There are many anecdotal complaints about Google search not being what it used to be. A German computer scientist and his colleagues put this theory to the test recently focusing on product reviews. Today on the show, we bring their findings to Google's chief search scientist.
Former President Donald Trump cemented the conservative majority on the Supreme Court. If Trump wins again, Biden said "one of the scariest parts" would be his power to fill upcoming vacancies.
OTTAWA – The House of Commons has voted unanimously for a bill that will crack down on the ability of foreign states to influence federal politicians who rightfully owe their allegiance to Canadian businesses and billionaires. “If the allegations are true, Canadian parliamentarians collaborating with foreign governments is unacceptable,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said. “Elected […]
EDMONTON – Edmontonian Jason Porter, who’s spent another evening shouting outraged profanities at his TV amid a growing pile of Alberta Genuine Draft empties, was excited to discover an Oilers game on screen, according to local reporters. “Holy shit, the Oilers are in the Cup Final? That’s wild,” said Porter. “I should dig out the […]
In brief: We’re continuing to follow the possibility of heavy rainfall next week in the greater Houston area, especially for coastal areas. We’re still far from having all of the details, but we know enough to take the threat seriously.
Weekend outlook
Happy Saturday, everyone. If sunshine and heat are your jam, you’re in luck this weekend. Today, especially, will bring brilliant blue skies and temperatures in the mid-90s. There may be a few clouds tomorrow, but I still expect mostly sunny skies on Sunday, with high temperatures in the low- to mid-90s. It’s possible we’ll see a few isolated showers and thunderstorms during the afternoon and evening hours on Sunday, but most of us will simply be sunny and warm.
And then it won’t be.
NOAA rain forecast for now through next Thursday. (Weather Bell)
Next week
The overall pattern appears unsettled for most of next week, with a very healthy chance of showers each day, and the middle of the week especially concerning. A low pressure system over the southern Gulf of Mexico will help push a large plume of tropical moisture into Texas and Louisiana. This threat of heavy rainfall next week will materialize whether the low in the southern Gulf becomes a tropical depression or storm. In fact, it doesn’t really matter. The table is set, regardless.
Over the last 24 hours some of our guidance has been showing excessive amounts of rainfall along the Gulf coast, but whether these bullseyes occur over Matagorda Bay, Galveston Bay, Port Arthur, or Southern Louisiana is something we cannot say. In terms of timing, the greatest threat of heavy rainfall likely will come during a period from Tuesday evening through Thursday morning.
Next Wednesday morning precipitable water levels are forecast to be nearly 200 percent of norma levels. (Weather Bell)
So what does this all mean? If you live inland of Interstate 10, the overall risk is lower. Most of these areas are likely to pick up 2 to 4 inches between Monday and Friday. However, areas along and south of Interstate 10 are likely to see 4 to 6 inches of rainfall next week. Our concern is that some localized areas may see 10 inches or more of rainfall next week given the tropical nature of this rainfall. The expected level of moisture in the atmosphere—a value known as precipitable water—is very high, and such levels are capable of producing high rainfall rates that can quickly flood streets. We don’t know for sure whether this kind of pattern will establish itself over the Houston area, but it is a distinct possibility.
I’m writing all of this on a Saturday morning not to scare you, but rather to prepare you for the possibility of heavy rainfall next week. We will continue to watch this closely, and update this weekend as warranted.
Officials continue to warn residents that Calgary could run out of water if the effort to conserve water isn't their first priority. But what could running out of water actually look like in Alberta's largest city?
The Downtown Penetrator was Calgary's pre-disco-era plan for a giant highway to bring motorists into the core from the booming populations in the city's northeast and eastern suburbs.
The city could be forced to bring in mandatory indoor water restrictions if water usage in Calgary continues at its current rate, the mayor said Friday, calling the situation "urgent and catastrophic."
EL PASO, TX—Recalling the difficulty she once had standing up straight as she carried her textbooks and supplies from class to class, local 11-year-old Mia Bridgemeyer told reporters Friday that her pregnant belly was really helping her balance the weight of her 20-pound backpack. “Before, I was always hunched over…
Today is my final day of employment at the job I wrote in about. I am leaving here for a job at a large university in the major city I live near, with a 40% pay increase and better benefits and PTO. In my last two weeks, they decided to move the role out from under Jane’s supervision to being under Andy’s, which is wild because Andy doesn’t know the first thing about the role nor the system that the role works with (whereas Jane is the one who trained me in that system). They also decided that it will be a senior level role instead of the junior one I’ve had, and give the role a 40-50% pay increase, which is also wild because when I asked for a promotion a couple of months ago, they said it wasn’t in the budget. It was a super nice F-you to me from the org I’ve been supporting for three years.
In my final two weeks here, I have voiced my concerns with respect to Andy to whomever here I thought I could trust. My exit interview, which was supposed to be with the head of our org, was conducted by my grandboss instead because he canceled on me at the last minute. I was scathing in my exit interview, stating that the reasons I was leaving were 1) money and 2) Andy. I spoke to the one and only board member I know, who was very kind and seemed appreciative of what I had to say. I spoke to Andy’s new direct report, who started here last week, and very carefully let her know my concerns so as not to frighten her; she also seemed to appreciate the heads-up. I learned that Andy has had it out for me from the very beginning, probably because I don’t believe any of the BS they throw at us and I have, for months now, questioned Andy at every possible opportunity whenever they spout fluff and I want to know concrete facts. (They have never, to my recollection, responded to my questions with anything concrete, and usually end up very flustered.)
Yesterday, Andy wrote an email to all-staff announcing the change in the role. As my last official action at the org, I replied-all, copied the board, and wrote an email laying out all the issues.
Whether or not the board will do anything remains to be seen, but given that our org head mostly reports to them that everything here is hunky dory, I think they will be surprised at the least, and hopefully will take a long hard look at Andy and why the head of our org has kept Andy employed despite … everything. Several others here are looking for work and I hope they are able to get out and to find satisfying work at places that will appreciate what they put in and compensate them fairly. I am in a strong position given that I know Jane will give me excellent references going forward, so I was not worried about blowback in sending this email. I know not everyone has the security I do, so I do not recommend this approach to everyone, but if you know you can’t be harmed by speaking the truth and standing up for yourself and others who are being mistreated, I encourage you to do so.
Nearly three years later and my partner (now spouse!) is still at the same company. They’ve been promoted, they’re beloved by all coworkers, and recently got complimented by their boss for “always encouraging us to be better.”
Meanwhile, I am at a different job so now we don’t work from home the same days anymore. It’s been good to get distance from each other in our professional lives, I think essentially being coworkers was not doing our relationship any favors. We did have a conversation about what I perceived as unprofessional behavior and they pointed out that my field is fairly hierarchical and conservative while theirs is younger and less uptight. Thanks for your answer and to the commenters!
It’s small, but the update is that I did indeed find a job in another state! It helped my case that my old city and my new city have suburbs with the same name, and my old job had that suburb as part of its name; I think that’s how I got my foot in the door. I only had two weeks to move and it was a nightmare; I sprouted my first gray hairs not long after that ordeal! I’m a little over a year into the new job and loving it. I will even be up for a promotion of sorts soon, with higher pay and more responsibilities so I’m very happy!
Last September I posted about the all-male faculty and staff camping trip at my school (all-boys Catholic school).
Bad update: Well, the camping trip is coming up — Monday to Thursday of next week, in fact. Still an all-male trip. Still no women invited or allowed.
Good update: The school agreed to create a committee to discuss women’s issues and experiences at the school, and I was the chair this past year. Administrators gave me TWO professional development days to present information (data and interviews and women’s personal experiences of exclusion) on campus. I got to be in front of the entire school for somewhere around eight total hours, educating everyone on the inherent inequalities of being a woman at an all-boys high school. We did a school-wide survey about exclusion, sexual harassment, and gender inequality on campus. Some of the men were shocked to learn about how the women feel.
The camping trip was discussed! As predicted, there are a lot of people (men) wanting to push back on the idea of women being invited. Some of them sought me out for my opinion, privately, and asked me questions about it in what I’d consider to be a good-faith attempt at understanding my perspective. I used talking points straight from Alison’s answers to guide our discussion. I spoke one-on-one with maybe eight men out of the 60 or so who attend this trip. Maybe I’ve turned a couple hearts? (By the way there are at least five men who are emphatically on my side — very exciting!)
The conversation is ongoing around the trip specifically. Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of other cultural issues to address. This year I got pregnant (a great piece of news for me and my husband) and I was devastated to learn there is no paid maternity leave (well, devastated, but perhaps not surprised). Catholic schools managed to lobby for an exemption to my state’s paid family leave policies. (Really pro-family, right?) I joined the faculty contract negotiations team this summer, and I am always working to leverage positive social change where I work.
To everyone who rightfully asked why I am still working there: I think you’re right, and it’s time to leave. I owe them a couple more years contractually for paying for my master’s degree (nice job perk, to be fair) but after that I am not sure I see myself staying. In the meantime it’s imperative that I work to create change, no matter how strongly the cultural tide pushes against it.
Thank you to Alison and the commentariat, who persuaded me I’m not upset over nothing.
SAN FRANCISCO – After X, formerly Twitter, announced yesterday that “likes” would now be privatized and hidden, owner Elon Musk assured users that the move had nothing to do with all the freaky porn stuff he likes, and was strictly for election interference only. The tech mogul announced the decision on X yesterday, posting: “Important […]
WASHINGTON—Trying to find work to keep the new summer hires busy, officials at the National Archives tasked intern Haley Scholtz with singeing the edges of the U.S. Constitution on Wednesday to make it look old. “Just burn it around the margins a bit so it looks old-timey,” said archivist Kevin McManus, telling…
Steve Bannon has been ordered by a judge to report to prison by July 1 to serve a four-month sentence after he was convicted of acting in contempt of Congress. The Onion explains everything you need to know about the former Trump advisor and far-right figure potentially spending time behind bars.
WASHINGTON—Marking the first time in history that humans have successfully smoothed away all the unsightly craters of a celestial body, NASA announced Thursday that it had polished the moon using an orbital rock tumbler. “Thanks to the tireless efforts of our scientists, technicians, and engineers, we have tumbled the…
THE HEAVENS—Begging the deliverymen to stay while He figured something out, the Lord God Almighty cursed loudly Thursday after He reportedly realized the gates of heaven were not wide enough for His new couch to fit through. “Are you fucking kidding Me? Wayfair must have listed the dimensions wrong,” said God, the…
DAYTON, OH—A wave of nostalgia and dirty toilet water rushing over them, old classmates attending a reunion at Belhaven High School easily picked up right in the swirly where they had left off, sources reported Wednesday. “Wow, it’s wild how we can come together after all these years and immediately get back into…
K-pop idol Jin of the group BTS has promised to embrace 1,000 fans in a three-hour-long hugging marathon upon his return from service in the South Korean army, which requires all able-bodied men to serve. What do you think?
So you’ve decided to jump into a black hole. Good news: as long as the black hole is big enough you can sail through the event horizon without harm and get to experience the interior of the black hole before you’re annihilated by the central singularity. Or so we once thought. These days, quite a few physicists believe that the only way to avoid horrible contradictions in fundamental physics generated by black holes is for all them to be surrounded by screens of extreme energy that prevent anything from ever entering the event horizon. Sounds outlandish? Welcome to black holes. So let’s find out why many of our most brilliant physicists take these black hole firewalls deadly seriously.
Hosted by Matt O'Dowd Written by Matt O'Dowd Post Production by Leonardo Scholzer, Yago Ballarini & Stephanie Faria Directed by Andrew Kornhaber Associate Producer: Bahar Gholipour Executive Producers: Eric Brown & Andrew Kornhaber Executive in Charge for PBS: Maribel Lopez Director of Programming for PBS: Gabrielle Ewing Assistant Director of Programming for PBS: John Campbell
Big Bang Sponsors First Principles Foundation John Sronce Bryce Fort Peter Barrett David Neumann Alexander Tamas Morgan Hough Juan Benet Vinnie Falco Mark Rosenthal
Quasar Sponsors Grace Biaelcki Glenn Sugden Ethan Cohen Stephen Wilcox J Tyacke Mark Heising
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MIAMI, FLORIDA - JULY 12: A "for rent" sign in front of a home on July 12, 2023 in Miami, Florida. The U.S. consumer price index report showed that inflation fell to its lowest annual rate in more than two years during June. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
DETROIT — The federal government is laying the groundwork for a potentially major change to the nation’s largest rental assistance program, aiming to test an idea that would allow low-income tenants to pay rent directly with cash, rather than use traditional housing vouchers.
On Wednesday afternoon in Detroit, at a national guaranteed income conference, HUD Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy Development Brian McCabe announced that his agency is soon planning to solicit public comment on the prospect of testing whether distributing cash directly to tenants might work better for renters, landlords, governments and even taxpayers.
Officials are keenly aware of some of the stark challenges faced by participants of the 50-year-old federal voucher program. To get a voucher, a household first must prove eligibility. Then a public housing agency must issue the voucher subsidy to a landlord on the household’s behalf. The landlord must then accept that voucher, the unit must pass an inspection, and the landlord must sign a contract with the public housing agency.
Some renters, in turn, struggle to find anywhere to use their voucher, should they be one of the lucky few to even receive one. One federal study found that only about 60 percent of beneficiaries can find a landlord willing to rent to them.
HUD will specifically seek input on questions like whether landlords would be more willing to rent to low-income people if they could skip the government’s red tape, and whether there would be higher-quality housing available to renters using cash. More than two million families currently use the federal subsidy.
At the conference, McCabe also shared that HUD plans to soon issue guidance to housing agencies on how they could run these sorts of cash pilot programs. McCabe was referring specifically to agencies in Moving to Work, a federal program that allows certain public housing authorities to spend their dollars more flexibly than is permitted under the traditional voucher program. Moving to Work was established in 1996 and expanded by Congress in 2016.
McCabe’s announcement reflects a change in HUD’s position on cash assistance. Last year, HUD lawyers said housing agencies, including those in Moving to Work, lacked the legal authority to test cash aid in lieu of vouchers.
The shift came in part from advocacy by housing leaders over the last year, who’ve emphasized that they believe Moving to Work agencies do have congressional permission to pilot innovations like cash rental assistance. Vox reviewed one such letter sent on May 7 by four national housing groups, and another sent by public housing agency leaders, like Preston Prince, the executive director of the Santa Clara Housing Authority.
Providing cash assistance “could be really disruptive — in a good way,” Prince told Vox. “Cash could help us serve more families.” Santa Clara has some 37,000 people on its voucher waitlist, and leaders estimate that they’re currently serving just one in six eligible residents.
Prince acknowledges that a study testing cash rental assistance could evoke more criticism of the housing voucher program or even of housing authorities more broadly.
“I am petrified about doing this pilot project, that it might prove something I’ve been working on for 30 years is not effective,” he told me. “It could challenge the overall system. That’s the unnerving part. But it takes a little bit of courage to say in the end it’s not about me.”
Advocates for testing cash rental assistance stress that they’re just looking to improve the housing voucher program, not replace it wholesale. If cash proved effective and even helped save governments money, officials might be able to focus on providing more support services, producing new housing, and conducting research. Housing authorities spend 13.8 hours annually on average administering individual vouchers, with tasks like certifying a renter’s income and assets to ensure they are as destitute as they say.
That voucher fraud detection work exists to protect public funds, but can also be stigmatizing and degrading. “There’s been pressure to look at our families as broken and untrustworthy, and direct rental assistance could really say to people, ‘You are trustworthy and valuable and we are here to help you be successful,’” said Prince.
The federal government has taken steps in recent years to cut down on paperwork required to access housing aid. During the pandemic individuals seeking help under the $46.5 billion Emergency Rental Assistance Program could simply affirm, under penalty of perjury, details such as their income or address, rather than submitting official records.
More recently, HUD announced that housing agencies could allow people to self-certify their income for homeless program eligibility, a move that could expedite voucher access. In announcing the shift, HUD acknowledged that many people experiencing homelessness might not have Social Security cards or pay stubs to prove their income status.
While some renters might prefer vouchers, others may find cash easier and faster to use, especially in certain markets. “I suspect that renters being able to present themselves to landlords as paying like any other potential tenant could feel quite empowering,” Stefanie DeLuca, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins, told me in 2021. Several sources Vox spoke with confirmed there could be multiple cash rental assistance studies launched as early as this year.
Though housing leaders are pitching the research as a modest policy inquiry, officials involved are keenly aware of the potentially dramatic implications of this research, should the studies show that cash indeed works better. A small pilot could lead to a larger federally funded demonstration study, which could, officials say, then lead to asking Congress to make permanent changes to the big bipartisan program.
How the idea of cash rental assistance advanced
The road to McCabe’s announcements in Detroit traces its origins back to the 1970s, in a now largely forgotten nationwide study of cash rental assistance. Known as the Experimental Housing Allowance Program, 50,000 families across 12 US cities received cash subsidies for rent. Program evaluators found the subsidies were well-received and successfully administered, but policymakers shifted their attention to the new federal housing voucher program, then known as Section 8.
In 2017, Todd Richardson, a longtime HUD staffer whose team inadvertently discovered old reports of this federal experiment, proposed that those findings could inform the existing Moving to Work voucher program.
By September 2023, as Vox then reported, HUD officials began formally pitching philanthropies and basic income advocates on partnering to study this cash rental assistance idea. Part of their hope was that private charitable dollars might have fewer legal constraints than federal voucher funds, which HUD attorneys then still felt would be ineligible to use for the research.
Since then HUD has been meeting regularly with nonprofits, funders, and housing experts to figure out how to get this cash aid idea off the ground. The federal housing agency has been hosting monthly virtual meetings and in November convened an in-person event in Washington, DC.
James Riccio, with the national policy research group MDRC, has participated in those monthly calls led by HUD analyst Paul Joice, and he told Vox his nonprofit should know “within the next month” if they can move forward with officially designing a cash rental assistance study. If they get the go-ahead, Riccio thinks their design work could be completed by late summer or early fall.
“We’ve taken up the gauntlet that HUD has thrown down and are trying to build a demonstration that would inform HUD’s efforts,” he said.
MDRC’s goal is to conduct a two-year randomized control trial across five geographically diverse cities, studying 1,000 families. Half of those would pay for their housing with traditional vouchers, and the other half would use cash.
“We really don’t know how it’s going to turn out, if landlords would be more inclined to rent to people,” Riccio said. “It seems there’s very good reason to think it could be true, but it’s something we could learn.”
Basic income advocates see a major opportunity
The pilot program is especially exciting for advocates of guaranteed income, who believe that the government should provide individuals with unconditional cash payments to reduce poverty, promote economic stability, and ensure basic standards of living.
During the early years of the pandemic, federal emergency aid fueled some tests of this guaranteed income idea. But that money has largely run out, and the tens of billions in annually appropriated federal voucher dollars presents advocates with a much more potentially reliable funding stream.
For now, leaders in the movement emphasize that they see cash rental assistance as a complement, rather than a replacement, to other forms of housing aid.
“We don’t want to be providing impetus to strip HUD of funding for the voucher program, which along with other rental assistance lifts 900,000 people out of poverty every year,” said Nika Soon-Shiong, the executive director of the Fund for Guaranteed Income, which is currently fundraising for a cash rental assistance pilot. “It’s not about more or less government, it’s about what kinds of interactions officials are investing in. What if every call to verify a low-income renter’s income was instead, ‘Hey, I heard you needed a ride. I can drive you.’”
The Fund for Guaranteed Income, which has administered a dozen basic income pilots across the US, is hoping to launch a rental assistance study later this year. It would be less statistically precise than the one MDRC is pursuing, but Soon-Shiong says they’d be focused more on practical design questions and specifically helping individuals move into apartments more easily. Their smaller pilot would aim to study 100 people for one year who receive direct cash, compared with 100 people who receive a voucher off the waitlist.
“What we’re trying to pilot is the mechanisms to build that cash on-ramp, and what it looks like specifically to redesign the housing inspection form, and to make sure the contract they sign can be converted into a housing assistance payment contract,” Soon-Shiong told Vox. “Our particular intervention is focused on how we can solve one of the key problems of the program which is that people aren’t able to utilize their voucher.”
At the Detroit conference on Wednesday, McCabe gave a shout-out to the Fund for Guaranteed Income’s work and stressed that he sees many different variations of research as helpful to building an evidence base.
“I want to emphasize there are millions of different ways that this type of program could be developed, and they would test different things and address different issues in the voucher program,” he said. “But in the end, we’re thinking about what it would mean to give families cash to pay their rent.”
Gizmodo calls it “the best screensaver of all time.” They’re referring to the Windows 3D Pipes screensaver, a mesmerizing network of pipes constructed in 3D before your very eyes. How did this iconic screen saver come to be?
One of my old friends told me how he got 3D Pipes added to Windows.
At the time, he was on the Windows OpenGL team. They had successfully implemented the API with hardware acceleration, but had nothing to show it off. Windows NT 3.5 was very close to shipping with OpenGL support, but there was nothing in the product that let the user know that this feature even existed. He had to find a way to advertise the feature without risking product stability.
That’s when it occurred to him to use a screen saver. This provided a point of visibility to the user, and it was relatively low risk, because if there was a problem, they could just tell users, “Sorry, don’t use that screen saver.” (This was in the days before widespread Internet access, and long before it became commonplace for operating systems to auto-update.)
He announced a team-wide screen saver writing contest: Build your best screen saver, and the one that gets the most votes will be added to Windows NT.
The Windows OpenGL team took the contest to heart, and it wasn’t long before they had written 3D Text, 3D Maze, 3D Flying Objects, and, of course, 3D Pipes. He sent email to the entire Windows NT development team with instructions on how to install these new screen savers and where to send in their votes.
By a stroke of luck, one of the people to see these new screen savers was a member of the marketing team who tried them out the night before an already-scheduled visit in New York City with a major computer industry magazine. He loved them and wrote back, “You can call off the vote. We’re adding all of them to the product!”
And with that one piece of email, 3D Pipes and all the other 3D screen savers got added to Windows.
I can’t say that I expected to hear from you during Pride month. So, imagine my surprise when, this week, you spilled to an undercover reporter that you’ve been feeling a little left out. It tugs at my heartstrings that you plan to stare wistfully “across the lagoon at the Pride flag for the next month” like some backward Jay Gatsby who has never been invited to a party and whose Daisy currently has her tongue down Jordan Baker’s throat.
I’m writing to apologize on behalf of the entire community for neglecting you and to offer some feedback on your design for a new Pride flag. You were recorded describing it as “white [with] yellow and orange flames around it. And in the middle is the word ‘vergogna.’ ‘Vergogna’ in Italian means shame.”
Okay. I have some thoughts:
First off, snaps for cultural competency. If queer people love anything, it’s a fucking flag. (Literally. We’ve been known to carry them around in our back pockets.) From one flag-lover to another, it’s devastating to hear that your husband isn’t supportive. He sounds kind of flag-phobic.
Back to your flag: your use of the fire emoji is on point.
Honestly, your design is so strong that pairing it with your “Sacred Heart of Jesus” flag seems like gilding the lily. But it’s sweet that you want to honor the gay community’s historic situationship with the Catholic Church.
Speaking of which, I’m here for “Italians on hot mics” as this year’s Pride theme. It’s giving Pope Francis. One complaint: Couldn’t you two have staggered the merch rollout? I just shelled out for a THAT’S THAT ME FROCIAGGINE crop top, and now you’re hitting me with this. Corporate Pride is so expensive.
And that brings us to “vergogna.” You are not the first person to look at the LGBTQIA+ community and try to hand us a symbol of shame. And whether we’re talking about a pink triangle or an unprintable slur, we always manage to take the hateful thing you created and make it our own. A badge of honor. You see, Martha-Ann, to us, “pride” is not another word for ego—it’s an act of defiance. It’s laughing through broken teeth. It’s about endurance, love, and solidarity with anyone who has been deemed unworthy to exist. And it’s about celebrating the fact that we’ve always been here and will continue to be here long after you’re gone.
So, go out on your back porch and fly your white flag. You’re fighting a losing battle. Besides, we already took all the colors.
