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This week, Kate Cox got an abortion. She joined more than 9.3 million Americans who got a legal abortion in the past 10 years, of which 83,000 (0.9%) got one after 20 weeks of gestation.
I’ve seen many on social media wonder: What’s the big deal? She found the healthcare she needed after all, right? And this cross-state journey is rare, right?
Forced abortion travel has doubled following Dobbs. And if you’re one of the lucky few who can travel, this journey isn’t without very real challenges that may not be apparent to the unseen eye.
The journey
The journey for an abortion looks very different depending on who you are. In general, though, many challenges could be prevented if we, as a society, accepted abortion as healthcare.
First, many people’s journeys stop before they begin:
It takes a lot of cash—plane tickets, rental car, hotel rooms, food, and procedure. This adds up to about $10,000-$30,000. As you can imagine, many people can’t afford this, and often, insurance doesn’t cover it.
Half of all abortion seekers live below the Federal Poverty Level—an income of less than $13k/year.
This is especially true for adolescents and teens (who make up a big number of later abortion patients), undocumented people, and parents.
If they make the journey, it’s not without other hard realities:
Pain meds are available. For those later in pregnancy, though, it doesn’t do much. You may not have access to an epidural, depending on the state’s regulations, because you’re at an outpatient clinic. This is unimaginable pain—in all senses of the word.
Your partner can’t be there to support you during labor, like hold your hand, or coach you through pain. You can’t have a phone, either. Tight security is required at abortion clinics. In the same vein, you walk past protesters yelling at you every morning and every night for a week. You wish, with all your heart, you could enjoy the same level of ignorance.
Recovering in a hotel room means a cold, unfamiliar place. Without your slippers, without your bed, without your cat, and without access to the comfort food you crave. All you want to be is at home.
The journey means needing time off from work and getting your FMLA form signed by a physician in another state. All you hope is that your employer won’t ask questions because you don’t have any energy to explain.
The journey may include carrying the baby’s ashes on an airplane. This requires holding back a flood of emotions in public—exhaustion, grief, anxiety, pain, a strong desire for privacy.
People who have abortions are no more likely to struggle with mental health than the people who do not—in fact, not getting a needed abortion has been found to increase anxiety and depression in the first 12 months. But there are emotional costs in needing to travel, and much of that is driven by stigma and ostracization of abortion care. Also, recognizing when you need help (remember you don’t have a follow-up appointment with your OB) and finding the right clinician or therapist, given the unique circumstances and the trust required, is hard.
Two things help:
The confidence in making the right decision: 95% of people who have an abortion say it was the right decision for them. The most common emotion reported afterward is relief.
The healthcare workers—literally angels on earth—at the abortion clinic ensure moments of human connection, empathy, and support. You feel cared for, which helps tremendously. And the rare souls you trust with your story like family, friends, and clinicians thereafter also help tremendously.
Travel for abortions is increasing
This journey is becoming more common. Before Dobbs, 1 in 10 women having abortions had to travel. Now it’s double— 1 in 5. We see increased travel from many angles:
While the number of abortions across states has greatly shifted post-Dobbs, the national average hasn’t budged.
Calls to the National Abortion Hotline for travel services, like hotel rooms and plane tickets, have tripled post-Dobbs and remain high.
Scientists who measured distance to abortion facilities found travel time increased, on average, by three times post- Dobbs. In Texas, for example, the new travel time to the nearest abortion facility increased by almost a full workday.
This speaks to why we see increases in self-managed abortion (i.e., medication abortion). It’s also why colleagues in Latin America, for example, have been supporting people to self-manage with pills up to 24 weeks of pregnancy, which is safe and effective.
Bottom line
An increasing number of women are traveling out of state for reproductive healthcare. This journey isn’t without very real obstacles. The most tragic part is much of the associated trauma is preventable if we just had access to local healthcare.
It may be hard to understand, but it’s harder for people to live through. Trust women. Listen to their stories. Trust their voices. It is, after all, their lives and their livelihoods.
Love, YLE
If you want to support travel for abortions, here are some great options.
The Brigid Alliance supports people who are traveling for abortions at 15+ weeks.
Jane’s Due Process funds abortion and practical support for Texas teens traveling for abortion care
A big thank you to Dr. Heidi Moseson — a reproductive epidemiologist— who helped immensely with much of the piece’s research.
“Your Local Epidemiologist (YLE)” is written by Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, MPH PhD—an epidemiologist, data scientist, wife, and mom of two little girls. During the day, she works at a nonpartisan health policy think tank and is a senior scientific consultant to a number of organizations. At night she writes this newsletter. Her main goal is to “translate” the ever-evolving public health science so that people will be well-equipped to make evidence-based decisions. This newsletter is free thanks to the generous support of fellow YLE community members. To support this effort, subscribe below:
The measure would allow supervised clinical studies with active duty members. Psychedelic treatments for PTSD have found conservative supporters in the state for years.
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
I’m on vacation. Here are some past letters that I’m making new again, rather than leaving them to wilt in the archives.
1. We’re supposed to try cupping and acupuncture as a team-building activity
My workplace is big on team-building and morale-boosting events. Normally the events are not bad and are something everyone can enjoy (everyone gets taken to lunch on company time/dime to a restaurant chosen from a list by all employees, motivational speakers who are actually interesting, an employee art display for individuals who like to draw or paint, etc.). The morale and working environment is good and I have never had any issues until now.
The newest activity my boss wants to do is for everyone to try both cupping and acupuncture. He is touting the health benefits of these “treatments.” How do I tell him I don’t believe in woo and no one is putting suction cups or needles anywhere near me? In my opinion, treatments like these are nothing more than snake oil and I refuse to have any part of them. I’m not the only one who feels this way either. Before this, everyone was always excited about the activities and events put on by the company, but most of the individuals I have talked to want nothing to do with this woo.
Are you required to participate, or just strongly encouraged to? If the latter, say something like “I’m not up for this one” or “this one isn’t my cup of tea” and just sit it out. But if you’re discouraged from opting out, then say something like this: “I don’t feel comfortable participating in health treatments as a work activity, and alternative medicine in particular isn’t universally embraced. I’m hoping we can reconsider this event, or provide an alternative for people who aren’t comfortable with it.”
2. My coworker turns down new work but isn’t doing much work now
I’ve been in my position longer than my new coworker who has the same title, and therefore I typically delegate the tasks between the two of us (but I am not her manager). Because I am more senior, our manager recently assigned some other tasks to me and suggested that I delegate more of the job-typical tasks to my coworker.
My coworker has started pushing back and asking if I can take on some of the newer projects instead of giving them to her. However, her door is right next to mine, and I can’t help but notice that every day she’s only in the building between 6-7.5 hours, which includes one-hour lunches with other coworkers, so 5-6.5 hours working. It’s not my job to police other people’s work schedules, so I’ve said nothing to our manager. I’m okay with my coworker saying she’s too busy to take on extra tasks, because in that case I’d just stay later and take them on myself, but she’s not even working 40 hours per week. Is it possible for me to fix this without bringing to my manager and sounding whiny? If so, how should I approach it?
Well, you can try being firmer with your coworker: “Jane, I need to divvy this up, so I’m going to take X and you should take Y.” And then if she tells you that she doesn’t have time, you could say, “Hmmm, I won’t have time to do this either, so if you don’t either, I should go talk to (manager).”
And yes, you will probably end up needing to talk to your manager — but that’s not going to sound whiny. Part of your job is to flag it for your manager when things are impacting your work, and you especially have standing to do that here because your manager has asked you to delegate to your coworker. I’d say this to your manager: “You’ve suggested that I delegate more to Jane, but when I’ve tried to, she’s told me that she doesn’t have time to take them on. Has she by chance worked out an abbreviated schedule with you? I’ve noticed she often doesn’t work full days, but I wasn’t sure if that was something official she’d worked out with you, and I don’t want to put her in an awkward position by pushing if she has.” On the off chance that your coworker has worked out a shortened schedule, that’ll be helpful to know — but if she hasn’t, you’ll be flagging what’s happening for your manager, who will probably ask you for more information about what’s going on or start paying more attention to it herself.
“It’s soooo unfair that Jane takes long lunches” is whiny. “I’m not able to delegate work to Jane because she says she doesn’t have time to do it, but she’s also not working full hours” isn’t whiny; it’s factual information that your manager needs to have in order to oversee the workflow in her department.
3. Don’t mention your “sexual purity” on your resume
I am reviewing law student applications for a summer internship/clerkship position at a large public law firm. One applicant included, among other standard experience stuff, that he was a “Co-Leader of a Young Men’s Sexual Purity Accountability Group” during his undergrad years. Alison, what do I do with this information? I can see in some contexts that this might(?) be appropriate (he also included a lot of not super relevant church activities on his resume), but I can’t figure out why he would include this in this context. The other members of the hiring panel are as put off by this as I am — are we right to have this reaction? I just don’t want to know literally anything about applicants’ sex lives!
Yeah, this is the other side of the earlier question from someone who wondered if there was a way to put his leadership of a sex club on his resume.
Your sex life stays off your resume.
Possibly this guy has just gotten very bad resume advice, but it certainly raises the concern that he doesn’t understand what is and isn’t appropriate to discuss in a work context. You are right to be squicked out and put off of his candidacy.
4. Can I go to my wife’s work function even though they said spouses aren’t invited?
So my wife has a work function three hours away that will involve drinking, between 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. It’s supposed to be a manager celebration at an arcade. Since it’s so far and casual, she assumed spouses were invited. When she asked her boss, he said spouses are not. Now we’re both pissed because, as it is, my spouse works close to 60 hours every week and I never see her. This seems like the one time the company could extend an olive branch to neglected spouses and balance work and life a tiny bit, but no. Can she bring me anyway? I don’t want her to get in trouble, but can she even? She is being forced to go but is at least getting paid to do so.
No, she absolutely cannot bring you if she already asked and was told that spouses aren’t invited. It would be rude and awfully weird to bring you after she’s been explicitly told that.
It’s pretty normal for companies to have daytime functions like this (for morale / celebration / team-building purposes) that spouses aren’t invited to.
In 2018 I wrote to say I slept through a whole day of work in my third month on the job (at my last job). I am still reading AAM pretty much every weekday! My mom thinks it’s hilarious I read work blogs “on break.”
It was only June of this year that I wrote in with the five-year update but things have changed dramatically since then — for the worse, unfortunately.
I took on this new, challenging pseudo-leadership position just before that update. It comes with a workload that no mortal could finish in a given workweek, I was pulling a lot of nights and weekends. A few weeks after I wrote in, I had another severe illness episode. I didn’t sleep through work, it was something else, equally visible and alarming. I realized that I’d been ignoring warning signs for a while (again) and not taking care of myself. Sigh. I do think I’ve learned/grown in the years since I first wrote, but I still really wrestle with concepts like success and productivity and personal identity being tied to work. It’s also so hard when other people can do things like guzzle coffee, skip lunch, work weekends, or multitask, and not have to pay the price for it after. I can’t, and it’s frustrating to not be able to “keep up.”
I am fortunate — again — that my manager in this role is as compassionate as the first one. I have a completely unique work arrangement now. My team worked mostly hybrid and async already, so we just agreed to take it there completely. We are entirely results focused — nobody cares how you do the work, when, or where, just that the agreed result is met. I extend this to the rest of my team — I don’t need them in the office if I’m not there either. They keep me posted on their progress and I call them if/when we need to discuss anything. We have removed maybe 90% of meetings this way — I honestly believe async work, flex work, is the future of work. My team does really cool things with the flex — I’m obviously mostly just using it to rest and see doctors, but they’re making progress in their volunteer work, their family lives, and hobbies. I was told I am “by far” the best manager they’ve had, which is wild considering how badly I think I’m underperforming. I do maybe 30% of the work I used to do (I reallocated parts to other people and dropped some of the lower-priority stuff), but the team’s metrics are excellent and they’re really happy and seem to be thriving, so maybe that’s a silver lining in all this.
This entire experience has really challenged my sense of identity, maybe that’s true for other chronic illness sufferers. I struggle with intense shame about not being able to do as much work as I think I should. My therapist says I need to broaden my definitions of “success” and “productivity” because if I take care of myself I am being productive, and if I can get well again then that is a success. It feels like a small knife in the belly every time I have to say “no” to a new request or miss a goal/deadline. Ambition might be my hamartia. It also feels like my personal life is stuck, because I’m not well enough to do anything.
I’m just really grateful that I have supportive colleagues who give me the benefit of the doubt. So many of the posts at AAM are about horrendous workplaces, and I think I would be 2x out of a job if I worked at one of them.
I did want to make a note … out of ALL the people I work with, by far the least empathetic have been the HR department. I’ve been shades of purple at how frustrating it is. Literally the day I had an episode, witnessed by the entire staff, I had messages from HR people to “just do this one thing before you go out sick.” (Internal screaming.) And it wasn’t, like, sick leave stuff. It was general work stuff. They’re so infuriating that my boss and I just haven’t engaged them at all in the current arrangements. I probably should be documenting this, or using FMLA, or whatever, but since we trust each other we’re just doing it our own way.
I also neglected to mention in previous updates — my original diagnosis was wrong. Super wrong. So it took about three years to actually sort it all out. We still don’t think we have the whole picture — it doesn’t explain what’s happening right now. I’m working with five different specialists; keeping track of my medical life is a job in itself. (By the way, professional patient advocates are a thing. I haven’t hired one, but if anybody else out there is chronically ill, just know there are professionals who can support you.)
It’s preaching to the choir to say this to the AAM readers, but here’s what I’ve learned in the last 5.5 years:
1. Empathy in the workplace will pay dividends. Give people the benefit of the doubt. This is not the same as being a doormat — you can maintain standards while giving grace.
2. Flex when you can, because you can. There will be times you have to be rigid, save your inflexibility for those times.
3. Communication may well be the most important skill at work, maybe in life. If you learn how to have hard conversations, how to tailor your message to your audience, to understand things from another perspective, you can reap benefits you couldn’t imagine before.
4. Don’t suffer a-holes. Go over, around, under, run the other way, whatever you need to do. There is a huge, wide world out there full of well-intentioned, kind, compassionate people and if you’re not a part of that world yet, make it a priority to find an entrypoint. It makes so many other things possible.
Before I took this job, I told myself I wanted to work with “clear hearted” and “full hearted” people. People who show up as humans, and who know what’s truly important. It’s one of the best decisions I ever made. That, and continuing to be a regular at AAM ;-)
Tesla recently recalled 2 million vehicles following safety concerns with the autopilot system. The Onion asked Tesla owners what they thought about the self-driving car recall, and this is what they said.
Dear Eleven Adults Responsible for the Majority of Book Bans in Schools,
I’m sorry for that cold salutation. I don’t know all your names yet. But shout out to you, Jennifer Petersen. The Washington Post reported that you’re one of the eleven, working from Spotsylvania, which I imagined as a dark and misty town where dogs became vampires. My imagination got the best of me—I just love speculative fiction. Turns out, it’s a real place in Virginia.
If I’m being honest, I’ve been feeling more than a little overwhelmed with the state of our country lately. It feels like every day, something happens that makes me wonder whether I’ve stumbled right into the fifth dimension from A Wrinkle in Time and lost a couple of decades. I’m guessing you all know that book, since some of your schools have banned it.
What an unexpected pleasure it was to feel an actual jolt of joy when I read that the entire movement to ban books in US public schools is coming from fewer people than I fed this Thanksgiving. Thank god (do you have an issue with me saying “god”? Or “God”? I’m guessing no) it’s just eleven of you.
Here’s why I’m writing, and it’s not really about reading—it’s actually about math. I need to understand the formula you use to accomplish your work, so I’m hoping you might be willing to join me for a brief Zoom meeting.
Before you refuse, let me say, I know you’re busy. I read that some of you contested almost a hundred books in a single year in your local school district. I’m sure everyone in your hometowns knows your names. But—wow—that means you were reading TWO books a week, and doing everything else needed to get those books out of school libraries and away from the eyes of impressionable students. I imagine this involves so much more than just reading, like writing letters and attending meetings, all of which must be very, very time-consuming.
And I bet your work must be taking a toll in ways you’re probably not comfortable talking to me about, because we haven’t even met. I’m guessing, for example, that reading all the sexually explicit content to protect innocent children from becoming oversexualized might also be having the same effect on you as a reader? Or, perhaps, you’re finding yourself questioning your own sexuality? Thinking a little more deeply about your own pronouns?
Maybe you’re even starting to see systemic racism in the very fabric of our society. It’s those books! And now you can’t unsee it. Words on paper can be pretty powerful.
Don’t worry. This isn’t going to be a debate about the books you’ve removed. I mean, that’s the beauty of books, right? You are allowed to form your own opinions about them.
But I’m really writing because I believe I have something to learn from you. I mean, you are ELEVEN human beings who have convinced people all over America to take books off the shelves in our schools. I did a little digging myself and found that there were almost three thousand different books targeted for censorship in 2022. That’s three times as many as 2021! You guys are like David (of David and Goliath, from the Bible—are you okay with me talking about this story?).
No matter what I believe about banning books, I recognize that eleven of you have had a disproportionate impact on the practice of banning books in public schools. I think one conversation, even on a Zoom screen, would serve as a master class for me to understand the banning formula that you use. And then I could ask a few friends from my book group to work with me to ban other things things I believe would have a disproportionate impact on students.
We would start with some low-stakes ideas that really impact me, like banning bras with underwires, and those endless Facebook ads promising to reduce my menopausal belly. Once we’ve had some success, we would turn our attention to banning things that really impact students, like active shooter drills on the first day of school and assault weapons. I have a whole list of ideas.
Thanks for considering,
Melanie Winklosky, Founder BANding Together (I just made that up, do you like it?)
(Click here to read our previous reporting about Timothy Murray’s ordeal.)
After the Texas Observer first reported last month that 11-year-old Timothy Murray was arrested by the Brownsville Independent School District police and detained in solitary confinement just days after he reported being bullied by his school principal, Myrta Garza, Timothy’s mother Nadia Rincon had hoped prosecutors would drop the charges against her son.
But during a status hearing today, Cameron County Assistant District Attorney Rene Garza made it clear the office is hell-bent on building a criminal case against Timothy, asking for more time to gather evidence after school administrators who previously worked under Garza filed another criminal charge against the student earlier this month.
Cameron County Assistant District Attorney Rene Garza Courtesy of the State Bar of Texas
“We’ve got an overzealous prosecutor who, regardless of what the facts or lack of facts there may be, made decisions that have proven to be more harmful than anything else time and time again,” said Sara Stapleton-Barrera, who is now Timothy’s attorney.
Garza did not immediately respond to the Observer’s request for comment. We will update this story if he does.
Judge Adela Kowalski-Garza scheduled another hearing for February 14 but granted permission to Rincon for Timothy to be homeschooled.
“He’s not safe in this district,” Rincon said.
A week ago on December 5, school administrators who had worked under Garza while she was principal at Canales Elementary had the district police file a report charging Timothy with aggravated assault. For the second time, school administrators seized a chance to use police actions to punish the fifth-grader. Rincon’s repeated appeals to the district and even the state education agency have gone unanswered.
Despite the recent incident, Timothy says he’s been thriving at his new school, Canales Elementary in the Victoria Gardens neighborhood of Brownsville. Since he transferred there from Palm Grove in mid-September, he’s been making straight As, competing in the University Interscholastic League chess competitions, and in the Battle of the Books contest. For Battle of the Books, he was required to memorize the details from four fiction books and answer 100 questions about them. He proudly told me he got 98 out of 100 correct.
“I made a new start here. I’m getting 90s to 100s. And people like me. I’ve made friends,” Timothy said.
But Garza remains in her position as principal at Palm Grove Elementary School; her ties in the district run deep. Her mother, Rachel Ayala, served as area superintendent for 45 years. At Canales Elementary, she served as principal for four years, from 2018 to 2023, before she was removed by then-district superintendent Rene Gutierrez, who targeted the school, saying it needed improvement.
A day before Assistant Principal Gabriel Rodriguez, who previously worked under Garza, had a Brownsville ISD police officer file a report charging Timothy with aggravated assault, another student reported to Principal Patricia Chacon that Timothy pulled his hair and tried to cut his finger with scissors. Timothy said Chacon brought both boys into her office and told the students she would report the incident to their parents. Timothy apologized for pulling the student’s hair but clarified he had pretended to cut the student’s paper and was not aiming for his finger. Chacon later informed Rincon that the student later retracted his accusation when school administrators called his parents. But the district police still filed the report thereafter.
Timothy thought the matter had been resolved until he was pulled out of lunch the next day and into a meeting with Assistant Principal Gabriel Rodriguez.
“It looked like most of the administration was there except for the people I trusted. Then the police officer came in, and he started touching his handcuffs,” Timothy said. “I kinda panicked and said, ‘I will not continue this conversation without my mother present.’”
Timothy said Rodriguez “clammed up” after and released him back to lunch. But he no longer felt safe at his new school.
“I didn’t think it was a good idea to stay, so I asked one of the teachers during lunch to go back to the office and to call my mother to pick me up.”
Rincon was not the first parent to complain about Garza’s retaliatory behavior. After the Observer first reported what happened to Timothy, other parents reached out to us to share their stories.
Palm Grove Elementary School Principal Myrta Garza Palm Grove Elementary School
Parent Andrea Ramos told the Observer that on November 18, 2021, Garza called Child Protective Services (CPS) to investigate her after a tense meeting with the principal to discuss her child’s need for special accommodation services. According to Ramos, her mother, who is a special education supervisor for another school district, had challenged Garza on the education goals the principal set for her then-5-year-old grandson with autism, which included knowing mental math and getting ready for state standardized testing.
“About 24 to 48 hours after that meeting, I got a knock on my door from CPS, saying I was neglecting my child,” Ramos said.
The investigation lasted a week and was dismissed after no signs of neglect were found. But Ramos said the incident left her with trauma. To this day, she still jumps at the sound of a door knock and won’t answer her phone or door if she doesn’t know who it is.
“They still made me take parenting classes. And even after they didn’t find anything, they threatened that if the school ever called CPS again, they would take my child away,” Ramos said. Right after the incident, Ramos transferred her child from Canales Elementary to another school.
Parent Mayra Gomez also transferred her child from Canales Elementary while Garza was principal there. In early April of 2022, a student kicked Gomez’s son in the face, and when he complained of pain, P.E. teachers told him to keep on playing. Gomez said she didn’t receive any notification from the school and only heard about the incident from her son after school. A few days later, the same student grabbed her son’s genitals. She called and emailed Garza multiple times before getting a call back.
Gomez criticized the principal for failing to notify her and get back to her more promptly. “At that point, she got very aggressive. She just told me, ‘You’re not gonna call me at my school and tell me how to do my job. If you don’t like how I run this school, then get your kid out and send them somewhere else.’”
According to Gomez, Garza changed her tone after she complained to district board members. During a meeting that followed, the principal and board members promised the two boys would not be in the same classroom. But it wasn’t until two weeks later, when the student grabbed her son’s genitals again, that Garza acted to change his class. By that time, Gomez had decided to take her son out of the school.
“I just feel like they’re all trying to cover for each other. And in the process, they’re neglecting the kids,” Gomez said.
Parent Jennifer Vasquez said she was relieved when Garza left Canales Elementary, where her daughter attends. She described seeing Garza often scream at parents and students.
“A lot of parents don’t know where to report problems or where to go, so they don’t say anything,” Vasquez said “[Garza] has a lot of people to back her up. She has people in high places. So I guess she can basically do whatever she wants and she receives no consequences for it. But how are we going to trust a person like this with our kids?”
In response to the Observer’s public records request for all parent complaints against Garza, Brownsville ISD reported they did not find any even though Ramos, Gomez, and Vasquez all told the Observer they had filed complaints against the principal with district board members.
Rincon said she was never notified that her son was being questioned by Canales school administrators and district police. It wasn’t until three hours later, around 4 p.m., after the school day had already ended, that Principal Patricia Chacon called her. Chacon was not at the meeting and told Rincon she did not know the meeting was happening at the time. She informed Rincon the police had filed a report charging Timothy for aggravated assault.
“How is it possible that you interrogated Timothy and filed a police report without me being present?” Rincon asked Dolores Emerson, executive director of elementary education for the district. “And then she told me they had the authority to do this without any parents there.”
Texas Education Code 37.115 requires school administrators to conduct a fact-based, systemic behavioral threat assessment to determine if there is an imminent threat warranting a referral to law enforcement. Under state law, schools are not held to the same requirements when pursuing other charges beyond terroristic threat. Before engaging law enforcement in pursuing a terroristic threat charge, the statute states, “The team must notify the parent of or person standing in parental relation to the student regarding the assessment. In conducting the assessment, the team shall provide an opportunity for the parent or person to: participate in the assessment, either in person or remotely; and submit to the team information regarding the student.” After completing the assessment, school administrators are required to provide parents with a report of their findings.
“Parents have a right to be involved if a child is being considered for a threat assessment. The law should be posted on every entrance of a school in the lobby so that parents are aware of their rights,” said state Representative Penny Morales Shaw, who cosponsored the legislation requiring parental involvement.
But what recourse do parents like Rincon have when they feel their rights have been repeatedly flouted?
Especially after the state passed a new law requiring all schools to have armed guards, Renuka Rege, education justice policy advisor at the advocacy group Texas Appleseed, says there needs to be stronger state enforcement and oversight to make sure districts comply with the laws that protect both parents’ and students’ rights against excessive and arbitrary police actions in schools.
“[The Texas Education Agency (TEA)] has not had very strong oversight of threat assessment implementation thus far,” Rege said. “If parents feel their rights have been violated they can follow their school district’s complaint or grievance process, which districts are supposed to have, or they can try to file a complaint with TEA, but these often have not led to real recourse for families.”
After the district repeatedly ignored Rincon’s requests to review any investigative reports on her son, she filed a complaint with the Texas Education Agency, which referred the matter back to the district. In an October 4 letter from the state agency reviewed by the Observer, Jurisdiction Review Manager Naomi Roach wrote, “After further review, the agency has determined that you should pursue this matter through the school district’s local grievance process.”
The day after the Observer reported what happened to Timothy, Brownsville ISD released a public statement stating, “Rest assured that we are committed to transparency and accountability. We will conduct a comprehensive review of the situation and take any necessary actions based on the findings of our ongoing investigation.”
But the district still has not provided Rincon with copies of their threat assessment findings, if there was one conducted, from Timothy’s first arrest. The district said it was asking the attorney general for a ruling on the Observer‘s inquiries about the report. Media relations officer Jason Moody did not immediately respond to the Observer’s request for comment. We will update this story if he does. After this story was published, board member Denise Garza responded to Rincon’s complaint stating interim Superintendent Jesus Chavez is “looking into this concern.”
Fernando de Urioste at the civil rights Cirkiel Law Group told the Observer, “In our experience, investigations aren’t being done. And the investigations that are done are often after-the-fact. They go back and reconstruct an investigation. They’re just saying, ‘Well, we met our minimum compliance. It doesn’t matter whether the threat assessment makes any sense. We can say we did one.’”
Local podcaster and former Brownsville ISD board member Erasmo Castro says the school district “protects their own. They are not looking for what is in the best interest of the staff, teachers, parents, or students.”
Castro adds that the district is “trigger happy” when it comes to using law enforcement on its students. In a city where a quarter of families live below the poverty line, Castro said, “There’s no consideration in the district for what the blowback will be in regards to a student’s life or future.”
Based on an analysis of district juvenile justice referral data we received from Brownsville ISD, the district police made 3,102 student arrests over a period of roughly two and half years from May 2021 to November 2023. That’s 135 arrests per month in the school year. Fifty-nine percent of those arrests were for felony changes.
Of those arrests, 3.5 percent were for elementary school-aged children. From the beginning of the prior school year to November 3 this year, there have been 76 arrests of students 10 to 11 years old. Charges for terroristic threats accounted for 20 percent of those arrests. Most, 66 percent, were felony charges. There were no charges for aggravated assault for this age group.
“A lot of times young kids don't even really understand what's happening. It's a terrifying process when you go with the police and then have to be detained and then go to court. All these things result in a lot of fear and trauma down the line.”
Rincon said she’s noticed that leading up to the hearing, Timothy has been more anxious, moving constantly, and hitting his legs. She’s on the waitlist for behavioral therapists. But now, she’s concerned that any action her son makes may be another chance for school administrators to take police action against Timothy.
“I'm very worried because I see that when Timothy gets nervous, he moves around too much; and if he’s sitting next to another kid, maybe they will feel intimidated. I’m worried he could be arrested at any time,” Rincon said.
Rincon said she can’t trust the school district to do what’s right anymore. So she’s been considering moving back to Uvalde to have Timothy attend the public schools there. For now, she’s planning to have him homeschooled while his case is pending. Timothy, on the other hand, seems more concerned about his academic progress. He says he doesn’t want to change schools and “start all over again.”
“They are putting so much effort in to damage my family and won’t let us move on,” Rincon said.
In the meantime, Rincon has been sitting in Timothy's classroom to make sure her son is safe.
An earlier version of this story stated Rene Garza is the District Attorney of Cameron County. He is the Assistant District Attorney. The story has also been updated to distinguish a school's requirement when pursuing a terroristic threat charge and other criminal charges.
Time to grow up and move home to Eau Claire, WI, say your grandparents. That girl you took to the prom has a good job at the VA hospital and could make room in her life—and condo—for a handsome, single, 34-year-old guy.
TOYOTA CITY, JAPAN—Noting that the policy was clearly stated in the purchase agreement for every vehicle it sold, Toyota revealed Thursday that any babies conceived in the backseats of their cars belonged to them. “If you, as a Toyota customer, ever had sex in an automobile we manufactured and, as a result, had a…
Household goldfish released into the wild have multiplied and become an invasive species in the Great Lakes, growing up to 16 inches long and capable of eating nearly anything, including algae, plants, eggs, and invertebrates. What do you think?
Thank you and the commenters for the excellent advice for what I now term “Jade’s Catastrophe, The Musical.” I guess as a reward, I have a somewhat equally weird update to offer (and good news).
I had to do A LOT of damage control (as much as I was legally allowed to do), which involved taking existing clients to lunch, sending out carefully worded notes that I was back and that in my absence someone had shared untrue information about my personal life and to please, please disregard it.
In one way Jade was helpful, her weird foray into telling people about what she believed about my sex life helped me weed out and ultimately end contracts with two male clients who decided the topic of sex was apparently okay and would not stop asking me more questions under the guise of “interest in another religion.” They were even creepier than Jade. One said he would be baptized if he got to take my virginity. This also helped me refocus my view on my field as a whole (more on that to come).
I reached out to Jade to ask if we could chat about what happened here in my country. Spot on to the commenters who guessed Germany. The rules here for my industry prohibited us from contacting certain clients after project conclusion so I wanted also to confirm she had not been keeping in contact with anyone after returning back to the States.
It was almost as if Jade was a Disney cartoon princess, (said persona would explain the singing and piano), she seemed so completely confused, shocked, and then insulted as I outlined the trouble she had left behind for both myself and the company. She said I was only upset because I was experiencing “the natural consequences” of choosing secular business practices and professional norms and conduct over her methods of “sharing the gospel.” “God cannot bless you when you don’t trust His ways in every area of your life” was her take.
I want to note here, Jade’s particular views are not held by my former religion as a whole. Interestingly, she did ask for tips on being able to get another job.
I spent some considerable time explaining that she couldn’t view every employer as if they were the church and that she would not be able to hold a job at any other company if she agreed to certain standards and then decided her ideas were better, and used religion as her backing. I told her that was blatant deception, which I think she took seriously.
When I pointed out that wearing a business skirt or slacks was more suitable for the conferences in the industry she was trying to join, which included many members of the same religion, she made it seem as if I was asking her to be “a whore of Sodom.” She indicated that her first priority was to find a husband and she didn’t believe one would want to see her wearing slacks. But one week later she was wearing jeans in a photo so I guess not being able to pay bills was making an impact.
Some commenters questioned whether my references to Jade’s looks indicated any kind of crush and reading back the letter it did come off quite odd without any context. It also made me reflect on the values of said industry where a lot of money is made from course and program sales to several other industries primarily run by older men. Therefore, much like in the old days of commercial flights, employees are definitely type-hired and the more you appealed to the customers, the more money you generated. I had consequently type-hired Jade.
“Jade’s Catastrophe” therefore turned out to be a blessing in disguise because of that reflection. I realized (not because of her values) that I had joined the field when I was very young as it was the only option for my degree in Germany. In the months since, I used Alison’s guides and not only switched companies, I was able to switch fields and am now a technical editor for a global medical publication where I am not sexualized and paid four times more.
I guess it’s about finding a balance between extremes bit I needed to see Jade’s extreme to recognize some bigoted industry standards I had normalized.
And for the extra weird: Jade wrote to me last week to ask if I could host her again while she returns to “find a husband.” She says her initial tenure here was “preparing the way for personal blessings.” Before she could hint that she needed a job, I was so happy to inform her I no longer live in the original area and am in a different industry.
The moral to this twisted, unprofessional fairytale is, as I become an ardent student of Alison’s teachings (many of which I was attempting to share with Jade), I came to realize that I had more value than my industry recognized. I also no longer feel obligated to help people who aren’t willing to help themselves.
See if George remembers to pick up the Merry Christmas wreath
The families are coming. Spike the eggnog
December 25
Clean the house because of the “miracle” (I didn’t know the entire town was coming over and they were going to drag all the snow in and SING)
Send thank you notes to everyone we’ve ever met, I guess. Even Sam “still-with-the-hee-haw?” Wainwright
Have a heart-to-heart with George to see if he’s okay. Also talk to Pete, Janie, and Tommy. And whoever at the Building & Loan lets Uncle Billy keep a pet squirrel
Prep another full turkey dinner. Apparently
Make more cookies? Violet is still passed out in my mudroom
It’s just—we live in upstate New York, and everyone forgot to stomp the snow off their boots before coming in?
Who the heck is Clarence?
December 26
Take a breath. Think more positively
Be grateful that, when the whole town starts singing in my living room, I know someone named “Mr. Martini” who carries around crates of wine
Make the meals. Sew the clothes. Refinish the floors
But I’ve known George since he was a twelve-year-old working at a pharmacy—the one where they leave big bottles of poison on the counter right next to the medicine—and he’s never mentioned a “Clarence”
I know I tune out George sometimes (“Train whistles!” “Hot dog!”), but I think I’d remember him mentioning his buddy the “angel” who’s “friends with Mark Twain”
December 27
Shovel the walk again, since George is still running around yelling at buildings
Reminisce about our honeymoon. HAHAHAHA
Check on Zuzu—she seems to have forgotten how flowers work?
Help people in need. See if I can give some money to a family that didn’t accidentally hand eight thousand dollars to the town asshole
I made a ROTISSERIE CHICKEN in a CRUMBLING FIREPLACE using a RECORD PLAYER
December 28
Put up wallpaper. Re-shingle the roof
Go to the doctor. (Didn’t button my coat and immediately got pneumonia)
I know how to single-handedly renovate a dilapidated Victorian in wartime with a baby on my hip. Clearly, I’m not fixing that broken banister knob on purpose
No one bothered to tell me that we also need a new car?
December 29
Get out the New Year’s Eve noisemakers
Go back in time and help George make a plan for the future more specific than “build things”
Which reminds me—I just found out “Clarence” told George that if he’d never existed, I’d be an “old maid” librarian with glasses. So, just so we’re clear, on top of George being literally the only person in the world who would want to marry me, he makes my vision better?
Why is Janie STILL playing the piano?
December 30
Start planning for next Christmas. Or not. Why plan anything? Christmas, New Year’s, having babies while running the USO, doing the Charleston at the school dance without falling into a swimming pool, having to crawl out of the bushes naked in front of that weird neighbor after someone steals your bathrobe. I DON’T know what I’m doing tomorrow or the next day, or later this afternoon. THE WORLD IS CHAOS
TAMPA, FL—Saying you fucked with the wrong guys this time, the nation’s leathery old men with veneers held a press conference Wednesday to announce their plan to see you in court. “We’re going to sue your ass into oblivion,” said 68-year-old Bernard Wheatcraft, one of several thousand leathery men who reportedly gave…
Enlarge / Tesla says that Autopilot users should always keep both hands on the steering wheel. (credit: CBS)
More than 2 million Tesla electric vehicles are subject to a new safety recall today. At issue is the much-criticized Autopilot driver-assistance feature, more specifically the Autosteer component.
Autopilot is Tesla's name for a suite of advanced driver assistance systems, but the two principal components are "traffic-aware cruise control" and Autosteer. The former maintains the car's speed relative to a vehicle in front, and the latter reads lane markers on the road and keeps the car between them. The system was originally based on one supplied by Mobileye, although that relationship broke down, and Tesla was dropped as a customer by Mobileye due to Mobileye's concern that Tesla was "pushing the envelope in terms of safety."
A tomato, which was grown aboard the ISS by NASA astronaut Frank Rubio as part of an experiment to study plant growth in space and lost when it floated away while unattended, has been found. What do you think?
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. Here are four updates from past letter-writers.
There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.
Toby was not fired, and Michael did speak with Pam, leading to her coming back the next day to apologize for “trying to take over and run things her way” or something like that. Which I felt was a significant concession for her, but not enough to change my mind on her overall. Since then, the idea of letting Pam go has always been sort of in the background, as it was clear that Michael wasn’t happy with her.
Immediately after this event, Michael told Pam that she needed to hire a second HR person, which did happen, and then a few months after that Michael made a big push to really establish everyone’s role and responsibilities as an attempt at getting her less involved in things that weren’t her job. But more and more interpersonal issues kept happening which all traced back to Pam, and finally last week he told me that he couldn’t handle it anymore. The company had just presented an initiative to the floor team, essentially offering job transition assistance to anyone who didn’t like working here, as part of our efforts to streamline ahead of more projected growth. Basically, “We try to make this a good place to work, but it is never going to fit everyone and we will all be happier if we can help those who hate it here find somewhere else they don’t hate.” After presenting this, he said that he felt like it would be a very tangible show of sincerity if he asked Pam to go as well, since she was as much a bad culture fit as anyone on the floor.
Michael went through a whole process and some investigating turned up more issues with Pam’s behavior. But ultimately, he asked her to resign yesterday and she agreed. He’s offering her a very generous severance package and she’s said she’ll help us get someone new in. Aside from the small socialist voice in my head that resents the HR person getting several times more severance than the floor worker, I think it’s all turned out so much better than I feared it would. Though I suppose there’s still time for things to go sideways.
Update to the update:
I said there was still time for things to go sideways and they did. A week or two after the conversation letting her go, Michael held Pam back after a meeting to thank her for continuing to work so hard and have such a good attitude through the end of her time with us. She took the opportunity to completely lose her composure to the point of shouting. She insisted that any problems he had heard about were lies and proceeded to recount a list of all the run-ins she had had with various employees, several of which Michael hadn’t even heard about. These all being evidence of employees with grudges against her “being the enforcer around here, so of course everyone hates me.” She then started hinting at some huge secret that was a massive threat to the company and which she had been dreading telling him for weeks. He was finally able to drag it out of her: some of the employees went to each other’s homes on Friday nights after work to play video games and get drunk. She was certain this was “a massive lawsuit just waiting to happen.”
This exchange helped Michael stop feeling guilty about letting Pam go. But then, two weeks before she was due to leave there was another incident. A piece of equipment that had been down was putting us behind schedule so an extra shift was arranged to help keep up. The machine was finally fixed and Michael thanked the floor management team for handling the extra shift so well. He commented about how far we’d come, as a year ago it would have just been him and his brother coming in on weekends to try and bridge the gap. Pam left that meeting and immediately shared this comment with Andy, our former floor manager who had recently stepped down voluntarily after several years. However the conversation went, it resulted in an irate Andy calling another executive to curse out Michael and quit on the spot. This prompted Michael to ask Pam to leave early. She later insisted in an email that she had done nothing wrong and had shared his comment with Andy to “reassure him.” At no point did she ever acknowledge any blame for a single incident.
So we’ve been making the best of it since then. The second HR person Pam hired has been filling in, but running things singlehandedly is more than she signed on for and she put in her 2 weeks notice today. So we’ll be looking for to start over from the ground up. Fully rebooting HR after all.
Just wanted to give you a quick update. We had our holiday party today, and it was a huge success! We set up a separate small table with Halal/Vegan options and had a trusted colleague to man the table. I prepped her on how to respond to anyone requesting food from that table, so that we could redirect those who were just curious by letting them know that if there was some left near the end of the event, they could come back and try some. But we wanted our colleagues observing those diets to have first dibs. We also asked our main caterer to prepare most of the sides to be vegan as well (we did still need the mac and cheese though!)
We got SO MANY COMPLIMENTS AND THANKS! People raved about the food, and many non-Halal/non-vegan eaters said they would love to be able to try it in the future. Our finance person (who BTW was the person who manned the table, as luck would have it) was so pleased with the comments she was getting that she said she would find the funds for us to provide more of these options for our upcoming events.
Thank you so much for answering my question so quickly, and also to the commentariat with the great suggestions. It was definitely helpful!
Your response to reflect on whether their speaking up was essential versus a nice-to-have was impactful. I realized that while for me public speaking and communicating about our work to various audiences is a requirement and something I encouraged in others, it wasn’t something that 100% of the team needed to be doing. In the end, I decided that it wasn’t essential that folks speak more than they currently did (both in internal meetings within our unit and with other departments) and stuck with only asking folks to provide factual information in meetings when it was something factual that they would have at their fingertips and wouldn’t be surprised by.
I wound up moving on to a new organization not long after this question was posted and didn’t get to the bottom of what went sideways with the DEI consultant, but we did continue to develop multiple channels for people to provide input into the DEI work (ex. surveys and internal conversations in addition to the meetings with the consultant) to ensure people didn’t have to be comfortable speaking in a group session to share feedback.
I wrote back in early 2020, seeking advice on a former boss not saying goodbye to me on my last day. Again, thank you for your advice. It helped me come to terms with leaving and going on to the next job. In hindsight it was kinda silly to even care about something like that, but live and learn.
On to the update: I was lucky to leave my first job when I did; a month later Covid happened, and my new job sent us all home. We were actually the first department to do so, as a test to see if the whole company could do it. I worked from home for a year and a half in my new job and I loved it! It gave me time to decompress, get acquainted with new coworkers, and try to unlearn all the bad habits I picked up at my first job. Not as easy as it sounds, what with everything else going on at the time (understatement of the century).
Alas, in the summer of 2021, our boss became anxious to have us back in the office. We were working better than ever, collaboration was at an all-time high … but he had signed a very expensive office lease. We went back, and over another year things got progressively worse at that job. I guess with Covid the general toxicity was muted, but once we were back in person I started to feel like a slow-boiling frog.
I was already looking at other jobs, but I finally got the push to leave last fall, when a coworker was arrested as part of a sting operation in our city. Their mugshot was on the evening news, and the nature of the crime made our workforce, mostly women, extremely upset and uncomfortable. I and several others brought it up to management, who just told us not to talk about it as it would embarrass the coworker. I guess because it was a slap on the wrist they were allowed to keep their job, as well as continue to travel on work trips. That coworker’s BFF was also his boss, which I suspect had something to do with him staying on.
This incident was really the straw that broke my back. While this job was a huge step up from my first, especially in pay, it was becoming too toxic for me. I know my value, and I knew I can get a better job elsewhere. Thanks to my daily reading of your site, I was able to rework my resume, answer and ask good questions at interviews, and make sure my references were in order. Thankfully, the executive director at my first job was more than happy to be a reference, and within six months I landed a new job! It’s another pay increase, which was needed, and so far it’s a calmer, more structured work environment.
As for my first job, I heard through the grapevine that while my old department was allowed to work from home during Covid, the rest of the office was not, which led to much resentment. My old position has become a revolving door, with most new hires staying less than a year before bouncing. Just what I’ve heard, but I’m not surprised. Thanks again for helping me when I was just starting out in the professional world and had no clue.
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
I’m on vacation. Here are some past letters that I’m making new again, rather than leaving them to wilt in the archives.
Due to the quantity of updates we have, posts on Wednesday will publish at 10 am, 11 am, 12:30 pm, 1:30 pm, 2:30, 3:30 pm, 5 pm, and 6 pm (all times Eastern).
1. My coworkers love talking about childbirth during lunch and it’s grossing me out
My coworkers enjoy talking about childbirth at lunch. It seems like I can’t even eat my lunch without someone discussing a torn perineum. I’ve tried making jokes like “ha ha, I just want to eat my lunch without a side of placenta” but they just keep talking about it. I think because I’m a woman in my mid-20s they assume that I want to hear about this stuff, but the fact is that I find is disgusting. It doesn’t help that we have two pregnant women in the office so everyone wants to share their horror stories.
Should I just pack more snacks and eat lunch later or eat at my desk? I love to talk about weekend stuff, music, pets, anything but bodily fluids and babies.
I think you can ask — clearly and directly and without making a joke about it, so they know you really mean it — if they wouldn’t mind stopping. But if that doesn’t work and it turns out that everyone but you likes the topic and wants to continue with it, then all you can really do is remove yourself from the situation. (That doesn’t mean the topic is polite or appropriate; it’s not.)
So in this case, you could say, “Hey, can I ask y’all a favor? I love eating together and getting to catch up, but I’m really uncomfortable with all the explicit talk about childbirth. Would you be up for reining that in? If not, I can eat on my own — but I enjoy our lunches together so much the rest of the time that I wanted to ask.”
You will probably get some ribbing about this, but they still might agree to cut it out.
My office is an older building and half of it is up on a small crawl space. Every winter around this time (late February to early March) is what we call the dead animal season. Something (rat, feral cat, mouse) ends up finding its way into the crawl space and perishing – for whatever reason. And then the smell begins to permeate the office. There are always one or two locations where the smell is worse – different every year – but the smell comes right up through the floor and is rank enough that people are nauseated and have a difficult time working. The smell will last for 2-3 weeks.
And nothing is done about this. The manager doesn’t usually notice unless it’s brought to his attention – he works in the part of the building that has a basement below it so he doesn’t often experience this. This has been going on for the eight years I’ve been working here, and the response every year is that we have no way to prevent animals getting under there and no way of getting them out. When we bring in air deodorizers or air purifiers (electric or natural) we are told that those emit a scent he can’t stand and we need to get rid of them – and we make a point to get ones that are fragrance free.
What are our options? And we can’t always take vacation then!
What?! Every year for two to three weeks, the smell of a decomposing corpse fills your office and makes people nauseated, and your manager doesn’t care and won’t even let you bring in an air purifier?
Something here stinks worse than the dead animal, and that something is your boss.
I doubt this violates an OSHA rule (although I’d welcome someone finding out differently), which means that your best bet is to demand as a group that this be solved, including going over your boss’s head (again, as a group) if he won’t budge. You have the legal right to organize with your coworkers about your working conditions; use that right to make it more of a pain for your company to ignore you than to keep letting this happen. (Note that the law protects you when you push back as a group, but not if you do it on your own. So speaking as a group matters here, if you care about the legal protection. But it’s also just probably going to get you better results in this case.)
3. Why am I hearing how my friend is messing up at work?
I recommended a good friend for a job at my company in a completely different department from me. He’s now been working there for a year. He’s in his mid-20s and is a good worker although he lacks experience. He was tossed into a job that he wasn’t qualified or trained for and given no leadership or supervision.
His boss (not my boss – again, separate departments) pulls me into her office last week and tells me my friend has made a mistake that cost the company thousands of dollars. Later, my friend’s coworker comes and tells me directly that my friend is “a fuck up” and she’s recommending that he be fired.
I didn’t want to know any of this and I’m confused and upset as to WHY ON EARTH I would be told. I’m not a supervisor or a person in authority. First, is this normal? Should I have been told this? Second, what am I supposed to do with this information? I wish I could un-hear all of it.
No, it’s not normal.
It’s possible that they were venting to you, without thinking through the fact that there was no reason to do it and it would put you in an unfair position. It’s also possible that they each felt like they should loop you back in — like, “That guy you recommended? Not the right one for the job!”
I can imagine a situation where if I were considering firing someone who a colleague had recommended, I might feel like I should loop them in on where things stood — just like you’d do if you weren’t hiring them at all after a colleague’s recommendation. I might feel like it would be helpful to seek their input — sort of like, “Here are the problems I’m seeing. I know you know him well. Do you think my assessment is off-base / is there a different perspective I should be taking?” But that would be a much more nuanced conversation than “This dude is a fuck-up” and doesn’t sound like what’s happening here.
Really, it just sounds like your coworkers are frustrated and venting in the wrong place. If it happens again, I’d say, “I feel like I’m in an awkward position hearing this. I’m assuming there’s no role for me to play here…?” and wait to see what they say.
4. My office gave out thank-you gifts … with strings and deadlines
I work for a private firm in a very deadline-driven business. We are extremely busy now and are having a stressful year because we are short on staff. A few days ago the professionals in the department received a $50 Visa gift card with a note. My first thought was gratitude — how nice to have the extra difficulties we are facing this year acknowledged! But the note asked us to use the funds to do something for someone else — family, team members, community. And to document our good works, preferably via social media, by a deadline that’s just two days after our filing deadline.
A number of guys are taking their wives to dinner or getting them flowers. Great idea, but I don’t have kids, and my husband would prefer my presence to anything I might buy for him (love that guy!) We have food everywhere, so no need to buy a treat for the team. No time to take folks to lunch. The only thing folks want now is time off and/or sleep. I have an idea for some equipment that might help our admin team (they work outrageous hours), but it’s expensive. I’d need to pool funds with many others and work with the admins to get the right thing, and no one has time for that. The firm has a charitable foundation we could donate to.
Any thoughts? We’re tired and stressed and pretty annoyed by this request.
“You’re swamped, so here’s a gift that requires more work and thought from you right now, and it must happen in the timeframe we say!” … is not really a great gift. I don’t blame you for being a little annoyed.
How about donating it to a charity you support? That’s fast and easy. And then you could pass along feedback to whoever organized this that while you appreciated the intent, it ended up feeling like an additional thing to do at a time when you needed less.
Recapping this unexpected threat to health, the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday released an advisory titled "What You Should Know about Eye Drops" in hopes of keeping the dangers of this year from leaking into the next. Among the notable points from the regulator was this stark pronouncement: No one should ever use any homeopathic ophthalmic products, and every single such product should be pulled off the market.
Following the release of the Tesla cyber truck’s official specs and crash test data, some safety experts have weighed in calling the new vehicle a “death machine,” citing its poor sight lines, substandard crash test results, 3.5-ton weight, and sharply angled steel body. What do you think?
WASHINGTON—Hailing the initiative as a bold new era for the country’s multiplayer capabilities, President Joe Biden announced plans Wednesday to purchase an extra PlayStation 5 controller in case someone visits the nation. “We cannot stand by and fail to greatly expand America’s ability to engage in couch co-op…
HERONSBURG, AL—Under the terms of a strict ban that took effect in the state with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, an Alabama seventh-grader was arrested and jailed Wednesday after taking a basketball back out from under her shirt, according to law enforcement. “Every basketball found under someone’s shirt is a miracle…
A jury just found Google guilty on all counts of antitrust violations stemming from its dispute with Epic, maker of Fortnite, which brought a variety of claims related to how Google runs its app marketplace. This is huge:
The mobile app store world is a duopoly run by Google and Apple. Both use a variety of tactics to prevent their customers from installing third party app stores, which funnels all app makers into their own app stores. Those app stores cream an eye-popping 30% off every purchase made in an app.
This is a shocking amount to charge for payment processing. The payments sector is incredibly monopolized and notorious for its price-gouging – and its standard (wildly inflated) rate is 2-5%:
Now, in theory, Epic doesn't have to sell in Google Play, the official Android app store. Unlike Apple's iOS, Android permit both sideloading (installing an app directly without using an app store) and configuring your device to use a different app store. In practice, Google uses a variety of anticompetitive tricks to prevent these app stores from springing up and to dissuade Android users from sideloading. Proving that Google's actions – like paying Activision $360m as part of "Project Hug" (no, really!) – were intended to prevent new app stores from springing up was a big lift for Epic. But they managed it, in large part thanks to Google's own internal communications, wherein executives admitted that this was exactly why Project Hug existed. This is part of a pattern with Big Tech antitrust: many of the charges are theoretically very hard to make stick, but because the companies put their evil plans in writing (think of the fraudulent crypto exchange FTX, whose top execs all conferred in a groupchat called "Wirefraud"), Big Tech keeps losing in court:
Now, I do like to dunk on Big Tech for this kind of thing, because it's objectively funny and because the companies make so many unforced errors. But in an important sense, this kind of written record is impossible to avoid. Any large institution can only make and enact policy through administrative systems, and those systems leave behind a papertrail: memos, meeting minutes, etc. Yes, we all know that quote from The Wire: "Is you taking notes on a fucking criminal conspiracy?" But inevitably, any ambitious conspiracy can only exist if someone is taking notes.
What's more, any large conspiracy involving lots of parties will inevitably produce leaks. Think of this as the corollary to the idea that the moon landing can't be a hoax, because there's no way 400,000 co-conspirators could keep the secret. Big Tech's conspiracies required hundreds or even thousands of collaborators to keep their mouths shut, and eventually someone blabs:
This is part of a wave of antitrust cases being brought against the tech giants. As Matt Stoller writes, the guilty-on-all-counts jury verdict will leak into current and future actions. Remember, Google spent much of this year in court fighting the DoJ, who argued that the company bribed Apple not to make a competing search engine, paying tens of billions every year to keep a competitor from emerging. Now that a jury has convicted Google of doing that to prevent alternative app stores from emerging, claims that it used these pay-for-delay tactics in other sectros get a lot more credible:
On that note: what about Apple? Epic brought a very similar case against Apple and lost. Both Apple and Epic are appealing that case to the Supreme Court, and now that Google has been convicted in a similar case, it might prompt the Supremes to weigh in and resolve the seeming inconsistencies in the interpretation of federal law.
This is a key moment in the long project to wrest antitrust away from the pro-monopoly side, who spent decades "training" judges to produce verdicts that run counter to the plain language of America's antitrust law:
There's 40 years' worth of bad precedent to overturn. The good news is that we've got the law on our side. Literally, the wording of the laws and the records of the Congressional debate leading to their passage, all militate towards the (incredibly obvious) conclusion that the purpose of anti-monopoly law is to fight monopoly, not defend it:
It's amazing to realize that we got into this monopoly quagmire because judges just literally refused to enforce the law. That's what makes one part of the jury verdict against Google so exciting: the jury found that Google's insistence that Play Store sellers use its payment processor was an act of illegal tying. Today, "tying" is an obscure legal theory, but few doctrines would be more useful in disenshittifying the internet. A company is guilty of illegal tying when it forces you to use unrelated products or services as a condition of using the product you actually want. The abandonment of tying led to a host of horribles, from printer companies forcing you to buy ink at $10,000/gallon to Livenation forcing venues to sell tickets through its Ticketmaster subsidiary.
The next phase of this comes when the judge decides on the penalty. Epic doesn't want cash damages – it wants the judge to order Google to fulfill its promise of "an open, competitive Android ecosystem for all users and industry participants." They've asked the judge to order Google to facilitate third-party app stores, and to separate app stores from payment processors. As Stoller puts it, they want to "crush Google’s control over Android":
Google has sworn to appeal, surprising no one. The Times's expert says that they will have a tough time winning, given how clear the verdict was. Whatever this means for Google and Android, it means a lot for a future free from monopolies.
#15yrsago Former Nasdaq chairman busted for running a $50 billion fraud — largest Ponzi scheme ever < href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122903010173099377">https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122903010173099377
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html
The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books, February 2024
Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025
Unauthorized Bread: a graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025
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Thank you for your response — as well as to everyone who commented. I found all of the responses to be helpful — they really helped me keep my sanity for the remaining five weeks of my notice period. After I wrote to you, things continued to go downhill with my (now former) boss. This only scratches the tip of the iceberg in terms of how banapants things got during my last few weeks, but gives you enough of the picture I think. :)
During my notice period, I took a week of vacation (pre-planned before I gave notice). When I came back, I discovered my boss had decided — without consulting me — that I was going to lead research for a project I was still managing in a very unstable country that had recently undergone a coup d’état — scheduled the week before I was due to move back to the U.S. for my new job. It will not surprise you that my former company did not have any safety or evacuation protocols in place. I told my boss I was not comfortable going to this country, nor was I willing to travel during the remainder of my notice period.
In response, she gave me the silent treatment and then reported me to HR. During the conversation, the head of HR repeatedly tried to convince me to travel to this country, as well as tried to trap me into badmouthing my boss. I told them that they did not understand the concept of a notice period, which is for wrapping things up and handing things over. After 15 minutes of extremely circular conversation, I told him if we could not find a way forward, my last day would be tomorrow. He immediately backed off and went, “No, no, no, you don’t need to leave tomorrow,” likely because they were so understaffed and desperately needed me to finish the work I had outlined in my handover note.
After this meeting, my boss denied approving my handover note — which she had agreed to the day of my resignation — and stated it had to be a living document. After this particular comment, I added a list of every single task I had completed during my notice period, including links to all documents, to prove that I had, in fact, done quite a bit of work during this time.
After this incident, my boss tried publicly bullying me, stating that I had intentionally slowed down the timeline on the aforementioned project to avoid travelling. When this did not work, she gave me the silent treatment for a week and only communicated to me through her assistant, which I honestly preferred. She changed her tune and started being “nice” to me when someone else on our team made her angry a few days later. After this, I more or less checked out of work, as I figured she was going to badmouth me even if I worked 60 hours a week, and I preferred to start my new job rested.
They did try to short my last paycheck by about $1,000. Luckily I kept detailed records of everything related to my remaining PTO days and confirmation from HR of my official last day. I did actually receive my last full two months salary (my former company paid every other month — another red flag).
I have been at my new job for about four months, and it has been a really nice change. My work-life balance is much better and I actually look forward to opening my laptop now. The work is challenging and fast paced (I work in the humanitarian / development field) but my new boss is very supportive, and the team I work with is really great. I am actually learning things and feel like I’m making an impact, versus managing someone’s insanity on a day to day basis. I am still in touch with a couple of people at my old company who have said things have continued to go downhill since I left — several people exited after my departure as well. When I think back on it, I can’t believe I stayed in that situation for as long as I did. My old boss has reached out a couple of times since I left and I haven’t replied.
Thank you all again for your great comments and advice. I used a lot of it during my last month at my job and it was incredibly helpful to keeping both my sanity and energy intact.
![It's not just time zones and leap seconds. SI seconds on Earth are slower because of relativity, so there are time standards for space stuff (TCB, TGC) that use faster SI seconds than UTC/Unix time. T2 - T1 = [God doesn't know and the Devil isn't telling.]](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/datetime.png "It's not just time zones and leap seconds. SI seconds on Earth are slower because of relativity, so there are time standards for space stuff (TCB, TGC) that use faster SI seconds than UTC/Unix time. T2 - T1 = [God doesn't know and the Devil isn't telling.]")
Climate and Information Climate (Andrew Revkin)
