Cowboy Who?

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

A reader writes:

I work for a toxic organization, and I’ve been looking for opportunities elsewhere. A job opened up in my home city that would be a lateral move for me so I applied and was offered the job. Hooray! However, the salary included in the offer email was WAY more than I was expecting — not in a good way — in a suspicious way.

For reference, I currently make $65K, which is (from what I can tell) fairly typical for the position in the area of the country where I work. The range for the job I applied to (only one state over, similar cost of living) was $63K-$87K. They offered me $86K. I feel like this has to be a mistake. The job qualifications are a specific master’s degree required (which I have) and management experience preferred. I do have management experience but only 1.5 years of it. I also have a second master’s degree but it’s not super related to the work I would be doing. I can’t understand why they would bump me so high in the range. I’ve been working in this field for seven years and I’ve always been started at or just above the minimum for each new position I’ve accepted. I’m suspecting maybe two numbers were transposed and they meant to offer me $68K, which would be reasonable.

How do I bring this up without lowballing myself? I need to know whether this is really the salary because I am moving to take this job and what I’m anticipating making will affect some of the decisions I make about living arrangements. But I don’t want to say, “Hey, I think maybe you made a mistake and are offering me too much money. I was only expecting to make in the $60s.” And then they lower the pay because I’m offering to work for less. There is a chance the offer is sincere and I don’t want to jeopardize that in the process of getting clarity.

I emailed back my acceptance to say, “I accept X Position with a pay of $86K annually” to give them a chance to maybe notice a typo and say, “Oh, wait, that’s not right.” But they just said, “Sounds good. We’ll reach out with the pre-employment paperwork soon.”

Is there another way I can approach this to confirm the salary without saying “I’ll work for less”? (Even though I will).

I’d just believe they intended to offer you $86K.

If they had offered you something way outside their advertised range, it would be reasonable to think it might be a typo and inquire about it. But they offered you within their range. And then you repeated the number back to them and they didn’t blink. That’s almost certainly because they are in fact offering you $86K.

Not every company starts people at the bottom of their posted salary ranges. And advertised salary ranges aren’t always “this is the range of what you could make the entire time you are in this position.” Often they are “this is the range we will consider as a starting salary for the right candidate.” You just ended up at the top of their range. That’s a good thing.

If you hadn’t already written back to confirm and you were still looking for a way to reassure yourself, I might have recommended getting on the phone with the hiring manager to discuss the offer and saying something like, “I appreciate you offering me near the top of the range” — which would have flagged it for them if they hadn’t meant to do that. But at this point, you’ve written back to confirm, they agreed, and it’s highly likely that this is in fact your salary.

If it turns out that they didn’t actually mean to offer you that … well, they made an offer squarely within their range, and you wrote back to confirm that number in writing. They’d have to be real shitheels to try to switch that up on you later. (Legally they could do it, as long as it’s not retroactive for time you’d already worked, but it would reflect terribly on them and a decent employer wouldn’t do it.)

In a 5-4 decision, the justices ruled that the multibillion opioid settlement inappropriately protected the Sackler family.

(Image credit: Josh Reynolds)

The decision brings abortion back into the political limelight as a major controversy, just months before the presidential election.

(Image credit: Saul Loeb)

A woman says Robert Morris, prominent evangelical pastor, former Trump religious adviser and founder of Gateway Church, sexually abused her as a child in the 1980s. Morris has resigned from Gateway.

(Image credit: Alex Brandon)

Friedman launched a boisterous campaign for governor in 2006, decades after forming the band Kinky Friedman and The Texas Jewboys.

1. “That’s true they don’t go far. But it’s never been great for your climb. They call it climate.”

2. “And you can never quarantine the past.”

3. “He needs a haircut more than I do. It’s true. I couldn’t tell. Needs a haircut.”

4. “Oh, everybody’s gotta ride in something. High life, lived, comatosed him.”

5. “They delivered a swift and swiping, and you know that sweeping, it was swift and it was sweeping.”

6. “You’re the type of girl I like. Because you’re empty, and I’m empty.”

7. “He can’t even finish the song of the law. Are they civilized or satanist?”

8. “She speaks in rhyme, the way she talks, the bus will go here, and then the bus will go there because that’s what buses do.”

9. “I can’t believe she’s married to Roe.”

10. “They sacrifice every day for the furniture, the future… of their children.”

11. “This is the very definition of totally terrytism.”

12. “We got the money. It’s so funny how we went right down to the store, we got, so they put you down… we got the money.”

13. “And with total premedication.”

14. “She rabble-rousing, dental surf combat.”

15. “Person, woman, man, camera, TV.”

Pavement: 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 12, 14
Trump: 1, 3, 5, 8, 10, 11,13,15

Before the first presidential debate of 2024, CNN has released a list of rules and regulations that both candidates must follow. The following are the guidelines that President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump must adhere to during their 90 minutes on stage.

Read more...

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

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

1. My coworker constantly changes her schedule

I am member of a small team with four core staff, including my manager and me. One of my core colleagues is part-time, three days a week. My manager gives her flexibility on this, so she changes her hours to suit her needs every week, to the point where I feel it is negatively affecting all of our work.

Last week, we needed all hands on deck for a major event Wednesday/Thursday/Friday, but she decided to come in on Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday, leaving us extremely short staffed for Thursday/Friday (which were communicated to her as core days three weeks before). This week, we had to cancel a staff photoshoot the day before, as she had previously told us she would be in and available for it in our weekly team meeting. She changed her hours the afternoon before the shoot and we had to cancel the photographer.

Her job is working one-on-one with clients, and oftentimes they will come in looking for her/calling for her, and she will not be in when she told them she would be. My manager does not relay her weekly schedule to us, so I am left scrambling to help her urgent clients or telling them to come back another day she is in (which I never know! because her schedule is so irregular!). She refuses to set an autoreply stating when she is in office and when she is out (even for vacation), leaving clients to complain to us that she is ignoring their emails. None of these are one-off events — these happen regularly.

My manager is very insulated from the problems. Oftentimes he is off-site at meetings, and is overall passive and laissez-faire. However, he had did address this issue a year ago and she committed to fixed shifts for a few months, but since then she has reverted to changing her schedule throughout the week.

I am not her manager but some work projects she has negatively affected (such as the major event she missed/thephotoshoot) are ones that I am in charge of. How can I bring up my concerns to my manager, without it coming off catty?

It’s not catty to point out a work problem that’s interfering with your own work and causing chaos with clients. That’s a very normal thing to do — always, but especially if your manager isn’t around to see the issues himself. I suspect you’re worried about it being catty because you’re so frustrated with your coworker that your aggravation is at a level that feels catty in your head, but this really is normal to raise.

So talk to your manager! He may be assuming his conversation with her last year mostly solved the issues and doesn’t realize the problems have returned in full force. When you talk to him, stick to the facts and the impact on work. For example: “When Jane changes her schedule at the last minute or doesn’t let us know in advance when she’ll be working, it causes a lot of problems, like XYZ. We also often get clients looking for her because she’s not in when she told them she would be, and clients complain to us that she’s ignoring their emails. Could you ask her to stick to fixed, scheduled shifts?”

2. Is it a red flag if your interviewer refuses to let you meet the person who would be managing you?

My son recently was offered a job after interviewing with a group of HR people, but without talking to the person who would be his boss or any of his coworkers. After he was offered the job, he asked if he could set up a Zoom with his would-be supervisor so that he could at least meet him. HR said no, they did not want him to meet with the person who would be supervising him.

This seemed weird and a big red flag to both of us, and with my encouragement, he turned the job down (the job was also nothing special and located in a not-terribly-desirable place to live). It seems strange enough for the department head to play no role in hiring someone who will report to him, but then prohibiting them from meeting even on Zoom for a few minutes just seemed odd. It makes me wonder if they’re trying to hide something. Were we right in thinking this is weird and a red flag, and that it’s better to wait until something else comes along? Or is this more normal than I realize and I gave my son bad advice? I might add that my son just graduated from college last spring and this was his first job offer, and it was with a small public college.

Did they literally say they didn’t want him to meet with the manager? Or could that have been a misunderstanding — like could they have meant the manager was on vacation and the hiring needed to be finalized before he was back, or something along those lines? If so, that’s not ideal but would make more sense. In that case, your son could have asked to speak with someone else on the team instead.

But if they literally said they didn’t want him to meet with the manager, that’s extremely weird and a huge red flag.

There’s also an option in between those — something more like, “Cecil’s schedule is packed and he’s not involved in the hiring for this role.” That’s still a red flag, because asking to meet the person will be managing you is such a reasonable request that generally employers find a way to make that happen, even if it wasn’t originally planned. (Assuming, of course, that there’s not some reason for it, like that the manager is hospitalized or otherwise truly unavailable.)

3. I scream when I’m startled at work

I get easily startled at my desk, and I want to know how to stop. It only happens at my computer when I’m laser-focused on my work and don’t hear someone coming up behind me. A coworker will walk up behind me for something, and I scream. Yes, scream. Not Psycho-shower-scene screeching, but the type of sudden shriek that startles everyone around me, and then we all have a good laugh about it afterwards.

Two people (in this job and my last job) have told me that me being startled has startled them in turn. I don’t want my coworkers to walk on eggshells around me. They’ve kind of already accepted this as a “quirk” I have and do their best not to scare me (which has helped, and I let them know that I appreciate it), but I want to know what I can do to alleviate this. The good news is that my cubicle is set up on a machine shop floor instead of a quiet office area, so my occasional screams go out into a void of equipment noise instead of disrupting a quiet office. Nonetheless, I don’t want to jumpscare any nearby coworkers!

I already have a little mirror at my desk that shows the opening behind me (although I wish I could install one of those fisheye shoplifter mirrors you find at pharmacies). If I want to listen to something while I work, I only put one earbud in. My friends outside of work suggested that I should ask for a desk that doesn’t have my back towards an opening, which I think would help a lot. However, I’m a junior employee who doesn’t feel like I’m in a position to ask for much, and I know that the reason the cubicles are set up the way they are so that everyone can see your computer screen.

I was diagnosed with general anxiety disorder and Level 1 autism two years ago. I also have childhood trauma from an abusive parent. I have never told anyone in my professional life or sought any sort of accommodations for these because I otherwise can perform my duties just fine. I see my conditions as my responsibility to cope with, and I just want to excel in my job without others feeling like they have to give me special privileges. If nobody knows about my conditions, then they can only address my behavior and performance. I also just wouldn’t know how to navigate that conversation because aside from maybe the desk positioning, I wouldn’t really know what to ask *for.*

I’ll actually be moving to a different location next month to work in a project I’ve been asking to be involved in, so I want to see what I can do differently.

Talk to your manager and ask if you can change the way your desk is positioned. You’re not saying “I want to move my desk so no one can see what’s on my screen.” You’ll be saying, “With the way my desk is positioned, I’ve been getting startled when people come up behind me — and I have such a strong startle reflex that it’s been making me involuntarily scream. I’m embarrassed when it happens, and it’s disruptive to people around me. I’ve tried putting up a mirror but it hasn’t solved it. I’d like to angle my desk differently so this stops happening. Is that okay?”

Maybe they’ll say no, all the desks need to stay exactly where they are. But it’s reasonable to ask. If the answer is no, at that point you can decide if you want to go the formal accommodation route — but a conversation might take care of it.

Also, in advance of your move next month, say a version of this to whoever’s in charge of where you’ll be sitting before the move, and ask for your desk to face outward. Again, this is reasonable.

4. My boss showed up at my house and banged on the door

I work for a golf course, which is supposed to be relaxing job. Although I have never been late to work, I was supposed to meet my boss at the bank one day out of work and overslept. He has had been dead against me since then.

Then, early one morning, I was about 20 minutes late for work (I had just done a closing shift the night before and was sick and had a fever) when my husband hears banging on the door so loud that it wakes him up out of a dead sleep on the second story of our home. (You normally can’t even hear the front door from upstairs.) I come running downstairs to see the owner of the golf course standing there with his arms folded. When I opened the door, I told him, “Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry, I’ll be right into work.” When I got into work, he proceeded to try to call someone else to have my shift covered even though he had already banged on my house door. My question is, is it against the law for managers to show up at your private residence and bang on your door, demanding you come into work, and then once you get into work have somebody come in to replace you?

It is legal for your boss to show up at your house and bang on the door (because it’s legal for anyone to show up at your house and bang on your door, at least unless circumstances occur that would make it trespassing or harassment, like if they refuse to leave when told to). It’s also legal for him to get someone else to cover your shift, even after demanding you show up. Some states do have laws requiring employers to pay you a minimum number of hours simply for showing up. But in states without those laws, you’d only need to be paid for whatever amount of time you were there after clocking in.

Separately from the law, there’s also the question of whether your boss is a jerk, and the answer to that is yes.

5. Listing a target position on LinkedIn that you don’t actually have

I am job hunting after being laid off. I recently took a LinkedIn workshop and the instructor told us to put in a placeholder position if we weren’t actively employed, on the grounds that we won’t come up in searches by recruiters without an active job title. This placeholder would basically be full of SEO. Roughly, the idea would be:

• job title: number one preferred job title
• company field: target industries
• description field: “seeking” other relevant job titles and whatever other search terms that might apply

This obviously wouldn’t look like an actual position to any human reading it, so it’s not quite the same as lying about one’s job history. It still seems dodgy to me, and like the sort of thing a recruiter might reject immediately. Am I just behind the times? Is this an accepted practice now?

No, this is crap advice. Ignore it.

Humans will look at your LinkedIn profile and this will be a weird thing to have there.

Editorial note: The following message came into our patron services team this week. We are posting here in full with the patron’s permission as it explains the full scope of the challenges our readers are facing following the publishers’ decision to remove more than 500,000 books from our lending library.

Here is Maureen, in her own words:

“I use the Internet Archive for many reasons and the book removals have impacted my ability to do so! Despite my good fortune to live in a community which provides a great library with plenty of physical books and a decent digital selection via Libby, the Archive still meets needs which my local library cannot fulfill.

I’m disabled: it causes fatigue, executive dysfunction, and more. I also am at high risk for Long Covid complications, so I try to limit my time in crowded public areas.

Additionally I live in an area with extreme weather that runs the gamut from whiteout blizzards, river floods making roads impassable, tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, extreme heat, wildfire smoke, and on and on!

This means that actually GETTING to the library can be a challenge at times, especially as I work, which further reduces the hours available.

While I do have a decent selection of typical contemporary ebooks via my community library’s Libby app, many topics of importance to me aren’t represented well or at all.

These include:

* LGBT, feminist, and disability studies books (many of which are long out of print, had small print runs or cost exorbitant academic prices, and were published long before ebooks existed or only in other areas of the world).

* retro/vintage/historical children’s picture books as well as vintage scifi and fantasy books, for many of the reasons listed above.

* Niche topics in anthropology, archaeology, and world religions. (Again for the aforementioned reasons).

It also really infuriates me that the lawsuit claims that use of the Archive’s library is just “recreational”.

* Just because I’m no longer in college or grad school doesn’t mean I’ve stopped learning, or privately researching, or somehow lost my desire for knowledge!

* (Plus, full-time and part-time independent scholars EXIST OUTSIDE OF THE ACADEMY and it’s so disheartening to see their contributions ignored/denied.)

* All children’s books are BY DEFINITION educational! They’re teaching kids to read!!!!!

* So are all nonfiction & biography books! They convey important information that help people make sense of the world.

* Vintage/retro genre books (romance, mystery, scifi etc) are in fact subjects of scholarship, through Fandom Studies, Leisure Studies, History, Literature etc. The Browne Popular Culture Library at Bowling Green State University is a perfect example!

* And yes, contemporary genre books are subjects of scholarship too. And while many non-academics read vintage and/or contemporary genre books for solely for fun, many of us also like to chart changes in genre over time.

* For example, I am a Trekkie (Star Trek fan) and comparing very early Trek novels with recent ones is illuminating on a fandom history level AND a sociological level.

***Education and scholarship also mean private self-study. Publishers need to stop locking knowledge in the academic ivory tower!!!!!!!!***

In short- the Internet Archive is very important to me and millions of other readers. The books need to be restored to circulation. Let us read, let us learn.”

Maureen L., Iowa City, Iowa

TORONTO, ON ― Describing it as “not entirely tasteless” and “at least as relevant to Tim Hortons as pizza, clothing, credit cards, or the spaceships they will probably announce soon,” reviewers of Tim Hortons’ new play, “The Last Timbit,” have deemed the production mediocre so far, which is much more than can be said for […]

The post Critics praise “The Last Timbit” as the most edible product Tim Hortons has to offer appeared first on The Beaverton.

The pair of NASA astronauts who flew Boeing’s Starliner capsule to the International Space Station on June 6 have been delayed from returning several times, with their departure date getting pushed from June 18, to the 22nd, to the 26th, and now an unannounced new date as issues with the capsule continue to crop up.…

Read more...

Earlier this month, a bombshell report from the religious watchdog group Wartburg Watch roiled one of the largest megachurches in Texas. Robert Morris, the founder and pastor of the influential Southlake-based Gateway Church, had in the 1980s repeatedly sexually abused a child over the course of four years, beginning when the girl was 12 years old, as recounted by the survivor to Wartburg’s Dee Parsons. According to the victim, Cindy Clemishire, the abuse took place in both Oklahoma and Texas.   

The public allegations toppled Morris, a highly influential conservative pastor and a key emissary for the religious right in Republican politics. In a statement following the Wartburg report, Morris admitted to “inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady.” He resigned as pastor of Gateway on June 18—his name was promptly scrubbed from the Gateway website and those of its many affiliated organizations. The bio of his son, in line to succeed Morris as senior pastor, now lacked any mention of his father.  

Before his fall from grace, Morris wielded significant political influence, endorsing candidates and promoting Republican legislative priorities from the pulpit while serving as one of ex-President Donald Trump’s key advisors. Morris has made visits to the White House and even hosted Trump at a Gateway campus in Dallas, where Trump described Morris and his colleague Steve Dulin as “great people with a great reputation.”

Under Morris’ leadership over 23 years, Gateway Church ballooned to around 100,000 congregants at campuses spread across North Texas. The vast network has become a hotbed for Christian nationalism, “an ideology that seeks to privilege conservative Christianity in education, law, and public policy,” according to David Brockman, a religious scholar with the Baker Institute at Rice University and a Texas Observer contributor. 

Gateway has a long history of promoting right-wing candidates from the pulpit and beyond. The church is closely aligned with Patriot Mobile, the Christian nationalist cell phone company whose PAC has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars backing candidates who campaigned on claims that children are being deliberately “sexualized” in public schools. The church has also allowed Patriot Mobile to use its facilities to host voter registration events in partnership with Citizens Defending Freedom, a right-wing activist group with chapters across the nation that is a founding member of the Remnant Alliance, a new coalition of Christian nationalist organizations that are also targeting school board elections. Morris and his church also promoted voter guides published by groups like Vision America and the iVoterGuide, both of which are linked to the right-wing network Council on National Policy.

Gateway consists of a sprawling web of churches and affiliated educational organizations. It features nine Gateway campuses in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, four prison ministries in North Texas, and a satellite campus in Jackson Hole, a preferred vacation spot among America’s wealthiest elites. According to Gateway, it also provides support and resources to a vast network of 98 churches in 24 states, with 32 affiliated ministries in the Dallas-Fort Worth area alone, and a total of 275 churches across 80 countries.

One of those affiliates is Mercy Culture, an openly political megachurch that has become an engine for Christian nationalist politics where GOP state Representative Nate Schatzline is a pastor. Schatzline is a firebrand Christian conservative from Tarrant County who openly mixes religion and politics. During his first term in 2023, he led a group of Mercy Culture congregants in prayer at the Texas Capitol. On April 21, Schatzline led the Mercy Culture congregation in prayer for a list of candidates supported by For Liberty and Justice Tarrant, a Mercy Culture-affiliated nonprofit that Schatzline also leads. Several of the endorsed politicians were in attendance. He’s also led “Candidate University” trainings for aspiring candidates and activists who “will stand for righteousness” and “make an impact for the Kingdom in government.”

Schatzline has been at the forefront of a crusade to ban drag shows and remove LGBTQ+ content from school libraries, often describing his opponents as “groomers”. Notably, the word “groomer” was not among the 418 words in the statement Schatzline issued on June 18 regarding Morris’ past child molestation.

“For years, Pastor [Morris] has shared about a ‘moral failing’ in the early years of his marriage and ministry, after which he submitted to restoration,” Schatzline’s statement on X reads. “While I believe in restoration, the details that have recently come to light are deeply disturbing and are unacceptable for anyone, especially a spiritual leader.”

Schatzline’s statement did not call for Moore to be criminally prosecuted. For “continuous sexual abuse of [a] young child,” there is no statute of limitations under Texas law. Schatzline did not respond to Observer requests for comment.

In a June 20 post on X, Schatzline said: “Leftists will use the recent evil actions of celebrity pastors to CONSTANTLY redirect & deflect from the sexual indoctrination in the pub ed system. Let’s unify against both. Both are evil!”

Other prominent Texas Republicans—who’ve also made political hay of stopping child predators or preventing the sexualization of minors—have also met and been pictured with Morris over the years, including Governor Greg Abbott, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, and Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn. None of them appear to have issued any public statement about Morris, nor did any respond to the Observer’s requests for comment.

In 2020, Trump spoke at length with Morris during a public event at the Gateway Church campus in Dallas. The former president has repeatedly promoted conspiracy theories that cast his political enemies as Satanic pedophiles and validated the delusions of QAnon adherents.

In 2015, Morris posted a photo of himself shaking hands with Abbott. In 2017, Morris said Abbott had personally called him seeking support for a so-called bathroom bill to ban transgender Texans from using public restrooms that align with their gender expression. The right’s main talking point for the bill was to stop potential predators from accessing bathrooms to prey on women and children. In 2023, Abbott made a comment on X suggesting that children are the targets of “sexual activism,” and he has helped advance the right’s narrative that public school teachers and administrators are intentionally sexualizing children. 

Morris also posted a photo with Cruz after a meeting in 2016. In 2022, Cruz said on X: “The radical left wants to sexualize kids. We ought to be protecting the innocence of kids.”

Waybourn, the top lawman in Tarrant County where Gateway Church is headquartered, also has a connection to Morris. In 2023, Morris posted photos with Waybourn and members of his staff after attending a Sunday service at Gateway. The conservative sheriff has campaigned heavily on the idea he would crack down on human sex trafficking, including minors.

Morris has been condemned by many conservative Christians, including John Huffman, the former Mayor of Southlake, where Gateway is headquartered. “Gateway Church says it’s ‘All about people.’ It’s time they prove it,” Huffman wrote in a lengthy post on X criticizing the church leadership’s response.

Local outlets have reported that some Gateway congregants have chosen to leave the church in the controversy’s wake.

But, in a June 18 audio recording reported by NBC News, one church elder said that there is “an anointing” on Morris even after “there was some stuff that was done. They both can exist,” he said. 

In a since-deleted Facebook post, one congregant questioned the motivations of Morris’ victim, Clemishire. “Gateway Church is my church and Robert Morris was my pastor,” the congregant wrote. “Here are my thoughts on this sad day he resigned. I find several things to question: Her timing…why now? Why did she not write a book or take info further 10 to 15 years ago as an adult?”

Clemishire emailed Morris about the abuse as early as 2005 seeking compensation, in response to which Morris replied with a legal warning that Clemishire could be “criminally prosecuted.” At least one church elder was aware that Clemishire sought compensation from Morris at the time.

The post Pastor’s Admitted Child Sex Abuse Roils Hotbed of Christian Nationalism appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Dramatic footage captures the moment a home falls off a cliff into a river after days of rainfall in Minnesota.

In a statement, METRO board chair Elizabeth Gonzalez Brock said staff recommended to not move forward with the project because of reduced ridership projections and increased costs.

SANTA CRUZ, CA—Staring in awe as the gasping, waddling figure struggled to pull himself to shore, eye witnesses confirmed Wednesday that a naked man spotted emerging from the ocean must have just finished evolving. “Oh my god, look at that thing, it’s making its way out of the water and, for the first time, using its…

Read more...

Houston may be settling into its summer weather doldrums, but let’s face it: In June, the skies over the region were a happenin’ place. As happens this time of the month, Eric and Matt have cracked open their inboxes and answered your queries.

Got a burning question of your own? Smash the Feedback button in the blog’s sidebar, respond here with a comment or talk to us on our socials: X, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Mastodon, Bluesky and LinkedIn.

---

Q. So I’m curious which model actually panned out (regarding TS Alberto). Was it the regular models or the AI models? I remember it being mentioned that there were some differences between them a few days ago.

Thanks for the question. We took a look at this in the immediate aftermath of Alberto, and in terms of track the physics-based models significantly outperformed most of the AI-models. Essentially, some of the AI models wanted to bring the tropical system much further north into the Gulf of Mexico (toward Texas) whereas the traditional models kept it bottled up in the Southern Gulf, which is what ultimately happened.

I’ve also been looking at the AI guidance more frequently for non-storm events and so far I’m not convinced it’s any better (or even as good as) the physics-based models. Of course this is just my personal experience. The best way to determine the value of these new models will be using rigorous, comparative studies of what the models predicted across a range of variables against what ultimately happened. Now that the AI forecasts are coming out in real time, those kinds of studies can be done. I look forward to seeing the results in the coming months and we’ll be sure and share any interesting findings here.

–Eric

Q: Is the news media hurricane prediction for 2024 hype or more on the real side? I am debating getting a generator, but don’t want to buy into the hype if that’s what it is.

A: It’s certainly not hype. But you have to look at it logically. The data almost unanimously suggests that this should about as active a hurricane season as we could have. Thus, the seasonal forecasts are all quite bullish on hurricane development.

In fact, one thing we did at our companion site The Eyewall back in early June was to expand on ways that the active hurricane season forecasts could bust. The reality is that it could bust. Absolutely. Would that mean the preseason forecasts were all hype? As a scientist, I will tell you certainly not. As a member of the public, I get why you’d have that opinion though. So we encourage people to look at the decisions they make with regard to seasonal hurricane forecasts with nuance.

Were you probably going to get a generator anyway? We’ve had far more events non-tropics related that have caused extensive power outages in our area in recent years. Just consider the whole picture. And in this case consider a busted forecast a good thing if it happens.

–Matt

Q. Why is Potential Tropical Cyclone One not called “Tropical Depression One”? I thought a storm was called a tropical depression before it became a tropical storm?

It’s all a bit confusing, isn’t it? But the intent here by the National Hurricane Center is good. A “Potential Tropical Cyclone” is sometimes issued before a tropical system becomes a ‘depression’ or a ‘tropical storm.’ This happens when a system could bring tropical storm or hurricane conditions to land within 48 hours.

Essentially, forecasters from the hurricane center do this when they want to highlight the threat of a tropical system to land, but that system has not yet formed. Why do this? Because sometimes a tropical storm does not intensify until very shortly before landfall, at which point formal warnings are often too late to be actionable. The hurricane center started doing this in 2017, and you can find more information here.

–Eric

Q: Curious to know how the NWS determines if a tornado occurred and categorizes it after the event? Is it based on eyewitness accounts, damage, etc?

A: There are a few ways to confirm a tornado has occurred. Some larger tornadoes have “tornadic debris signatures” on radar, where you can see the radar showing you lofted debris from tornado damage. The most obvious and easiest way to suspect a tornado is eyewitness accounts.

But sometimes well-meaning people think something is a tornado when it is not. That’s why the NWS usually sends out a survey team to go investigate damage after a storm if a tornado is suspected. They can combine spotter or eyewitness accounts with radar data to determine exactly where to look for tornado damage. Generally speaking, if the damage is all pointed in one direction, that’s a tell-tale sign of straight line winds, or a microburst/downburst, not a tornado.

But if the damage is more chaotic or pointed down in different directions, that’s a probable sign of a tornado. This page from the NWS in Binghamton, NY shows sort of how they go about this process.

Rating the tornado’s intensity is another matter. There is some subjectivity involved, but in general, the damage indicators as provided in the Enhanced Fujita scale provide a decent categorization for a tornado.

–Matt

Q. You are all hype. I thought your website was dedicated to providing weather insight for Houston without the hype but your Stage 2 flooding article was all hype!! Don’t quit your day job!

A. Let me put your weary and worried mind at ease: we won’t be quitting our day jobs. My day job is writing about space exploration for Ars Technica. Matt is a meteorologist for an energy company in Houston. Would you believe that Space City Weather is hobby for both of us, a second job we do to try and help the community?

I do think it is useful to revisit our thinking about issuing a Stage 2 flood alert on Sunday, June 16. Here’s the post, which we published at 9:53 a.m. Note that this was Father’s Day, and Matt and I spent a couple of hours that morning strategizing, thinking, and writing about the forecast. I mention that just so you understand we’re pretty dedicated to this stuff.

That morning we actually gave some thought to issuing a Stage 3 warning for coastal areas, but I decided it was best to hold back for a time. At the time some of the modeling was rather dire (showing upwards of 20 inches of rain across parts of Houston in some instances). The ‘official’ precipitation forecast from NOAA showed a bullseye of 12 inches of rain just south of Houston, and the flood threat was very real for coastal areas. In any case, we felt it was time to raise the alarm about the potential for significant flooding in the Houston region for the coming week. So we pulled the trigger.

Some uncertainty definitely remained—we caveated our forecast with the following statement, “Our forecast modeling remains a bit split as to whether the heaviest rain will fall near Galveston, or further south closer to the Coastal Bend.” The latter is precisely what happened.

In forecasting, you win some, and you lose some. All we can really do is to try and do our best, and that’s just what we do here.

–Eric

The case is one element in a right-wing legal and political campaign that frames efforts to respond to false and misleading information as censorship.

(Image credit: Jim Watson)

The Last Timbit, the new musical from — bafflingly — Tim Hortons, premieres today. Despite the obvious advertising, its cast argues it's a real musical. And it could be a new way to help a struggling Canadian theatre industry.

I noted some time ago in the discussion of the Microspeak term party that a party branch is a branch in which the usual procedures for code changes don’t apply, or at least apply less strictly than normal.

A closely-related term for this type of branch is a fun fork.¹ The idea is the same: It’s a branch where you can make changes more freely than normal. But a fun fork is even looser than a party branch: The idea of the fun fork is that it will never be merged back to the parent branch. Do whatever you want! Nobody will care!

Usually, a fun fork is created so that a team can experiment with a large, complex feature. If the experiment proves successful, the team can move the changes from the fun fork to a product branch. The actual code in the fun fork is not usually taken verbatim directly into the product. It will probably be cleaned up, say by removing things that didn’t pan out,² removing dead code, refactoring for maintainability. It might even be reimplemented entirely from scratch based on information learned in the fun fork. It is the ingestion into the product branch that undergoes the standard change scrutiny that applies to all changes to the product.

¹ Even thought the term “fork” implies that the changes are going into a clone of the main repo, in practice, the “fork” is usually a branch of the main repo. This makes it possible to use existing infrastructure for managing branches and resources associated with branches, like build resources, ISO and VHD production, and symbol indexing. The term “fork” comes from an old internal Microsoft source control system that did not support branches, so the only option was to fork the entire code base.

² For example, the team may have implemented three different ways of doing something, so they could see which one works best. After they decide which one to use, they can delete the other two. You might have a trio of functions called Do­Something, Do­Something­Differently, and Do­Something­With­Feeling. You decide that “Differently” is the best one, so you delete the other two and rename Do­Something­Differently to Do­Something.

Or maybe the team implemented an object called a Widget­Manager, but as the code evolved, the manager didn’t do that much managing any more, so they renamed it to Widget­Selector to match what it actually does.

The post Microspeak: Fun fork appeared first on The Old New Thing.

Roland Sound Canvas emulation has long been a "white whale" of DOS emulation. While there have been several efforts from Roland over the years to emulate the Sound Canvas line, they have not targeted the modules used by most DOS games, the SC-55 and SC-55mkII. Other emulation methods have not quite hit the mark for other reasons. Recently, an emulator author with the handle "nukeyt" has released an emulator called Nuked-SC55. In this article I will tell you how to run it with DOSBox and other programs.

Read more »

LONDON—In an effort to correct the imperial power’s past wrongs, London’s Science Museum was reportedly forced Wednesday to return the fire exhibit originally plundered from the gods. “After extensive negotiations with the deities, we are proud to announce that fire will soon be returned to its rightful home on Mount…

Read more...

MANACOR, SPAIN—Expressing regret about missing “the amazing event,” Rafael Nadal announced this week that he has officially withdrawn from Wimbledon in order to spend more time pressing his tennis racket against his face to make waffle marks, adding that he would now be referred to as Waffle Face. “As I near…

Read more...

Friday is our day in court. After four long years of legal action, we will be in New York for the appellate oral argument in Hachette v. Internet Archive, the publishers’ lawsuit against our library.

Show Your Support!

Throughout this four-year process, our patrons and supporters have asked how to help in this fight. Here are actions you can take to stand with the Internet Archive:

1. Watch the oral argument on Friday, June 28.
The proceedings will be livestreamed starting at 10am ET. Join via https://ww2.ca2.uscourts.gov/court.html, Courtroom 1505.


2. Tell the publishers: Let readers read!
We’ve created an open letter to the publishers, asking them to restore access to the 500,000 books they’ve removed from our library. Add your signature today!


3. Stay connected.
Sign up for the Empowering Libraries newsletter for ongoing updates about the lawsuit and our library.

A quick recap

After the lower court sided with the publishers last March, we committed to appeal the decision. The appeal process kicked off last fall, with our opening brief filed in December, followed by amicus briefs in support of our library and library lending two weeks later. On Friday, we’ll appear in the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, continuing our fight for library digital rights.

What’s at stake?

The lawsuit is about the longstanding and widespread library practice of controlled digital lending, which is how we lend the books we own to our patrons. As a result of the publishers’ lawsuit, more than 500,000 books have been removed from our lending library. The impacts on our patrons have been devastating:

A congressional probe recently revealed that the U.S. Postal Service has shared information from Americans’ mail with law enforcement, including names and addresses, without requiring a court order, with the organization approving 97% of the 60,000 requests they’ve received from police departments since 2015. What do y…

Read more...

MOSCOW—In an effort to strengthen ties with outside groups two years into Russia’s widely condemned invasion of Ukraine, an increasingly isolated Vladimir Putin confirmed Wednesday that he had tried joining an adult kickball league. “I found this intramural league that plays in central Moscow, and kickball might be a…

Read more...

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
You ever imagine how you'd feel if there were constant fights between anonymous well-armed vigilante factions. Eventually everyone would just move to the suburbs.

Today's News:

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
Pro Wrestling is the most realistic form of entertainment, in that nothing means anything, but everyone still gets hurt.

Today's News:

Hidalgo posted a series of photos from her recent bridal shower, which included a photo of her and her fiancé David James. Under the post, Whitmire commented, "Wonderful. He sure looks like a nerd".

No, no, great job, you disintegrated our Death Star, the first-ever pedestrian-only planet. You drove a million miles just to ruin a perfectly lovely living space.

Just admit you were jealous of our commute and hated the idea of us enjoying a holistic work-life-play housing concept optimized to balance labor and leisure.

You couldn’t bear to watch us walk with our friends to work or see us enjoy the bonding comforts of a carefully designed, open-plan, living-first colony. It’s honestly sad.

Coming in your massive, individual vehicles—not a single one of you carpooled. It’s classic rebel exceptionalism.

What were you so mad about, anyway? We were exclusively blowing up planets without protected bike lanes or recessed pedestrian crossings. Those people were already 75 percent more likely to die in pedestrian-related accidents.

“That’s no moon.” Yeah, no shit. We had a fully internalized pneumatic trash system, which we know you guys broke, by the way. Floor-to-ceiling windows, smart doors, vaulted ceilings, and housing for two million people.

I mean, it’s true, we did have one crucial weakness, but it wasn’t what you think. And blowing the whole thing up wasn’t going to help finish our self-sustaining greenhouse complex.

But I hope you enjoy the vacuous sprawl you call a Republic. Just try to ignore the fact that dozens of people die each year jumping from one flying car down to another. Not to mention the horrifying number of speeders that run into trees.

You have to do a bit of self-reflection and realize your lifestyle isn’t sustainable. Aren’t you starting to think you might be overusing hyperspace for convenience?

Efficiency aside, constant long-haul trips from planet to planet can’t be enjoyable for anyone involved. It’s got to get confusing to keep track of what world you’re on and what exactly you’re there to do.

Whatever, we’re not going to let you suppress the progress of our growing empire of walkers. We’ll just build another boundary-pushing community and hope that you learn to accept the new order.