Cowboy Who?

They are back 🏳️‍🌈

I could not focus on their story for some times but now I want to do more so I wiill post more about them and build a story as well!

This will be an ongoing story, will post episods as gifs, will see how it goes :)

Today on the show, hosts from Planet Money and The Indicator debate the economic indicators of this year and next year.

First up, we try to identify the figure that best captured the essence of 2023. The contenders: the possible soft landing, consumer sentiment, and the housing market.

And looking ahead to 2024, what will the economic indicator of next year be? Interest rates, Bidenomics, or junk fees?

Listen to our hosts make their case, and then tell us who won by submitting your vote via Planet Money's Instagram or email us with "Family Feud" in the subject line. Voting ends on December 31st.

This episode was hosted by Jeff Guo, Kenny Malone and Wailin Wong. It was produced by Julia Ritchey and Willa Rubin with engineering help from Valentina Rodriguez Sanchez. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Kate Concannon edits The Indicator.

Help support Planet Money and get bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.

Music: Universal Music Production, "Terry And Mildred," "Decked Out For The Holidays." Audio Network - "Counting Down Seconds," "Tijuana Choo Choo."

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It's that time of year again! Our annual year-end tradition of checking in on the stories we've reported and the people we met along the way.

We'll hear from a Hollywood strike captain who tried to pull off one last job, an update from the data detective trying to uncover the truth in academic research, and tribute to a very special member of the Planet Money family.

Check out the original stories:
Vacation, and why the U.S. takes so little of it
The secret entrance that sidesteps Hollywood picket lines
Did two honesty researchers fabricate their data?
Planet Money Records Vol. 1: Earnest Jackson, Planet Money Records Vol. 2: The Negotiation & Planet Money Records Vol. 3: Making a Hit

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Federal authorities accused the Houston-area developer of targeting Latino home buyers with predatory loans and false promises. The housing development drew the attention of state lawmakers after right-wing publications claimed it is a magnet for undocumented immigrants.

While hand counting ballots is legal, the Texas Secretary of State has warned local party leaders the effort could be costly and time-consuming.

Suspecting the Washington-based hospital of providing gender-affirming care to Texas children, which is now banned in Texas, AG Ken Paxton issued investigative subpoenas demanding medical information.

WARSAW, POLAND – A piece of checked luggage on a recent domestic Canadian flight has decided to take the year off to travel. “Ever since I came out of the closet last week, I’ve felt this urge to really seize the day,” says the suitcase. “That’s why I’m starting my New Year’s resolutions early, by […]

The post Checked luggage takes year off to travel appeared first on The Beaverton.

BRANDON, MB — Local girlfriend Teresa Waldner failed to remind boyfriend Todd Derksen to be careful yesterday, resulting in his bumbling straight into the mouth of an erupting volcano.  “Oh, god,” Waldner said, standing by Derksen’s hospital bed, waving away the smoke from his crispy, burnt skin. “I thought he might have finally learned to […]

The post Woman neglects to say “be careful,” resulting in boyfriend bumbling into active volcano appeared first on The Beaverton.

NEW YORK CITY – Fans of the new series Nanny Knickknacks, which focuses on the high-pressure drama at Brooklyn’s premier factory for manufacturing action figures based on the hit sitcom The Nanny, have identified their favourite cast member in the form of newly-hired assembly line worker Cathy Markowitz, who made it clear early on, that […]

The post Breakout star of reality show based at “The Nanny” action-figure factory says “I’m not here to make Frans” appeared first on The Beaverton.

It's potluck season.

PALO ALTO, CA — GoBananaz, the world’s premier simian social media site has debuted a long awaited feature allowing users to heave faeces at each other.  “This is a game-changer,” said Tiny, a Madagascan lemur and self-described GoBananaz addict. “We all know how easily a GoBananaz exchange on a completely non-controversial topic – say, the […]

The post Monkey social media platform allows monkey users to throw faeces at other monkeys users anywhere in the world appeared first on The Beaverton.

CALGARY – According to friends and family, 37-year-old Jason Rowe is absolutely churning through Goosebumps books in a desperate attempt to hit his 2023 reading goal. “I told him 50 books was too ambitious,” said Rowe’s girlfriend, who comfortably hit her target weeks ago. “But he was all ‘I love reading’ and ‘It’s just a […]

The post Man intent on reading 50 books this year really ploughing through the Goosebumps appeared first on The Beaverton.

RACINE, WI—As part of an effort to take the happy-go-lucky bathroom-cleaning characters in a darker direction, Scrubbing Bubbles announced Friday that it had rebranded its namesake mascots, envisioning them anew as horny bad boy grime fighters. “These streetwise and sexy new Scrubbing Bubbles play by their own rules…

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

Here are my favorite posts of 2023, in no particular order:

1. My employee doesn’t think we’re doing enough about bears at work
Because of bears.

2. Someone or something is deleting our work emails
Because of the mystery.

3. My coworker and I attend the same sex club
Because I adore this sort of awkwardness.

4. Mortification week, all of it
Because I deeply love the shared human experience of mortification.

5. Should we give extra sick days to employees who can’t work from home?
Because this is a really good idea.

6. A behind-the-scenes look at how Ask a Manager runs
Because this was fun to do.

7. a very good update: how to tell a former employee he can’t visit us weekly
Because it’s an unexpected love story!

8. As a manager, should I not wear a “childless” shirt in my off-hours?
Because all the different facets of this make the question fascinating.

9. Can I bring a blender to work?
Because I love this sort of “can I do this small thing that might seem really off?” question.

10. The adult bibs, the talking shrimp, and other unusual office traditions
Because this was incredibly wholesome.

What were your favorites of the year?

See favorites from past years:

2022 2021 2020 2018  2017
2016   2014   2013   2012   2011
and the whole last decade

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

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

Remember the letter-writer who was told their performance evaluation would be based on activities outside of work? Here’s the update.

Thank you so much for taking the time to respond to my letter, and thank you to everyone who commented! It’s been over a year since then, and I finally have a somewhat satisfying update.

As several comments pointed out, the goals that my supervisor assigned to me seemed strangely generic. I had thought about my actual career goals beforehand, but my supervisor had a list of examples from HR, and she said that we should stick to those. At least the examples I mentioned in my original letter were work-related, but my supervisor also suggested other activities to help me meet my quotas for relationship-building and community involvement, such as volunteering for a local church group (which seemed like a bizarre and inappropriate suggestion to me, but I digress). I got the impression that corporate just wanted to say that all employees volunteer in their communities because it was good PR, and my supervisor just wanted to check off boxes on a list to keep corporate happy.

When I tried to clarify whether or not these activities were paid, or how they should be recorded on my timesheet, I got very vague responses. She just kept repeating the phrase “on your own time” and emphasizing that these are supposed to be “volunteer” activities that didn’t need to be recorded on my timesheet at all. When I asked coworkers about it, they had mixed experiences and basically told me it was up to the supervisor’s discretion. When I tried to push back in my next review, my supervisor doubled down. All of the extracurriculars had been annoying but doable in my first review cycle, but in the next cycle, the list became a lot longer and was no longer doable for me, especially unpaid. Since she wasn’t receptive to hearing that, I essentially accepted that I would not get perfect score on my review and that I probably wasn’t a good fit for the company culture in the long term. (Special shoutout to the commenters who helped me make my peace with this!)

My supervisor was very hands-off and we didn’t work together directly, so she couldn’t really give me any meaningful feedback, and it made the review process feel very impersonal. She didn’t seem familiar with the core responsibilities that I was supposedly hired for (which made me worry that I had misunderstood my role), and she often forgot basic information about my background (which made it feel like I was being reviewed by a total stranger). For example, when I mentioned that I’d been working towards some certifications that I’d like to include as goals for my review, she responded, “Are you sure you’re ready for that? I don’t think you’re even eligible yet.” These certifications are common in our industry and anyone with a few years of experience would be eligible, so it seemed like she was under the impression that I was a recent college graduate (likely because I was hired around the same time as some recent graduates), even though I was hired with a mid-level title and salary. I clarified that yes, I was definitely eligible, and others had encouraged me to obtain these certifications since they would benefit both me and the company, but I understood that it was up to her whether or not to include these goals in my review. On paper, based on her ratings in my formal review, I would have seemed like the most mediocre employee in the world. Meanwhile, I was regularly getting high praise from the people who actually did work with me directly. Even my supervisor’s boss would occasionally call me out of the blue to say that everyone had been so impressed with the quality of my work, I was a valuable addition to the team, they couldn’t afford to lose me, etc. So I was getting mixed messages to say the least.

Eventually, due to some organizational reshuffling, I was assigned a new supervisor. I met with both supervisors to discuss the transition, and my old supervisor expressed concern that I hadn’t completed all of the goals for my review yet, e.g. I participated in the formal mentorship program with one mentor, but she wanted me to have multiple mentors through the formal program. My new supervisor agreed with me that I was getting the mentorship I needed in other ways and that adding more of these formal mentorship meetings to my schedule wasn’t the most productive use of my time. I asked yet again about which activities could be paid, and my old supervisor started giving me her typical vague response, but my new supervisor quickly jumped in to say that most of these activities were for the company’s benefit (especially things like attending networking events with clients) and I should absolutely be paid for that time. It took him less than 30 seconds to answer a question that my previous supervisor had been dodging for over a year.

Since then, I’ve been promoted twice. I still don’t expect to stay at this company forever, but I’m satisfied with where I’m at right now, and I consider that a happy ending.

Thanks again for your excellent advice! I continue to read your blog regularly, and I’m incredibly grateful to you and the commenters for sharing your workplace wisdom.

As I’ve noted a few times before, the Swedish town of Gävle has erected a giant traditional Swedish straw goat since 1966. The Gävle Goat (Gävlebocken in Swedish) is famous for being the largest Yule Goat, and is even more famous for its notoriety: Vandals have set fire to the goat for more than half of its seasons. You can even place bets on whether the goat will survive the year without going up in flames. (Personally, I root for the goat to survive, because I am not a sicko. Or perhaps, more precisely, because I am not a sicko with respect to this specific issue.)

This year, Gävlebocken faces a new threat: Being eaten.

Due to the extremely wet weather in late summer, the straw used to construct the goat contains a higher than usual amount of seed, and local jackdaws have discovered that it can be used as a food source. The goatkeepers decided not to take protective action against the birds on the grounds that they are a natural threat and not a human one. Reports from the scene are that the goat is looking quite ragged already, and whether or not it survives the season may come down to what your definition of “goat” is.

You can check out the goat for yourself (for as long as it stands) on the Gävlebocken live cam.

The post In 2023, the Gävle Goat faces a new threat to its survival appeared first on The Old New Thing.

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

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

Remember the letter-writer whose life was being devoured by a volunteer group they had founded years ago? Here’s the update.

I wrote back in 2017 (!) about a volunteer organization (“AVO”) that I had founded and was, at the time, devouring my life. This update is up, down, and all over the place, so my apologies to the readership in advance.

I mulled things over for a few months after you posted my response, but at that year’s annual board elections, I formally left AVO’s board and handed the reins over to other people. I was still there to handle some of the technical pieces of the accounting system I had built, but I left the day-to-day running of things to other people. When I was in town during a project or a fundraiser, I would attend, and that was that. The close family member whom I referenced in my original letter took over some things, other people took over other things, and stuff seemed to be going okay. The company was even bringing in enough grant funding to properly pay more of the young artists with whom it worked. Yay!

Then, in the fall of 2018, AVO wound up in a protracted insurance dispute with the venue that hosted its largest yearly event, which spiraled over the next year. Separately, AVO’s original treasurer returned (not of my doing!), put huge — but legitimate — expenses on the company’s credit cards, set the credit cards to auto-pay the minimum balance every month, and then abruptly quit and stopped talking to anyone. The credit card company, likewise, would not speak to anyone at AVO (even my close relative, who was appointed treasurer and trying to clean up the credit card mess) because the former treasurer had not changed any of the names on the card accounts before leaving and still refused to speak to anyone to sort out the mess. Paying off the cards would have taken years anyway, but AVO was also in a sector that was very heavily impacted by the pandemic, and two years of canceled events and unrelenting admin costs also took their toll, leaving the company in very bad shape financially come 2022. Things were starting to look up then: a few anonymous donors — I have my suspicions who, but I can’t prove them — gave enough money to begin digging out of the hole caused by compound credit card interest, and the insurance dispute magically resolved itself due to employee turnover at the insurance companies. AVO’s board would need to be largely reconstituted, but that could happen in due time.

Then, in early 2023, my close relative suddenly and unexpectedly died. He had been the only person remaining on the board with access to the company’s bank account, the only person who understood how to communicate with state agencies, the only person with a complete history of the company in his memory, and the only person who had the time and energy to work with new volunteers and board members and really get things going again post-pandemic. After he died, my family’s remaining members and I agreed with AVO’s remaining board members that AVO should close. I’m now back on the board, this time as treasurer, to clean up finances, sell or donate assets, cancel accounts, file final paperwork, and close the organization. (I even managed to strong-arm the credit card companies into allowing me to pay off and close the cards.) It’s not what I want to be doing with my free time, but since AVO isn’t doing any actual programming anymore, there are no set deadlines, and I can just work on it at my own pace. The hardest part of the situation is dealing with the dual grief of saying goodbye to my relative and an organization that has been a part of my life for so long all at once — and that’s a problem for my therapist, who is thankfully quite helpful.

Samsung, Living Room – Deborah and Curtis expressed their excitement over the fact that the new TV remote comes with buttons that take them directly to their favourite streaming services. “I love FunDunder,” explained Deborah. “Where else can I see 6 of the 12 total episodes of Celebrity bus drivers? And I am always telling […]

The post Couple thrilled new remote includes shortcut buttons for streaming services Quibi, BingBong, and DankDoo appeared first on The Beaverton.

JASPER, AB – A new review of The Jasper Planetarium has exposed a major flaw in the facility, that it does not house any actual planets and is in fact a glorified observatory. “I came here hoping to see tanks full of planets living as close to they would in the wild as you could […]

The post Lame Planetarium doesn’t contain any planets appeared first on The Beaverton.

WASHINGTON—After a vagrant emerged from the darkness along the highway and beckoned toward the vehicles with his wickedly sharp blade, President Joe Biden directed his motorcade to pullover and pick up a blood-soaked hitchhiker, sources reported Thursday. “Wow, that poor guy with the meat cleaver sure looks like he…

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NASHUA, NH—Looking over his shoulder to make sure no one else copped his find, local thrifter Brian Gresbaum told reporters Thursday he had struck gold with a vintage Amazon Essentials jacket from 2021. “Oh my god, there’s no way this is an authentic Amazon Essential soft-shell jacket from their fall 2021 collection,”…

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STANFORD, CA—In a cutting-edge breakthrough for their field, psychologists at Stanford University confirmed Thursday they had trained a full-grown man to ask for help when he needed it. “After years of rigorous experimentation, we believe the test subject, whom we have named Buster, is finally capable of requesting…

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SAN FRANCISCO—Joining a plethora of similar subscription boxes already on the market, a new service called BradBox ships customers 10 items every month that company founder and CEO Brad Lazarow has around his home but no longer wants. “There’s no theme and no thought put into it—just 10 things the CEO found under his…

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

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

Remember the letter-writer who wrote a Glassdoor review and their former employer was losing their minds? Here’s the update.

I just wanted to say thank you for publishing my letter. I really appreciate it, as well as the advice you gave and the commenters.

I didn’t write the Glassdoor and Indeed reviews out of malice or ill will, I wrote it because this company is genuinely challenging to work with. In my original letter I didn’t even disclose other more ridiculous things that happened at that workplace, such as the fact that leadership would disclose to their employee “inner circle” things they definitely should NOT disclose, such as which employees were on PIPs (!) and even topics like which employees were struggling with things like marriage issues. The company’s leadership has also been vindictive to people who have left the company on platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook, directly asking them why they left and interrogating them with questions like “you think you’re too good for us now?” (which is something I was a direct recipient of when I left). I swear, it’s like a soap opera. My spouse and I used to joke that it was like Days Of Our Lives. It’s a shame because I loved the work that I did there but the drama and immaturity of the leadership was too much and the lack of opportunities for advancement led to me to seek other employment. I feel like it was such an unprofessional workplace. In hindsight, it was a good career “stepping stone” but I am in a MUCH better place now. I don’t even know how that place still functions, and given how transparent the leadership is on social media (a friend sent me a screenshot from the CEO, who made a post the other day on a social media platform about how much she hates being a CEO!!!) it seems like the workplace is hanging on by a thread anyway.

Thank you and the commenters for the reassuring words regarding that I didn’t do anything wrong, and rather that my previous employer’s antics regarding the witch hunt were wrong. I had multiple moments where I was seriously considering contacting those services to take the review down or delete the review, but I’m holding firm — the review is staying up.

While I still do feel a little bit weird that my reviews caused some internal chaos, the positive that’s come out of this is that many of my friends who worked there have had enough. The witch hunt was the final straw of a bale of hay that was already breaking the camel’s back. Four out of the five friends that have worked directly with me have received new positions elsewhere AND have left their own reviews of the company, with similar commentary. The remaining one is somewhat holding out for a leadership position — one whose job description she even wrote! — although leadership has repeatedly told her that they’re not going to promote her because they do not feel that she is qualified to lead. We’re all going to be working with her later this week to spruce up her resume, tidy up her LinkedIn, and take her out for a “you can do this!!” brunch so she can hit the job market.

Again, I appreciate the kind words and advice!