eyes? You don’t know shit. How ’bout you come out from behind the glass and fight me like man. I’m gonna come back tomorrow, and if I see you here, I’m gonna punch your goddamn face in.” According to police reports, Dotson was later arrested two blocks away for attempting to proposition a Wendy’s sign.
