New comic!
Today's News:

And the legends spoke of the day Link went up into the sky and never came back.

Today's links

• A media literacy handbook for Israel-Gaza: A new "breaking news consumer handbook" from On The Media.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• This day in history: 2003, 2008, 2013, 2018, 2022
• Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading

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A media literacy handbook for Israel-Gaza (permalink)

Media explainers are a cheap way to become an instant expert on everything from billionaire submarine excursions to hellaciously complex geopolitical conflicts, but On The Media's "Breaking News Consumers' Handbooks" are explainers that help you understand other explainers:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/breaking-news-consumers-handbook-israel-and-gaza-edition-on-the-media

The latest handbook is an Israel-Gaza edition. It doesn't aim to parse fine distinctions over the definition of "occupation" or identify the source of shell fragments. Rather, it offers seven bullet points' worth of advice on weighing all the other news you hear about the war:

https://media.wnyc.org/media/resources/2023/Oct/27/BNCH_ISRAEL_GAZA_EDITION_1.pdf

I. "Headlines are obscured by the fog of war"

Headline writers have a hard job under the best of circumstances – trying to snag your interest in a few words. Headlines can't encompass all the nuance of a story, and they are often written by editors, not the writers who produced the story. Between the imperatives for speed and brevity and the broken telephone between editors and writers, it's easy for headlines to go wrong, even when no one is attempting to mislead you. Even reliable outlets will screw up headlines sometimes – and that likelihood goes way up in times like these. You gotta read the story, not just the headline.

II. Know red flags for bullshit

The factually untrue information that spreads furthest tends to originate with a handful of superspreader accounts. Whether these people are Just Wrong or malicious disinfo peddlers, they share a few characteristics that should trip your BS meter and prompt extra scrutiny:

• High-frequency posting

• Emotionally charged framing

• Posts that purport to be summaries or excerpts from news outlets, but do not include links to the original

• The phrase "breaking news" (no one has that many scoops)

III. Don't trust screenshots

Screenshots of news stories, tweets, and other social media should come with links to the original. It's just too damned easy to fake a screenshot.

IV. "Know your platform"

It used to be that Twitter got a lot of first-person accounts from people in the thick of crises, while Facebook and Reddit contained commentary and reposts. Today, Twitter is just another aggregator. This time around, there's lots of first-person, real-time reporting coming off Telegram (it runs well on old phones and doesn't chew up batteries). Instagram is widely used in both Israel and the West Bank.

V. "Crisis actors" aren't a thing

People who attribute war images to "crisis actors" are either deluded or lying. There's plenty of ways to distort war news, but paying people to pretend to be grieving family members is essentially unheard of. Any explanation that involves crisis actors is a solid reason to permanently block that source.

VI. There's plenty of ways to verify stuff that smells fishy

TinEye, Yandex and Google Image Search are all good tools for checking "breaking" images and seeing if they're old copypasta ganked from earlier conflicts (or, you know, video-games). The fact that an image doesn't show up in one of these searches doesn't guarantee its authenticity, of course.

VII. Think before you post

Israel-Gaza is the most polluted media pool yet. Don't make it worse.

There's plenty more detail on this (especially on the use of verification tools) in Brooke Gladstone's radio segment:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/on-the-media-breaking-news-consumers-handbook-israel-gaza-edition

The media environment sucks, and warrants skepticism and caution. But we also need to be skeptical of skepticism itself! As danah boyd started saying all the way back in 2018, weaponized media literacy leads to conspiratorialism:

https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2018/03/09/you-think-you-want-media-literacy-do-you.html

Remember, the biggest peddlers of "fake news" are also the most prolific users of the term. For a lot of these information warriors, the point isn't to get you to believe them – they'll settle for you believing nothing. "Flood the zone with bullshit" is Steve Bannon's go-to tactic, and it's one that his acolytes have picked up and multiplied.

It's important to be a critical thinker, but there's plenty of people who've figured out how to weaponize a critical viewpoint and turn it into nihilism. Remember, the guy who wrote How To Lie With Statistics was a tobacco industry shill who made his living obfuscating the link between smoking and cancer. It's absolutely possible to lie with statistics, but it's also possible to use statistics to know the truth, as Tim Harford explains in his 2021 must-read book The Data Detective:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how-to-truth/#harford

There's a world of difference between being misled and being brainwashed. A lot of today's worry about "disinformation" and "misinformation" has the whiff of a moral panic:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/10/are-we-having-a-moral-panic-over-misinformation.html

It's possible to have a nuanced view of this subject – to take steps to enure you're not being tricked without equating crude tricks like sticking a fake BBC chyron on a 10-year-old image with unstoppable mind-control:

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• Comments on the September 6, 2023 Draft of a WIPO Broadcasting Treaty, the Definitions, Scope of Application, National Treatment and Formalities https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/research/110/

• Octostudio https://octostudio.org/en/

• Nigeria: the best copyright law in the world? https://www.eifl.net/blogs/nigeria-best-copyright-law-world (h/t Corynne McSherry)

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This day in history (permalink)

#20yrsago My notes from Decentralized Economic Systems and Monetary Evolution https://craphound.com/fom2003-decentralizedeconomicsystems.txt

#20yrsago Fox threatens to sue Fox over Simpsons https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/oct/29/tvnews.internationalnews

#20yrsago Extended iCal rant from a timezone warrior https://memex.craphound.com/2003/10/30/extended-ical-rant-from-a-timezone-warrior/

#15yrsago Headlong: laser-fine YA novel about kids’ friendships and escaping destiny from Kathe Koja https://memex.craphound.com/2008/10/30/headlong-laser-fine-ya-novel-about-kids-friendships-and-escaping-destiny-from-kathe-koja/

#15yrsago Bat-Manga: the lost Japanese Batman comics of 1966 https://memex.craphound.com/2008/10/29/bat-manga-the-lost-japanese-batman-comics-of-1966/

#10yrsago Giving no-strings-attached money to the world’s poorest produces remarkably good results https://www.economist.com/international/2013/12/12/pennies-from-heaven

#10yrsago Spanish PM summons US ambassador to explain NSA mass-surveillance of Spaniards https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/28/spain-summons-us-ambassador-nsa-calls,/a>

#10yrsago Statistics Done Wrong: a guide to spotting and avoiding stats errors https://www.statisticsdonewrong.com

#10yrsago David Cameron threatens injunction against the Guardian to stop further Snowden leak publications https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/28/david-cameron-nsa-threat-newspapers-guardian-snowden

#5yrsago Consumer Reports finds that D-Link’s home camera sends unencrypted video without unique passwords https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics-computers/privacy/d-link-camera-poses-data-security-risk-consumer-reports-finds-a8814384448/

#5yrsago Is this the full list of US cities that have bought or considered Predpol’s predictive policing services? https://memex.craphound.com/2018/10/30/is-this-the-full-list-of-us-cities-that-have-bought-or-considered-predpols-predictive-policing-services/

#5yrsago Trump FCC official publicly lying about censorship on municipal broadband https://www.vice.com/en/article/bj49j8/fcc-falsely-claims-community-broadband-an-ominous-threat-to-the-first-amendment

#5yrsago Bram Stoker’s reference materials for Dracula discovered at the London Library https://www.londonlibrary.co.uk/dracula

#1yrago Adobe steals your color https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process

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Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

• 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

• Moral Hazard, a short story for MIT Tech Review's 12 Tomorrows. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION

• Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM

Latest podcast: Microincentives and Enshittification https://craphound.com/news/2023/10/23/microincentives-and-enshittification/
Upcoming appearances:

• The Internet Con at the Internet Archive (virtual), Oct 31
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/book-talk-the-internet-con-tickets-730939137637

• Hackaday Supercon, Nov 4 (Pasadena)
  https://hackaday.io/superconference/

• CBC IDEAS, Nov 16 (Stratford, ON)
  https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cbc-ideas-visionaries-in-conversation-tickets-729692809837

• Inspiring the Next Generation, Nov 16 (Stratford, ON)
  https://www.provocation.ca/upcoming-2023-events-stratford

• Generation of Lost Causes (Toronto, Nov 22)
  https://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/detail.jsp?Entt=RDMEVT495758&R=EVT495758

• Who Is Watching Big Tech? (Toronto, Nov 27)
  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 7
  https://www.flyleafbooks.com/doctorow-2023

Recent appearances:

• A Drink with Cory Doctorow (The Idler)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAnnk3vef00

• Equity Mates Investing podcast
  https://open.spotify.com/show/2ZzAxuxFmQ1U78pL3RMxns

• Economics and Other Science Fictions (Everyday Anarchism)
  https://www.everydayanarchism.com/103-debt-discussion-2-economics-and-other-science-fictions-with-cory-doctorow/

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:

• The Lost Cause: a post-Green New Deal eco-topian novel about truth and reconciliation with white nationalist militias, Tor Books, November 2023

• 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

---

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.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
The key to life is indulgence in maladaptive behaviors.

Today's News:

Guys, holy shit.

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

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

1. My wife is sexting a coworker on work systems

My wife happened to leave her system up while working from home and I noticed a chat where she was cheating with another employee and there were sexual references and conversation in the messages. How would an employer view this?

Badly, usually. But it’s not your place to take this to her employer — and that would be a really awful thing to do. You have 100% standing to address it with her as her spouse; you have no standing to address it with her company.

2. My employee uses my name in every sentence

I have a new direct report who uses my name regularly in both written and verbal communication. Think “yes, Amanda, I will surely look at that,” “Amanda, I am going on lunch now,” “thank you for explaining that to me, Amanda.” I HATE this, I don’t know why, but it’s something that’s always bugged me (reminds me of a creepy salesman and sometimes feels quite assertive / aggressive — “Amanda, I do not agree”). I think it may be a slightly cultural thing, as she is not from UK / US and I don’t think English is her first language.

Is this something I can address? Or do I just need to put up with it? I know in the grand scheme of things it’s not a big deal, but it’s winding me up!

I hate this too! But I’d bet money that it’s a cultural/language thing in this case.

Either way, try to let it roll off you. Maybe it’ll be easier to do that if you remind yourself that it’s probably a language thing … or possibly it’s just awkwardness, like she struggles with talking to people and read that everyone loves the sound of their own name and misunderstood how to apply that (Dale Carnegie was big on this and bears some of the blame). Whatever the cause, she’s almost certainly not doing it because she wants to be smarmy or insincere, even if it’s coming across that way, and she’s allowed to have personal quirks.

A caveat: if you can see it grating on her coworkers to the point that it’s affecting how she’s perceived at work, it could be a kindness to say something about it to her, framed as “This might be a quirk of English, but sometimes it can come across aggressively when you use someone’s name so often. I know that’s not where you’re coming from, and don’t want you to be perceived wrongly.”

3. Can I convince a board to get rid of their toxic CEO?

Tonight when I happened to be perusing some AAM advice about how to avoid toxic workplaces, I thought I might as well check out the Glassdoor reviews of a company I’m interviewing with and am really excited about. Well … I’m glad I did, but I almost wish I hadn’t. Turns out there had been a change in leadership in 2020, and since then, there have been a slew of reviews of the company about a toxic CEO and a culture of fear.

I was really excited about this job, not least because mine is a very niche field and the job description is one I might have written if I could write my dream job description. However, a few slightly strange things have happened so far that, in hindsight, extend back to the application process:
• This organization literally runs the main job board for my field, yet the job wasn’t posted there until two days before applications were due. Normally jobs like this are heavily advertised over a couple of months.
• The first interview was scheduled for 60 minutes, but the interviewers only asked me three questions! I had a lot of questions for them, which ended up taking up rest of the hour, and we had what I thought was a great chat. But I thought the time management for that step in the process was strange.
• The director I would be working under has no particular expertise in my area. Lots of experience in the field in general, but for that type of role I would have expected a real rockstar.
• A role on the team I would be working on that had been a full-time role (I know this because I applied a few years ago) is now only part-time, yet they claim to be growing the team!

Now that I found the Glassdoor reviews, all of the above to me seems to confirm that the org can’t attract or retain talent.

Is this salvageable?? Obviously I don’t want to work for a tyrant, which this guy seems to be — the Glassdoor reviews were very specific and credible, and the one good review called the others “sour grapes” with no work ethic. I don’t know what I can ask if I get a second interview that might reassure me about working there. But I guess my real question is, if I get an offer, can I tell somebody there that I’d love to work for them if the board would get rid of the toxic CEO? It seems so tragic, because this org has done some truly amazing and pioneering work in my field, and this one guy seems to have completely derailed it all. Can I somehow contact the board and let them know the CEO is driving off talent?

There is zero chance that a job candidate complaining to the board about this stuff would result in them firing the CEO.

The Glassdoor reviews do sound credible and alarming. But the organization already has access to those and almost certainly knows about them. The information that you’d be adding yourself — the four bullet points about your experience in their hiring process — aren’t terribly damning, and definitely not near the level of “fire the CEO.”

If you’re offered the job, you can certainly explain to the hiring manager that you’re saying no because of their Glassdoor reviews. It’s possible that at some point in the future it’ll help them to be able to say that they’re losing good candidates because of the CEO’s reputation. But that’s really all you can do.

4. I told my interviewer I’d been fired even though they didn’t ask

I was recently “let go” (okay, fired) from a job. It was traumatic and I took time to really reflect on everything that had happened. I did not write on my resume or cover letter that I was let go. While I was interviewing, I was not asked why I left my previous job, I, having too much Catholic schooling, decided to alert them to this fact. Needless to say, the interview went south after that and I did not get the job.

Is there another way I should have approached it? Should I have written something on my resume or cover letter about being fired? I have read not to but now I am second-guessing myself.

You’re not obligated to disclose that you were fired. If a company wants to know, let them ask you. You absolutely should not put it on your resume (you don’t put reasons for leaving jobs on your resume) or address it in your cover letter (your cover letter is for explaining why you’re a good candidate; it is not a confessional!). You also shouldn’t bring it up proactively in interviews!

If your interviewer asks why you left that job, you shouldn’t lie — but you should have a short (short!), upbeat answer about why it wasn’t the right fit and, depending on the details, possibly what you learned from it. We’re talking like two sentences here at the most — with a few more prepared to use in case they ask any follow-ups. But you absolutely do not need to raise it on your own.

5. I don’t want a promotion

I started at the bottom in my industry a couple years ago, performed really well, and was promoted quickly. I had all the glamour that came with it — praise from management, decently high pay — but I was miserable. The more my workload grew, the more my stress grew. I couldn’t seem to disconnect from work, even when I wasn’t there, and it was affecting my marriage. I was upset and frazzled all the time.

So, I decided it wasn’t for me and started job searching about six months ago. I ended up moving to a new job where I essentially took a demotion and a pay cut, but my workload was much more manageable and I was noticeably calmer and happier.

Except now it’s happening again. I did really well during my 90-day trial period, and management has talked about training me in more skills and potentially moving me to a new role. I am being assigned more and more work that is outside what I was actually hired to do. I’m getting comments from my boss like, “Of course you want to keep growing here, so we’re looking at continuing your training, and there’s an internal role opening up in such-and-such department, so of course you’ll be throwing your hat in the ring for that…”

Is there any possible way to say in the working world that I do not want a promotion, I do not want to grow, and I’m happy where I am? I understand the trade-offs of such a thing, i.e. getting paid less and having a lower title, but all of that is worth it to me if it means having good mental health. I just can’t seem to stop running into the expectation that I should be taking on more, more, more … and I feel like trying to voice my feelings will reflect poorly on me.

Talk to your boss! She’s assuming you want those things — probably because in her experience most people do — but that doesn’t mean she’ll be appalled to find out that you don’t. But you do need to tell her or she won’t know.

I’d say it this way: “I really appreciate the vote of confidence! I actually took this job specifically because it was less responsibility and stress than I’d had previously; those were big draws for me, so I’m not interested in going after promotions right now. Of course I want to grow in my current role the same way anyone would, but I wanted to make sure you know that the whole reason I took this job was because I wanted to do XYZ (current responsibilities), not ABC (proposed new ones).”

The reason to include the “I want to grow in my current role the same way anyone would” language is because you don’t want to sound like you’re saying you’ll resist learning new things across the board. In most jobs, managers will assume that you’ll get better and better at what you do, and it may be a normal and expected part of the role to add in more projects as you master the basics. You don’t want to sound like you’re going to freeze your contributions at where you were in month three.

Leamington, ON– We all have our autumn rituals, and whether yours is drying off from the summer’s floods or cooling down from the summer’s forest fires, or both, The Beaverton has you covered. One thing we love about the Fall is dipping into the famous seasonal menu over at the Green Goddess. Let’s take a […]

The post Tell us your fall Starbucks order, and we’ll tell you what kind of climate survivalist you’ll be appeared first on The Beaverton.

I'm not a coward it just saves me time and i'm very very busy

Perry, who won an Emmy nod and enormous fame for his starring role as Chandler Bing in the hit sitcom, was found dead at his Los Angeles home, multiple outlets reported.

(Image credit: Matt Sayles/AP)

As we all know, Nintendo introduced the Famicom in 1983, ported it to the west as the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985 and after the last licensed games were released in 1993-94 Nintendo retired the system. But that does not mean that the hardware underlying the system was dead, the hardware was widely cloned and cartridges were still being made for it. Some companies decided develop the hardware further by adding new capabilities, such as new graphics modes and more sound channels, to work with games that would look less primitive than those that could only take advantage of 1983-era chip designs. Let's take a look at some of these approaches in this blog article.

Read more »

HALIFAX – A local 2-story home, recently purchased by Jeff and Priya Steinen, is being hailed as a sound investment due to the structure having “good bones”, as well as healthy teeth, hair, and eye. “As soon as we saw this house we knew it was the one, and not just because it whispered that […]

The post Fixer-upper home has good bones, teeth appeared first on The Beaverton.

House Republicans elected Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) as House speaker, the party’s fourth nominee for the job since Kevin McCarthy was ousted as speaker three weeks ago. What do you think?

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WASHINGTON—In an effort to provide U.S. voters with increased transparency, a new federal law was passed Friday that requires political candidates to disclose their sexual fetishes on all campaign materials. “American voters have the right to know their elected officials’ perversions, whether they involve piss play,…

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Fox News host Sean Hannity used the devastating Lewiston shooting to bring up his own “personal security plan” that involves using his mixed martial arts training to protect himself during a mass shooting. What do you think?

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It’s that spooky time of the year again, when kids and adults with drinking problems spend an inordinate amount of time planning out costumes that they will either look back on fondly or try to delete off instagram to avoid getting cancelled. But you may be wondering: what are the most popular costumes in each […]

The post Most popular Halloween Costumes in each Province appeared first on The Beaverton.

How did you sleep last night?

Not great, honestly.

How come?

Look, I wasn’t going to tell you, Holly, because I know you get freaked out by this stuff, but I saw a ghost in our bedroom.

Oh my god. I told you we shouldn’t have moved into this old house, Greg.

I know. She just appeared out of nowhere and was, like, trying to teach me Spanish for a while. And the crazy thing is that I took Spanish in high school, but I couldn’t remember shit last night.

Wait, what?

I said I took Spanish in high school, but I don’t remember shit. She must think I’m an idiot.

What are you talking about?

I told my parents back then that my brain can’t think about languages like that, and I was right. And now this ghost is up my ass about it.

Greg. Can you please focus? Was this, like, an evil spirit kind of ghost?

I would say more strict than evil, but I could see her getting super pissed if I keep blowing it like I did last night. She asked me to tell her my name in Spanish and I said, “Si amo e Greg.”

So?

That’s not how you say it, Holly, those are all the wrong words except for “Greg.”

What are all those papers in your hand?

She gave me some worksheets. Word matches and vocabulary puzzles, that sort of thing. She’s trying to make it fun which I totally appreciate, but it’s a lot and it’s literally all due tonight. Can you quiz me later?

You have homework? No, I’m not quizzing you! And I’m also not sleeping in the bedroom tonight.

I feel like you’re blaming me right now, even though I can’t help it if this ghost is haunting me weird.

I’ll be in the guest room.

Did she show up again last night?

See for yourself.

She graded it?

That’s what the big fat D+ on the page means, yeah. I told you I don’t remember shit. It would have been really nice if you quizzed me like I asked you to.

Okay, listen. I’m not quizzing you and also you don’t have to take this stupid ghost class or whatever this is. Just tell her that tonight. Tell her you’re not doing it, maybe she’ll go away.

Oh yeah, right, okay. Sure. I’ll just tell her I’m not doing the class. She will fail me so hard, Holly. She won’t think twice about doing that. What aren’t you getting about this?

Just do it.

You seem really upset about this even though you’re not the one who’s being haunted in a very unconventional manner, but fine. I’ll try.

So, did you talk to her last night?

Yeah, she was fine with it.

See! I told you.

I’m kidding, Holly. She was not fine with it. She was so pissed. She said it showed a total lack of follow-through, and she’s not wrong about that, and you know it. It’s the story of my life, this is a pattern, open your eyes.

I don’t want this ghost in our house, Greg. She needs to go! Do you understand that? Because I feel like you don’t.

That’s why I need to get my grade up and finish this out, then maybe she’ll leave. This could be the only shot at a normal life together, don’t you see that?

Did this lady, by any chance, say why she’s teaching you Spanish?

Because by the year 2050 the US will be the largest Spanish-speaking country in the world, and she feels like not being bilingual is short-sighted. She has so many statistics like that.

She’s expecting you to be bilingual after this class?

She’s helping me build a pathway to conversational proficiency, which, if I’m being honest, is starting to sound pretty great.

You know what, I’m going to sleep back in our bedroom tonight. I want to meet this bitch.

I wouldn’t if I were you.

What do you mean?

She’s just not a huge fan.

Of me?

She’s not an idiot, Holly. She knows that your attitude about me learning Spanish stinks and that you’ve been holding me back and not quizzing me.

You talk about me with her?

You’ve come up, I’ll put it that way. But that’s not the point, the point is—are you going to help me study or not?

You know what, screw it. I’ll help.

Great, let’s start with the number worksheets, once I hit catorce I can’t think straight.

You look happy this morning. What’s with the smile?

Look.

B+? Wow, that’s an improvement.

I know, right? That’s what Carmen said, too.

Oh.

She’s a great teacher.

Seems like the studying we did together helped too.

She makes learning fun, I guess is what I’m trying to say.

What does she … Carmen even look like anyway? I mean I know she’s a creepy ghost but if you had to describe …

… Sofia Vergara.

Oh. She’s pretty?

I’m so in the weeds with this Spanish stuff that I don’t even look at her or smell or perfume or anything like that. It’s not like that. By 2050, the US will be the largest Spanish-speaking country in the world, Holly. There are so many other statistics too.

The ghost wears perfume?

I don’t know what she called it. Body spray? All I know is that I didn’t remember shit before she got here and now I’m building a pathway to conversational proficiency. I’m finally doing something I can feel good about. I feel orgulloso, Holly, which means “proud” in Spanish.

Well, you know, I’m … orgulloso of you too. Maybe I don’t say that enough.

Thanks.

But I still want her out of here.

Let’s just stick to the plan. Before we know it, she’ll be taking her G-string and high-heels and floating right out of here so we can just get back to us.

Is she a fucking stripper? Wait, is that why there’s glitter on the worksheets?

I don’t know what she was when she was alive, but probably. All I know for sure is that she’s dead now and that she’s a top-notch educator who smells like coconuts.

Morning. Listen, I’ve been thinking and I see that it’s stressing you out that there’s an ex-stripper ghost who’s now a teacher in our bedroom. I get that now, okay? So I’m going to talk to her tonight and tell her to leave.

No, it’s fine. You don’t have to do that.

Really? Since when?

I just don’t think I should be judging you about it anymore.

You mean that? Why are you acting weird? Are you blushing?

Am I? Huh. It’s crazy, but in the guest room last night I actually also saw a ghost.

Another ghost?

His name is Clay, and he’s teaching me stuff too.

Oh. What subject? And don’t say Spanish, because that would be too weird, ha.

Sex ed, I guess?

That’s not Spanish.

I need to go take a nap. That spirit can fuck.

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

The East Texas town is one of 218 local governments asking voters to approve new debt for repairs and upgrades to city infrastructure. Local leaders say inflation isn’t helping them keep up with capital needs.

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

Today's links

• Amazon Alexa is a graduate of the Darth Vader MBA: I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• This day in history: 2003, 2013, 2018, 2022
• Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading

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Amazon Alexa is a graduate of the Darth Vader MBA (permalink)

If you own an Alexa, you might enjoy its integration with IFTTT, an easy scripting environment that lets you create your own little voice-controlled apps, like "start my Roomba" or "close the garage door." If so, tough shit, Amazon just nuked IFTTT for Alexa:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/25/23931463/ifttt-amazon-alexa-applets-ending-support-integration-automation

Amazon can do this because the Alexa's operating system sits behind a cryptographic lock, and any tool that bypasses that lock is a felony under Section 1201 of the DMCA, punishable by a 5-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine. That means that it's literally a crime to provide a rival OS that lets users retain functionality that Amazon no longer supports.

This is the proverbial gun on the mantelpiece, a moral hazard and invitation to mischief that tempts Amazon executives to run a bait-and-switch con where they sell you a gadget with five features and then remotely kill-switch two of them. This is prime directive of the Darth Vader MBA: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."

So many companies got their business-plan at the Darth Vader MBA. The ability to revoke features after the fact means that companies can fuck around, but never find out. Apple sold millions of tracks via iTunes with the promise of letting you stream them to any other device you owned. After a couple years of this, the company caught some heat from the record labels, so they just pushed an update that killed the feature:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/10/30/apple-to-ipod-owners-eat-shit-and-die-updated/

That gun on the mantelpiece went off all the way back in 2004 and it turns out it was a starter-pistol. Pretty soon, everyone was getting in on the act. If you find an alert on your printer screen demanding that you install a "security update" there's a damned good chance that the "update" is designed to block you from using third-party ink cartridges in a printer that you (sorta) own:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

Selling your Tesla? Have fun being poor. The upgrades you spent thousands of dollars on go up in a puff of smoke the minute you trade the car into the dealer, annihilating the resale value of your car at the speed of light:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/23/how-to-fix-cars-by-breaking-felony-contempt-of-business-model/

Telsa has to detect the ownership transfer first. But once a product is sufficiently cloud-based, they can destroy your property from a distance without any warning or intervention on your part. That's what Adobe did last year, when it literally stole the colors from your Photoshop files, in history's SaaSiest heist caper:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process

And yet, when we hear about remote killswitches in the news, it's most often as part of a PR blitz for their virtues. Russia's invasion of Ukraine kicked off a new genre of these PR pieces, celebrating the fact that a John Deere dealership was able to remotely brick looted tractors that had been removed to Chechnya:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/

Today, Deere's PR minions are pitching search-and-replace versions of this story about Israeli tractors that Hamas is said to have looted, which were also remotely bricked.

But the main use of this remote killswitch isn't confounding war-looters: it's preventing farmers from fixing their own tractors without paying rent to John Deere. An even bigger omission from this narrative is the fact that John Deere is objectively Very Bad At Security, which means that the world's fleet of critical agricultural equipment is one breach away from being rendered permanently inert:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/23/reputation-laundry/#deere-john

There are plenty of good and honorable people working at big companies, from Adobe to Apple to Deere to Tesla to Amazon. But those people have to convince their colleagues that they should do the right thing. Those debates weigh the expected gains from scammy, immoral behavior against the expected costs.

Without DMCA 1201, Amazon would have to worry that their decision to revoke IFTTT functionality would motivate customers to seek out alternative software for their Alexas. This is a big deal: once a customer learns how to de-Amazon their Alexa, Amazon might never recapture that customer. Such a switch wouldn't have to come from a scrappy startup or a hacker's DIY solution, either. Take away DMCA 1201 and Walmart could step up, offering an alternative Alexa software stack that let you switch your purchases away from Amazon.

Money talks, bullshit walks. In any boardroom argument about whether to shift value away from customers to the company, a credible argument about how the company will suffer a net loss as a result has a better chance of prevailing than an argument that's just about the ethics of such a course of action:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

Inevitably, these killswitches are pitched as a paternalistic tool for protecting customers. An HP rep once told me that they push deceptive security updates to brick third-party ink cartridges so that printer owners aren't tricked into printing out cherished family photos with ink that fades over time. Apple insists that its ability to push iOS updates that revoke functionality is about keeping mobile users safe – not monopolizing repair:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

John Deere's killswitches protect you from looters. Adobe's killswitches let them add valuable functionality to their products. Tesla? Well, Tesla at least is refreshingly honest: "We have a killswitch because fuck you, that's why."

These excuses ring hollow because they conspicuously omit the possibility that you could have the benefits without the harms. Like, your tractor could come with a killswitch that you could bypass, meaning you could brick it at a distance, and still fix it yourself. Same with your phone. Software updates that take away functionality you want can be mitigated with the ability to roll back those updates – and by giving users the ability to apply part of a patch, but not the whole patch.

Cloud computing and software as a service are a choice. "Local first" computing is possible, and desirable:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/03/there-is-no-cloud/#only-other-peoples-computers

The cheapest rhetorical trick of the tech sector is the "indivisibility gambit" – the idea that these prix-fixe menus could never be served a la carte. Wanna talk to your friends online? Sorry there's just no way to help you do that without spying on you:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/08/divisibility/#technognosticism

One important argument over smart-speakers was poisoned by this false dichotomy: the debate about accessibility and IoT gadgets. Every IoT privacy or revocation scandal would provoke blanket statements from technically savvy people like, "No one should ever use one of these." The replies would then swiftly follow: "That's an ableist statement: I rely on my automation because I have a disability and I would otherwise be reliant on a caregiver or have to go without."

But the excluded middle here is: "No one should use one of these because they are killswitched. This is especially bad when a smart speaker is an assistive technology, because those applications are too important to leave up to the whims of giant companies that might brick them or revoke their features due to their own commercial imperatives, callousness, or financial straits."

Like the problem with the "bionic eyes" that Second Sight bricked wasn't that they helped visually impaired people see – it was that they couldn't be operated without the company's ongoing support and consent:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-eye-obsolete

It's perfectly possible to imagine a bionic eye whose software can be maintained by third parties, whose parts and schematics are widely available. The challenge of making this assistive technology fail gracefully isn't technical – it's commercial.

We're meant to believe that no bionic eye company could survive unless they devise their assistive technology such that it fails catastrophically if the business goes under. But it turns out that a bionic eye company can't survive even if they are allowed to do this.

Even if you believe Milton Friedman's Big Lie that a company is legally obligated to "maximize shareholder value," not even Friedman says that you are legally obligated to maximize companies' shareholder value. The fact that a company can make more money by defrauding you by revoking or bricking the things you buy from them doesn't oblige you to stand up for their right to do this.

Indeed, all of this conduct is arguably illegal, under Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits "unfair and deceptive business practices":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

"No one should ever use a smart speaker" lacks nuance. "Anyone who uses a smart speaker should be insulated from unilateral revocations by the manufacturer, both through legal restrictions that bind the manufacturer, and legal rights that empower others to modify our devices to help us," is a much better formulation.

It's only in the land of the Darth Vader MBA that the deal is "take it or leave it." In a good world, we should be able to take the parts that work, and throw away the parts that don't.

(Image: Stock Catalog/https://www.quotecatalog.com, Sam Howzit; CC BY 2.0; modified)

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• UK Set to Reject Big Tech Call for Antitrust Appeals Route https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-24/uk-is-set-to-reject-big-tech-call-for-antitrust-appeals-route (h/t Naked Capitalism)

• The best books on Chokepoint Capitalism https://fivebooks.com/best-books/chokepoint-capitalism-cory-doctorow/

• Art for Money https://www.holloway.com/b/art-for-money (h/t Julian Bleeker)

---

This day in history (permalink)

#20yrsago Wired runs a balanced Broadcast Flag story — last week to fight the proposal https://www.wired.com/2003/11/fcc-moves-to-stifle-tv-piracy/

#20yrsago 20,000 libertarians to move to New Hampshire https://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/27/us/libertarians-pursue-new-political-goal-state-of-their-own.html

#10yrsago HOWTO protect yourself from Internet surveillance, EFF edition https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/ten-steps-against-surveillance

#10yrsago D&D with toddlers https://web.archive.org/web/20131107181349/http://gygaxmagazine.com/selected-content/dming-for-your-toddler/

#5yrsago Steve Mnuchin stole Cesar Sayoc’s house https://theintercept.com/2018/10/26/cesar-sayoc-foreclosure-steven-mnuchin/

#5yrsago The Copyright Office’s DMCA-defanging is nice, but man, there are: So. Many. Hoops to jump through https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-wins-dmca-exemption-petitions-tinkering-echos-and-repairing-appliances-new

#5yrsago Chicagoans can actually play “Machine Learning President,” the election RPG https://www.polygon.com/2018/10/25/18010142/machine-learning-president-2020-election-larp

#5yrsago China Telecom has been using poisoned internet routes to suck up massive amounts of US and Canadian internet traffic https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1050&context=mca

#5yrsago Using science to fine-tune your fake blood recipe https://www.wired.com/story/water-flour-syrup-dye-mastering-the-elements-of-fake-blood/

#1yrago Uline's billions fund voter suppression https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/26/boxed-in/#bircher-jr

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Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Slashdot (https://slashdot.org).

Currently writing:

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

• 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

• Moral Hazard, a short story for MIT Tech Review's 12 Tomorrows. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION

• Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM

Latest podcast: Microincentives and Enshittification https://craphound.com/news/2023/10/23/microincentives-and-enshittification/
Upcoming appearances:

• The Internet Con at the Internet Archive (virtual), Oct 31
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/book-talk-the-internet-con-tickets-730939137637

• Hackaday Supercon, Nov 4 (Pasadena)
  https://hackaday.io/superconference/

• 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 7
  https://www.flyleafbooks.com/doctorow-2023

Recent appearances:

• A Drink with Cory Doctorow (The Idler)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAnnk3vef00

• Equity Mates Investing podcast
  https://open.spotify.com/show/2ZzAxuxFmQ1U78pL3RMxns

• Economics and Other Science Fictions (Everyday Anarchism)
  https://www.everydayanarchism.com/103-debt-discussion-2-economics-and-other-science-fictions-with-cory-doctorow/

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:

• The Lost Cause: a post-Green New Deal eco-topian novel about truth and reconciliation with white nationalist militias, Tor Books, November 2023

• 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

---

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.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

---

How to get Pluralistic:

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(Final Medium column: "The internet’s original sin" https://doctorow.medium.com/the-internets-original-sin-c16a8d0256a8?sk=e4c58c0a5739f0bc79860390ae874232)

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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

Featuring double-locked doors, high-speed Internet, and no mirrors to reflect that sad, pathetic face back at you.

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NAPLES, FL—Warning that the dangerous contaminant could have easily killed someone if the proper precautions had not been taken, students at a Florida high school were reportedly locked in a decontamination chamber Friday after exposure to a book. “On Friday morning at approximately 8:02 a.m., one of our teachers…

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SAN ANTONIO—In a thoughtful reflection on the start of his rookie season, San Antonio Spurs power forward Victor Wembanyama admitted to reporters Friday that he was a little overwhelmed by the speed and intensity of NBA groupies. “They’re so much more physical and quick than I could have ever imagined,” said…

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Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
Just to be clear, I was dunking on humans and praising AI *before* it was a terrifying nearterm concern.

Today's News:

Congratulations—the metamorphosis you didn’t know you needed has just begun. Whether you’ve stumbled upon OK Computer while drifting through a midlife crisis, or a forty-something coworker threw shade on your music playlist (again), it’s clear you’ve embarked on the pilgrimage into Radiohead’s dark, dreamy, and disorienting world.

Welcome, abandon all hope, smile, and settle into the uneasy feeling of being stuck somewhere between melancholy and smug satisfaction.

Setting the Mood

First, dim the lights. No, dimmer. That’s it. Make sure that either it’s raining outside or you’ve got one of those ambient noise apps playing the sound of rain, but like a computerized rain—kind of like if you were taking a shower in the ’90s and logging on to AOL.com at the same time (if you have to ask, just search for fax machine sounds on YouTube). Now, sit in your most uncomfortable chair. This isn’t about comfort, friend. This is about understanding.

Dress Code Rummage

Look through your closet for a pair of old, ripped jeans and the obscure band T-shirt you once bought because you thought it was “cool.” If you own a beanie, now’s the time. This is the look we’re aiming for: “I might be having an existential crisis, but at least I’m trendy.” Think Justin Beiber between album releases or Pete Davidson at a Panda Express.

Understanding the Lyrics

You won’t. Not at first. Or ever. But pretend you do. Nod thoughtfully when Thom Yorke sings about 2 + 2 equalling 5. Smile enigmatically when someone asks you what “Karma Police” is about. It’s about everything and nothing. It’s about karma, but it’s also about police. The true Radiohead experience is 80 percent confusion, 20 percent feigned understanding. That’s the sweet spot. That’s the center of a Yorke peppermint patty.

Explaining to Friends

“Have you heard the B side of Amnesiac?” you’ll ask casually at your next brunch date, sipping a mimosa, an unread but well-leafed-through copy of Naomi Klein’s No Logo prominently placed on the table. Your friends, who embraced Radiohead during their angsty teen years, will shoot each other knowing glances, trying to determine whether you’re joking or you’ve never heard “Knives Out” before. Embrace this space. You are the enigma. You are in control. You are the question and the answer. Order the eggs benedict.

Dealing with the “Fake Fan” Accusations

“You’re only NOW getting into Radiohead?” scoffs the barista with a KID A tattoo. The appropriate response is a solemn nod, followed by, “I was waiting for the right time in my life to truly appreciate it.” Then, ask for almond milk. This has nothing to do with Radiohead; sometimes, you just have to treat yourself.

The Dance Moving

Dancing to Radiohead tunes is a unique art. It’s less “dance” and more “awkward sway while looking deeply troubled.” Stare into the middle distance. Dance with your torso, not your arms or your legs. In your head, multiply 679 by 842. Now, translate that number to binary. Twenty minutes have passed, but you were dancing. Master this, and you’re in.

Buying Merch

Hop onto the internet and order some expensive vinyl, even if you don’t own a record player. If you’d like to express your newfound love with a T-shirt (although I would advise against it), go with something that doesn’t have the band’s name printed on it. Maybe something with a phrase in big letters that are not even Radiohead lyrics—like, WE ARE RABBITS, HOARDING POTS OF GOLD, or ROMAN EMPIRE … WE DISSENT, or EPHEMERAL FROGS GRASP CLOUDS. You know, something straight out of refrigerator magnet poetry.

Recommending Radiohead

Someone asks you for a song recommendation. “Try ‘Creep,’” you say, proud of yourself. Watch in horror as the Radiohead aficionados snicker. Recover by muttering something about preferring their earlier underground stuff or an obscure King of Limbs B side. They are now laughing at your “ironic” first suggestion. Well played.

Remember, it’s never too late to dive deep into the complex emotional landscape of Radiohead. Your mid-thirties are the perfect time to pretend you’re in your angsty teens again. Happy brooding!

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

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

1. Can I regularly take PTO for a crafting social group?

I understand that vacation time is part of my compensation package and I need to take time off, but would it be considered unprofessional/immature to take PTO every other Friday afternoon to go to a recurring social gathering? I know that it is my earned time but cannot shake the feeling that going to a purely social crafting group on Friday afternoons, during the work day, might be seen as less appropriate than. say, taking the whole day off or taking my cat to the vet. I can’t exactly put my finger on why it feels wrong. Or other than just not mentioning the reason, is there a way to frame it that sounds less frivolous?

I am not necessarily worried about my direct boss/coworkers since they would encourage me to take some me time, but I am already seen as quirky (energetic with a decent Funko Pop! collection but am good at what I do) and would hate to tip the scales to unprofessional/immature outside of my team. My life outside of work is pretty nonexistent so I am trying to find ways to fulfill myself, since taking a day off without anything planned is the worst (since I could use that to catch up on my backlog), which results in me never taking time off to recoup from the burn out that is oh so real.

My only concern would be whether the recurring nature of it will make you harder to schedule with. Like if the only time everyone has free for a meeting is one of the days you’re going to be out, are people going to be annoyed if they know it’s because every other Friday you’re crafting? Same thing if you’re in a job where most people around you are harried and the nature of their work means they couldn’t do that — in which case you still could, but it might be wiser to be more circumspect about what that time is for.

But if none of those things are the case, or if you make it clear you’ll be flexible if it ever poses scheduling challenges, I think you’re fine. Even so, if you want to be vague about it, you could say you’re involved in a community group that meets then, or you’ve carved out that time for a hobby — you don’t need to say “crafting social group” from the get-go.

2. A “glitch” stripped us of hundreds of hours of PTO

We were recently informed that for the last 28 months (since May 2021), the system that records our timecards, PTO, pay stubs, and other financial information had a “glitch” that incorrectly allocated more vacation time per pay period than was in the benefits guide. Leadership just found this out and are working to get the updated balances out to all staff.

For the past couple of years, leadership has waived the max vacation carryover rule and has repeatedly asked people to spend down their hours. People have saved PTO for honeymoons, to care for their children outside of school hours, and to supplement sick time for family emergencies and parental leave and were relying on this number to be accurate. Former staff members have come and gone and been paid out for these extra hours in that time. But now staff are finding themselves with negative balances, since the updated calculations are reducing totals by up to 200 hours per person. If you leave before your balance is over 0, you have to pay back the organization. If we had left before the error was fixed, we would not have been affected. It feels like the employees are being punished for staying, for a mistake that’s not ours and for trusting the system and the team in charge of it. What can we leverage to push back on this? Is there a way we can propose a different solution to leadership that wouldn’t penalize the team for this error?

Well, this is horrible.

It’s one thing to do this if the errors were very small and very short-lived — like just one paycheck and just a few hours of time. But it’s really awful to do it when we’re talking about years of miscalculations and people are losing 200 hours (!!) of the time they thought they had saved — that’s five weeks (!!). As you point out, people made decisions based on the numbers the company provided — and they had every reason to assume that the PTO calculations that had been showing in their records for the last two and a half years were correct. This is the company’s error, and the only ethical way to handle it is for the company to take the hit, let people have the balances they’ve been telling them they had, and just start calculating correctly from this point forward. Hell, not just ethical, but practical — because otherwise they’re going to destroy people’s morale, and that’s going to affect how hard people are willing to work for them, how interested they are in other offers, etc. And no one is going to trust a single thing this company tells them again.

As for what you can do, you could talk to an employment lawyer in your state about whether you have any legal recourse. Depending on exactly how those “glitched” balances were presented to you, it’s possible the company created a legal obligation on their side, given the length of time this was happening — but you’d need a lawyer in your state to tell you for sure. If that’s not fruitful, your best bet is to band together with coworkers and push back hard, insisting the company honor the vacation balances it supplied you with for multiple years in a row and that people relied on. They may or may not cave, but a concerted, organized push from a large group of you could pay off.

3. Should I organize a low-pressure gift collection for an employee?

I’m the manager of a team and one of my reports is getting married next month. I want to organize a gift collection to send a wedding gift, but I don’t want people to feel pressured to participate! (I’ve read your many posts on gift-giving and fully agree that gifts should flow downwards, but this is more sideways/diagonal?)

Is it fine if I organize this myself? If so, any suggested language so people feel very comfortable opting out if they choose (especially since there is that manager-report power dynamic)?

Or should I find someone else to organize this? But then how to ensure that that person doesn’t feel pressured either?

Am I overthinking this? Most likely!

If their manager organizes a gift collection, people will feel pressured to participate; it’s just how power dynamics go. There will be less pressure if if a coworker organizes it, but there will still be pressure … and pressuring people to spend their own money at work just isn’t a good thing.

It’s better if this kind of thing is paid for by the organization itself. If that’s not an option, I’d urge you to just circulate a card instead. In addition to the pressure to give money, this sort of thing can be fraught in other ways — Cecil organizes a gift when Valentina gets married because they’re friends but seven months later no one thinks to organize a gift for Jane, who feels hurt and demoralized at the difference in treatment … or Cecil feels frustrated that he’s always asked to donate for colleagues’ weddings but no one recognizes his own non-marriage major life events … and on and on. You’re much better off sticking with either cards across the board or gifts from the organization itself.

4. Should I tell my employee I’m going to leave soon?

I manage a small office that is part of a larger corporation. We have the only office in the state, although the company heads are only about two hours away. While I haven’t even been employed by them for six months, I have noticed quite a few red flags: many people in leadership roles are leaving (including the VP who hired me) and unobtainable metrics set in place. I believe this office is being set up to fail (I know firsthand that my one remaining employee, “Gina,” was put on a PIP with the hopes she would fail, but to their surprise she came out stronger), so I’ve been looking for a way out.

Well, it happened. I just received my offer letter for a position less than a mile from my home, at the same salary, and in a field I am more comfortable in. It is still in the pending stage due to background and drug tests (no worries there), so it will probably be at least two weeks before I can hand in my notice.

I’m holding a “training day” on Friday and I would love to make sure that Gina has every tool for success. Should I give her a hint as to why I’m doing this? I also want to let her know because I think there’s a good chance that this office may close in a few months without any other employees there (they can’t hurry up and hire … the process to hire me took three months and that was nearly a year after the last manager left!).

In hindsight, I probably should have never taken this job to begin with, but now I’m attached to my employee. Can I tell her that she may want to work on her resume? She has no desire to change roles into my position.

Even though you’re not expecting any problems with the background check or drug test, things happen — positions get put on hold, offers get revoked, things end up taking much longer than anyone thought …

If you tell Gina now, you’ll be taking the risk that she’ll say something to someone else that ends up complicating things for you, and then it’s possible the firm offer won’t show up, or won’t show up on the schedule you’re expecting. So it’s really a judgment call. It sounds like Gina has reason to be more loyal to you than to the rest of the organization, but you never know what stray remark someone might make that can then blow back on you. So you’ve got to decide if that’s a risk you’re comfortable with.

For what it’s worth, though, if you do get the firm offer two weeks from now, that small amount of time is unlikely to make a significant difference when it comes to warning Gina. I think you could simply wait to tell her until it’s final, without either of you losing much for having waited.

TORONTO – In an effort to assuage concerns regarding the long overdue Eglinton Crosstown LRT, Premier Doug Ford has announced a cautiously optimistic opening date of 2236. “I’m very pleased to finally give Torontonians something to look forward to with respect to this ongoing infrastructure project. Now we can all breathe easier knowing that there […]

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OTTAWA – With Conservative Premiers now freely using S. 33 to overrule any court ruling getting in the way of their agenda the federal government has announced plans to rename The Charter Of Rights & Freedoms to The Charter Of Long-Term Goals & General Guidelines “Now that the landmark Charter we have been celebrating and […]

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CROPSEYVILLE, NY—Frantically searching the internet for ideas, local man Jared Walker told reporters Thursday he always waits until the last minute to decide what he’ll end up sitting alone in his house dressed up as for Halloween. “Every year I tell myself I’m going to get an earlier start putting together the…

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