The administration of President Donald Trump is reportedly considering funding cuts and layoffs for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a federal agency that includes the National Weather Service and National Hurricane Center.

With plenty of patience and money, the industry is extending its multi-year campaign to bring legal casinos and sports betting to the state.

The death of an 11-year-old at a Greenville residential treatment center is among 16 deaths reported in the Texas foster care system in the last 15 months.

OTTAWA – With US President Trump instituting 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports, Canada has elected to use their excess metals in the most sensible way possible – by constructing a 21-storey-tall robotic weapon shaped after Canada’s hunkiest actor. Weighing approximately 50,000 metric tons, Mecha-Gosling is powered by a CANDU nuclear reactor. It […]

The post New US tariffs force Canada to use excess steel, aluminum in construction of 200 ft Mecha-Gosling appeared first on The Beaverton.

by Jake Pearson and Anjeanette Damon

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When the federal courts first blocked the Trump administration’s funding freeze, Jessyca Leach was cautiously optimistic.

For days, the pause had prevented her from accessing the money she needs for her Phoenix health clinic to serve thousands of at-risk people, most of them poor and many of them members of the LGBTQ+ community. Things had gotten so bad that she had to lay off three employees and cut the salaries of her leadership team, including her own.

So when the funding started to flow again last week, days after the court orders, Leach hoped her ordeal would be over. It wasn’t.

Her federal dollars were accompanied by an ominous note from the payment processing arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Citing “Executive Orders regarding potentially unallowable grant payments,” the agency said that it would continue “taking additional measures to process payments” and that its reviews “will result in delays and/or rejections of payments.”

“If it’s not there,” Leach said of the federal money that covers the salaries for 40% of her staff, “things get really bad, really fast.”

The notice Leach received was one of several indications over the past week that the Trump administration is not backing down in its fight to slash spending and dramatically reshape the federal government, despite multiple court orders explicitly restraining the president’s sweeping executive actions. In some cases, to get around the judges’ rulings, the administration has cited a memo that it says is not subject to the existing orders. In others, it denied funding to organizations because their granting agencies are not defendants in one of the ongoing legal challenges. In others still, it has withheld funds by citing the agencies’ own judgment, not the president’s directives.

That argument in particular has been met with skepticism by one of the federal judges hearing lawsuits over the administration’s spending freeze. U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan wrote in a Feb. 3 temporary restraining order that “the court is not persuaded that the continuing freezes are solely due to independent agency action” and that “both logic and record evidence point to the opposite conclusion.”

Nevertheless, the administration is pressing the same argument in a separate case brought by a coalition of 23 state attorneys general, who assert that the government continues to effectively pause spending in defiance of the court’s rulings. The administration denied that claim in a filing on Sunday, arguing that it is making “good-faith, diligent efforts to comply with the injunction” and that to the extent the court doesn’t agree with the government’s interpretation of the order, it should clarify “the intended scope of its temporary restraining order.”

On Monday, the judge overseeing that case, John J. McConnell Jr., did just that, ruling that the Trump administration had violated his restraining order by keeping funds frozen. He wrote that the government’s “broad categorical and sweeping freeze of federal funds” was “likely unconstitutional” and that it must immediately restore funding across the board, unless it could show the court “a specific instance where they are acting in compliance with this order but otherwise withholding funds due to specific authority.”

The Constitution gives Congress the power to tax and spend, but legal experts say the Trump administration’s actions set the stage for major challenges to that authority — and the well-established limits on the chief executive’s power to unilaterally cut off money that Congress has appropriated to groups he disagrees with. Many of the cuts are related to climate and diversity programs.

Past presidential administrations have tried to exert more control over spending, and President Richard Nixon took the fight to withhold funding to the U.S. Supreme Court. But his administration argued, unsuccessfully, on statutory grounds. No administration has found a constitutional argument compelling enough to bring to the U.S. Supreme Court, said David Super, constitutional law professor at Georgetown Law.

“The only hope the administration will have is someone will recognize the heretofore unrecognized power of the president to withhold money on their own,” Super said.

David Cole, a former legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union who also teaches at Georgetown Law, agreed, saying the president already has the means to pursue changes to federal spending, including majorities in both houses of Congress. “If he disagrees with the law that Congress has enacted, including an appropriation, he can urge Congress to amend the law,” Cole said. “Ideological disagreement with a law is not a justification for refusing to execute that law.”

Still, the Trump administration seems to be girding for potentially thousands of contract disputes. Super, however, said contract law is clear there too: both parties to the contract are bound to its terms.

“No contract I’ve seen has terms that allow a contractor to be dumped because someone doesn’t like their ideology,” Super said.

Neither the White House nor the Department of Health and Human Services responded to requests for comment for this story. But on Sunday, Vice President JD Vance telegraphed on social media the administration’s view on the series of court rulings blocking executive actions in the first three weeks of Trump’s presidency. “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” he wrote on X.

The legal battle kicked off after the Office of Management and Budget issued a two-page memo on Jan. 27 that required all agencies to identify and pause funding to programs that didn’t comply with executive orders Trump issued on his first day in office, “including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.”

That prompted two lawsuits — one filed in Washington, D.C., by a group of nonprofits and another in Rhode Island by states. Budget officials withdrew that OMB memo two days later. But the White House’s top spokesperson announced the following day that the executive orders would continue “in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented.”

Judges in both cases have temporarily blocked the administration from withholding spending based on the executive orders and the since-rescinded OMB memo.

In its notice to agencies about the rulings, though, government lawyers told leaders that they were still free to pause federal grants. In that document, the Department of Justice wrote that while federal officials couldn’t “pause, freeze, impede, block, cancel, or terminate” obligated money based on the administration’s January directives, agencies “remain free to exercise their own discretion under their ‘authorizing statutes, regulations, and terms,’ including any exercise of discretion to pause certain funding.”

It’s unclear how the administration will respond to Monday’s court order to unfreeze federal funding. But the resulting confusion caused by the various executive actions and court rulings may be the goal of the administration’s rapid-fire directives and its evolving justifications for withholding funds even after the judicial intervention, experts said. In the absence of clarity, groups that rely on federal funding could be forced to scale back or suspend operations.

“There are policy decisions that are being made by simply stirring all this up and creating uncertainty and confusion,” said Don Kettl, a professor emeritus and former dean in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland.

That’s what’s happening at the Walker Basin Conservancy, an environmental nonprofit that is relying on federal grants to restore a shrinking lake in rural Nevada.

“On the same day, I will have conversations with different people, often in the same office, who have different understandings,” said Peter Stanton, the group’s CEO. “It’s just a mess.”

The conservancy needs the money for restoration work on public lands in the basin, work that creates local jobs. But in a phone call on Wednesday with the Department of Interior agency that oversees the group’s grants, Stanton said he was told he would get no money from awards that involve funds from two laws that were passed by Congress while Joe Biden was president: the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. The Interior Department did not respond to ProPublica’s request for comment.

The confusion is influencing big spending decisions that need to be made soon, such as hiring a seasonal workforce. “There will be an inflection point where the chaos and lack of clarity itself begin to drive those decisions,” he said.

Injecting even more uncertainty into the mix, Trump can issue executive orders “faster than opponents can file suits to stop them or courts can decide the cases,” Kettl said.

On Thursday, Trump did just that, issuing another order that directs agency heads to review grants to nongovernmental organizations, many of which, the order said, “are engaged in actions that actively undermine the security, prosperity, and safety of the American people.”

Legal observers say these moves should not have come as a surprise.

Four years ago, on the last day of Trump’s first presidency, Russell Vought and Mark Paoletta, who then, as now, served as top budget officials, wrote in a 14-page letter to a congressional committee that a 1974 law asserting Congress’ powers over the purse was “an albatross around a President’s neck.” In another part of the letter, they said that the president “must be permitted to take time to consider how to best execute” spending federal dollars and that “if that requires a temporary pause in spending, it must be permitted.”

The extent and breadth of the administration’s efforts to control domestic spending appropriated by Congress is still unclear. In affidavits filed late Friday night, officials from across the country detailed the scope and disruption at the state level.

In New York, a top accounting official wrote that, as of Wednesday, the state could not access money that low-income people use to buy groceries, a block grant for maternal and child health services and nearly $6 million in education funding. In New Mexico, the official who heads services for the elderly and disabled adults said further spending pauses could force them to stop delivering hot meals.

Individual grantees who received far smaller sums were no less concerned as they struggled to get clear answers from the government.

Soon after Trump issued his executive orders, Hally Strevey emailed her grant officers at the Bureau of Reclamation about the $600,000 in grants her organization had been awarded under the Biden-era Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to restore a section of the Poudre River in Colorado to prevent future floods. “Since your agreement is already in place and awarded, you should actually be fine,” one wrote back on Jan. 23, “and this current situation will not impact your ability to draw down funding.” Four days later, she wrote again, pasting a link to a Washington Post story detailing the budget memo that called for a sweeping freeze of federal funds and asked, “Is our funding still safe given this latest news?”

An official confirmed receipt of that email but didn’t answer her question. Unable to access her money, she emailed the help desk of the federal grant payment system on Wednesday, after the court rulings, and finally learned the truth: “the grants are suspended.” The next day, her federal grant officer responded, citing another budget memo, which was not at issue in either of the cases challenging the administration’s spending pauses. Pursuant to that document, all funding related to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act “has been paused,” the official wrote.

“Even though I was anticipating it, deep down you’re like, that’ll never happen,” Strevey said. “And then it did.”

The Bureau of Reclamation did not respond to a request for comment.

Jillian Blanchard, vice president of climate change and environmental justice at Lawyers for Good Government, said that by freezing the grants, the Trump administration had broken a binding contract. “It is illegal to pause legally obligated funds for policy reasons without congressional approval, which is what is happening,” she said.

The administration has not always stated policy reasons though. Instead, in some cases, it has blamed the grinding machinery of government bureaucracy.

On Thursday, for example, a Department of Justice lawyer denied the administration was not abiding by the court’s rulings in one of the two cases challenging the government’s spending freezes, this one brought by a coalition of state attorneys general. He told an attorney representing Oregon that the Environmental Protection Agency was “working through the process of unsuspending grants, which is taking some time given the nature of the process.”

In another email, the same official wrote to a lawyer for New York that the delays in releasing funds to the state were not examples of the administration’s obstinance but were instead “very likely related to” the federal Payment Management System’s “ongoing process of working through the unusually large number of payment requests they received.”

In a filing, the lawyer explained the cause of the “operational delay,” writing that in the four days after OMB issued the spending freeze memo that kicked off the litigation, so many grantees tried to draw down funds — in many cases for their full grant balance — that the payment system automatically flagged 7,000 of them as unusual, prompting further review. As of Sunday, the lawyer wrote, the backlog was fewer than 600 requests.

ProPublica is reporting on the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape the federal government. If you’re a federal worker or the recipient of federal funding and you want to send us a tip, please contact us. Jake Pearson can be reached by phone or on Signal at 917-512-0276 or by email at jake.pearson@propublica.org. Anjeanette Damon can be reached on Signal at 775-303-8857 or by email anjeanette.damon@propublica.org.

Sharon Lerner, Topher Sanders and Joel Jacobs contributed reporting.

You can use the Internet Archive to access historical versions, but GovWayback makes it even more straightforward:

GovWayback is a simple tool to quickly access archived versions of government websites from before January 20, 2025 – just add “wayback.com” after “.gov” in any government URL. GovWayback automatically redirects you to that page’s archived version from the Internet Archive.

For example, you can enter cdc.govwayback.com, and it’ll take you the archived version of cdc.gov.

Tags: archive, government, Internet Archive

Before the election, Elon Musk declared:

“I think that the strong bias with respect to government information should be to make it available to the public. Let’s be as transparent as possible. Fully transparent.”

When one of his fanboys tweeted that quote, Elon responded by making an even bigger claim, saying: “There should be no need for FOIA requests. All government data should be default public for maximum transparency.”

As big believers (and users) of the FOIA system, that actually sounded good to us, and I would have supported any actual effort to make more government information and documents public by default.

Right after the inauguration, Lauren Harper at the Freedom of the Press Foundation noted that this was an opportunity for Elon to put “his documents where his mouth is, and make DOGE’s records public.” But, she noted, the early indications didn’t look good, including the fact that one of their first orders of business was to shut down the OMB FOIA portal. It’s still down as I type this.

Of course, if Musk was living up to his words that we wouldn’t even need FOIA because he’d just make everything public, well, that would be one explanation.

But that’s not what is actually happening. Just as when he took over Twitter, we’re learning that Musk’s promises and Musk’s reality are wholly different things. When he promises to make things better for “the people,” he always means “make things better for Elon.”

As you can see, he said those things two days before Elon Musk was elected alongside Donald Trump to (apparently) rip out every bit of accountability from the government of the United States of America. Now that he has near total control over the systems that make the US work, he apparently wants them to be pretty damn secret.

We first heard about this last week when the always excellent 404 Media reported that the DOGE boys were told to stop using Slack, because someone realized the conversations were accessible by FOIA.

Employees working for the agency now known as DOGE have been ordered to stop using Slack while government lawyers attempt to transition the agency to one that is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, 404 Media has learned.

“Good morning, everyone! As a reminder, please refrain from using Slack at the moment while our various general counsels figure out the best way to handle the records migration to our new EOP [Executive Office of the President] component,” a message seen by 404 Media reads. “Will update as soon as we have more information!”

Sounds like someone’s got something to hide, huh?

Given that not one, not two, but three of the DOGE boys have been outed as having terrible fucking judgment (either blatantly racist tweets or being involved with a fucked up cybercrime group built around Discord and Telegram chat channels) you have to imagine that some shit is going on in those Slack chats.

And thus, it was announced late last week that DOGE has been reorganized outside of OMB (subject to FOIA) and now under the Executive Office of the President, which is subject to the Presidential Records Act instead, allowing such records to be hidden for at least a decade.

The White House has designated Mr. Musk’s office, United States DOGE Service, as an entity insulated from public records requests or most judicial intervention until at least 2034, by declaring the documents it produces and receives presidential records.

And that, of course, is only if the Trump admin abides by the PRA, something he was famous for ignoring in his first administration, including when he took classified documents with him to Mar-A-Lago when he left office.

So, again, what is Elon hiding? After all, when he said everything should be public, he said the only exceptions should be things like “how to make a nuclear bomb.”

Seems like an admission that he’s doing some crazy shit.

Which is actually a problem if he’s claiming to be protected by the Presidential Records Act. After all, the reason there is secrecy like that under the PRA is because it’s supposed to cover advice to the President. The fear was if that advice would become public too quickly, advisors wouldn’t be able to be honest with the President. But the reason most of the rest of the executive branch is subject to FOIA is because they’re actually doing stuff, not just advising. And that information is required, under law, to be public.

I recognize, again, that the Trump administration sees laws only as things they get to use to punish those they hate, rather than anything that binds them, but I’m guessing that lawsuits are about to be filed (if they haven’t been already) challenging this designation.

So, maybe we’ll actually find out what kinds of messages Elon is trading with the guy who calls himself “Big Balls” and the guy who claimed he “was racist before it was cool.”

But only after a court gets involved. So much for “maximum transparency.”

Musk’s version of government efficiency appears to mean efficiently hiding what he and his crew are doing inside our government.

An old MSDN article from 1995 talks about how Explorer chooses the icon to use for an executable.

Windows NT simply chooses the first resource listed in the application’s RC script. On the other hand, Windows 95’s algorithm is to choose the alphabetically first named group icon if one exists. If one such group resource does not exist, Windows chooses the icon with the numerically lowest identifier.

The first thing I want to do is make a correction. The description of the Windows NT algorithm is incorrect. Both Windows NT and Windows 95 use the same algorithm:

• Choose the alphabetically first named group icon, if available.
• Else, choose the group icon with the numerically lowest identifier.

The reason for this is that the Portable Executable file format requires resources to be listed in the resource dictionary with named resources first (sorted alphabetically), followed by numbered resources (sorted numerically). Explorer calls Enum­Resource­Names and grabs the first one, and since the icon groups are enumerated in the order they appear in the resource dictionary, the effect is the one described above.

If you want to replicate this algorithm, it’s not hard.

HICON FindFirstIcon(HMODULE hmod)
{
    HICON icon = nullptr;
    EnumResourceNamesW(hmod, RT_GROUP_ICON,
        [](HMODULE, PCWSTR, PCWSTR id, LONG_PTR param)
    {
        *reinterpret_cast<HICON*>(param) =
            LoadIconW(hmod, id);
        return FALSE;
    }, reinterpret_cast<LONG_PTR>(&icon);
    return icon;
}

The callback function tries to load the first icon it finds, and then returns FALSE to stop the enumeration. This returns control to Find­First­Icon, which returns the icon that the callback function loaded (or at least tried to load).

The post How does Explorer find the “first” icon in a file appeared first on The Old New Thing.

Violent crime in Houston increased in 2024 after a multiyear decline, according to information released by the Houston Police Department. Overall crime, including nonviolent cases, continued to trend downward.

I never thought I’d follow a dieting fad. I always prided myself on being the type of laid-back person who worked as much as I wanted, whenever I wanted. But recently, I noticed I was working nearly nonstop. When I wasn’t literally working, I was thinking about work. As I’ve gotten older, my body just can’t absorb that much work anymore.

Then, a friend of mine—I swear, a perfectly normal person who would never do anything dangerous or unhealthy, who would never starve her employer of work—told me about intermittent working.

The basic idea is that you pick a certain time segment of the day, such as 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and work only during those hours.

I know, I know. When you first hear about intermittent working, it sounds impossible.

At first, it was really hard. I craved work every hour of the day and night. But within a week, I was already experiencing the benefits of intermittent working. My bloodshot eyes faded from red to dark pink, and my back hunch started to unfurl. I found myself forming new thoughts—ideas and concerns that had nothing to do with performing wage labor.

I even started talking to my family. Taking an interest in my kids was, unfortunately, not as engaging as I’d hoped. But once I started listening to audiobooks during their violin concerts and taking THC gummies at their volleyball games, I found I was only mildly tempted to leave and run to the office to get a jump-start on the next end-of-quarter review.

Only a month into my diet, I managed to sit through twenty-five minutes of my kid’s jiu-jitsu tournament without sending a single work-related message from my phone.

Still, I felt sheepish about trying such a fringe diet. I didn’t want my coworkers to know. When they would schedule meetings for 8 p.m. because “that’s the only time that works for everybody,” I would just attend. It felt easier than admitting I was restricting my work hours.

Since finally telling everyone I was intermittently working, my bosses remain the biggest obstacle to my diet’s success. They’re worried that if I only work eight hours a day, I won’t be able to fit enough work into each week. They entice me to binge-work by flooding my inbox with after-hours emails. If I don’t respond, they text or call. I’ve shown them all the research that proves that intermittent working is safe and effective, but they’re still concerned for my health.

To ease my colleagues’ and supervisors’ minds, sometimes I’ll shift my working window earlier or later, or schedule emails to auto-send in the middle of the night. That way, imagining I’m working constantly, they can finally stop worrying, convinced I’m healthy and normal.

Each night, I can feel my cravings for work subsiding more and more.

I slip up now and then, though. I’ve asked my husband to go into the basement to check his work email; it’s simply too torturous to watch him work after hours right in front of me. Sometimes, when he takes conference calls late at night, I feel deeply jealous of his carefree work-anytime lifestyle. I’ll sneak to my computer and reorganize my to-do list or even proofread a few reports.

Just a little taste to tide me over until the next morning.

OTTAWA – Conservative insiders are growing concerned about Pierre Poilievre’s behaviour in recent days, as he is spending hours in his bedroom playing Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi while looking at photos of Trudeau. “Every time a new poll arrives showing Mark Carney winning the next election he pulls up a photo of Trudeau looking […]

The post Poilievre hits play on the ‘don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone’ part of Big Yellow Taxi, stares at photo of Trudeau appeared first on The Beaverton.

When Emmett Schelling first moved to Texas, it wasn’t to become an advocate. It was for a corporate job. 

He began volunteering with the Transgender Education Network of Texas (TENT) at a time when a so-called “bathroom bill,” which would have mandated people use the bathroom of their biological sex, was still just an idea.

When the bathroom bill became a fully formed piece of legislation that consumed the 2017 session, its existence made Schelling acutely aware of who he was as a transgender man. It also put him on notice that the Legislature could—and would—try to legislate who he could be. The bathroom bill did not pass that year. But since then, the number of anti-LGBTQ bills filed by state legislators increased from two dozen in 2017 to over 100 in 2023. 

As the 2025 legislative session ramps up, advocates warn that Republican lawmakers are poised to renew their assault against transgender Texans with dozens of new bills aimed at wiping away their existence.

“Trans people are fighting for our lives,” said Schelling, who is now the executive director of TENT. “We are fighting for the literal freedom to exist, and we are fighting for people to recognize the same sanctity of our lives as they do when they’re looking at any human being.” 

Last session, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 15, which expanded the 2021 ban on trans girls participating on women’s teams in K-12 sports to include higher education. The Legislature also passed Senate Bill 14, which banned minors from receiving gender-affirming care like puberty blockers, making Texas the largest state to enact such a law. The GOP-controlled Lege also passed a bill outlawing public drag shows, though a federal judge declared the law to be unconstitutional. 

Trans advocates expect a similar onslaught this session. 

Indeed, in his State of the State address earlier this month, Governor Greg Abbott continued to press the issue.  “No boys in girls’ sports. The State of Texas recognizes only two genders – male and female,” Abbott said. “Any educator who tells students that boys can be girls should be fired on the spot.”

So far, 52 anti-trans bills have been filed, according to the Trans Legislation Tracker. 

Republican legislators have filed numerous bills targeting trans kids in schools, such as House Bill 1655, which would prohibit public school employees from helping a child “socially transition” by using their correct name and pronouns. The bill calls for a school to lose funding for any violation. House Bill 344 would prohibit instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in K-12 schools. House Bill 1123 would require students to compete in interscholastic athletic competitions on the basis of their biological sex.

Legislators have also continued their crusade to limit access to or altogether outlaw transgender healthcare. That includes measures like House Bill 847 that would prohibit using taxpayer money for gender-affirming care such as hormone replacement therapy or surgery. There’s also legislation like Senator Bob Hall’s Senate Bill 115 that advocates warn is meant to make the financial costs of providing gender-affirming care prohibitive for doctors and health insurers. (A version of Hall’s bill passed the Senate last session.)

Republicans are also pushing measures, like House Bill 477, to require a person’s biological sex to be included on their birth certificate, and legislation defining male and female, based on reproductive organs, as the only two genders. Representative Steve Toth, a right-wing Republican from The Woodlands first revived the 2017 bathroom bill last session (though it never got a hearing) and has filed it again this year.

Even as they’re being inundated with new anti-trans bills at the state level and a flood of anti-LGBTQ+ policies from the new Trump administration, advocates in Texas are playing a mix of offense and defense. Last legislative session, TENT worked with community and partner organizations to file over 100 proactive bills that would improve the well-being of all Texans, Schelling said. One such bill was Senate Bill 110, which would have prohibited discrimination in places of public accommodation. Though none gained legislative traction, the organizations have once again enlisted allied lawmakers to file a number of bills on their agenda for this session, Schelling said. 

“[These bills] focus in on community, focus in on economic issues, focus in on the things that day in, day out affect [people’s] lives, including trans people,” Schelling said. “These policies are for everyone, to try to benefit everyone, to try to benefit the state.” 

Advocates are also working to mitigate the effects of harmful laws passed during the last session and to proactively help trans Texans with education campaigns, legal resources, and community support. 

Hotline calls to organizations like the Trevor Project, a nonprofit organization aimed at preventing suicide in LGBTQ+ youth, increased by 700 percent after the election of President Trump because of the promise of anti-trans politics to follow. Anti-trans laws led to a 72 percent increase in suicide attempts in trans and nonbinary youth, a 2024 study by Trevor Project researchers found.  

Groups like the Trans Legal Aid Clinic of Texas are focused on providing legal guidance to trans people regarding new state and federal laws. The legal clinic  has provided trans Texans a “roadmap” for how to change gender markers and names on their government documents like driver’s licenses and passports. Board Chair Pete Makopoulos-Senftleber joined the clinic in 2019 to help other trans people navigate this tricky bureaucracy.

This summer, the Department of Public Safety and Department of State Health Services blocked trans people from updating gender markers on their driver’s licenses and birth certificates respectively. Because of these directives, the clinic had to “throw the roadmap out the window,” Makopoulos-Senftleber said. Last fall, the clinic created a fund to help trans and nonbinary Texans obtain a passport—and partnered with the Montrose Center, a hub for the LGBTQ+ community in Houston, to cover the cost of 500 passports. 

Though the clinic’s mission hasn’t changed, it’s been more of a struggle to help people understand what documents they can update. “[We’re] constantly having to keep our fingers on the pulse of this patchwork of horrible legislative patterns and policy directives,” Makopoulos-Senftleber said. “The fear and panic cause people to spiral.”

On January 20, President Trump signed an executive order declaring federal government documents should allow only two genders, male and female, based on biological sex. This would include passports, which began offering an “X” gender option in 2022. 

The full extent of the executive order’s impact remains unclear, but rhetoric alone can contribute to fear and confusion, said Paul Castillo, deputy legal director for Lambda Legal.

“This is the exact sort of playbook that the Governor, the Attorney General, and the Legislature have used for their political purposes and to impact the lives of trans and nonbinary folks,” Castillo said. “They understand that simply making a statement does have impacts on the health and wellbeing of trans folks.” 

Attacks on every level, Makopoulos-Senftleber said, make it increasingly difficult to provide critical support to the trans community. 

“[We need to] understand the vast complexity of challenges that trans individuals and trans organizations are having to confront,” Makopoulos-Senftleber said. “[It’s the] political and social climate across the country as a whole that’s making our work harder, and the struggle of trans, nonbinary individuals that much harder every day.” 

Avery Belyeu, head of the Montrose Center, which offers counseling services and support groups, said it’s vitally important for trans people to take care of themselves and seek support.

“I expect our community to be experiencing fear and anxiety,” Belyeu said. “We’re the side of the LGBTQ+ nonprofit world that’s focused on joy, that’s focused on care, that’s focused on resilience.” As a trans woman, Belyeu said she takes special pride in having resources that specifically support the trans community. 

Lex Loro, interim executive director of The Pride Center San Antonio, said she hopes trans people in the San Antonio area know there’s places they can go for support. “Seeing these headlines and hearing this news is really scary, and it can be even scarier if you do not feel connected to community and if you feel isolated,” Loro said. “That is why we really, really want to let people know that the Pride Center exists.” 

Loro said members of the Pride Center will be involved in advocacy work, such as showing up at the Capitol for TENT’s advocacy day in March. But they also stressed the importance of community bonding, especially in San Antonio, which doesn’t have the resources of a city with a more developed queer community like Houston. 

“We’re not going anywhere, and we’re going to continue to find solutions to support queer people,” Loro said. 

Schelling, the director of TENT, said he encourages people to connect with trans-led organizations on both the local and state level as each has its own role in the advocacy space. 

“A lot of it is just understanding the sphere of influence that each of us has in our own way,” Schelling said. “There’s so much movement, there’s so many attacks on every level, and so that’s where I really lean in and say, ‘What organizing is happening by the trans people in your community?’” 

Supporting trans-led organizations that are leading this work is key, Schelling said. 

“We have voices, we have thoughts,” Schelling said. “We should be the ones who are actually talking about what these issues are and how they’re directly impacting us. We don’t need hand-holders or spokespeople to get in the way of that.” 

Though the Legislature, and the political climate as a whole, is hostile towards trans people right now, Schelling said he believes things will get better eventually. Until then, he’ll continue to fight. 

“We will continue to claim the freedom and the liberty of being authentically who we are in this world,” Schelling said. “It’s just important to remind communities that we have indeed been in worse places in time, and we have survived that, and we have continued to exist, and we will still continue to exist through the attacks coming from the State of Texas.” 

The post Trans Texans Are Under Attack (Again), but Advocates Aren’t Giving In appeared first on The Texas Observer.

We’ve been talking about this shift to a very active weather pattern across the Eastern U.S. for a while now. It’s been mostly in the context of wintry precipitation which has panned out with mixed results overall. Well, the signal now is pretty clearly that wave after wave of storminess is going to lead to a pile up in rain totals over the Southeast at large, specifically from about West Virginia through northern Louisiana. We’ve already seen some flooding in portions of West Virginia recently.

The first round of storminess arrives today with a second round tomorrow. A third round is penciled in for Saturday. Each round will bring widespread rainfall with embedded thunderstorms that produce even heavier rainfall. The forecast rain over the next 7 days is pretty impressive. NOAA’s Weather Prediction Center shows roughly 4 to 7 inches in a very broad area between southern West Virginia and northern Louisiana, with a bullseye from northern Mississippi into Tennessee.

Because of the antecedent conditions (or what ground conditions are like currently), a lot of this rain will be welcomed and absorbed into drier ground, with the exception of portions of West Virginia. That said, there will still likely be areas of flooding, and there are currently flood watches posted for some areas.

There can indeed be too much of a good thing, and it’s another round next Wednesday or Thursday that will probably be another one to watch. Models actually disagree on storm track and potential for wintry precipitation so there’s a lot here to unpack still. That said, it was enough to get a notation on the day 8 to 14 hazards outlook yesterday, with flooding possible.

I think the main takeaway here is that, while a lot of focus will be on the wintry weather to the north of these storms, the highest impact weather will likely be from multiple inches of rain that fall in the next 7 to 10 days or so across parts of the Southeast and the potential for flooding.

Southern California

A significant rainstorm is going to impact Southern California beginning later tomorrow and especially on Thursday. There is already a moderate risk (level 3/4) for excessive rain and flooding, but especially mudslide and debris flow concerns over recent burn scars. The trouble is less the total amount of rain but how quickly it falls. Especially on Thursday, there will be the potential for torrential rains in parts of the LA Basin, perhaps accumulating at the rate of an inch an hour or even a bit more in spots. If you live on the Gulf Coast, that may sound like weak sauce, but the reality is that type of rain over fresh burn scars and in a city with terrain can cause some pretty bad flooding issues.

Total rainfall should be on the order of 1 to 3 inches with higher amounts likely in spots, especially in the foothills and mountains. Debris flows are a long-term concern after fires like the ones experienced around Los Angeles this year, so unfortunately the next couple years in particular will be challenging in those areas trying to recover.

WASHINGTON—In a major survey of public attitudes toward alternative energy as the climate crisis continues, a poll published Tuesday found that an overwhelming majority of U.S. residents would support wind turbines if they sliced deli meat as well. “Everyday Americans want to know how exactly wind power is going to serve our community, and many more of us would be on board if, in addition to converting the wind’s kinetic energy into electricity, those turbines also provided thinly sliced Cajun-style turkey breast,” said survey participant and Iowa resident Jeanine McFadden, who went on to explain that her community felt “left behind” by a lack of access to alternative meat-slicing sources. “Politicians talk a big talk about alternative energy, but if the people of this community could stand underneath the turbine blades for a little sample of honey ham, or if the base of the turbine had a built-in hot box full of grab-and-go rotisserie chickens, that’s what would make a real difference.” McFadden added that the community would also be open to exploring nuclear energy, provided the residual heat from reactors could be used to toast sub sandwiches.

The post Poll Finds Majority Of Americans Would Support Wind Turbines If They Sliced Deli Meat As Well appeared first on The Onion.

CHICAGO—As he drifted in and out of consciousness and glimpsed memories of your eyes widening in horror, sources confirmed Tuesday that honestly, the man you recently saw get hit by a bus can’t stop thinking about you either. According to witnesses, it might surprise you, but the severely injured man whose face has been frozen in your mind for days can still hear your beautiful voice shouting “Bus!” during the brief moments when his pain isn’t too intense. While all you can think about is the sight of his bloody face and crumpled body as bystanders rushed to help him and sirens blared in the distance, all he has been able to think about are your piercing eyes and full lips, and your arms reaching out in a way his may never be able to do again. At press time, the man whose memory is the source of vivid flashbacks every time you see a bus was wondering how different his life would have been if he had seen you just a moment sooner and stopped instead of stepping into the street.

The post Report: Honestly, Man You Saw Get Hit By Bus Can’t Stop Thinking About You Either appeared first on The Onion.

Today's links

• Musk steals a billion dollars from low-income Americans and sends it to Intuit: Forcing you to pay Turbotax to send data to the IRS that it already has is the DEFINITION of government inefficiency.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: 2005, 2010, 2015
• Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

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Musk steals a billion dollars from low-income Americans and sends it to Intuit (permalink)

Let me tell you about the most wasteful US federal government spending I know about. It's a humdinger. You and everyone you know are mired in it for weeks, or perhaps months, every year. It will cost you, personally, thousands of dollars over your lifetime. I'm talking about filing your taxes.

Not paying your taxes. Paying your taxes is fine. It keeps the country running, though not because the government needs our "tax dollars" to pay for things. The government annihilates the money it taxes away from us, and creates new money to pay for programs. The USA needs US citizens' dollars to build highways the same way Starbucks needs its Starbucks gift cards to make lattes – that is, not at all:

https://theglobepost.com/2019/03/28/stephanie-kelton-mmt/

I'm talking about filing your taxes. In nearly every case, a tax return contains a bunch of things the IRS already knows: how much interest your bank paid you, how much your employer paid you, how many kids you have, etc etc. Nearly everyone who pays a tax-prep place or website to file their tax return is just sending data to the IRS that the IRS already has. This is insanely wasteful.

In most other "advanced" countries (and in plenty of poorer countries, too), the tax authority fills in your tax return for you and mails it to you at tax-time. If it looks good to you, you just sign the bottom and send it back. If there are mistakes, you can correct them. You can also just drop it in the shredder and hire an accountant to do your taxes for you, if, for example, you run a small business, or are self-employed, or have other complex tax needs. A tiny minority of tax filers fall into that bucket, and they keep the tax-prep industry in other countries alive, albeit in a much smaller form than in the USA.

In the US, we have a duopoly of two gigantic tax-prep outfits: H&R Block, and Intuit, owners of Turbotax. These companies make billions from low-income, working Americans every year, charging them to format a bunch of information the IRS already has, and then sending it to the IRS on their behalf. These companies lobbied like crazy for the right to tax you when you pay your taxes.

In 2003, it looked like the IRS would start sending Americans pre-completed returns, so H&R Block and Turbotax went into lobbying overdrive, whipping up a "public private partnership" called the "Free File Alliance," that promised to do free tax prep for most Americans. But once the threat of IRS free filing was killed, they turned Free File into a sick joke. Americans who tried to use Free File were fraudulently channeled into filing products that cost money – sometimes hundreds of dollars – to use, a fact that was only revealed after the taxpayer had spent hours keying in their information. Free File sites were also used to peddle unrelated financial products to tax filers, with deceptive language that implied that buying these services was needed to file your return:

https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free

The big winner from the Free File scam was Intuit, which bought Turbotax in 1993. They made about one billion dollars per year ripping off Americans they'd promised to file free tax returns for. After outstanding work by Propublica, lawmakers and the IRS were finally pressured to create an IRS-based free filing service that would cut Intuit out of the loop. Intuit went on a lobbying blitz without parallel, giving out $3.5m in bribes in 2022 in a bid to kill the Treasury Department's study of a free filing service:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/20/turbotaxed/#counter-intuit

In 2022, nearly every US state attorney general settled their lawsuits against Intuit for the Turbotax ripoff, bringing in $141m:

https://www.agturbotaxsettlement.com/Home/portalid/0

In 2023, the FTC won a case against Intuit over the scam:

https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2023/09/nine-takeaways-initial-decision-intuit-turbotax-action

But Intut was undeterred. They came back in 2023 with a campaign to say that ripping off American tax-filers was antiracist and anyone who wanted the IRS to make filing free was, therefore, a racist:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/27/predatory-inclusion/#equal-opportunity-scammers

Strangely, no one bought that one. By May, 2023 the IRS had announced its own, in-house free file program:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/17/free-as-in-freefile/#tell-me-something-i-dont-know

Now, no one is forcing you to use this program. Do you have a family accountant that your grandparents started using in the Eisenhower administration? Just keep going to them. Do you like using Turbotax? Keep using it! Wanna do your own taxes? Here's the forms:

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040s.pdf

But if you want to file your taxes for free, and you earn $125,000/year or less, here's the IRS's service:

https://www.irs.gov/filing/irs-free-file-do-your-taxes-for-free">https://www.irs.gov/filing/irs-free-file-do-your-taxes-for-free

Better use it quick, though. Elon Musk has just announced that he's killing it. Yeah, I know, no one elected him. That doesn't seem to matter to anyone, least of all Democrats on the Hill, who are still showing up for work every day and trying to engender a "spirit of comity" rather than screaming and throwing eggs:

https://apnews.com/article/irs-direct-file-musk-18f-6a4dc35a92f9f29c310721af53f58b16

Musk called IRS free file a "far left" program and announced that he had "deleted it." By the way, the median Trump voter's income is about $72k, meaning more than half of Trump voters qualified for free file:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-working-class-support/

(Image: Wcamp9, CC BY 4.0, modified)

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• Everyone Is Judging AI by These Tests. But Experts Say They’re Close to Meaningless https://themarkup.org/artificial-intelligence/2024/07/17/everyone-is-judging-ai-by-these-tests-but-experts-say-theyre-close-to-meaningless (h/t Usermag)

• CenturyLink nightmares: Users keep asking Ars for help with multi-month outages https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/centurylink-nightmares-users-keep-asking-ars-for-help-with-multi-month-outages/

• Price of eggs rising faster than bitcoin in Trump’s America https://protos.com/price-of-eggs-rising-faster-than-bitcoin-in-trumps-america/

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Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago US government: Your fingerprints have expired! https://web.archive.org/web/20050213034201/https://fictioneer.blogspot.com/2005/02/government-to-immigrant-your.html

#15yrsago International Amateur Scanning League will rescue our video treasures! https://web.archive.org/web/20100213170425/http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/02/international-amateur-scanning.html

#15yrsago Interview with a Nigerian 419 scammer https://web.archive.org/web/20100130161655/http://www.scam-detectives.co.uk/blog/2010/01/22/interview-with-a-scammer-part-one/

#10yrsago Nathan Barley: old comedy turned out to be a documentary about our future https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/feb/10/nathan-barley-charlie-brooker-east-london-comedy

#10yrsago Court has to a law’s diagram tortured sentence structure in order to rule https://www.loweringthebar.net/2015/02/tenth-circuit-forced-to-diagram-congressional-sentence.html">

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Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Boskone (Boston), Feb 14
  https://schedule.boskone.org/62/

• Picks and Shovels with Ken Liu (Boston), Feb 14
  https://brooklinebooksmith.com/event/2025-02-14/cory-doctorow-ken-liu-picks-and-shovels

• Picks and Shovels with Yanis Varoufakis (Jacobin/virtual), Feb 15
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkIDep7Z4LM

• Picks and Shovels with Charlie Jane Anders (Menlo Park), Feb 17
  https://www.keplers.org/upcoming-events-internal/cory-doctorow

• Picks and Shovels with Wil Wheaton (Los Angeles), Feb 18
  https://www.dieselbookstore.com/event/Cory-Doctorow-Wil-Wheaton-Author-signing

• Picks and Shovels with Dan Savage (Seattle), Feb 19
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-with-dan-savage-picks-and-shovels-a-martin-hench-novel-tickets-1106741957989

• Picks and Shovels at Another Story (Toronto), Feb 23
  https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/picks-shovels-cory-doctorow-tickets-1219803217259

• Ursula Franklin Lecture (Toronto), Feb 24
  https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/2025-ursula-franklin-lecture-cory-doctorow-tickets-1218373831929

• Picks and Shovels with John Hodgman (NYC), Feb 26
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-john-hodgman-picks-and-shovels-tickets-1131132841779

• Picks and Shovels (Penn State), Feb 27
  https://www.bellisario.psu.edu/assets/uploads/CoryDoctorow-Poster.pdf

• Picks and Shovels at the Doylestown Bookshop (Doylestown, PA), Mar 1
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-picks-and-shovels-a-martin-hench-novel-tickets-1146230880419

• Picks and Shovels at Red Emma's (Baltimore), Mar 2
  https://redemmas.org/events/cory-doctorow-presents-picks-and-shovels/

• Picks and Shovels with Matt Stoller (DC), Mar 4
  https://www.loyaltybookstores.com/picksnshovels

• Picks and Shovels with Lee Vinsel (Richmond, VA), Mar 5
  https://fountainbookstore.com/events/1795820250305

• With Great Power Came No Responsibility: How Enshittification Conquered the 21st Century and How We Can Overthrow It (Indiana University/virtual), Mar 7
  https://events.iu.edu/mediaiub/event/1783095-with-great-power-came-no-responsibility-how-enshitti

• Picks and Shovels at First Light Books (Austin), Mar 10
  https://thethirdplace.is/event/cory-doctorow-picks-shovels-1

• Picks and Shovels at Dark Delicacies (Burbank), Mar 13
  https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3257/Thu%2C_Mar_13th_6_pm%3A_Pick_%26_Shovel%3A_A_Martin_Hench_Novel_HB.html#/

• Cloudfest (Europa Park), Mar 17-20
  https://cloudfest.link/

• Picks and Shovels at Imagine! Belfast (Remote), Mar 24
  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cory-doctorow-in-conversation-with-alan-meban-tickets-1106421399189

• Picks and Shovels with Peter Sagal (Chicago), Apr 2
  https://exileinbookville.com/events/44853

• ABA Techshow (Chicago), Apr 3
  https://www.techshow.com/

• Picks and Shovels at Morgenstern (Bloomington), Apr 4
  https://morgensternbooks.com/event/2025-04-04/author-event-cory-doctorow

• Teardown 2025 (PDX), Jun 20-22
  https://www.crowdsupply.com/teardown/portland-2025

• DeepSouthCon63 (New Orleans), Oct 10-12, 2025
  http://www.contraflowscifi.org/

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Recent appearances (permalink)

• The Writer's Voice
  https://www.writersvoice.net/2025/02/black-history-month-aaron-robertson-the-black-utopians-also-cory-doctorow-picks-and-shovels/

• The threat of big tech oligarchy and why the internet sucks (David Moscrop)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0Jfhn5wJ-o

• Elon Musk's Digital Coup and the Future of the Internet (System Crash)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEZPa-YzaUs

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Latest books (permalink)

• • Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).
• The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.

• "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

• "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

• "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

• "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

• "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

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Upcoming books (permalink)

• Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026

• Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

• The Memex Method, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026

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Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

• Enshittification: a nonfiction book about platform decay for Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Status: second pass edit underway (readaloud)

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

• Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2025

Latest podcast: MLMs are the mirror-world version of community organizing https://craphound.com/overclocked/2025/02/09/mlms-are-the-mirror-world-version-of-community-organizing/

---

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

---

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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

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

A reader writes:

My company announced a “biggest loser” weight loss challenge today and immediately my stomach sank. This was sent by the owner/founder of my small civil engineering company (about 40 employees). This is still so fresh for me I don’t even really have the words to express how many ways this is a horrible idea and would love your thoughts.

I have the words.

And those words begin with: how is this still happening in the year of our lord 2025?

It’s incredible that so many workplaces are still oblivious to how very problematic weight loss competitions can be for many people — people with eating disorders, first and foremost, but also anyone who’s trying to have a healthier relationship with food or avoid diet culture, people who need maintain their weight or gain weight (the assumption that everyone should lose weight is really weird), anyone who’s concerned about crash dieting, anyone who does want to lose weight but doesn’t want to engage with their coworkers about how it’s going, or anyone who simply doesn’t consider their diet or their weight to be any of their employer’s business.

That’s a lot of people, all told.

If your employer wants to encourage employees to make healthy choices, they’re welcome to provide healthy snacks, subsidize gym memberships, and offer excellent health insurance. Creating a contest around crash dieting isn’t the way to do it.

Are you up for pushing back about it? Ideally you’d talk to someone with some influence over it (HR might be the right place to start) and point out that experts advise against these competitions because they’re bad for such a wide range of people.

WASHINGTON—Raising alarm over what the report called a major breach, a watchdog investigation discovered Tuesday that Elon Musk’s hair-plug guy had been granted high-level security clearance by the U.S. State Department. “Records indicate that a hair restoration specialist received top secret security clearance despite having no pertinent qualifications or experience beyond performing hair-plug procedures on Silicon Valley tech billionaires,” the report read in part, stating that the plastic surgeon was provided with unchecked access to the nation’s most sensitive information after leveraging a close relationship that began when he first grafted hair onto the Tesla CEO’s balding head in 2010. “While Musk claims that the hair transplant technician is only using the authorization to help identify bald men in the government and schedule appointments, there is no way to know for sure. Furthermore, we have every reason to believe the hair loss expert is an agent of the Turkish government, given his work restoring the hairlines of President Erdoğan’s inner circle.” At press time, State of Secretary Marco Rubio declined to provide any insight on the decision-making process while scratching the many tiny scabs on his shaved scalp.

The post Investigation Finds Elon Musk’s Hair-Plug Guy Given Highest Security Clearance appeared first on The Onion.

Apparently the RSS feed has stopped updating on some services – Feedly, Newsblur – meaning some people are missing updates. This happened last year and nothing I did or that anyone suggested remedied it. In the end, it got better all on its own. Sometimes these blog posts will appear on Feedly etc when comic updates don’t, so if it does, updates are M-W-F unless I explicitly say otherwise. Sorry for the break in service. Nothing has changed at my end!

The post RSS woes return appeared first on Bad Machinery.

ST. GEORGE, UT—With the water vapor causing condensation to form on the lenses and impair his vision, local man Patrick Whittle was reportedly forced Thursday by his fogged-up glasses to finish his soup using his other senses. “In my blinded state, I must rely on my other senses if I’m ever going to eat this soup,” said Whittle, explaining that the condensed moisture on his eyewear left him with no choice but to use his heightened sense of smell to guide himself toward the bowl of lobster bisque. “This certainly feels like soup considering how hot it is. And the taste? Checks out. If only I could get a visual confirmation on my soup, but alas, this cursed fog won’t allow it.” At press time, reports confirmed Whittle was left with even fewer senses at his soup-eating disposal after burning his tongue.

The post Man With Fogged-Up Glasses Forced To Finish Soup Using Other Senses appeared first on The Onion.

In brief: Today’s post discusses the likelihood of widespread rainfall today and Wednesday ahead of the first of several decently strong cold fronts. Speaking of which, there’s the possibility of a freeze over the next 10 days, so we don’t advise planting tender plants just yet.

Winter is not over yet

Houston has had an anomalously warm start to February, with an average temperature of 72.1 degrees. This is a shocking 16.2 degrees above normal through the first third of the month. Beginning Wednesday we’re going to enter a cooler, more seasonal pattern. Looking ahead, global models are pointing to the possibility of two stronger cold fronts next week.

The first of these arrives Sunday, and the second possibly by next Thursday or so. One or maybe both of these could drive Houston’s lows into the 30s, and there’s a distinct chance of a light freeze about 10 days from now. I’m not saying it will happen, but it’s definitely possible. So hold off on gardening for a little while longer.

Tuesday

Today is likely to be a fairly wet day. We don’t really have any significant flooding concerns, but streets could pond over amid some of the stronger showers or thunderstorms. The rain will be somewhat scattered this morning before showers become more widespread this afternoon as the atmosphere turns unstable. Showers will likely peak in coverage this afternoon before rain chances diminish somewhat overnight. This won’t be the end of the rain, as we are likely to see another round of showers on Wednesday morning along with the front.

Temperatures this morning are generally in the upper 60s across much of Houston, and they’re going to remain there all day with cloudy skies and the potential for rain. Winds will be gusty, varying from the south, east, and northwest. Lows tonight will only fall into the low- to mid-60s for most locations.

Wednesday

Additional showers are possible on Wednesday morning and into the early afternoon hours, ahead of the actual cool front. Between now and Wednesday afternoon I expect most of Houston to receive 1 to 2 inches of rainfall, although amounts could be a little bit higher for areas well inland, including The Woodlands and points north. Highs on Wednesday will be in the upper 70s for most before drier air moves in during the evening hours. Temperatures will start to fall before midnight, and by early Thursday morning temperatures for most of the area should dip into the upper 40s.

Thursday and Friday

These will be a pair of partly sunny days, with highs in the upper 50s to lower 60s. Thursday will see gusty, northerly winds and Thursday night will be quite chilly, in the low- to mid-40s. Friday night will be a bit warmer, in the 50s, as the flow turns more southerly.

Saturday

A warmer day, with highs in the mid-70s. We’ll again see the potential for some widespread (mostly light?) showers ahead of the next front. Accumulations don’t look overly impressive, but bear in mind the potential for rain if you’re planning outdoor activities. Colder air likely arrives overnight, pushing lows on Sunday morning into the 40s.

Sunday

Sunshine returns for the second half of the weekend, but with a colder, northerly flow high temperatures will likely be in the 50s. Lows on Sunday night could drop into the upper 30s in Houston, give or take. We’ll see.

Next week

Our roller coaster weather rolls on, with highs by the middle of next week likely rebounding into the 70s. However, most of our guidance points toward a fairly strong front for the second half of next week. This is when I think there’s at least a decent chance to see a widespread freeze in Houston.

On Tuesday's show: NOAA is among federal agencies under scrutiny right now by the Department of Government Efficiency. A local meteorologist explains why he thinks it would be a bad idea to drastically alter the agency and how that might impact us here in southeast Texas.

Jim Carola, 83, the longtime news director and anchor for 610 and 100.3 KILT Houston, passed away Monday. "Jim Carola is not only a Houston icon, but will always be remembered as a class act," Texas Radio Hall of Famer and former KILT colleague T.J. Callahan told mikemcguff.com.   "Jim was loved by all who crossed his path, and I was blessed to have learned the radio news business

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

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

1. How to work with a jerk who raises his voice, when “that’s just how he is”

I work with Fergus, a senior engineer who has a reputation for being “crotchety,” a term I am starting to push back on because it seems to explain away his unprofessional behavior as a personality quirk or something to be expected because of his age. I’m trying to figure out exactly where to draw the line in order for me and my team to consistently push back against his behavior. On our last call, Fergus joined the zoom and immediately declared his team was not involved in the project and explained to me how he thinks it works. He interrupted me several times and raised his voice in an effort to convince me and/or dominate the conversation, while I (a female, somewhat younger non-engineer) patiently explained to him that he was wrong about how it works and his team did in fact need to be involved. The next bit went well, but he did grumpily end the call with, “I can’t believe we didn’t do it the other way.” I suppose I was hoping for an apology. It was exhausting and I really think the raising of his voice is the line I want to draw. The typical response from colleagues and leadership is always, “Oh, that’s just Fergus!” and I am done with it. I don’t think someone should get to yell, just because “they’re like that.”

So I need a plan. I want to work out ahead of time what my response should be so that a) I don’t have to decide in that irritating moment that he has crossed a line, and b) I can help my team follow the same plan in the hopes that a united front will be successful. So what’s the appropriate response? Innocently ask if he’s okay and needs a minute to calm down? Firmly ask him to stop raising his voice, right there in the meeting? Email him after the fact to say that I am concerned about the tone of the meeting? Cc his boss? Or ours? Maybe only cc his boss the second time it happens? Cc HR the third time? What are my options here? Should I ask HR for advice on how to handle this, given our apparent history of letting Fergus behave however he wants?

In the moment, interject with a calm, “Please stop raising your voice.” The more calm and detached when you say it, the better; you want him to feel like he looks out of control by comparison. It’s possible that alone will be enough; often people who behave like this, especially at work, are used to never being called out on it (because “that’s just how he is”) and so when someone does, it jars them back into behaving more appropriately. So make that your strategy the next few times it happens, and see if he absorbs that he can’t raise his voice around you.

If it continues after that, talk to him one-on-one right after the meeting and call it out even more directly: “You kept raising your voice on that call — can you please not do that? It makes the meeting unpleasant for everyone else, and I don’t want to ask people to tolerate that.”

I think you have a better chance of success calling it out directly than asking his boss, your boss, or HR to intervene — since apparently everyone else has decided they’ll just work around him.

Related:
how to deal with a coworker who’s rude to you
I have to manage the office jerk

2. Is it true that you can’t take any time off when you’re new?

My best friend (who doesn’t work with me) is telling me that since I’m new at my job, my attendance has to be perfect for at least the first year. Doctors appointments on my lunch hour, work when sick, and don’t take any vacation time.

I can see it’s a good idea to be conservative with time off for a while, but no time off for a year seems excessive. She says that bosses will tell you to take your time off, but it’s much too risky for a new hire to get a reputation for not being around. She says it’s a known thing. Am I naive to think I can take reasonable time off without getting a bad reputation?

Your friend is wrong, and sounds like she’s absorbed some weird messages about work somewhere along the line. Sometimes that happens if someone has worked at really dysfunctional companies; other times it stems from messages they’ve absorbed from their families. It’s true that you shouldn’t expect to take a lot of time off when you’re new to a job, but that means “don’t expect to take a week off in month 2” (although even then, if you negotiated it at the time of hire, it might be fine), not that you can’t go to doctor’s appointments or need to work when you’re sick or take no vacation the whole year.

Related:
everything you need to know about time off when you start a new job
how soon after starting a new job can you take a whole week off?

3. Can I keep my own soap in the office bathroom without others using it?

Our daughter was stillborn in 2022 and my husband and I have recently become pregnant again. The hand soap provided at my work isn’t safe to use while pregnant, so I’ve brought my own, but it’s quite expensive.

Carrying my own hand soap back and forth from my office to the bathroom isn’t practical or hygienic. How can I mark the bottle in such a way that my coworkers won’t use it and I don’t seem like I’m being dramatic? FYI, none of my coworkers know we’re expecting and I would very much like to keep it that way.

I don’t think you can, unfortunately. If it’s in the bathroom, some people will use it and it also risks getting tossed. Can you buy a less expensive option to keep there? (I’m guessing you’re trying to avoid antibacterial soap, and there are a number of low-cost alternatives. If you’re having trouble finding them, talk to your doctor about options.) Another option could be something like soap leaves, which you can slip in your pocket when you head to the bathroom, if you can find suitable ones.

4. My employee made such an odd hiring recommendation that I’m doubting her skills

I am retiring in April and while I don’t have a unique job, I have a unique skill set and several people will probably cover my roles. For the administrative part, we’ve pretty much decided what to do, but it’s not finalized. I’ve shared with my staff that the plan is being developed and that I will tell them everything I know as soon as I know it.

Yesterday I received an email from Janet, someone I would consider in a more senior position, recommending her coworker (Amy, who I also supervise) for this position. Amy is in no way qualified to do this role. Janet’s heart was in the right place, and I thanked her for sharing but that was all I said. However, now I am looking at Janet and her abilities in a different way. Her assessment of Amy’s skills is way off. Otherwise, I think Janet’s skills are excellent and my advice to my successor was going to be have her on a path to the next level. Now I’m not sure. How do I get out of this mindset? Am I totally overreacting?

It’s hard to say without knowing more. How clear is Janet on exactly what that position will be and what it will take to do it well? You said you’ve only really shared so far that a plan is in progress, so is it possible that Janet is envisioning the job being something different? Also, how closely has she worked with Amy? Is she well positioned to have seen Amy’s skills and strengths and weaknesses firsthand, or not? If she knows exactly what the position will be and she’s worked with Amy closely enough that she should know she’s obviously not a match, then sure, that’s concerning (if in fact the next step for Janet would mean a job where she’ll need to hire and manage people). But if either of those factors aren’t present, I wouldn’t let this throw you.

If you’re unsure, why not ask her what led her to recommend Amy and approach it from the standpoint of being genuinely curious about her perspective? Who knows, you might hear something that makes it make more sense to you (but if not, that will be helpful info too).

5. How can I push for a standard fee that wasn’t in a contract?

I’m a subject expert in my field and was booked to speak for a larger conference this coming spring. The host organization “merged with” (was bought by?) another that will certainly have value differences and make changes. One was to lay off 25+ staff from the original org. Another was to cancel me from the line up (likely because my point of view is not shared by them, but I’m speculating).

Thing is, the original org booked speakers without formal contracts, which is unusual, but not unheard of and worked because they had a lot of clout in our field. Everyone knew they’d act in good faith, which is good, since they hold more power in our space. (But you see where this is going.)

Normally if an organization cancels me within 90 days of the event, my cancellation fee is 50% of our agreed upon rate. I slotted this event into my schedule to the exclusion of others, began working on my content for them, and am unlikely to fill that space with a new event. This new org has said they’ll pay it, just send my invoice and “executed contract.” I’m reasonably sure they know as well as I that there isn’t one.

My judgement is clouded by my distaste for the new org and its values, so while I’m not disappointed to be off the lineup, I’m also not at ease to not at least try to push for the fee. I know they can dig in and just not pay it, but what I’m looking for is the wording that says, “No official contract is not my fault, and was beyond my control, but you should honor what we both know is typical in this scenario, please.”

Do you have anything in writing confirming the original agreement — even just emails? An email agreement can count as a written contract in many cases. They could push back since there was no cancellation fee specified in those emails, but you’ll at least be able to document that this was a firm agreement, which sounds like the best you can do. Frame it as, “OrgA always used email agreements like the one attached. Since I held space in my schedule, turned down other work for that time, and have already begun working on my content, I’m attaching an invoice for half the fee, per typical practice.”

Also, do you have any contacts from the original org who remain at the new org (or who, even if they’re gone, have some influence there) who would be willing to push on your behalf?

This is a shit show. No denying that.

I've been struggling with what to do. What actions to take. What, if anything, will work? Is anyone doing anything? (Sherrilyn Ifill answers that question – "Yes. And You Can Too.")

I believe in humans. I know that.

I am choosing to focus on what is in my control. You may not be able to. That's okay. It's okay to not be okay. It's okay to be overwhelmed. It's okay to be scared. I am, too. But I refuse to panic. And I refuse to obey in advance (thank you Timothy Snyder).

Here are some things I know to be true, and some resources for right now.

1. Do something. It doesn't have to be protesting or marching. It can be taking a walk or taking food to a neighbor. Just do something that makes you feel good (and hopefully gets you outside, if you're able). Don't just sit there and doomscroll.
2. News sources matter. Doomscrolling is terrible for you – use that time doing something fun or taking action, instead. Here is how I'm managing my newsfeed.
   1. I removed all social media except Bluesky (and I have notifications turned off for that app).
   2. I reinstalled an old standby RSS reader, NetNewsWire. Excellent, easy to use, and free without a bunch of annoying ads. Add your own trusted sources and read at your control, not the algorithms'.
   3. I don't panic. If I read or hear something, I breathe, then decide if it's worth looking up. If yes, I look to trusted sources for confirmation (see list below). We're inundated with alerts and urgent news – take a breath before you react. I learned a lot about breathing from Thich Nhat Hanh.
3. Be kind. We're all enduring whatever the fuck this is. Be kind.

News sources I trust

• Kottke. He has shifted to primarily coup-related news for right now. When we get through this, it's a great site for all kinds of clever, fun, and interesting content.
• Heather Cox Richardson – America's best explainer of right now.
• Timothy Snyder – telling it like it is. Be sure to read "Twenty Lessons on Tyranny" and "Of course it's a coup."
• NextDraft – a nice summary of critical, fact-checked news and commentary, along with some random bits from around the world (and universe) – a worthwhile blend.

Resources for right now

• Solidarity Not Charity: Mutual Aid for Mobilization and Survival (and other writings from Dean Spade)
• Fight back with Indivisible
• 5Calls – so easy, why not?
• Insight Timer – helps me breathe, relax, and get to sleep
• Libraries – university or local – rich with resources to learn from or escape to
• The Marginalian – all kinds of good stories

Here if you need me.

☮️❤️

Our 2nd most-read article of 2025.

It’s so easy to label people these days. From the way folks have been talking, you’d think everyone falls into two buckets: those who voted against the mayor who promised to blow up the city and those who voted for the mayor who promised to blow up the city. And now that the mayor, whom I voted for, is blowing up the city, as he promised, I’m one of many people who are being unfairly blamed for something I didn’t want. Okay? I didn’t want the mayor to blow up the city like he mentioned many times; I just wanted him to fix the old bowling alley like he promised in passing once. Anyone saying I’m partially responsible for the explosions is just a sign that they have no argument.

Before you rush to cancel me, try to remember the mayor made lots of promises, and I didn’t expect him to keep them all. Yes, he promised to turn our playgrounds to glass and take a blowtorch to the schools; yes, he said that he was going to use napalm on every grocery store, but, as I said, he also promised he was going to fix the old bowling alley.

Oh, how I loved that bowling alley as a kid. It’s been closed for twenty years, so when the mayor mentioned he’d fix it if we elected him, I had to give it a chance. To be fair, he was also the mayor a few years ago, made the same promise, and failed to fix the bowling alley then. But he did live up to his promise to reintroduce smallpox into local daycares, so at least you know he can get things done, unlike the other guy who did neither of those.

I’ve seen all the attacks online. You use the mayor’s own clear statements of purpose against me just because I consciously chose this. “The mayor said he was going to blow up the city.” Yeah, metaphorically. “The mayor brought up his desire to see the residents of the city cleansed by flame in every speech.” Sure, if you take it out of context, maybe. “The mayor’s election slogan was, ‘Blow It All Up and Watch Them Suffer,’” which is scary only for people stupid enough to take him seriously. The fact that he had to go so far as to pour gasoline all over the Burger King before throwing a Molotov cocktail through the window shows what his opponents have pushed him to do. It’s really his critics that have kept him from fixing the bowling alley.

Let me reiterate: I do not approve of the mayor locking the doors of the mall and igniting a bus full of C4 in the food court. I may have worn a shirt that said, VOTE FOR THE MAYOR WHO WILL BLOW UP THE MALL FOOD COURT, but that was just my fun way of saying I only cared about the bowling alley. It makes me sad that you think I wanted people to get hurt by this. Especially when it’s something that directly affected me for the first time in my life, when my nephew was accidentally trapped in that mall when it exploded. Give me a little grace here. Plus, my nephew voted for the other candidate, so it’s kind of his fault that he ended up there to begin with.

Is it so bad that I wanted the bowling alley back? Maybe that’s what you’re really mad about. You wanted the mayor to fail. The negativity around the smell of roasting pig is just a facile attempt to distract from his potential future successes. I bet the mayor is about to fix up the bowling alley, and I’ll walk in, and I’ll be twelve again, and all the adults will be so tall, and it will be my party, and everyone—even the kids who don’t like me—will have to sing happy birthday. The previous mayor said that rebuilding the bowling alley wouldn’t make it 1996 again, which, to me, is unacceptable.

It’s disgusting and, frankly, counterproductive to point out that I voted for this. To imply that I had personal free will and agency when I walked into a voting booth and picked Mayor Bomberman is insulting. Here I am, admitting that I did not actually want the mayor’s biggest promise to happen, and you’re criticizing me for directly being part of the reason it’s happening. You should be praising me for being able to admit that—well, not that I was wrong, heaven forbid—but perhaps my faith in the mayor who was arrested thirty-four times for arson was misplaced.

At the end of the day, you can imply that I “wanted this” as much as you like. You don’t know what’s inside my heart. The mayor said he’d fix the bowling alley. Just because he hasn’t fixed the bowling alley and announced that he’ll never fix the bowling alley, doesn’t mean I’m dumb or a fool. And while he may have also promised he’d re-segregate the city, crash the city’s economy, and turn the city’s only remaining functional hospital into a big Jersey Mike’s, I can guarantee that I only wanted the Jersey Mike’s.

So, no, I’m not “happy now” that our zoo has been turned into an open-air animal mausoleum. But of the options I had, only one mayor promised to completely change the city. And you know what? At least he is doing something. It may kill a lot of people. It may leave others without homes or jobs. But I respect a man of action, regardless of what that action is and whether or not it’s going to make things better or worse.

Now, I’ll just sit back and wait for the bowling alley to get fixed.

Mike Drucker’s new book, Good Game, No Rematch, combines ridiculous personal stories and fascinating gaming history to explore the poignant ways that electronic entertainment can save us from ourselves. Or humiliate us, case depending.

WASHINGTON D.C. – After an estimated 113 million Americans tuned in to watch Super Bowl LIX, the nation arose Monday morning to discover that Canadian forces had used the opportunity to once again burn down their White House. As nearly a third of the US population watched the Eagles defeat the Chiefs, including President Trump […]

The post Canada uses Super Bowl distraction to burn down White House again appeared first on The Beaverton.