Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his partner, former broadcast journalist Lauren Sánchez, are engaged four years after his high-profile divorce from billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. What do you think?
A Puerto Rican man was denied a car rental at a Hertz location at the New Orleans airport where employees apparently believed his driver's license was from outside the U.S. Hertz has since apologized.
Caitlin Bernard, an Indiana OB-GYN, has been under scrutiny from her state's Republican attorney general since speaking out about the impact of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
In an unanimous decision, a Republican-led investigative committee that spent months quietly looking into Paxton recommended impeaching the state's top lawyer.
The attorney general, reelected last year by voters who shrugged off his scandals, is accused of a yearslong pattern of alleged misconduct and lawbreaking. The full House is expected to consider the articles soon.
"It's emotional" for all of the students, one parent said. Students at Marlin High School complain that the school failed to give them accurate data about what they needed to do to graduate.
Researchers examining the Great Barrier Reef have discovered the coral is infested with a bacteria closely related to chlamydia, which scientists say could help them understand the coral microbiome and its potential impact on coral reef health. What do you think?
Enlarge / Minnesota's right-to-repair bill is the first to pass in the US that demands broad access to most electronics' repair manuals, tools, and diagnostic software. Game consoles, medical devices, and other specific gear, however, are exempted. (credit: Getty Images)
It doesn't cover video game consoles, medical gear, farm or construction equipment, digital security tools, or cars. But in demanding that manuals, tools, and parts be made available for most electronics and appliances, Minnesota's recently passed right-to-repair bill covers the most ground of any US state yet.
The Digital Right to Repair Bill, passed as part of an omnibus legislation and signed by Gov. Tim Walz on Wednesday, "fills in many of the loopholes that watered down the New York Right to Repair legislation," said Nathan Proctor, senior director for the Public Interest Research Group's right-to-repair campaign, in a post.
New York's bill, beset by lobbyists, was signed in modified form by Gov. Kathy Hochul late last year. It also exempted motor vehicles and medical devices, as well as devices sold before July 1, 2023, and all "business-to-business" and "business-to-government" devices. The modified bill also allowed manufacturers to sell "assemblies" of parts—like a whole motherboard instead of an individual component, or the entire top case Apple typically provides instead of a replacement battery or keyboard—if an improper individual part installation "heightens the risk of injury."
Tropical Weather Outlook
NWS National Hurricane Center Miami FL
800 AM EDT Thu May 25 2023
For the North Atlantic...Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico:
Southwestern Atlantic:
A non-tropical area of low pressure is expected to form along a
frontal boundary offshore of the southeastern United States coast
within the next day or two. The system appears unlikely to become
a subtropical or tropical cyclone since it is forecast to remain
frontal while moving generally northward and inland over the
Carolinas this weekend.
Regardless, the system is likely to produce gusty winds and
dangerous surf and rip current conditions along portions of the
southeastern United States coast late this week and into the
weekend. Heavy rainfall is expected in portions of the Carolinas
with hazardous marine conditions expected over the coastal and
offshore waters where gale warnings are in effect. For more
information, see products from your local National Weather
Service office and high seas forecasts issued by the National
Weather Service.
* Formation chance through 48 hours...low...near 0 percent.
* Formation chance through 7 days...low...10 percent.
&&
High Seas Forecasts issued by the National Weather Service
can be found under AWIPS header NFDHSFAT1, WMO header FZNT01
KWBC, and online at ocean.weather.gov/shtml/NFDHSFAT1.php
The punishment for Stewart Rhodes on a seditious conspiracy charge could set the bar for others, including top members of the far-right Proud Boys group, this summer.
CLEARWATER, FL—Hoping that she had done enough to obtain one of the coveted feminine hygiene products, local Florida woman Jessica Calderon filled out a 25-page application Thursday in order to receive a tampon from a dispenser. “Let’s see, I’ve filled out my personal information and my medical history, now I just…
MINNEAPOLIS, MN—Bowing to the demands of the pro-moist movement, Target reportedly removed all towels from stores Thursday after a soaking-wet lunatic objected to dryness. “We apologize to the sopping individual who felt angry and threatened by our promotion of dryness,” said Target CEO Brian Cornell, explaining that…
TALLAHASSEE, FL—Attempting his formal announcement again in an effort to compensate for last night’s glitch-ridden debacle on Twitter, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis reportedly relaunched his presidential campaign Thursday from inside a burning Tesla. “America deserves a president who won’t cave to wokeness and will…
The alarm blares, and I wake up with a renewed vigor to indoctrinate America’s youth.
I ride my bike to work, smugly turning up my nose at real Americans who drive trucks. As I pedal, my thoughts are preoccupied with how I will infect children with my liberal agenda. No other ideas flow in and out of my mind on my commute, like wondering if I should donate plasma this weekend to make some extra cash to pay rent.
I pull into the parking lot and say hello to the drag queen we recently hired as the school librarian. As we walk into Socialist Snowflake Learning Center (previously called Robert E. Lee Elementary), we schedule a time for her to visit my class and expose my students to sexually explicit material.
As the bell rings and students arrive, I refuse to let Bethany G. enter the classroom, since she’s wearing a Paw Patrol backpack; I send her to the principal’s office to be expelled and possibly jailed. I allow my students to kneel during the Pledge of Allegiance but force them to blow kisses at framed portraits of George Soros, Ibram X. Kendi, and Joy Behar.
Circle Time #1: Students engage in Social Emotional Learning, which is just an hour of me interrogating kids under a single swaying lightbulb, demanding that they admit whether or not their parents are anti-vaxxers.
Story Time: I read The Lorax aloud. By the end of the book, all the kids are radicalized and collectively devise a plan to dismantle capitalism.
Science: I perpetrate the lie that the weather is getting more extreme due to the rampant use of fossil fuels and continued deforestation. I intentionally neglect to tell students what nature and its resources are really for: earning as much money as possible in your ~80 years on earth without considering how your short-sighted choices will affect future generations.
Lunch: I continue my ongoing quest to undermine the frozen food industry by encouraging students to balance eating veggies alongside their chicken nuggets. Publicly humiliate any kid who drinks cow’s milk. Deliberately instruct low-income students NOT to pay for their lunch and to pass this heavy burden onto the taxpayer instead.
I call students back from recess, ask them to wash their hands, and allow them to use whatever bathroom sink they want. Society crumbles.
As students filter back into the room, we hear a loud, popping noise. The young students look to me to protect them, but my snowflake ass has refused to conceal and carry, despite the onslaught of angry parents at school board meetings who demand teachers start packing heat and become de facto security guards. (These parents believe we are incompetent in nearly every aspect of our jobs but DO trust us to handle a firearm during a dangerous situation.) Thankfully, the noise was just a car backfiring, so I can return to being a cowardly professional educator who indoctrinates third graders to become nonbinary communists.
Math: Almost immediately after thinking our lives were at risk, we pivot to our math lesson. For many adults, this abrupt transition might be difficult to navigate, but the third graders are resilient and used to these scares. After working through word problems that contain characters with diverse names, I hand out their homework for the evening. I have purposefully created math problems that third-grade students can answer, but adults who are unable to problem solve cannot complete.
Circle Time #2: Instead of reading an offensive chapter book aloud, I give an impromptu thirty-minute lecture in which I encourage my students to consider undergoing a gender reassignment surgery over summer break or before their tenth birthday, whichever comes first.
Music Lesson: The students learn the lyrics to “WAP,” Lil Nas X’s entire catalog, and whatever the national anthem of Norway is.
As we begin tidying up the room, I mandate that the tallest white boy in class clean out the litter box the kids who identify as cats use.
We end the day with five minutes of mindfulness, a.k.a. a nod to New Age Wiccan Pagan anti-Christian practices. During this time, Muslim students are allowed to pray, and atheist students can play with Legos. Christian students are persecuted.
I lock up my classroom, jump on my bike, and leave school grounds. I’m already excited to return tomorrow so I can continue brainwashing children.
Then I ride to my local Planned Parenthood clinic to get an abortion.
While I recuperate, I spend the rest of my day devising ways to undermine the American way of life while drinking Bud Light out of a glass. \
My letter was actually published the same day I was leaving for a vacation. While I was away, I had some time to really reflect on your response and think through my next steps. What stood out to me the most in your response was when you said that this investor seemed cavalier about my protection; after reflecting on my interactions with him, I think this statement hits the nail on the head. I am also incredibly grateful to the commenters for sharing words of wisdom. Nearly everyone was urging me to not pursue this opportunity. Several people had even expressed that they were in similar situations that didn’t pan out the way they had hoped. I knew in my gut that something wasn’t right, and I think I just needed some validation.
I came back from vacation knowing I would not be taking part in this opportunity and interestingly enough, I never heard from the investor again. This pretty much confirmed exactly what I was thinking in the beginning, which was that he was perhaps viewing me as a means to an end. To be fair, I did not bother to reach back out either. We essentially both ended up ghosting each other. I am glad I did not spend any of my time giving him my ideas or knowledge; my husband recently started his own business, so instead, I’ve been pouring my free time into helping him grow it. It’s been extremely fulfilling, and I am able to get that “entrepreneur bug” out of my system!
I sincerely wish this investor the best in his business endeavors, but I’m happy I didn’t take him up on this offer.
The good news is two-fold: Jim has had some wins in his area of work that seem to have calmed his anxiety at least to the point he’s not fretting at me constantly about his own work. He’s definitely an anxious person though — I hear from him at least once a week about how much he’s worried that generative AI is going to take over his job. That’s easier for me to ignore than a stream of anxieties in our one-on-ones though. The other part of the good(ish) news is that due to some big miscommunications with him, I implemented shared note-taking for our one-on-ones and that has turned out to also help give our meetings better structure. We have a shared running document where we add notes about the current meeting at the top and save all the previous ones below. We both add agenda items to this document. It’s definitely helping keep our weekly one-on-ones on track and gets me around the issue that I don’t want his advice on anything I’m working on because I can think more carefully ahead of time about what to discuss (oddly, he’s constantly suggesting I use generative AI on my work tasks, even though he’s super anxious about this technology — I ignore that advice too).
The bad news is that his anxiety is the least of his problems. He works incredibly fast on projects that really need thoughtful work, says yes to everything with no prioritization for our team which has resulted in us being signed up for work that is nowhere near what we should be doing, and makes a lot of mistakes. After more than a year in this job, he still doesn’t understand the fundamentals of our technical field. I spend a lot of time correcting his misconceptions, although I’ve realized it doesn’t really do much good so I’m trying to pull back on doing that too. My grandboss, Jim’s boss and my former manager, is highly uninvolved in our team’s work to the point I doubt he is seeing the majority of Jim’s mistakes. All this to say, I am pretty sure I’m not long for this job, which is disappointing because it used to be a great position. I have hired a summer intern so am planning to stay through the summer since there’s no one else to mentor them, but am thinking of giving notice at the end of the summer and working as a freelancer/contractor for a while. Very excited to be my own boss! Thank you again for your great advice.
Shortly after I emailed you, I actually got offered a much higher-paying job at a company in California and decided to take it, so I ended up just paying everything back in full and it feels like a weight off my shoulders. I’m much happier at my new job too and have a lot less stress. I wanted to say thank you again for your advice – it was very much appreciated.
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
A reader writes:
When my company mandated a return to in-office work, I did not expect the biggest problem to be the office noise machine. But hear me out.
During the pandemic, my company installed a Bose speaker system in the ceilings of our large open office to play white noise (actually brown noise, which is supposed to be more soothing). Sounds great, right?
Everyone is bothered to some degree, but I seem to be unusually sensitive to it. It’s triggering a mix of anxiety, irritation and just …hyperarousal? Like it’s going straight to my amygdala. I don’t (didn’t?) have misophonia. The effect builds over time, and volume/proximity matter.
There are control knobs in each section of the office with settings from 1 to 10. At 8, it’s extremely disruptive to everyone in my area. You have to raise your voice to have a conversation. At 6, people 15 feet from the speaker complain. At 4, I don’t notice it if I keep my own headphones on, but it still affects me — the first day on that setting, I didn’t realize what was happening until I went outside and my mood abruptly (eerily) improved. At 3, I’m tense and feel mentally wrung out at the end of the day, but within a more normal scale. (It may be my real reaction to being in the office again.)
When coworkers showed me the controls, they warned me not to turn it down too far, lest the company president insist it be set to 9.
Her office is in a different speaker zone, but it’s her pet project — and an emotional hot button. During the lockdown, one of the remaining in-office staff got into a long conflict with the prez before eventually being fired. The noise volume was the focus. Feelings were hurt, and positions became entrenched.
Every night (and whenever the prez passes by), the volume is turned to 8. Every morning, we turn it down, hoping not to go too far. My neighbor brought it up with our manager and was told we shouldn’t be touching the knob.
The speaker is above my head. I need to stick this out until I find a new job.
Is there any effective way to improve things? Maybe something is wrong with the sound balance or this is some infrasound effect, and an audio-savvy reader knows a way to frame it as a technical glitch and fix it?
Good lord. If the company president wants white noise while she works, she can play white noise in her own office — not inflict it on everyone who’s stuck in an open office, when people have made it clear they hate it.
I can’t speak to the technical parts of this question (readers who can are welcome to!) but I’m going to assume for the sake of this answer that the speaker is functioning the way it’s supposed to.
You’ve got two different options.
The first, and possibly the most effective, is to band together as a group to address this. One person battling it out with the president isn’t the way to go — someone got fired after doing that! — but there’s safety and power in numbers. If a large group of you point out that you can’t easily hear each other and it’s making a lot of you tense and uncomfortable (and affecting your mental health, if that seems true), it’s possible you’ll get some traction. If you have HR, that’s where your group should start. If you don’t, talk to whoever manages the physical space or look for someone who works closely with the president and has the ability to get things done. If that doesn’t work, you’ll at least have protection of having spoken as a group — as opposed to one person trying to fight the battle alone.
The other option is to approach it as a health issue and ask for a medical accommodation. The Americans with Disabilities Act probably isn’t in play here, but you can use the same basic framing for requesting a medical accommodation. In fact, you might even talk to your doctor and see if they’re able to write something official for you, given the effect it’s having on you. (I don’t know the right medical language to use to describe that effect, but your doctor probably will.) Your requested accommodation could be anything from moving you to a quieter space or further away from the speaker, to setting up a speaker-free zone for you and others who need it, to getting rid of the white noise altogether (that would be logical, although who knows how much your president will dig in her heels), to letting you work from home if that’s feasible for your job.
To be clear, employers aren’t required to provide the specific accommodation a doctor says you need — and if the ADA isn’t in play, they’re not required to accommodate you at all — but most employers will try to work with you when they can. It’s at least worth a try.
If none of that works, all you’re really left with is the hope that someone in your office (not you, of course) will eventually be driven to destroy the speakers.
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00:00 Intro 01:47 Demonstration 03:15 Regen braking and one-pedal driving 09:17 Somebody forgot about the brake lights 12:25 One solution that GM came up with 15:12 Adaptive cruise control 16:25 US regulations 21:15 The Boy who Cried Wolf problem 21:50 Europe's previously terrible regulations and their fix 25:47 An earnest call to action 28:38 Bloops
ST. LOUIS—In an effort to distance itself from a controversial marketing campaign featuring a transgender influencer, Anheuser-Busch confirmed Thursday that all cans of Bud Light beer had undergone gay conversion therapy. “As of today, all of our Bud Light cans, bottles, and kegs have been fully cleansed of all traces…
A Texas Tribune review of the investigators’ employment history, voting records and campaign donations found a lack of support for the attorney general’s claim.
“SA to HOU | HOU to SA is a two-city art exhibition exchange between Clamp Light Studios & Gallery, an artist-run studio and exhibition space based in San Antonio and Box 13 Artspace, an artist-run studio and exhibition space in Houston. While close to 200 miles separate the two artist groups, the common goal is to support their fellow artists and share their community’s creative output. The exhibitions will be curated by curators Bianca Alvarez (San Antonio) and Rosa Ana Orlando (Houston).
Curatorial Statement by Rosa Ana Orlando:
Using their own visual languages, the artists included in this exhibition delve into themes that deal with identity, self-reflection, anxiety, loss, fears, and introspection, which are examined through a variety of approaches, formats, materials, and styles.
I truly believe in the power of art to connect us as humans, as it transcends cultural and generational barriers. Art allows us to express feelings and communicate messages in powerful ways; it makes us aware of different perspectives and points of views, and it contributes to developing empathy and understanding for unfamiliar situations. I am thankful for the opportunity to engage with the thought provoking and compelling works included in this exhibition, which all embody these ideas.”
Tahir Karmali, “Untitled,” 2022, corrugated steel in Georgian revival home, 16 x 4 feet. Photographed at Wave Hill. Image courtesy of the artist.
“Fluent~Collaborative & testsite are pleased to present Pulp Friction, a collaboration between Tahir Carl Karmali and Regine Basha.
Tahir Carl Karmali is a Kenyan-born artist based in New York. Over the past 15 years, his work has spanned photography, sculpture, textile installation, prints, and drawings. Though his formal approach may appear deceptively minimal, his choice of materials is often imbued with hidden narratives of ecological exploitation, human migratory patterns, and intersections of the personal with the geo-political. He cites artists such as Eva Hesse, El Anatsui, Agnes Denes, Isamu Noguchi, and Zarina Hashmi, as artists with whom he has connective tissue. The work he has created specifically for testsite, which includes drawings as well as a new sculpture made onsite, reflects upon the border – its physicality as well as its porousness and the trauma it causes to migrant bodies and to land use.”
Fernando Andrade, “Espacio 60,” 2021, acrylic on canvas.
“Rockport Center for the Arts hosts Confluence, an art exhibition featuring the abstract paintings and figurative/abstract mixed-media work of artist Fernando Andrade. Presented by Neiland Sammons II, the exhibition will be on display through June 11 in the H-E-B Gallery located on the upper level.
Confluence brings together select works from the artist’s two series, Espacios and Suspended Thoughts. Espacios is a series of abstract paintings, improvised organic compositions that are colorful and dynamic, while Suspended Thoughts, his new, ongoing body of work, represents the struggles of mental health taking place during the pandemic, utilizing contrasting mediums to create a pause in time using suspended bodies in an abstract space.”
“Actual Footage of Me is a vibrant and playful collection that features some of the most beloved artworks by Dallas-based illustrator and fiber artist Nikki Dionne. The exhibition showcases Niki’s unique artistic vision and explores themes of self-discovery and identity as a black woman.
As visitors enter the show, they will be immediately drawn into Niki’s world, where they will encounter a variety of faceless black women brought to life through different mediums such as fiber, oil pastels, and digital illustration. The exhibition space will be filled with Niki’s signature illustration style and textures that create a captivating visual experience.”
Bo-Tan, “White Culture,” oil on canvas, 20 x 30 inches.
“The Charles Adams Gallery is proud to present an exhibition of paintings by Bo-Tan, a highly experienced painter specializing in traditional representational art, particularly oil portraiture. Born in Dalian, China, Bo-Tan graduated from the oil painting department of Luxun Academy of Fine Arts in Shenyang and went on to teach at the school for 14 years. He is a recognized associate professor and a member of both the Chinese Artists Association and the Chinese Oil Painting Committee.
Bo-Tan has been a West Texas resident for over two decades, contributing significantly to the local art community through his own professional gallery and studio space near downtown Lubbock, as well as through exhibitions at LUHCA and Art on the LLano. Visitors to the Charles Adams Gallery can experience Bo-Tan’s captivating use of color and light in this collection of portraits and still lifes. This exhibition offers a unique opportunity to see the work of an accomplished artist with a distinguished career in painting.”
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