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

Last week we talked about terrible food at conferences and other work events. Unsurprisingly, the most egregious examples turned out to be what’s served to people with dietary restrictions … but sometimes everyone gets the same monstrous treatment. Here are 18 of the most ridiculous stories you shared.

1. The lemonade

At a business meeting at a private club, I ordered a glass of lemonade and received a glass of lemon juice. Nothing like a cool refreshing mouthful of acid!

2. The imported cheese

I was at a conference last year where I think the venue started running out of food? I’m not sure, it wasn’t great to begin with but it got sillier and sillier. For breakfast on the second-to-last day there was a tray with “imported and domestic cheeses.” It was Kraft singles.

3. The potatoes

I once attended a training event and the vegan lunch was a potato “burger” (mashed potato pattie in a bun, no salad/sauce) with boiled potatoes and a side of chips. Quadruple carb fun times!

4. The blessed Fritos

At an event I once volunteered for, my gluten allergy wasn’t properly communicated. So I was so hungry I started dipping applesauce in chips. They also didn’t have gluten-free communion, which I felt obligated to take, so the priest very hastily blessed some Fritos for me. They did get me better food the second day.

5. The treats

My ex took the minutes for a monthly board meeting. The board chair always made a big fuss about bringing food for everyone, but it was always comically too little. The board is 12 people, plus 2-3 attending staff. The worst was the time it was three croissants from a nice bakery, and when “pizza party day” was two personal pizzas. For 15+ people. She would always make a big deal of how lucky everyone was to have such nice treats and slice out the tiny portions herself.

6. The sweet potato incident

We have a story that floats around our company called “The Sweet Potato Incident”. One of our directors was a really nice lady but had no taste when it came to choosing menus. She decided she was going to choose the menu for our annual Employee Appreciation Dinner instead of our Head of Catering and it was… baffling to say the least. Every course had sweet potatoes in it. The first course was a sweet potato soup or a salad featuring sweet potatoes. The main course was a sweet potato pasta. The dessert was sweet potato pie! Maybe our Head of Catering was miffed at not being consulted and that’s why she allowed this laughable menu to go through, but everyone strongly encouraged the director to defer to ANYONE else for future menu planning.

7. The vegan option

I went to a conference that provided boxed lunches on the last day. The meat option was a turkey sandwich, a bag of chips and a cookie, the vegetarian option was a bag of chips and a cookie, and the vegan option was just a bag of chips.

8. The light apps

My worst story is a Friday night holiday party with one round of *light* apps (at dinnertime) and an open martini bar. People got blackout drunk whether they meant to or not. Nobody could look at each other the following Monday.

Highlights: One guy withdrew the max from an ATM and gave it to a stranger. A male supervisor patted a female staffer on the butt. There were martini races. I got a piggyback ride from the IT guy to another bar. Underage interns were served. There was a conference call the next day to try to piece everything together.

And that is the last time we had an event with almost no food.

9. The faux steak

My brother’s mother-in-law was a vegetarian in a rural community who once accompanied her husband to his company’s annual dinner. The dinner organizers were very proud of themselves for coming up with something they assured her was much better than the plates of plain vegetables she’d been served in the past. Her husband got steak. She got a slice of watermelon cut into the shape of a steak.

10. The pizza

Conference worker at a fancy hotel in my youth. Management said they would provide pizza to those who helped clear down after a late running conference.

14 of us stayed late to pack up, clear down the 4 rooms and presentation halls and turn it around for the wedding the next day.

They did indeed provide pizza.

One.

Just one.

We split slices with someone’s pen knife and had to provide our own drinks as the food and sodas were for ‘attendees only’.

Cool.

Did not volunteer to stay twice.

11. The missing ice cream

I worked for a very large municipal agency in a big city notorious for being…well…terrible in all the ways. The agency was constantly putting out fires, was always in the press (for the wrong reasons), and morale among staff was low. There was never an iota of staff appreciation in any way – I worked there for ten years. Except there was the famous “Ice Cream Social.” One summer, we moved into a new building. It was all very “you get what you get and you don’t get upset.” We moved to save money, not because we were doing so well. It was very matter of fact. We moved and kept working. Someone, I will never know who, had the bright idea of doing a “Staff Appreciation / Welcome to the New Building Ice Cream Social.” This was unheard of. Someone MADE FLYERS. People were excited! There were going to be toppings! We all gathered at 3 pm in our large conference room. Yep, there were toppings, but no ice cream. All the anticipatory joy was sucked out of the room. Everyone hung out for an hour waiting for the ice cream (that was ordered by someone?) and didn’t arrive. Finally, after about 90 minutes, someone ran down to Duane Reade and just bought random pints for the people who decided to stick around.

12. The work travel log

I’m celiac. I used to travel a fair bit for work as well as attend big industry conferences. Best cast scenario for all day meetings or conferences is that I’d get edible meals with protein, but nothing to eat during the breaks when everyone else was offered dainty cakes cakes etc. Worst case…

– Fruit salad for starter at big fancy dinner. Main meal was okay … then I was served an identical fruit salad for dessert. Meanwhile everyone else had a lovingly prepared selection of mini desserts appropriate to the country we were in

– Same conference, different year: everyone was given lunch bags containing sandwiches, and drink, fruit, a chocolate bar. I was given a very onion heavy salad with no protein or dressings. Scavenged some fruit from colleagues, turns out the chocolate bar contained gluten so I couldn’t have that. Asked about it and apparently they only had gluten-containing chocolate.

– Work all-day meeting venue: caterers had got the memo about including a source of protein in ALL meals. Unfortunately they took this to mean chickpeas. So many chickpeas. A chickpea salad which honestly had an entire can of them and not much else. A dinner that was 70% chickpea. Served up on repeat, day after day, trip after trip. I’ve not been able to eat them since I stopped working there.

– Pandemic, work sent out treats to everyone ahead of the zoom holiday party. Asked for dietary preferences. Apparently the supplier couldn’t do celiac-safe so they just didn’t give me anything.

– Five star hotel I got back to at midnight on a day which had involved getting up at 4.30 am, red eye flight, entire day of meetings (with the chickpeas), mandatory socializing. Exhausted and hungry, I phoned room service. Normally hotels are perfectly happy to cobble together various celiac-safe options from different meals to give me one meal. This one apparently had never heard of such a thing and after a lot of negotiating about what they could actually provide that was gluten-free charged me £22 for a single burger patty with one slice of tomato on top. Absolutely nothing else.

Needless to say, for work travel my suitcase was always 50% food. At one point I got so fed up that this was always an issue I became a thorn in the side of conference organizers by asking why there was no food for me every time it wasn’t provided. (To be fair, most were lovely and horrified when they saw what I’d been given and made an effort to sort it out. Only for the same thing to happen the next year when the conference moved to a new venue.) I no longer travel for work. I don’t miss it.

13. The kosher muffins

At my last job, I got sent to a conference in Charleston, South Carolina over Passover. Not the best time to visit a place famous for its biscuits, but I made do.

When I went down to breakfast each day, there was a separate table labeled “kosher” – full of muffins and pastries and other things that couldn’t be eaten on Passover. (In case it isn’t clear, the universe of Jews who would care about kosher certification and would eat a muffin on Passover is probably zero.) I love that they were trying so hard and so utterly failed.

14. The standing meal

I had to attend a fancy reception for work at an art museum. The venue and food presentation were lovely but the food was a disaster. The organizers clearly spent a ton of money – prime beef, seafood, complex salads and soups and hors d’oeuvres, but no way to eat them. There were no low tables or chairs, just a few high top tables (for over 100 people) and no utensils! We all had plates of food but no where to put them and no way to eat them (this was not finger food!). Think long strips of beef and substantial pieces of salmon.

Someone flagged a server and the (in-house) caterer seemed surprised we couldn’t eat the food. They finally brought out forks but no knives or spoons! Execs were trying to cut steak with forks (didn’t work) and creative staff poured soup into cups – all while standing. It was bizarre! I had to attend the same event the next year and thankfully they provided utensils AND tables to sit and eat.

15. The canceled lunch

Employee Appreciation Lunch at a hospital, for all employees (clinical and office/non-clinical staff). The C-suite made a big deal of this, starting a full two weeks in advance. Managers were instructed to remind their employees not to bring lunch on a specific day, because the hospital would be providing lunch that day at noon.

The day comes, and there’s no indication of where the employee lunch is going to be held. No flyers, no announcement. Well, they’ll probably tell us when it arrives, right?

Noon rolls around. No announcement. Hungry nurses start calling other floors for information, since they can’t just all walk off at once for lunch, they need to take turns so that the others can stay to take care of the patients.

At 12:15, the PA system booms with an angry voice yelling: “THE EMPLOYEE LUNCH IS CANCELED. >CLICK< ”

There was never any explanation or apology.

16. The green lunch

A conference I attended had a “Green Lunch” which I thought might refer to things that were environmentally friendly or vegetarian. Literally all the items were green and didn’t even really go together. Grapes, guacamole, some green peppers, and key lime pie. I don’t even remember everything on the buffet but it was bonkers. It must have been the absolute cheapest option for the meeting planners.

17. The focaccia

Once, the org I volunteer for was helping staff a large event. We were working all of Saturday, for free, and in exchange they had promised us lunch. For other similar events we’d had sandwiches, trays of pizza, and my favourite was when an event had given us vouchers for a nearby buffet restaurant and we’d had a proper hot meal. This event, long after lunchtime, sent us a tray of plain focaccia bread. There were more volunteers than slices of focaccia. We did not offer to staff this particular event again.

18. The tofu

This was ~15 years ago, so I think/hope things are at least slightly better now, but I was attending a conference where they had tacos for lunch one day. The vegetarian option was just cold, unpressed, unseasoned tofu. I skipped lunch that day and went out to find something more palatable.

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

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

1. Cursing in an interview “to be memorable”

I was recently watching a Twitch streamer who somewhat jokingly suggested that someone could stand out in an interview by “accidentally” dropping an F-bomb in an interview, then being immediately apologetic about it. His reasoning was that if they were thinking about candidates, the hiring person would definitely remember that one person that cursed during the interview. My thought is that the person that cursed in an interview would definitely be remembered, but it would be the hiring manager’s story forever about that one guy who said the F word and was immediately moved to the no pile. What would your reaction be to a candidate that cursed in an interview? Would their chances be ruined or would they be charmingly memorable?

That’s terrible advice! Employers either will or won’t care that someone dropped an F-bomb in an interview. If they care, it won’t be charmingly memorable; it will be a (potentially serious) strike against them. If they don’t care, it’s not a good enough story to make them memorable in the way this person is envisioning. (Personally I take extreme pleasure in profanity but would consider it odd judgment for someone to use it in an interview. It wouldn’t be an instant rejection but it would make me look more carefully at their judgment and professional polish, and in some roles the latter really matters.)

In general, the advice shows a lack of understanding about how interviewing works. Getting hired isn’t about being memorable for absolutely anything (if it were, you could just wear a bright yellow suit or sing all your answers or so forth and get all the jobs). To the extent that it’s about being memorable at all, it’s about being memorable for being incredibly skilled at the things the job requires.

Related:
being intentionally late to an interview as a strategy

2. Slow job offer process when I need to move across the country

I am job searching after finishing a grad program (so my first full-time job in the field, currently unemployed). I had a first interview a little over two months ago, a second interview in person five weeks ago, and then they all took a three-week break because various people on the search committee went on summer vacation, and another phone interview. They have told me they’re going to offer me the job but are having some sort of issue/slow-down with HR. This is all fine except I need to move cross country for this job and I have to leave my apartment Aug. 31. I know that isn’t their fault but I’ve let them know the date I need to move, and it’s not possible for me to find a new apartment, sign a new lease, hire movers, etc. until I have the offer.

Is there a polite and professional way to let them know I need this info ASAP? Or that even if they can’t send me the official offer to let me know what the amount of salary they’re going to offer is so I can plan this move that’s happening in less than two weeks?

This is tricky because you really, really shouldn’t start planning a move until you have an official job offer — at least not any parts that involve signing contracts or handing over money. Job offers fall through, even when you’ve been clearly told one is coming, and there’s always a risk this one won’t end up materializing. (It probably will! But you can’t count on it yet.) You don’t want to be in a position where you’ve put down money for a move that ends up not happening.

You can certainly try one more time with, “I need to move either way by August 31, and so I need to know whether to plan a move to (new state) or find housing here. I don’t want to sign a lease on a new apartment here if I’m about to come work for you.” But they really might not be able to move faster, and if that’s the case, trying to nail down salary won’t be enough to give you an official offer you can rely on. If that’s the case, your best bet might be housing that could be temporary if it needs to be (like a month-to-month lease if you can find one, or staying with friends/family short-term if it’s an option). I know that sucks — but don’t start a cross-country move without an official offer unless you’re willing to end up living there with no job.

3. Client couldn’t comfortably fit in restaurant booth

Recently I was meeting a client in-person for the first time for lunch. I arrived at the restaurant first and grabbed a booth because it seemed more comfortable and the location seemed more private.

When the client showed up and tried to get into the booth, it became apparent that it was really uncomfortable for him. He is a large person and the booth was the style where both the table and chairs were stuck in place and couldn’t be pushed back. He looked very squeezed and was sitting about half out of the booth trying to get in further, but wasn’t saying anything.

I said as matter of factly as possible, “Do you want to switch to one of those tables?” (the ones with movable chairs). He nodded, and then we moved and went forward with the meeting.

Did I handle this right? I’m worried I embarrassed him by saying something but it was clearly very uncomfortable for him. For the future, how should I think about being inclusive of different sizes? This was our first time meeting in-person. I knew from video meetings he was bigger but obviously hadn’t thought through how that might impact day-to-day accessibility.

You handled it fine! You saw there was a problem, made a practical suggestion for fixing it, and didn’t make a big deal out of it. In the future, it’s worth making sure any spot where you’re meeting someone for the first time has seating that will work for a variety of body types and abilities. This situation will probably make you a lot more likely to do that from now on (it will me — it wasn’t sufficiently on my radar until this letter either); that’s a good nudge for us all to have.

4. Do I really have to tell my boss every time I have a doctor’s appointment?

I have medical trauma and I have strong anxiety around discussing medical topics with others, including just mentioning that I have a doctor’s appointment. I’ve had stuff going on recently that requires me to have more appointments with frequent follow-ups, and I’m struggling with telling my boss that I need to use sick leave in advance (our org’s policy is that you can use sick leave for appointments if you notify your supervisor in advance). Also, there’s no way for me to request it through our HR/timesheet website, so I have to tell him in-person or over email. This makes me so anxious/uncomfortable that I once delayed telling him until it was too late, then lied and made up a reason to leave early for the appointment (and now I worry that he’ll find out I lied or question whether I’m lying in the future).

Is it normal to just say you have a doctor’s appointment, or is it oversharing to explain that I have follow-ups? Can I just say I need to use sick leave and not explicitly say why and hope he’ll assume? Is there another way to bypass telling my boss I have an appointment that I’m not thinking of?

Yep, it’s completely normal to just say, “I have a doctor’s appointment.” You don’t need to explain that it’s follow-ups or what type of doctor or anything other than “medical appointment.” Since you’re going to be having a lot of appointments, it can sometimes be useful to say something like, “I have an ongoing medical thing that I’m going to have a bunch of appointments for over the next few months — it’s nothing to worry about but I wanted to give you a heads-up.” That way if your boss sees a dozen appointments come through for you, he has that overall context to put it in. But you don’t need to say that if you don’t want to.

If you’re trying to avoid saying the words “doctor’s appointment” or “medical appointment” altogether … well, you might be able to say “I’ll need to use sick leave for an appointment on the 27th” or “I’ll need to use sick leave on the 27th” but some managers will then come back to clarify whether this is a doctor’s appointment or what. You might find it easier to use the “ongoing medical thing/bunch of appointments coming up” language once at the outset, and then switch to “will need sick leave for an appointment on the 27th” after that.

5. I’m sending post-interview thanks-you’s a week late

If I meant to email thank-you notes to a panel of interviewers but the work week got away from me, do I apologize in the note? It will be one week when they receive them.

Don’t apologize. There’s no requirement that you send post-interview follow-ups at all — it’s just a thing that can be helpful, so you didn’t do anything wrong by waiting a week. (They weren’t owed notes!) In fact, you might as well use the timing to your advantage and write something like, “I’ve spent the past week thinking over our conversation and as I’ve contemplated details like X and Y, I’m even more interested in the role.”

Rather than participate in the first GOP presidential debate, Donald Trump instead opted to appear in a pretaped interview with Tucker Carlson that will air at the same time. The Onion asked Trump supporters how they felt about the former president’s interview, and this is what they said.

Read more...

Billy McFarland, who went to federal prison for crimes related to 2017’s infamous Fyre Festival, has announced that tickets for Fyre Festival 2 are now on sale for $499, though no dates, lineup, or location have been confirmed. What do you think?

Read more...

TUCSON, AZ—Responding to a wave of hazing rituals that turned violent at the local chapter of Beta Theta Pi, the dean of students at the University of Arizona reportedly overreacted Thursday by shutting down the fraternity even though the pledge didn’t die. “I don’t see what the big deal is—he’s out of the ICU and…

Read more...

NEW YORK—Touting the breakthrough as a major step forward in primate research, scientists at Columbia University announced Thursday they had successfully taught a 7-year-old western lowland gorilla to buy beer for underage teens. “Despite years of setbacks, we’ve finally trained a gorilla named Makuba to pick up a…

Read more...

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
Do you smoke? Only the purest crack.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
On the other hand, the prompt verbal response is highly appreciated.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
Later bean guy makes a fortune selling cans of beans with his label on them. People who hate him are 60% of his audience. He goes on to a university position in media studies.

Read more...

NEW YORK—Finding that every single one of the resumes had exactly what the company was looking for, job recruiter Karl Bonilla was reportedly combing through an exciting pool of the CEO’s nephews this week. “The CEO has a lot of relatives, so this is going to be a hard choice,” said Bonilla, adding that each candidate…

Read more...

Read more...

SAN FRANCISCO—In one of a slew of major changes to hit the social media site, owner Elon Musk confirmed Monday that the homepage for X, formerly known as Twitter, would now feature a photo of an erect penis that was impossible to close out of. “From an intuitive perspective, not having a hard, veiny cock on the…

Read more...

College can provide a rich, rewarding experience for students if they really prioritize materialism and bring cool stuff. Here is The Onion’s essential college shopping guide.

Read more...

AMARILLO, TX—After she was forced to carry her nonviable pregnancy to term in accordance with the state’s highly restrictive abortion ban, sources reported Wednesday that Texas doctors crowded around to observe the fucked-up thing a local woman had been legally required to give birth to. “My God…what…what are we even…

Read more...

Read more...

Eight candidates will participate in tonight’s GOP presidential debate, though without the clear front-runner, former President Donald Trump, who says the public already knows who he is and therefore he doesn’t need to attend. What do you think?

Read more...

The first debate of the 2024 election cycle is unfortunately upon us, taking place in Milwaukee this evening and featuring eight of the qualifying Republican candidates. The ninth qualifying candidate, former President Donald Trump, will not attend. The Onion tells you what to expect from the first GOP debate of the…

Read more...

MILWAUKEE—Lining up in the hallway dressed in hospital gowns, Republican presidential candidates underwent mandatory genital checks ahead of their first debate Wednesday. “Please state your name, date of birth, and gender,” said the Republican National Committee’s staff physician, who then put on glasses, snapped on…

Read more...

MILWAUKEE—In the wake of an aide’s failed attempt to properly affix the patriotic symbol to the former New Jersey governor’s lapel, a rapidly deflating Chris Christie was reportedly spotted whizzing around the GOP debate stage Wednesday after being popped with a U.S. flag pin. “Whooooaaaa, whoaaaaaaa, help…

Read more...

Today's links

• Supervised AI isn't: Automation blindness can't be automated away.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• This day in history: 2008, 2013, 2018, 2022
• Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading

Supervised AI isn't (permalink)

It wasn't just Ottawa: Microsoft Travel published a whole bushel of absurd articles, including the notorious Ottawa guide recommending that tourists dine at the Ottawa Food Bank ("go on an empty stomach"):

https://twitter.com/parismarx/status/1692233111260582161

After Paris Marx pointed out the Ottawa article, Business Insider's Nathan McAlone found several more howlers:

https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-removes-embarrassing-offensive-ai-assisted-travel-articles-2023-8

There was the article recommending that visitors to Montreal try "a hamburger" and went on to explain that a hamburger was a "sandwich comprised of a ground beef patty, a sliced bun of some kind, and toppings such as lettuce, tomato, cheese, etc" and that some of the best hamburgers in Montreal could be had at McDonald's.

For Anchorage, Microsoft recommended trying the local delicacy known as "seafood," which it defined as "basically any form of sea life regarded as food by humans, prominently including fish and shellfish," going on to say, "seafood is a versatile ingredient, so it makes sense that we eat it worldwide."

In Tokyo, visitors seeking "photo-worthy spots" were advised to "eat Wagyu beef."

There were more.

Microsoft insisted that this wasn't an issue of "unsupervised AI," but rather "human error." On its face, this presents a head-scratcher: is Microsoft saying that a human being erroneously decided to recommend the dining at Ottawa's food bank?

But a close parsing of the mealy-mouthed disclaimer reveals the truth. The unnamed Microsoft spokesdroid only appears to be claiming that this wasn't written by an AI, but they're actually just saying that the AI that wrote it wasn't "unsupervised." It was a supervised AI, overseen by a human. Who made an error. Thus: the problem was human error.

This deliberate misdirection actually reveals a deep truth about AI: that the story of AI being managed by a "human in the loop" is a fantasy, because humans are neurologically incapable of maintaining vigilance in watching for rare occurrences.

Our brains wire together neurons that we recruit when we practice a task. When we don't practice a task, the parts of our brain that we optimized for it get reused. Our brains are finite and so don't have the luxury of reserving precious cells for things we don't do.

That's why the TSA sucks so hard at its job – why they are the world's most skilled water-bottle-detecting X-ray readers, but consistently fail to spot the bombs and guns that red teams successfully smuggle past their checkpoints:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-breaches-us-airports-allowed-weapons-through-n367851

TSA agents (not "officers," please – they're bureaucrats, not cops) spend all day spotting water bottles that we forget in our carry-ons, but almost no one tries to smuggle a weapons through a checkpoint – 99.999999% of the guns and knives they do seize are the result of flier forgetfulness, not a planned hijacking.

In other words, they train all day to spot water bottles, and the only training they get in spotting knives, guns and bombs is in exercises, or the odd time someone forgets about the hand-cannon they shlep around in their day-pack. Of course they're excellent at spotting water bottles and shit at spotting weapons.

This is an inescapable, biological aspect of human cognition: we can't maintain vigilance for rare outcomes. This has long been understood in automation circles, where it is called "automation blindness" or "automation inattention":

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29939767/

Here's the thing: if nearly all of the time the machine does the right thing, the human "supervisor" who oversees it becomes incapable of spotting its error. The job of "review every machine decision and press the green button if it's correct" inevitably becomes "just press the green button," assuming that the machine is usually right.

This is a huge problem. It's why people just click "OK" when they get a bad certificate error in their browsers. 99.99% of the time, the error was caused by someone forgetting to replace an expired certificate, but the problem is, the other 0.01% of the time, it's because criminals are waiting for you to click "OK" so they can steal all your money:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ema-report-finds-nearly-80-130300983.html

Automation blindness can't be automated away. From interpreting radiographic scans:

https://healthitanalytics.com/news/ai-could-safely-automate-some-x-ray-interpretation

to autonomous vehicles:

https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-tech/automated-vehicles-may-encourage-new-breed-distracted-drivers

The "human in the loop" is a figleaf. The whole point of automation is to create a system that operates at superhuman scale – you don't buy an LLM to write one Microsoft Travel article, you get it to write a million of them, to flood the zone, top the search engines, and dominate the space.

As I wrote earlier: "There's no market for a machine-learning autopilot, or content moderation algorithm, or loan officer, if all it does is cough up a recommendation for a human to evaluate. Either that system will work so poorly that it gets thrown away, or it works so well that the inattentive human just button-mashes 'OK' every time a dialog box appears":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/21/let-me-summarize/#i-read-the-abstract

Microsoft – like every corporation – is insatiably horny for firing workers. It has spent the past three years cutting its writing staff to the bone, with the express intention of having AI fill its pages, with humans relegated to skimming the output of the plausible sentence-generators and clicking "OK":

https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-news-cuts-dozens-of-staffers-in-shift-to-ai-2020-5

We know about the howlers and the clunkers that Microsoft published, but what about all the other travel articles that don't contain any (obvious) mistakes? These were very likely written by a stochastic parrot, and they comprised training data for a human intelligence, the poor schmucks who are supposed to remain vigilant for the "hallucinations" (that is, the habitual, confidently told lies that are the hallmark of AI) in the torrent of "content" that scrolled past their screens:

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922

Like the TSA agents who are fed a steady stream of training data to hone their water-bottle-detection skills, Microsoft's humans in the loop are being asked to pluck atoms of difference out of a raging river of otherwise characterless slurry. They are expected to remain vigilant for something that almost never happens – all while they are racing the clock, charged with preventing a slurry backlog at all costs.

Automation blindness is inescapable – and it's the inconvenient truth that AI boosters conspicuously fail to mention when they are discussing how they will justify the trillion-dollar valuations they ascribe to super-advanced autocomplete systems. Instead, they wave around "humans in the loop," using low-waged workers as props in a Big Store con, just a way to (temporarily) cool the marks.

And what of the people who lose their (vital) jobs to (terminally unsuitable) AI in the course of this long-running, high-stakes infomercial?

Well, there's always the food bank.

"Go on an empty stomach."

(Image: Cryteria, CC BY 3.0; West Midlands Police, CC BY-SA 2.0; modified)

Hey look at this (permalink)

• Why Bill Watterson Vanished https://www.theamericanconservative.com/why-bill-watterson-vanished/ (h/t Slashdot)

• South Pole Electrical Infrastructure https://brr.fyi/posts/south-pole-electrical-infrastructure

*A Girl and Her Bird: Emergence by David R. Palmer https://www.tor.com/2023/08/22/a-girl-and-her-bird-emergence-by-david-r-palmer/ (I LOVE THIS BOOK)

This day in history (permalink)

#15yrsago Klingon knife scares the crap out of credulous British scandal-sheet https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-387680/Lethal-Star-Trek-blade-seized-knives-amnesty.html

#15yrsago Fafblog’s Medium Lobster becomes a political columnist for the Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/aug/21/uselections2008.barackobama

#10yrsago Larry Lessig and EFF sue music licensing company over bogus YouTube copyright claims https://www.eff.org/press/releases/lawrence-lessig-strikes-back-against-bogus-copyright-takedown

#10yrsago Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and The People Who Play It https://memex.craphound.com/2013/08/23/of-dice-and-men-the-story-of-dungeons-dragons-and-the-people-who-play-it/

#5yrsago From Tahrir to Trump: how the internet became the dictators’ home turf https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/08/14/240325/how-social-media-took-us-from-tahrir-square-to-donald-trump/

#5yrsago Apple removes Facebook’s deceptive, surveillant VPN from the App Store https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/22/apple-removes-facebook-onavo-app-from-app-store.html

#5yrsago LA County will switch to all open source vote-counting machines https://www.latimes.com/politics/essential/la-pol-ca-essential-politics-may-2018-htmlstory.html

#5yrsago Santa Clara fire department: Verizon’s pants are on fire https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/fire-dept-rejects-verizons-customer-support-mistake-excuse-for-throttling/

#5yrsago Data-driven analysis of the total, gratuitous inadequacy of women’s pockets https://pudding.cool/2018/08/pockets/

#5yrsago Facebook will subject all of its users to “trustworthiness scores" https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/08/21/facebook-is-rating-trustworthiness-its-users-scale-zero-one/

#5yrsago The company you hired to snoop on your kids’ phones uploaded all their data to an unprotected website https://www.vice.com/en/article/9kmj4v/spyware-company-spyfone-terabytes-data-exposed-online-leak

#1yrago Tory Britain is crashing and burning https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/23/late-stage-thatcherism/#just-dont-be-poor

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: The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation (audiobook outtake) https://craphound.com/news/2023/08/01/the-internet-con-how-to-seize-the-means-of-computation-audiobook-outtake/

Upcoming appearances:

• Burning Man Center Camp, 1430h, Aug 29
  https://playaevents.burningman.org/2023/playa_events/03/

• "The Internet Con" launch, Another Story Bookshop (Toronto), Sept 12
  https://anotherstory.ca/events/29283

• EFF Awards (San Francisco), Sept 14
  https://www.eff.org/awards/effawards/2023

• Launch for "The Internet Con" and Brian Merchant's "Blood in the Machine," Chevalier's Books (LA), Sept 27
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-internet-con-by-cory-doctorow-blood-in-the-machine-by-brian-merchant-tickets-696349940417

• An Evening with VE Schwab (Boise), Oct 2
  https://www.thecabinidaho.org/all-events/ve-schwab

• 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing keynote (Minneapolis), Oct 16
  https://cscw.acm.org/2023/index.php/keynotes/

Recent appearances:

• Gaslit Nation (pt 1)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUTlhNoV3Qg

• Hurriquake! (This Week in Tech)
  https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/941

• New Books Network
  https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-internet-con

Latest books:

• "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 (print edition: https://bookshop.org/books/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/9781736205907) (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 Internet Con: A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech, Verso, September 2023

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

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:

Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

Pluralistic.net

Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://pluralistic.net/plura-list

Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic

Medium (no ads, paywalled):

https://doctorow.medium.com/

(Latest Medium column: "Everything Made By an AI Is In the Public Domain: The US Copyright Office offers creative workers a powerful labor protective https://doctorow.medium.com/everything-made-by-an-ai-is-in-the-public-domain-caa634a8f7f1)

Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://twitter.com/doctorow

Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic

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

Enlarge / AI-generated art titled, "A Recent Entrance to Paradise." The image cannot be copyrighted, a judge ruled.

Art generated entirely by artificial intelligence cannot be copyrighted because "human authorship is an essential part of a valid copyright claim," a federal judge ruled on Friday.

The US Copyright Office previously rejected plaintiff Stephen Thaler's application for a copyright because the work lacked human authorship, and he challenged the decision in US District Court for the District of Columbia. Thaler and the Copyright Office both moved for summary judgment in motions that "present the sole issue of whether a work generated entirely by an artificial system absent human involvement should be eligible for copyright," Judge Beryl Howell's memorandum opinion issued Friday noted.

Howell denied Thaler's motion for summary judgment, granted the Copyright Office's motion, and ordered that the case be closed.

Read 20 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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 coworker is in a different time zone and keeps calling me in the middle of the night

I work in a multinational company where many of my coworkers are in drastically different time zones and different countries. I’ve managed to make this work quite well most of the time, but I have a coworker on a project who will not address anything in an email or message, and insists on long (once almost three hours) calls instead.

I’ve already tried gently suggesting that we discuss it in email or chat, but whenever I bring that up, she literally ignores the suggestion. She also regularly calls me — with no notice — at what is the middle of the night my time. On the rare occasion that I don’t wake up to a bunch of missed calls, she sends me multiple meeting requests with five minutes notice when I have other meetings to attend.

Is this the new normal that I have not adapted to? That everything should be a call? Am I just out of touch?

My boss is genuinely wonderful, but I’ve only been here for around four months and she’s constantly overworked, so I’m reluctant to bring up this situation if I can find a solution, especially because I don’t want to be seen as not a team player.

This isn’t a new normal; this is one person being pushy and thoughtless and rude.

Stop gently suggesting email and instead be much more direct! Say this: “I am X hours ahead of you so when you call me during your work day, it’s the middle of the night for me and you are waking me up. I need you to stop calling after X:00 my time/Y:00 your time. And because we are in such different time zones, we will need to handle more things through email or chat.”

Gentle is fine as a first approach, but when it doesn’t work, the next step is always to be clearer and more direct. You might also try blocking her number at night.

You should also start pushing back on the excessive meeting requests — “I can’t fit in X number of meetings with you this week — I can do one hour on Thursday afternoon and let’s plan to handle anything else in email.”

If any of your coworkers also work with her, it might be interesting to ask if they’re encountering this too and, if so, how they’re handling it. And if laying out clear boundaries like this doesn’t work, you really do need to take it to your boss — it makes sense to try to deal with yourself first, but if that doesn’t resolve it, any decent boss would want to be looped in, busy or not.

2. Should I coach my employee on his communication skills?

I’m a new manager, and I’m trying to figure out when I should coach my team members to develop their skills and when I should leave things alone. I have two rockstar employees: “Oswald” and “Bertram.” Oswald is a spectacular communicator who knows how to succinctly explain complicated procedures. Bertram is a great leader, super enthusiastic, but he takes a while to get to a point and tends to backtrack while talking, which can make it hard to follow his train of thought. It’s not an undue burden on his peers or management; it’s just not as beautiful as Oswald.

For both Oswald and Bertram, good verbal communication is an essential skill for their roles. Would you recommend that I try to coach Bertram to help him become a more concise speaker? Or is coaching Bertram on this overly heavy-handed, given that Bertram is really doing a fine job? Honestly the only reason I’ve noticed Bertram’s less than perfect communication is because Oswald is so amazing at speaking. Where is the line between helping someone improve and being overly critical of otherwise good team members?

Would you even be thinking about coaching Betram on this if you’d never met Oswald? In other words, if you weren’t comparing them, would you think Bertam’s speaking skills were just fine? If so, leave this alone — he’s not doing anything wrong, he’s just not as stellar as someone who’s unusually great. It could be something you jointly work on if he’s asking how to stretch to the next level, but that’s different than a failing that needs to be addressed.

But if Oswald didn’t exist and you’d still have concerns about Bertram’s communication skills, then it makes sense to address it, assuming it’s detracting from his success in his role.

3. Diplomatic way to say “let me Google that for you”

I have multiple coworkers who come to me with questions they could answer on their own with a little digging or a Google search. I’ve fallen into the bad habit of answering almost all the time, even if finding the file or looking up the answer would take me just as long as it would take them. Can you suggest a script/approach to guide them to try looking themselves first? I don’t want them to stop coming to me with more complex questions, just the easy ones.

With the simple questions, try asking, “Where have you looked so far?” If the answer is “nowhere,” then you can say, “Check the X doc, it should be in there” or “I’d need to google it to find out — try googling ‘how to use the IF function in Excel.'” Or even, “I usually google stuff like that — try that first and you should find what you need.” If you do that with someone a few times and they still keep bringing you easily-searchable questions, then you can say, “I can help with more complicated things, but with stuff like this, you should try the X documentation or even google before coming to me. You’ll almost always find the answer that way.”

4. Should I ban money collections on our team?

New manager here. Worked my way up over the years from secretarial and assistant positions. Always resented having to chip in for other people’s life events (showers, birthdays, etc.) when I wasn’t paid that much. My attitude was that I was at work to make money, not to spend it.

Now that I have my own department, would it be seen as mean if I insist that employees not take up these collections? I was going to buy a bunch of cards (wedding, birthday, baby) to be kept in my office that they could use if so desired and if needed I would buy a sheet cake once a month to celebrate any occasions they may want to celebrate. Your thoughts?

Yes, please do! A lot of people resent being hit up for money at work, and rightly so — and it can be hard to know when that’s the case because a lot of people will hide how they really feel about it.

You’d be doing everyone a favor if you stopped the practice. You can frame it as, “These things have a way of creating pressure on people, and I don’t want working here to take money out of anyone’s pocket.”

5. Company wants my friends or family to verify my work eligibility

I recently accepted a seasonal position with a company that I have worked with before. They sent I-9 paperwork through a third party company.

As part of the I-9 paperwork, government regulations require the employer or their authorized representative to verify that the new hire can legally work in the U.S. (like passports, driver’s licenses, Social Security cards, etc.). However, they are asking us to designate a friend or family member who will act as the employer’s “authorized representative” and then I’m supposed physically meet with the friend/family member, give them my documents, and have them fill out the required information using a site link that they receive from from the company.

I’m curious to know your thoughts on this practice. This work would normally be done by someone the company is paying, who has a minimum amount of training in this area. My friend or family member will not be compensated, likely will have no such training, and has no loyalty to this company. I don’t have family nearby, I’m a private person, and I don’t like imposing on a friend and taking up their time to do something that I feel should be the company’s responsibility. I’d also prefer not to share some of my personal info (like my Social Security number), even with a friend.

Am I overreacting? To me, this just feels like a really slimy way to cut their costs and pass on what should be their responsibility to someone they don’t even know. I’m uncomfortable with it, but maybe times have changed and this is the new normal? I’d appreciate your take on this practice.

Yeah, this sounds like an attempt to offload their own responsibility, and it’s particularly bizarre because employers are allowed to do I-9 verification remotely! (That started during the pandemic as temporary measure, and a permanent rule allowing it went into effect August 1.)

You could try pointing that out, say you don’t have anyone local to you who you’re comfortable asking, and ask if you can simply use the remote process authorized by the government.

The transition to college life can be tough on even the most prepared among us. Here’s a quiz to test whether you’re ready to head off to higher ed!

Read more...