WASHINGTON—Deciding it was time for her to become more politically active, Vice President Kamala Harris recently logged onto ActBlue to donate $7 to the Biden reelection campaign, sources reported Monday. “This is just my way of doing something to help out,” said Harris, who briefly considered rounding her donation up…
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Laser tag for team-building
I’m curious to get your take on laser tag as a team-building exercise. We all work from home at my small nonprofit and gather together in person for a few days several times a year. Earlier this year we did an afternoon of laser tag during one of our in-person meetings and there were at least a few of us who didn’t have that great of a time.
We were dismayed to discover last week that our org has scheduled another laser tag afternoon for our next in-person gathering. Aside from the fact that it has absolutely nothing to do with our work (and I think it’s a waste of both our time and the org’s money) (and these kinds of team-building activities are a scourge upon the earth), I also really don’t like the idea of having to run around with guns and shoot at my coworkers. (And yes, I know they’re not real but the whole thing is still very war-like in my head.) I already raised this with my supervisor, who I get along great with, and felt confident that she would see my side of things but she said I should go anyway. I also plan to ask my fellow coworkers who hated it last time to bring it up to their supervisors as well so we can push back as a group, but won’t be able to until next week as most of them are away at a conference this week. Any thoughts on this? I’m already feeling kind of sick about the whole thing.
Laser tag is a horrible choice for team-building, especially if it’s mandatory. It’s not at all inclusive for anyone who has physical activity restrictions, has any kind of trauma associated with gun violence, or just plain doesn’t like guns or running around. That’s a lot of people. (Personally I can’t even enjoy movies with a lot of shooting right now; I’m definitely not going to run around with a fake gun. I’d be pissed off about being required to do this.)
How firm were you when you talked to your manager? If you downplayed your feelings at all, go back to her and say, “I’ve thought on this more and it’s not something I’m comfortable participating in — and given sensitivities around gun violence right now, I doubt I’m the only one who feels that way. I’ll attend if it’s mandatory, but it’s not something I’ll participate in. Is there a spot where I can wait for everyone else to be done?”
2. Anonymous complaints about my department meeting
I am the sole member of a one-person communications department at a small firm where I’ve been employed for three years. I organize and run a biweekly (meaning once every two weeks) “touch-base” meeting attended by about 10 people from five other departments. If I don’t have any urgent updates or need input from any group members, I am happy to cancel the meeting out of respect for busy schedules. If we have the meeting, I keep an organized agenda and usually dismiss everyone within 10-15 minutes.
In the last three company-wide annual anonymous surveys, one person (based on the small number of complaints and wording) has been consistently complaining about my meeting — that we should cancel it more often, that we don’t have enough to discuss, that the deadlines are too far away, etc. I don’t want to cancel it more often because my job consists of managing long projects with strict deadlines that require input from a lot of other departments/people and awareness of deadlines.
Should I address the group about this since I can’t identify the complainant? Or just ignore it? It is possible that I’m just irritated that someone is whining about a very short, biweekly meeting.
Address it with the group head-on: “We’ve had complaints on the anonymous survey that we should cancel this meeting more often, so I wanted to get everyone’s input on how these meetings are working for you. They’re useful for me because of ___, but I’m open to hearing if there are changes you’d like to see.” If it’s just one person being a grump and everyone else thinks the meetings are fine, the open discussion may shame them into quitting with the anonymous complaints. But it could also be a valuable discussion, so go into it with an open mind and see what you learn!
Sometimes meetings are necessary even when people grumble about them, but sometimes they’re not or there are ways to streamline them that are worth hearing.
One note: I might be reading too much into your statement that you hold the meetings if you “need input from any group members” (emphasis mine), but if you’re making the whole group gather when you just need input from one or two people, they’ll probably be happier if you just meet with those people rather than making everyone assemble.
3. My company insists on shipping wine to our homes and I can’t opt out
I have been an employee at my mid-sized company for several years and I love my job. I have a supportive and knowledgeable boss and grandboss, and my peers are competent, respectful, and frankly the best at what we do. Our workforce is entirely remote across the world, and has been for the entire time that I have worked here. The only thing about my company that I dread is the holiday season.
Our CEO is passionate about wine. Every year as a holiday gift to the U.S.-based employees, our CEO sends a selection of one to three wines through the mail delivered directly to our homes. This delivery is accompanied by an invitation to a company-wide virtual wine tasting, led by an expert.
The first year this happened, I appreciated the thought but was disappointed that I wasn’t given an option to opt out. My closely held religious beliefs exclude me from being in the drinking crowd. Unusual in my industry, but not unheard of! I ended up gifting the wine to my parents and sent a message to my manager and HR letting them know that I would appreciate an alternative choice in the future.
The second year, I became slightly annoyed. Shipping notifications were sent with no warning or announcement beforehand. I planned on refusing the package, but my mail carrier left it without a signature. Again, I reached out to my supervisor and HR, and reiterated that having alcohol in my home was in discord with my religious beliefs, and that I was unhappy that my message from the previous year had been ignored. I was told to submit for reimbursement for a bottle of soda as an alternative.
Years three and four went similarly. No opt-out option was offered and my follow-up messages were brushed off with no meaningful change. I’m not the litigious type, but by this point I’m pretty upset that my beliefs are being so blatantly and knowingly disrespected.
Simultaneously, I truly appreciate the thought! I know our CEO means no harm, and is sharing their passion with us in an attempt to build community and camaraderie. I just wish that the leadership team would make a better attempt at imagining me and people like me as someone that they want to respect and hold space for within our community. I don’t need a gold star or a special gift — I simply want to be able to quietly opt out, without seeming ungrateful or judgmental. Am I off-base here? Or, is there some method of persuasion that I’m not thinking of?
No, you’re not off-base! It’s awfully disrespectful that they’ve continued to mail you alcohol year after year when you’ve told them it’s at odds with your religious beliefs. I don’t blame them for the first year — wine is a common enough gift and people who don’t drink will usually just give it away, even if they’re slightly annoyed — but after that there was no excuse, particularly after the second year when you clearly spelled out that it’s not just that you don’t drink, but that you cannot have it in your home.
If you want to give it one more shot, you could say this to your boss and HR: “I’m not sure if I haven’t been clear in past years, so I want to be very clear now: for religious reasons, I cannot have alcohol show up at my home. I have said this in past years and it has arrived anyway. So I am requesting a formal religious accommodation to opt out of the wine. How do I ensure the company respects my religious beliefs and does not ship me wine this year?”
Also, if you’ve been dealing with a low-level HR person on this, go higher. Make sure to use the words “formal religious accommodation.”
4. Participating in Secret Santa as a manager
I am an assistant manager of a government office of about 30 people. We normally do a gift exchange for the holidays, such as a Secret Santa or white elephant gift exchange. I realize holiday gifts from employees to managers are problematic, but should I participate in gift exchanges like the ones I described? Is it uncomfortable for people to draw my name and be my Secret Santa since I’m their boss? Is it awkward for them to steal a gift from me in a white elephant gift exchange? Or, am I overthinking this all-in-fun activity? If I decline to participate, do I then look like a Scrooge?
The rule against gifting up (or managers expecting gifts from people they manage) is because of the power dynamics in the relationship; people shouldn’t feel pressured to buy gifts for people with power over them. But something like a Secret Santa or white elephant exchange is different, because everyone is opting into participating and it’s more of a round robin / group activity than one with traditional gifting dynamics. It’s fine for you to participate if you want to.
This assumes you are behaving like a normal person and not, for example, making it clear you expect your Secret Santa to exceed the dollar limit or giving dirty looks to anyone who steals a gift from you in a white elephant exchange, etc.
5. Boss asked me to take on more supervision to “demonstrate to HR that I should be promoted”
My supervisor has recently asked me to start informally supervising a colleague (who is a peer on my team) to “demonstrate to HR” that I should be promoted. I’m not sure how to feel about this. On one hand, I know that there needs to be documentation that I have excelled at my current job to be promoted. On the other, I feel that I am taking on more work without any increase in pay. Is this reasonable?
What does “informally supervising” mean? You need real authority to supervise someone, and they need to be aware that you have that authority. If your boss just means she’d like you to start reviewing your coworker’s work and providing feedback, that’s one thing, as long as your coworker has been told you’ve been charged with that and there’s a clear limit on how long your boss envisions you doing this for. But if it’s anything more than that, she’s talking about a significant increase in responsibility, and that needs to be accompanied by the actual authority to do the job (and appropriate pay for doing it).
That said, some companies do operate like this and realistically in those organizations you’ve got to go along with it if you want the promotion. If yours is one of those, make sure you talk to your boss about the intended timeline for considering a promotion (it should be a few months at most, not a year) and get very clear about exactly what your company would need to see before you’re promoted. If they can’t tell you those two things in fairly concrete terms, be extremely wary.
MISSOULA, MT—Wincing at the sound of the man’s booming voice, sources confirmed Monday that 35-year-old Jesse Slattery was loud but not even drunk. “You’d think he’d had a shot or two before this, but nope, that’s just his voice,” said acquaintance Kevin McGill, who appeared bewildered by the man who was destroying…
SANTA ANA, CA—Emphasizing that employees should be proud of all the amazing things their hard work had accomplished, local CEO Bryan Arlington reportedly attempted to improve his company’s morale Monday by sharing intimate descriptions of his summer home renovations. “As many of you know, it’s been a difficult quarter…
AUGUSTA, GA—Realizing he should have introduced them years ago, local man Daniel Pendergast’s family was really hitting it off with his secret family, sources confirmed Monday. “I just assumed they’d be jealous of each other or mad at me for manipulating all of them for the past decade, but they genuinely seem to be…
A former TV pundit and ultra-conservative economist has won Argentina's presidential election. Now he faces the challenge of turning around a crippled economy with staggering inflation of over 140%
(Image credit: Tomas Cuesta/Getty Images)
Hovertext:
God runs a comedy club in heaven and everyone is obligated to laugh at his disturbingly alien sense of humor.
Thanks to everyone who came for BAHFest and congrats to our winner of the Hennig Brand trophy, Esther Redhouse-White.
I was listening to something about AIs on the radio this morning, and the expert was like: We can't just air gap it - remember it'll be smarter than us and very persuasive in getting us to do stuff ...
Last April, Propublica's Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski dropped a bombshell: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had been showered in high-ticket "gifts" by billionaire ideologue Harlan Crow, who subsequently benefited from Thomas's rulings in the court:
https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-scotus-undisclosed-luxury-travel-gifts-crow
This was just the beginning: in the coming days and weeks, more and more of Thomas's corruption came to light, everything from the fact that his mother's home had been bought by Crow, to the fact that Thomas's adoptive son went to a fancy private school on Crow's dime:
https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-harlan-crow-private-school-tuition-scotus
The news was explosive and not merely because of the corruption it revealed in the country's highest court. The credibility of the court itself was at its lowest ebb in living memory, thanks to the two judges who occupied stolen seats – Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett. One of those judges – Kavanaugh – is a credibly accused rapist. Thomas is also a credibly accused sexual abuser:
Then, this illegitimate court went on to deliver a string of upsets to long-settled law, culminating in the Dobbs decision, which triggered state laws that force small children to bear their rapists' babies:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/09/health/abortion-bans-rape-incest.html
That was the context for the Thomas bribery scandal, which was swiftly joined by another bribery scandal, involving Samuel Alito's improper acceptance of valuable gifts from Paul Singer, another billionaire who brought business before the court:
https://www.propublica.org/article/samuel-alito-luxury-fishing-trip-paul-singer-scotus-supreme-court
This string of scandals and outrages naturally prompted public curiosity about the Supreme Court's ethical standards, and that triggered fresh waves of incredulous outrage when we all found out that the Supreme Court doesn't have any:
When Congress made tentative noises about providing minor checks and balances on the court, the justices erupted in outrage, telling Congress to go fuck itself:
https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/supreme-court-ethics-durbin/cf67ef8450ea024d/full.pdf
Chief Justice Roberts went on whatever the opposite of a charm-offensive is called (an "offense offensive?"), a media tour whose key message to the American people was "STFU, you're hurting our feelings":
To the shock of no one except billionaires and Supreme Court justices inhabiting the splendid isolation from societal norms that is the privilege of life tenure, America didn't like this. The Supreme Court's credibility plummeted. A large supermajority of Americans – 79%! – now support age limits for Supreme Court justices:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/18/the-people-no/#tell-ya-what-i-want-what-i-really-really-want
Support for packing the Supreme Court is at an historic high and gaining ground, now sitting neck-and-neck with opposition at 46% in favor/51% opposed. Among under-30s, there's a healthy majority (58%) in favor of appointing more SCOTUS justices.
As Roberts' wounded bleats reveal, SCOTUS is very sensitive to its plummeting legitimacy. After all, the court doesn't have an army, nor does it have a police force. Supreme Court rulings only matter to the extent that the American people accept them as legitimate and obey them. Transformational presidents like Lincoln and FDR have waged successful wars against the Supreme Court, sidelining its authority and turning it into an unimportant rump institution for years afterward:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/26/mint-the-coin-etc-etc/#blitz-em
Now the Supremes are working their way through the (mythological but convenient) five stages of grief. Having passed through Denial and Anger, they've arrived at Bargaining, with the publication of the court's first "code" "of" "conduct":
https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/Code-of-Conduct-for-Justices_November_13_2023.pdf
It's…not good. As Max Moran writes for The American Prospect and The Revolving Door Project, the proposed code amounts to "security theater," a set of trivially bypassed strictures that would not have prevented any of the scandals to date and will permit far worse in the years to come:
https://prospect.org/justice/2023-11-17-supreme-court-objectivity-theater/
The security framing is a very useful tool for evaluating the Supremes' proposal. The purpose of a code of conduct isn't merely to prevent people from accidentally misstepping – it's to prevent malicious parties from corrupting the judicial process. To evaluate the code, we should red team it: imagine what harms a corrupt judge or a corrupting billionaire would be able to effect while staying within the bounds the code sets.
Seen in that light, the code is wildly defective and absolutely not fit for purpose. Its most glaring defect is found in the nature of its edicts – they are almost all optional. The word "should" appears 53 times in the document, while "must" appears just six times:
https://ballsandstrikes.org/ethics-accountability/supreme-court-code-of-conduct-hilariously-fake/
Of those six "musts," two are not pertinent to ethical questions (they pertain to the requirement for a justice to get prior approval before getting paid for teaching gigs).
When the code of conduct was rolled out, the court and its apologists pointed out that it was modeled on the ethical guidelines that bind lower courts. In the wake of the Thomas revelations, these guidelines were a useful benchmark to measure Thomas's conduct against. The fact that other federal judges would have been severely sanctioned or even fired if they had engaged in the same conduct as Thomas was a powerful argument that Thomas had overstepped the bounds of ethical conduct.
But as Bloomberg Law discovered when they compared the lower courts' codes to the Supremes' draft, the Supremes have gone through those lower court codes and systematically cut nearly every mention of "enforce" from their own draft. They also cut the requirement to "take appropriate action" if a violation is reported.
If you are a bad judge or a bad donor, all of this is good news. Nearly everything that it condemns is merely optional, which means that if a judge can be convinced to ignore a rule, they won't have violated the code. What's more, even widespread rulebreaking doesn't trigger an investigation. That's a very weak security measure indeed.
But it gets worse. The Supremes' code also omit key definitions found in the codes that bind the lower courts. The most important definition to be cut is for "political organization," which the lower courts define expansively as both parties and "entit[ies] whose principal purpose is to advocate for or against political candidates or parties." That definition captures "nonprofits, think tanks, lobbying firms, trade associations, grassroots groups" – the whole panoply of organizations whom federal judges must maintain an arm's length distance from in order to preserve their objectivity. Federal judges may not lead, speak at or donate to these organizations.
By omitting this definition, the Supremes open the door to involvement with precisely the kinds of PACs, thinktanks and other influence organizations funded by the billionaires who have benefited so handsomely from the judges' rulings.
What's more, the Supremes carve out an explicit exemption for speaking to "nonprofits, think tanks, lobbying firms, trade associations, grassroots groups," and to serving as a director, trustee or officer of "a nonprofit organization devoted to the law, the legal system, or the administration of justice and may assist such an organization in the management and investment of funds."
As Moran points out, this exemption would cover – among other institutions – the far-right Federalist Society, which satisfies all those criteria. That means a Supreme Court justice could sit on the board and raise funds for the FedSoc without raising any issues with this code – not even one of those squishy "shoulds." Nothing in this code would stop Clarence Thomas or Thomas Alito from accepting lavish gifts, private jet rides, or luxury tour buses from billionaires with business before the court:
As Moran writes, these definitional vacuums are a well-understood class of weaknesses in ethics codes. Congress gets a lot of mileage out of this ruse – for example, by narrowly defining "lobbying" to exclude things that most people understand that term to mean, Congress engage in improperly close relations with lobbyists while still maintaining that they hardly ever talk to a lobbyist at all:
https://www.politico.eu/article/jeff-hauser-opinion-watergate-european-union-qatargate/
The same ruse goes for campaign contributions – if you want to accept a lot of campaign contributions that would fall afoul of ethics rules, just narrow the definition of "campaign contribution" until all the money you're receiving no longer qualifies.
Moran closes by calling on Congress to formulate a real, meaningful code of conduct for the Supremes, one that orders Supreme Court judges not to accept corrupting gifts and to maintain the arm's length neutrality that the rest of the federal judiciary is required to keep. Rather than this new code of conduct constituting proof that SCOTUS can be its own oversight, its gross deficiencies should put to rest any question about whether the Supremes can be trusted to regulate themselves.
(Image: Senate Democrats, CC BY 2.0, modified)
Goodbye Dormzilla, Hello Student Housing https://www.independent.com/2023/11/09/goodbye-dormzilla-hello-student-housing/ (h/t Today in Tabs)
The Government Is Now the Hottest Tech Employer in Town https://www.wired.com/story/tech-jobs-government-layoffs/
#20yrsago Send back your MP3s https://web.archive.org/web/20031015045308/https://sendthemback.org/
#10yrsago UK Home Office suffers setback: can’t destroy family by deporting American head-teacher as his British wife begins cancer treatment https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/17/home-office-drops-us-teacher-deportation-threat
#10yrsago Rob Ford gives staff $5,000 taxpayer dollars each to stay on https://torontosun.com/2013/11/16/mayor-rob-fords-week-one-for-the-books
#5yrsago Exec who oversaw Google’s failed babykiller projects and cozied up to Saudis quits after employee uprising https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/technology/diane-greene-google-cloud.html
#5yrsago America’s big box stores sucked up corporate welfare and killed Main Street — now they’re ducking property tax https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-14/to-cut-taxes-big-box-stores-use-dark-store-theory
#5yrsago Google donated $5k to GOP Senator who “joked” about attending a lynching with her Black opponent https://thegrio.com/2018/11/14/google-donates-5000-to-cindy-hyde-smith-after-lynching-comments/
#5yrsago Sole and Despotic Dominion: my story about the future of private property for Reason https://reason.com/2018/11/17/sole-and-despotic-dominion/
#5yrsago Thousands of sleep apnea sufferers rely on a lone Australian CPAP hacker to stay healthy https://www.vice.com/en/article/xwjd4w/im-possibly-alive-because-it-exists-why-sleep-apnea-patients-rely-on-a-cpap-machine-hacker
#5yrsago Our homes are designed for stuff, making them unsuitable for people https://archive.curbed.com/2018/11/14/18093134/home-movie-theaters-game-rooms-mcmansion-hell-wagner
#5yrsago Terror as disappearances follow Chinese student communists’ solidarity with striking workers https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/13/asia/china-student-marxist-missing-intl/index.html?no-st=1542369901
#5yrsago The Lie Behind the Lie Detector: how to beat the pseudoscientific polygraph https://antipolygraph.org/pubs.shtml
#5yrsago A leaky database of SMS messages is a reminder that SMS is really, really insecure https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/15/millions-sms-text-messages-leaked-two-factor-codes/
#5yrsago For $20, you can make a DIY Stingray in minutes, using parts from Amazon https://www.vice.com/en/article/gy7qm9/how-i-made-imsi-catcher-cheap-amazon-github
#5yrsago EU antitrust enforcers investigate Amazon’s predatory private-label products https://web.archive.org/web/20190827094930/https://thecapitolforum.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Amazon-2018.11.05.pdf
#5yrsago UN poverty envoy calls UK poverty a “political choice” that inflicted “great misery” https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/nov/16/uk-austerity-has-inflicted-great-misery-on-citizens-un-says
#5yrsago Bernie Sanders introduces the Stop Walmart Act: no stock buybacks without a $15 minimum wage https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/15/business/bernie-sanders-walmart-minimum-wage/index.html
#1yrago Private equity health-care monopolies are on a profitable killing spree https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/17/the-doctor-will-fleece-you-now/#pe-in-full-effect
Today's top sources:
Currently writing:
Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS JAN 2025
The Bezzle, a Martin Hench noir thriller novel about the prison-tech industry. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2024
Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM
Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM
Latest podcast: Moral Hazard (from Communications Breakdown) https://craphound.com/stories/2023/11/12/moral-hazard-from-communications-breakdown/
Upcoming appearances:
Lost Cause at Simsbury Public Library, Nov 20 (Simsbury, CT)
https://simsbury.librarycalendar.com/event/author-visit-cory-doctorow-29257
Generation of Lost Causes, Nov 22 (Toronto)
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/705457551527?aff=oddtdtcreator
Who Is Watching Big Tech? Nov 27 (Toronto)`
https://web.archive.org/web/20230907160103/https://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/detail.jsp?Entt=RDMEVT496408&R=EVT496408
The Lost Cause at The Strand (NYC), Nov 29
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-the-lost-cause-tickets-734958008187
The Lost Cause at Flyleaf Books (Chapel Hill), Dec 5
https://www.flyleafbooks.com/doctorow-2023
Recent appearances:
Pushing back on unconstrained capitalism (Changelog)
https://changelog.com/podcast/565
Plutopia
https://plutopia.io/cory-doctorow-the-internet-con/
Latest books:
"The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html
"How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)
"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html
"Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.
Upcoming books:
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
This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.
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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla
Give yourself one point for each answer yes.
1. Are your pants unbuttoned before the appetizer is even put on the table?
2. Are you wearing a pilgrim hat and drinking your fourth High Noon?
3. Did you loudly ask what the turkey’s pronouns were, then smirk into your Modelo?
4. Did you explain the origins of the holiday to the children’s table using one to three racist terms?
5. When called out for using one to three racist terms, did you then proceed to use four more?
6. Did you walk into the kitchen and say, “How you girls doin’ with the cooking?”
7. Did you also ask if they’ve been “slaving away”?
8. Then call them “busy beavers”?
9. Instead of eating the home-cooked meal, did you pull out a bag of Ancestral Supplements because you’re on the Liver King’s hunter-and-gatherer diet?
10. Did you just spend a single semester in England, and call the can of cranberry sauce a “tin,” then compliment your cousin on her “jumper”?
11. If someone brings up their dietary restrictions, is your instinct to say “Enjoy your tofurrrrrkey” in a girly voice with a raised pinkie finger?
12. After your sister takes a bite of pumpkin pie, do you loudly speculate that her Ozempic prescription clearly isn’t strong enough?
13. Did you confide to your brother-in-law that you’re not just asking him for money, you’re giving him a rare opportunity to get in on the ground floor of your emu farm?
14. Is your family wearing matching fleece vests? Including the shih tzu?
15. Are you an amateur mixologist, and is one of your cocktail ingredients brine?
16. When everyone is sharing what they’re grateful for, does your list include the words “Tesla,” “Bitcoin,” or “Joe fucking Rogan, bro”?
17. Do you have a TikTok channel devoted entirely to clips of men being hit in the testicles / clips of frightened dogs being pushed down water slides, and are you watching the channel during the saying of grace?
18. Did you bust out your vape at dinner and get “handsy” under the table with your uninvited date?
19. When it’s time to do the dishes, do you tell everyone that you have an important phone call to take and/or diarrhea from the green bean casserole?
20. Did you pull the bigger part of the wishbone, then tell everyone that what you wished for was “reduced charges”?
21. When your grandmother requested leftovers, did you loudly burp into an empty Ziploc, then whisper “bon appetit”?
One to five points: You could be the worst person at Thanksgiving.
Six to ten points: You probably are the worst person at Thanksgiving.
Ten-plus points: You definitely are the worst person at Thanksgiving.
Yes on #18: You’re Lauren Boebert.
This beautiful two-bedroom Colonial is the perfect place to raise a family and—whoa there, buddy, nothing to see here. With a spacious backyard and a washer-dryer, you’ll feel right at—that door sticks so it’s better if we don’t even fiddle with it right now. What? No, I don’t hear any noises. It’s just a door, buddy.…
To help celebrate our twenty-fifth year of being on the information superhighway, we have reached out to some of our current and former columnists for check-ins and updates. Today’s columnist, Suzanne Yeagley, has written Interviews with People Who Have Interesting or Unusual Jobs for our site since 2002. It’s one of our oldest running columns. Suzanne returns today for the first new installment in a few years.
Q: What is your job title?
A: The official title is “Guinness World Records Adjudicator.” I’m part of a team of adjudicators who are sent in person for certain events. I am the person who decides, normally in real time, unless it’s a very intense record, whether or not the record attempt was successful.
We go to the event in our fancy uniform. Every time I’m in it, I feel very official.
There are also people who review record attempt applications in the office, on a computer. They are not in fancy uniforms. I did that job for about four years. At that time, my official title was Records Manager, and then Senior Records Manager.
Q: How did you find that job?
A: It is honestly the most boring way one finds a job. At my previous job, I was a writer, writing a story about a successful Guinness World Records attempt, and I thought to myself, “Who works there?”
Out of curiosity, I looked at their website and their jobs, and strangely, I found one that seemed to fit my background. I applied, and I got it.
Q: What was the Records Manager job like?
A: Each day, I would get applications and have to review them. Step one was telling the person the guidelines, the evidence requirements, and all the things we would need from them. And then step two, people would submit the evidence, and I would review it and say, “Yep, you followed all of the guidelines, gave us all of the evidence we needed, and you are now the Guinness World Records title holder.”
Q: How many people would you say were successful in achieving the record title they set out to achieve?
A: I can find statistics for this… but it’s gonna be a small percentage. Totally guessing, I would say maybe 30 percent achieved the title.
Q: So you saw people fail pretty often.
A: I saw it every day. You always want them to achieve the record, and it is always kind of a bummer when they don’t. But in person, I have never seen a failed adjudication. I’ve spoken to other adjudicators, and it’s rare not to see failed attempts.
Q: Were people setting new records, or were they trying to beat existing ones?
A: Both.
There’s a database of at least 60,000 record titles. Any person could go to the website and search for a record title. If the record title is active, you submit an application, and the process starts from there.
You can also apply for a new record title. However, and I think this is always surprising to people, there are criteria that every new record title has to meet. I can tell you what they are: They need to be breakable, measurable, standardizable, verifiable, and measured by a single superlative.
So, part of my job was looking at applications and saying, “Does it meet all of these criteria?” We got a lot that did not.
Q: Can you give an example of something that’s not standardizable?
A: We would frequently get applications for something like most acts of kindness done in a day. But we cannot standardize what an “act of kindness” is. Is it buying someone a car? Is it holding the door open for them? So that’s an example of one we would get all the time that cannot be an active record title.
Q: And can you give an example of people not achieving their title?
A: For a period of time, I got a lot of fitness titles. Things like most pull-ups in a minute, or there was something called a “Spiderman push-up,” so most Spiderman push-ups in a minute. The reason for those failures was that they were not using the correct form.
We also have mass certification records, meaning “the most people doing whatever it is.”
For example, I adjudicated a title in Canada for the largest human image of a maple leaf. And it RULED.
It was for Canada Day, and they had just under three thousand people in this town outside of Toronto. They had to wear the same color shirt and have the stem, so that when I looked down from the scissor lift, forty feet in the air, I could make sure it was, in fact, a maple leaf.
For those types of titles, a million things can go wrong. It doesn’t actually look like the image, not enough people participated, they’re not standing close enough together…
It’s why it makes any time it is successful so impressive.
Q: That would suck if you had to tell them they didn’t look like a maple leaf.
A: Yes, the mayor of the town was there. The whole town came out. As I was going up in the scissor lift, I was thinking, “PLEASE look like a maple leaf.” Adjudicators have to remain unbiased while judging attempts, but I would’ve been bummed if it didn’t work out.
Q: How did you transition from the office to going out in the field?
A: I love calling it “going out in the field.” I’m going to start calling it that. It makes me feel like an FBI agent…
You do a week of training at the headquarters in London. The training varies from having sessions with other members of the records team, all the way down to media training.
We had to do TV interviews and watch ourselves back. We had to learn what to say, what not to say… it really ran the gamut.
Q: Can you tell me about other in-person record attempts?
A: You shadow other adjudicators before going out on your own. The first attempt I ever shadowed was most turbans tied in eight hours.
It was an organization related to Sikhism, and they tried to break the record in Times Square. They got permits, cordoned off this whole section, and had artists performing and speakers giving talks. They had pamphlets about why people who are Sikhs wear turbans and what the significance of it is. You could go up, and someone would put a turban on you.
Q: This sounds great.
A: It was cool to watch because you’re in Times Square, and plenty of people are on vacation, and they’re very down to do something like that.
It was such a fun event. I’m pretty positive it was successful.
Q: How long does it take to put on a turban?
A: Faster than you think. It’s maybe thirty seconds since the person doing the tying was experienced.
Q: Any idea how many turbans they put on in eight hours?
A: 3,010!
Q: Wow! Any other memorable events?
A: The most recent one I did was one of my favorites. There were three record titles that a blind horse was attempting. Different tricks, like the highest free jump by a blind horse, things like that.
I’d had a call with the owner of the horse where we reviewed the evidence requirements, and one of the guidelines was that they would need proof from the animal’s vet that, yes, the horse was indeed blind. Because blindness can range in degrees, and you don’t want it to be an unfair competition between, in this case, two horses. The owner said, “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”
So I get there, and I had never seen the horse before.
And the horse had literally no eyeballs.
BrittanyHirstPhotography
It looked fine, it wasn’t bloody, it wasn’t gory, it just looked like a doll you forgot to put the finishing touches on.
Later, I saw the head of PR, and I said to her, “I cannot believe you did not warn me about that horse not having eyes.”
You always run into things you weren’t expecting.
Q: This job is really great.
A: Yes. I’m good at bar trivia because of all the random facts I’ve had to learn and all the different research I’ve had to do.
And I’ve had incredibly heartwarming experiences… I adjudicated the record title for the longest feather boa. It was in celebration of Pride, in connection with the Trevor Project, and I got to meet all of these incredible people. The people who get involved with the record attempts are always very nice, very interesting.
It is the most specific job in the world, and it’s incredible.
The former president called his political opponents "vermin" and said immigration is "poisoning the blood" of the U.S., echoing language used by Adolf Hitler, raising questions about authoritarianism.
(Image credit: Scott Eisen/Getty Images)
The call of bagpipes and thump of drums signalled the return of one of the Grey Cup's oldest traditions: Tuffy Nuff, the mascot of Calgary Stampeders supporters had arrived.
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LOS ANGELES—Mumbling “It’s way too early for this” under his breath, local man Ron Myers confirmed Friday that he was just going to roll over and pretend he didn’t see the horse head in his bed for five more minutes. “Nope,” said Myers, who took one look at the severed head of the prized racehorse bloodying his…
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This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go…
1. Coworker has temper tantrums whenever there’s noise, then gives us apology gifts
I work at a small construction company. When I started, it was our office manager, me, and one other office worker and we were completely remote. In the two years I’ve been here, we’ve grown rapidly (we now have 13 office employees). Earlier this year, our owners decided that with the increase in work and employees, we needed a centrally located office to hold meetings, etc. We are also a relatively new company, so we have a lot of processes and procedures to work through to ensure everything gets done and no one is duplicating work. Being in the office GREATLY helps with that.
We moved into an office two months ago and were given plenty of advance notice that we would need to report to the office full-time for a few months while we get processes in place to ensure things are running efficiently. This has largely been a big success. It’s helping immensely to be able to bounce ideas off of each other, establish guidelines for how to handle things, etc. (Ultimately we will transition to a hybrid schedule and work remotely 2-3 days a week and in the office the other days.)
I’m writing in regards to one coworker, Fay. Fay worked remotely for almost four years prior to this. Since settling into the office, she has at least 1-2 “temper tantrums” a week in regards to even the slightest increase in noise level. I’ve worked in a lot of offices and truly, this one is the quietest! Everyone is very respectful of each other’s space, that they may be on the phone or concentrating on something. However, it does occasionally get loud (example, when the field teams are in for a meeting, it’s going to be louder).
Every time the volume increases, Fay throws a tantrum, yelling and swearing about how she “can’t work in these conditions,” “it’s f-ing ridiculous to expect her to get her work done with this noise,” and so on. The language doesn’t bother any of us (we work in construction, we’re used to that). It’s the sudden explosion of anger and that she’s taking it out on us when we’re not the loud ones. The rest of us put headphones on, take our lunch break, or work on something that doesn’t require as much concentration when the office occasionally gets louder. Fay does the same, eventually, but not until after she throws a tantrum and has a yelling fit. I handle her outbursts the same way I did with my kids when they were little — I ignore them. I’m not giving any of my time or energy to react because she can’t get her emotions under control and doesn’t want to be in an office.
Every time, Fay approaches all of us one by one a few hours after her tantrum and apologizes. We accept and move on. Lately, she’s been buying little gifts for those of us who work in her direct vicinity (and take the brunt of her yelling) with an apology note. (Nothing expensive or crazy, think a mini size facial scrub, a scented candle, things like that.)
Today, she had yet another one tantrum. Our boss has talked to her once about one of her outbursts, but she hadn’t witnessed it, she’d only heard about it after the fact. Fay apologized and was good for a week or so. Today our boss witnessed it and said she will handle it, and I know she will address it with her. She’s very good like that.
However, I also know Fay will be making her rounds soon to apologize and there will likely be a small gift on my desk when I get into the office tomorrow. Is it awful of me to tell her I don’t want any more gifts (and frankly any more apologies) and I’d rather she just get her tantrums under control? I don’t want to be rude, but it’s like working on the edge of a volcano, never knowing when it will erupt.
Nope, it wouldn’t be awful of you. Fay is wildly out of line and she knows it; that’s what the apologies and gifts are for.
You could say this: “I don’t want or need any apology gifts, what I want is for you to stop exploding in the office because it’s really disruptive. If you do that, we’re good.” If she keeps pushing the gift anyway, say this: “I really don’t want gifts after this happens. Please just get your temper under control; that’s really what we need.”
2. Making sure halal and vegan buffet food doesn’t run out for the people who need it
I work for a fairly large employer (about 300 full-time staff), and we are planning our holiday luncheon. The luncheon is a well-attended event, served buffet-style with typical American holiday foods (turkey, ham, yams, macaroni and cheese, vegetables, etc.) I had an employee approach me yesterday about providing halal options. We have a sizable community who would benefit from this and are happy to include this in our planning, but we also have had a few vegans express interest in more vegan options.
What is the best way to include halal- and vegan-friendly options while ensuring that those who observe these diets have access? We have found that when we have vegan-friendly options in the buffet line, those who need it don’t always end up getting it because everyone else will eat it, too. We were thinking of setting these options up on a separate table with a small label indicating the type of food and saying “Reserved for our colleagues who observe these dietary requirements,” but I don’t know if that really sounds right or would make people feel like they are “outing” themselves in a way that would make them uncomfortable instead of included. We are too far in the planning to switch caterers, so we are adding a caterer who can do a few special options for us. But that means it won’t be enough to allow everyone to partake. Any ideas?
One effective option is to let people with dietary restrictions go through the buffet first before you open it to everyone else — because otherwise, you’re right, there’s always a risk that the vegan and halal food will be gone by the time the people who actually need it get up to the front of the line.
3. Rigid vacation request policy
I’m in a pretty typical nonprofit desk job. A manager on my team quit a few months ago, and now all six of us report to the team director. The director has instituted a new policy on vacation: all vacation requests must be made by two weeks into the quarter before the planned time off, and she’ll make decisions on them a month after the submission deadline (so requests for October-December vacation are due July 15 with approval or denial on August 15).
This is weird and bad, right? She says it’s the only way she can ensure non overlapping leave and that she doesn’t have time to consider leave requests more than quarterly. I doubt either of those are right? I don’t know how doctors or firefighters do it but I think coverage is pretty essential there and I can’t imagine this is their system; similarly, I would bet there are at least some executives at major companies overstretched in the same way as this director, and I’ve never heard of them refusing to even consider leave?
This is a new policy so we’re all still learning how it works. Apparently if your request is denied, you can submit a modified one for another attempt — but that won’t be reviewed until the next deadline. Also bad, no?
What, no, this is a terrible policy. You have to know by July that you want specific dates in December and if you don’t, then too bad, there’s no way you’re going to get them any later? (Actually, it’s a little more reasonable with December just because that’s a popular month for time off — but requiring people to submit dates for June by January and so forth is not reasonable.) What if you get the opportunity in November for a cool trip in March, or you learn on July 20 that you’ll have family in town in November? You’re out of luck because of these arbitrary deadlines?
Fielding leave requests just isn’t that burdensome, especially on a team of only six people. It would be different if she were telling you that you’d have your best shot at the dates you want if you use that schedule — but not even considering any outside of it is BS, and you might consider talking to HR about whether it’s okay for your benefits to be limited in this way.
4. Non-gendered honorifics
I work in the front end of a major grocery store chain. Sometimes I’m in a checkstand, but I am usually behind the customer service desk. Our store has a large non-binary-gender population, in both employees and customers. While it’s fairly easy to ask employees about preferred pronouns, it’s a little more awkward with customers.
For example, as a late-Boomer/early-GenX-er, my default would be “How may I help you, sir?” or Ma’am, you forgot your keys!” but I may misgender and/or offend some of our customers. Are there ungendered honorifics that can be used in these situations? “Hon” or “Dear” bug me for their sexist and ageist connotations. “Citizen” sounds like a bad sci-fi movie from the Cold War and isn’t appropriate for our large immigrant population. “Yo” or “Dude” are a little too casual. Some people say just not to use anything, but honorifics do help keep people connected and catch their attention when they’re looking away from me. How do I address people respectfully?
I can’t think of a single non-gendered honorific that wouldn’t sound bizarrely out of place in that context, like your “Citizen” example. And yeah, definitely don’t use “hon” or “dear.” Some people will use “friend,” but that’s not everyone’s cup of tea, and some customers may find it overly familiar. (At first I accidentally typed “fiend” there, and now I’m sad that that won’t work.)
But while I agree with you that honorifics can be very useful in the sorts of situations you describe, they’re not essential. When you need to catch someone’s attention (such as someone walking away who has forgotten their keys), calling out “pardon me!” will usually be nearly as successful as “ma’am!” (I agree it doesn’t sound as polite, but that’s because we’ve been conditioned to hear “ma’am” and “sir” as polite. I’d tell yourself that you’re prioritizing a more important form of politeness in not misgendering them.)
Anyone want to suggest a better option?
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Italian Tostada
Mozzarella Sauce Cruster
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Four Cheese Marinara Burrito, Unrolled
Topless Calzone
Mexican Pizza (Italian-Style)
Deep Dish Pinwheel o’ Cheddar
Wet ’n’ Starchy Caprese Salad
Detroit Style Discus Margheritus
The Papa John Special
Dehydrated Cheesy Gazpacho
Reconstructed Pizza Casserole
Busted Panini
Cheesy Beanless Chili on Bread Plate
Reppeponi Zippa
Donatello’s Surprise
Eese-Chay Izza-Pay
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