Cowboy Who?

Sorry, Waldo, but folks won’t ask for your whereabouts this time around.

In Robert Saucedo’s horror-comedy graphic novel Where Wolf, a lycanthrope is racking up quite the body count in College Station, prompting journalist Larry Chaney to track it down. The hunt also provides Chaney relief from the occupational “ennui” he’s experiencing. His search soon puts him in touch with the local furry community, where the part-man, part-canis lupus assailant has gone to blend in—and to feast.

A real life furry emailed Saucedo when the first chapter (of the 12 in his book) went live as a webcomic on the horror publication Fangoria. This furry reader asked if his inclusion of that subculture stemmed from hatred. 

The reaction had him recalling when he was the features editor of the Battalion, Texas A&M University’s student newspaper: “I assigned a story to one of the reporters about the local furry population. That was one of the most controversial stories in the paper—we had hate mail coming in for months!”

He countered the assumption by sending a link to Where Wolf’s first four chapters and earned an admirer who would also give him self-created fan art and that from others. He added, “I never thought I would get erotic fan art of something I wrote, but I’ll take it!”

The graphic novel is Saucedo’s first—and a self-financed—leap into the world of sequential art, one that also features illustrations and coloring from Debora Lancianese plus lettering from former Marvel staffer Jack Morelli.

To the latter, Saucedo has captured lightning in a bottle. Over email, he wrote that “The body language and facial expressions are flawless, as is the storytelling, all moving seamlessly from horror to humor to pathos to gore and back again.”

Saucedo, a Port Arthur native who has spent time in McAllen, Bryan/College Station, and now lives in Houston, said three figures served as inspirations for Where Wolf’s Larry Chaney: the protagonist and the actor playing him in the 1941 film The Wolf Man, the namesake of Gregory Mcdonald’s Fletch series, and the author’s own experience. 

“The body language and facial expressions are flawless, as is the storytelling, all moving seamlessly from horror to humor to pathos to gore and back again.”

Indeed, Saucedo worked for a Bryan–College Station Eagle as a reporter for about a year until dissatisfaction reared its head. He wasn’t confident enough in his writing. The switch to copy editing also didn’t work out. He added, “Larry is kind of like an avatar of where I thought I might be, professionally and emotionally, had I stayed in journalism, which is, to say, also not happy.”

His initial vision for the project was, in fact, a tribute to the journalism profession. 

“When Larry finds out that there’s a werewolf attacking the town,” Saucedo said, “he sees this as a big chance to get all the fame and glory he has been chasing his entire life. That’s where I was at in my life—I spent most of my 20s and 30s chasing that ‘fame and glory’ before realizing you kind of have to work for what you want to get.”

Saucedo found plenty of time to work on Where Wolf in 2020 when COVID hit and the Alamo Drafthouse, where he had programmed films, furloughed him. He applied the “a chapter a day” mantra and finished a full draft in less than two weeks. At this stage, his work was an online novel. (“No one was reading it—I could see the traffic on my website”). He briefly considered turning it into a podcast, but plans were scrapped after he realized he would need a sound editor (and an industry pro he met quoted him $10,000).

A graphic novel, then, became the best medium for Where Wolf.  He could invest in artists and nourish his love for cinema. 

“Having watched as many movies as I have, you kind of think in a very cinematic way when you’re trying to tell a story,” Saucedo said. “The rule of thumb I basically had when I talked to Deb was, ‘Even if you take out all the dialogue, the page still needs to look funny.’”

Here are two examples from the first chapter: One is a panel transition that has a chunk of human leg becoming chunks of meat on a plate, the other sees Larry interacting with an editorial “CENSORED” tag.

Lancianese, the artist he chose as a collaborator, enjoyed taking on the project despite the theme and style (it’s in black and white) being somewhat new to her. She shared that a planned sequel will be in full color.

“I fully trust the process as I love Rob’s writing,” she wrote over email, “so I’m sure this volume is gonna be more funny, gritty and surprising than the previous one.”

Yes, Saucedo already has completed the sequel to Where Wolf—sans graphics at the moment, again as a self-financed endeavor. Its release will be dependent on the current installment’s sales.

Already, Where Wolf has been optioned to become a series, a feature film and—in a full circle moment—a podcast. Stay tuned for the results. Saucedo said he’d be open to an animated version of Where Wolf, too.

“But that’s [something] that’s either gonna happen or not gonna happen, so I don’t want to spend all my time trying to will that into happening,” he added. “I’m really happy with it as a comic, and that’s the version of it I’m really confident to release to the public—more than the novel, more than the podcast, or any future iteration of Where Wolf.”

And so, akin to an investigation, Saucedo would be taking things one step at a time with his work. With the Texas portion of his book tour finished, he will now focus on those in other cities and states. Not before a small break, though. 

“I started off the tour with almost 300 books in my inventory and I have sold everything,” he said. “It’s been great getting to meet werewolf and comic fans from all over [Texas] and talk to them about the book. It’s been an even bigger privilege being able to reunite with some of the folks who inspired characters in the books, such as my college roommates or my journalism advisor from the Battalion.”

The post The Who Behind ‘Where Wolf’ appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Llano County commissioners had considered closing the three libraries in response to a ruling from a federal judge who ordered banned books returned to the shelves.

1. Your goal is to retrieve your treasure from a monstrous entity.

2. All you need is pen and paper, but expensive software makes it much easier.

3. The rules are constantly being updated, but they’re still shackled to a system from the 1970s.

4. You’re constantly referring back to an incomprehensible spreadsheet.

5. You’d have put more effort into your backstory if you knew it would be this important later.

6. Some classes have a much easier time than others, and it’s unclear why.

7. You’re drowning in acronyms.

8. Being a Cleric has its advantages.

9. If you’re a musician, this is going to be extra complicated.

10. Every check can result in a circumstantial bonus or a penalty.

11. Groups who can afford it hire an unsavory rogue to do their dirty work.

12. When in doubt, just round the number down.

13. If you want to get away with this bluff, you’d better come up with a damn good story.

14. Tread carefully. Traps are everywhere.

15. You’re unsure whether your opponent is Lawful or just Chaotic—but they’re definitely Evil.

16. There’s clearly some relationship between race and class. Bringing this up will divide the party.

17. You should really familiarize yourself with the charts and appendices. (But you won’t.)

18. You’re leaning heavily on that one improv class you took.

19. You’ve lost track of how many potions you’ve consumed while trying to finish this thing.

20. No matter how much experience you have, it always takes longer than you think.

21. You’ll either be rewarded with great riches or imprisoned for your follies.

22. In the end, you just have to roll the dice.

Dungeons & Dragons: 1-22
Taxes: 1-22

TORONTO – As the Toronto Blue Jays play the 2023 season’s first home games, fans are enjoying several offseason additions to the Rogers Centre, including a new bullpen bar, a large family play area, and a quiet corner where people can tell the team mascot the words they struggle to say to their fathers. “The […]

The post Rogers Centre renovations include private nook where fans can tell Blue Jays mascot everything they can’t say to their dad appeared first on The Beaverton.

NPR plans to shut down its official Twitter accounts after the Elon Musk-owned platform’s decision to label it as “state-affiliated,” which categorizes all 52 NPR-run Twitter accounts as propaganda channels. What do you think?

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WASHINGTON—Faced with stubbornly high levels of employment and intent on engineering the hardest landing possible for ordinary Americans, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell called Thursday for more poverty. “It’s essential that we use every lever at our disposal to protect the status quo, and this includes raising…

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It may have taken Nic Cage over 40 years to play Dracula in "Renfield," but he previously donned fangs for one of his most out-there performances in "Vampire's Kiss."

It's kind of surprising that it's taken this long for Nicolas Cage to play Count Dracula. If any actor was born to play the most famous vampire on the planet then surely it was our generation's most unpredictable screen legend. Now he's getting his chance in the comedy "Renfield," where he stars alongside Nicholas Hoult, who plays Dracula's beleaguered goon in the midst of an identity crisis. Cage has always expressed interest in vampire lore. He produced the 2000 film "Shadow of the Vampire," a fictionalized version of the making of "Nosferatu" that imagines what would have happened if an actual vampire had been among the cast. Mostly, however, his highly specific strain of acting has been saved for playing mere mortals. There is an exception to that rule (sort of) in the movie "Vampire's Kiss," which manages to be strange even by the standards of the king of such qualities.

Yes, Nic Cage Is A Good Actor

It's easy to dismiss the work of Nicolas Cage, to decry it as bad or inept. His performances display immense range as an actor but his most infamous work is frenetic, highly committed, and often inexplicably gripping. For decades, he's demanded attention, even if not all of it has been positive. Many are cynical about his process because, even after over 40 years in the business, it's utterly unlike anything his peers are doing. Cage once described his acting style as "Western Kabuki" and "Nouveau Shamanic," more rooted in the likes of German Expressionism than the realism-driven method that has dominated Hollywood since the '50s. Where others aim for naturalism, Cage goes for the extreme, a kind of unpredictability that David Lynch once compared to jazz.

What's most fascinating about Cage's work (and we could be here all day listing his intriguing qualities) is how consistent he's been. There was no mid-career evolution into who we now know as Nic Cage. He was always like that, as evidenced by his feral subversion of the stoic romantic hero in "Moonstruck" and his turn as a traumatized soldier in "Birdy," wherein he yanked out two of his front teeth to prepare for the role. In 1988, still only 24 years old, Cage headlined a curious dark comedy that purported to be a vampire movie but quickly revealed itself to viewers to be something far stranger. Even by Nic Cage standards, "Vampire's Kiss" is a unique one.

How Vampire's Kiss Got Made

"Vampire's Kiss" centers on a yuppie literary agent whose grasp on reality is tenuous long before he meets a woman who may or may not be a vampire. His drug-addled rants about alphabetizing are so uncomfortable that his own psychiatrist has no idea how to help him. When he has a one-night stand with a woman he's convinced wants him to be a vampire, things only get bleaker from here. The film was written by Joseph Minion, who was best known at the time for the screenplay of "After Hours," the Martin Scorsese black comedy about a bored yuppie who tries to get home one night in the midst of absolute chaos. A minor disappointment upon release, "After Hours" is now considered one of Scorsese's most underrated works, a bleak blend of screwball comedy, film noir, and panic attack that delves into pure Freudian nightmare, albeit with more jokes. It's not traditionally comedic, often more concerned with needling at the audiences' anxieties than their funny bones.

For his follow-up script, Minion wanted to explore his ongoing depression as well as a toxic relationship he'd had with his then-girlfriend, producer Barbara Zitwer. He saw Zitwer as "vampire and destroying him," and he imagined the speculative aspects of a classic vampire tale would fit well into his oeuvre (which is especially raw given that she went on to produce this film). He wasn't wrong. Vampire stories work best when they act as a conduit to explore contemporary ideas and concerns. Minion also wanted to make a New York movie, one with as grim an outlook on the city as "After Hours." Initially offered to Dennis Quaid, perhaps a more traditional leading man than his replacement, the screenplay for "Vampire's Kiss" then fell into the hands of Cage. His own agent tried to coax him into turning it down, believing it to be a poor follow-up to his previous film, "Moonstruck." Of course, few people can tell Nicolas Cage what to do.

Cage's Performance Is, Of Course, Intense

As Peter Loew, a rich jerk with more issues than a Fangoria subscription, Cage is surreally committed to his acting choices. To paraphrase "Garth Marenghi's Darkplace," he knows actors who use subtext and they're all cowards. This is a part of pure text, of unfettered id that cannot be controlled. For Cage, the core of this character was his smothering isolation, and the idea that one could be so lonely that you could literally go mad. While Cage is known for going off-script, with "Vampire's Kiss," he followed the screenplay to the latter for almost the entire production. That's not to say he performed as the studio expected. He'd never be so predictable. In perhaps the film's most infamous scene, where Peter recites the entire alphabet with the disgusted force of a Baptist preacher railing against Satan, he noted that he planned out his movements "in my hotel room with my cat."

Director Robert Bierman, who is mostly known for working on British television, encouraged Cage's more out-there choices, such as his pretentious transatlantic accent that veers into Transylvanian during his most hectic bellowing. Even he, however, was baffled by Cage's request that, when shooting a love scene with Jennifer Beals, he has hot yogurt poured onto his toes to get him aroused. It was also Cage's idea to eat a real cockroach on camera, which was the only change he made to the script.

What Vampire's Kiss Is Actually About

It's easy to mock "Vampire's Kiss." It's bonkers, eminently quotable, and the blueprint for the Nic Cage archetype that has been the stuff of memes for many years. If you've seen "Con Air" or the remake of "The Wicker Man" or any of the bad movie night-primed Cage films, you'll recognize that shared energy immediately in "Vampire's Kiss." But it's not a bad movie, certainly not in the way it's been deemed since it opened to terrible reviews and disappointing box office. The film really does exemplify the Cage Method and why it's proven so wildly divisive over the decades. He wanted to shock the audience, to make them feel nauseated by this repulsive character whose fall into madness is nonetheless deeply moving. And he wanted to do it without any sliver of realism in his performance. You can't say he failed when he set the terms so thoroughly.

"Vampire's Kiss" could probably have still worked had Peter been played by, to put it kindly, a more timid actor. Like "After Hours," it's a pitch-black comedy with a scathing view of the much-fetishized misogynistic yuppie culture of the era that's equally fascinated by psychological distress. It's not hard to see Griffin Dunne looking increasingly harried as he becomes convinced he's joined the ranks of the undead. But it's with Cage that the film finds its perfect partner, the one it needed if not necessarily the one its studio wanted. The potency of Cage lies in how he captures something so acutely human, even if it seems over-the-top. Being so utterly and unbearably alone does feel agonizing on a Cage-esque level, as much as we bottle up our emotions and pretend otherwise.

Is Vampire's Kiss Actually A Vampire Movie?

A vampire film can be defined by such by the presence of, you guessed it, a vampire. What form said creature takes is another question. Dracula is a 180 turn from Edward Cullen, who is the total opposite of Nosferatu, who is nothing like Santanico Pandemonium, and so on. Centuries of vampiric lore give creators endless options to pick and choose when telling their own tale. Many of the things we see as requirements of vampirism — an aversion to sunlight, fangs — aren't present in its most iconic stories. That gives "Vampire's Kiss" a lot of leeway to define itself as a vampire film. Sometimes, vampirism is a metaphor. With Peter Loew, it often feels like an excuse.

It's not uncommon to see vampirism as a stand-in for misogyny. So much of "Dracula" makes more sense when read as a dissection of Victorian-era puritanism and how it punishes women for defying the rigid status quo. With "Vampire's Kiss," Peter's contempt for women is akin to derangement, something that has saturated the era and seems primed to explode at any moment. He treats every woman he comes across, from his therapist to his beleaguered secretary to the women he ditches after endless one-night stands, as prey. He cuts his neck while shaving but sees it as a bloodsucking attack from a mysterious seductress who pins him down and leaves him helpless. As he begins to modify his behavior to become more vampiric, including buying a set of plastic fangs that look hilariously cheap, it coincides with his increasing torment towards his secretary, Alva. Peter is so convinced of his vampirism when, in reality, he's just a misogynist whose fear of women has left him isolated beyond hope. That's a pretty nervy story for a 1980s dark comedy with the title "Vampire's Kiss." Clearly, Nic Cage knew that, and committed accordingly. This is the story of an apex predator who is terrified of losing his power, and it nails that frenetic panic with zeal. Look past the memes and descend into its thrall.

Read this next: Movies That Flopped So Hard They Practically Put Studios Out Of Business

The post Before He Played Dracula In Renfield, Nicolas Cage Went Wild With Vampire's Kiss appeared first on /Film.

Right now, the economy is all over the place. And when things get confusing, we look to basic economic indicators to help explain what's going on. Today, we're bringing you two episodes of our daily show The Indicator that focus on the bond market.

The market for U.S. treasury bonds is generally safe, predictable and pretty boring. Recently, though, it's been anything but. We look into the fluctuations in bond prices and the yield curve (one of our favorite indicators) to try to help us understand where the economy stands right now.

These two Indicator episodes were originally produced by Brittany Cronin and Noah Glick. They were fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Gilly Moon and Katherine Silva. Kate Concannon edits The Indicator.

The Planet Money version was produced by Dylan Sloan and edited by Dave Blanchard.

Music: "Funk Lounge," "A Fulltime Job" and "Velvet Groove."

Help support Planet Money and get bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.

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It’s become an inside joke among Capitol insiders that the best way to figure out what Governor Greg Abbott and the Republican Legislature are gonna do next is to read the Miami Herald—or better yet, follow Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Twitter. 

While that’s a bit overstated, it’s truer than Abbott and his allies would care to admit. Long the biggest, baddest political perch in red state America, the Texas governorship is no longer the singular juggernaut it once was in national politics. 

DeSantis, boy wonder of the Sunshine State, availed himself of a GOP power vacuum that opened after Trump’s 2020 presidential loss, becoming the front-runner among 2024 Republican presidential contenders whose names don’t end in rump. That status was further solidified by his nearly 20-point blowout reelection in 2022, making Abbott’s own 11-point drubbing of Beto O’Rourke look downright quaint. 

With a new GOP supermajority in both chambers of the Florida statehouse, DeSantis has advanced an agenda that is obsessively focused on so-called anti-wokeism, punishing public schools and teachers, LGBTQ+ folks, the Disney corporation, and the free press via state-sanctioned culture policing. 

For the past few years, Abbott has engaged DeSantis in a not-so-subtle shadow boxing match over who could use their emergency powers during the COVID-19 pandemic in the most perverse fashion or who could sign the most oppressive legislation into law. But the political feedback loop between Tallahassee and Austin, telegraphed by way of Fox News and Newsmax, has become all the more transparent during this state legislative season. 

One of Abbott’s first moves this year, uncharacteristically for a governor who usually stays behind the scenes in a session’s early days, was to throw his support behind a Senate bill that would ban certain foreign entities and citizens from countries like China and Iran from buying land on Texas soil. The pronouncement came five days after DeSantis held a press conference pledging to do the same in Florida. In February, a week after DeSantis pledged to ban “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) in state colleges, Abbott’s chief of staff Gardner Pate sent a memo to Texas agencies and universities warning that it was illegal to consider DEI principles in hiring decisions.

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, a politician in the same anti-woke warrior mold as DeSantis, has eagerly imported many of the Florida man’s hateful innovations into the Texas Senate. The little gov is, for instance, leading the charge on a bill that would prohibit any discussion of sexuality or gender in Texas’ K-12 classrooms—a more far-reaching version of DeSantis’ “Don’t Say Gay” law that is limited to elementary schoolchildren. The Texas Senate has also passed a sweeping bill to ban all gender-affirming healthcare for transgender kids in Texas, which would go beyond Florida’s similar edict by outlawing care even for current patients. 

While DeSantis’ allies have been speedrunning his political vendettas through the legislature, the Yale and Harvard alum embarked on a national tour ostensibly to promote his literary opus entitled The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival. Obviously, the book tour doubles as a dry run for his all-but-announced presidential bid. The tour brought him onto Texas turf this spring as an esteemed guest at two local GOP dinner events in Houston and Dallas, where he declared Florida to be an equal partner with the Lone Star State in the coming wars on wokeness. 

“They know you don’t mess with Texas—and you don’t tread on Florida,” DeSantis declared at one event. “I really believe if it hadn’t been for Texas and Florida playing the role we have in this country in recent history, our entire country would be one big woke, neo-Marxist dumpster fire.” DeSantis never mentioned Abbott by name, referring to him only as “your governor.”

Later this month, DeSantis will head to Austin as the marquee guest for an event hosted by the Cicero Institute, the personal think tank and lobbying operation of venture capitalist and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale. Since fleeing Silicon Valley for Texas as a self-declared political refugee, Lonsdale has quietly become a player in GOP politics here, developing close connections with Abbott-world. 

Daniel Hodge, Abbott’s former longtime aide, is an advisor to Lonsdale’s venture capital firm 8VC and arranged a lunch between the investor and the governor in 2020. Abbott’s daughter also works for 8VC as an events coordinator. Lonsdale is also a DeSantis donor and said he could support him for president, though he hasn’t officially endorsed. 

Meanwhile, when the topic of DeSantis-Abbott tensions is raised, Abbott is quick to note that Texas has outpaced Florida with passage of a total abortion ban and permitless carry law, while insisting that he and Ron are buds. “DeSantis and I do a lot of things together,” he said in 2021. “We talk in ways and times that people have no idea about … and so I just kind of roll my eyes and scoff a little bit when people say these things.”

In Tallahassee, DeSantis allies seem to think the whole Abbott-DeSantis comparison is a cute parlor game for Austin insiders. “Not to be disrespectful to Gov. Abbott, but I don’t think there are many people in the DeSantis orbit who consider that to be a rivalry,” Brian Ballard, a top Florida lobbyist and powerbroker, said earlier this year. “I never have anyone say to me, ‘Did [DeSantis] get that from Gov. Abbott? Did you see what Gov. Abbott did in Texas?’”

While DeSantis has certainly gotten the better of Abbott in raising his national profile and becoming the post-Trump voice of grievance ideology, the actual tit-for-tat in their political arms race may not be all that relevant in a presidential primary several months out. 

DeSantis’ stature has already made him a target for Trump—who has launched his comeback campaign and dubbed the former “Ron DeSanctimonious.” And in presidential politics, the first thoroughbred out of the gate is often the first to stumble and fall. Just ask the last Florida governor (“please clap”) or the last Texas governor (“oops”) to enter a presidential race with supposed front-runner pedigree. Abbott and his political aides have done the typical dance around presidential speculation, saying he’s solely focused on the tasks at hand in the legislative session. By the time summer comes, DeSantis may well have melted down—and an indicted Trump may have absconded to Riyadh. 

Abbott and his political handlers are keeping their powder dry regarding his own rumored presidential ambitions, while leaving open the chance that maybe he’ll start sniffin’ around after sine die. The question then: Will Abbott, who’s become something of a petty tyrant here in Texas, where he’s spoiled by the safety of one-party rule, prove to be anything other than yet another governor out of his league?

The post Tallahassee My Texas appeared first on The Texas Observer.

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Today we’ll talk about magnetic fields on exoplanets, a new isotope of uranium, mysterious chemicals in the atmosphere, spectroscopy with quantum effects, a new way to measure brain activity, a longevity forecast, AI glasses that can read lips, better holograms, and of course, the telephone will ring.

Correction to what I say at 01:20 -- The telescope is in New Mexico, not Mexico, sorry about that!

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

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

1. Teenager’s job wants her to go on a weekend retreat

My daughter is 15 and has her first job. Supervisor messages everyone she is planning a team-building event which will be a Friday to Sunday summer girls getaway at an AirBnB somewhere. Supervisor’s message goes on that she REALLY wants all her employees to come and she’s giving this much notice since they’ll need to clear their schedules and will each need to pay up to $400 on their own for the weekend.

The group my daughter works with is about 12 girls and women ranging in age from 15 to 28 — with just one 15-year-old, one 17-year-old, and then the majority over 21. We immediately said “no” and my daughter is on board with that decision. If the event happens and it’s something she feels she absolutely cannot miss for her job, we said we could drive her to whatever day is most important and drive her back home at night.

This all seems crazy, right? The mix of adults and minors, having to pay for this on their own, having to spend three days of personal time with no compensation … none of this passes muster.

A little more background: The job is at a boutique aimed toward teen girls with things like dresses and jewelry. The boutique is owned and managed by older women, but this group of employees are all the young part-time workers and their supervisor is about mid-twenties. Up until now, they have been expected to go to a monthly “bonding” activity (like an escape room or dinner) on their own time and at their own expense.

One could suggest attendance at these things is voluntary, but there’s always language like, “I would like everyone to be able to attend this … And I’m gonna repeat this, I REALLY want everyone to come, that’s why I kinda want to start planning it now.” So, not really voluntary? Very curious what your take on this is.

This is someone who is (a) trying to use her employees to get her social needs met (which is wildly inappropriate given the power dynamics, to say nothing of the mix of ages) and/or (b) has no idea how to manage effectively and so, rather than focusing on things like managing people to clear goals or training them and developing their skills, is instead excessively focused on “bonding,” as if managing is akin to being the head of a sorority. My guess is it’s both (a) and (b).

The monthly events are already too much, particularly if there’s pressure to attend. The weekend retreat crosses the line into ridiculous. If this were genuinely a work-focused retreat, they would need to (a) pay for the attendees’ time (since these are clearly non-exempt positions, not salaried exempt ones) and (b) cover their expenses. They’re not doing either of those things, so this is just a social trip.

Does your daughter like this job and want to keep it? There are jobs that would demand a lot less of her time and personal money! If she really wants to keep it but would rather avoid these events, one option is “my parents say I can’t work at a job that requires me to spend the money I’m earning so I can’t attend these events.”

2. Oddball interview questions

I came across an article that claims to compile the favorite interview questions of top design leaders. A lot of the questions are what you’d expect, but then there’s stuff like “what’s on your Netflix queue that you haven’t watched and why?” (I don’t even have Netflix!) and “how do you organize your closet?”

What do you make of this? As someone who’s just started to interview, how seriously should I take this list? Should I prepare for some of those strange questions as well as the expected ones when I have an upcoming interview?

Those are crap questions asked by crap interviewers. People who ask these sorts of questions often claim it gives them some kind of special insight into candidates; that is BS. What it does do is raise the chances they’ll hire people who they like on a personal level, remind them of themselves, or share their interests, meaning they’ll end up with a more homogenous staff. It’s a great opportunity to introduce bias into the process.

You don’t need to prepare in advance for questions like this. Most interviewers don’t use them and among the ones who do, you can’t predict what random thing they’ll ask — there’s no point in preparing to talk about your Netflix queue if what your crap interviewer is really going to ask is what’s inside your purse.

3. Employee wants to make jam

I run a news website that covers the food industry. I have an employee who has always harbored small ambitions in the space, which we approved— like making jams that he sold at several local events.

Now, he’s taking meetings with investors to expand that line of jams. It’s a small-time seed investor, but it’s a real company that sees business potential. My employee views this prospect as complementary to his job (gives insight into the industry we cover); I see it as giving the appearance of compromising his objectivity (and creating land mines for what he can’t cover). Even for a modest market launch, the demands of scaling up a product are considerable, if not all-encompassing — but he thinks two weeks’ PTO will cover it. And that’s probably the biggest red flag: He doesn’t see any of these issues, and even after extended discussion still doesn’t entirely get it.

All of this would concern me even if he was a great employee and he’s not. His work quality is erratic — sometimes great, other times the bare minimum — and his manager has spoken with him several times about this. Just before we learned about the jam investor, we spoke about whether we should put the employee on a PIP.

How should I approach this issue? I don’t want to appear punitive (you want to make jam, therefore we’re unhappy with your work). Even if his work were stellar, I’d be seriously alarmed by an employee who didn’t recognize, much less identify these complications — but the cluelessness around the jam and his job (despite prior criticisms of his work, he believes he’s doing great) has me feeling like I want to pull the ripcord.

You need — and should already have! — a conflict of interest policy. It’s really standard for journalists to have conflict of interest policies that forbid having a financial stake in the industries or people they cover. (For example, here’s the AP’s policy on financial conflicts of interest.)

You need that policy despite the situation with this employee, because other conflicts of interest are likely to come up in the future (or may have already come up) and you won’t necessarily know about them if you don’t have a policy requiring people to disclose them.

But the fact that he doesn’t even see the conflict of interest after you’ve discussed it is alarming, as is his belief he’s doing great despite serious performance discussions. The best thing to do is to be straightforward about all of it: “This is a conflict of interest and we can’t allow a reporter here to operate their own business in the industry we cover. You’ll need to pick between the two; you can’t do both. That’s non-negotiable. As you think it over, I want to be up-front that we’re at the point of needing to move to a formal performance improvement plan to address XYZ. I realize that might factor into your decision either way, so I’d be glad to let you take a few days and think it over if you’d like to.”

4. Explaining why I’m leaving my job

A year and a half ago, I was a mid-level manager in my industry. My dad was diagnosed and passed from cancer within a month’s time. A week after this, a former colleague I highly respected at the time reached out and offered me what sounded like my dream job from a financial and time aspect. I was skeptical as it would be a pay cut, but there was a schedule for raise considerations that I thought I could manage financially. I was vulnerable at the time from my loss and desperate to make something “more” of myself and so I stepped down from my managerial position (but stayed on at a lower level to make up pay discrepancies) and took the job.

Within a couple of months of starting, I was drowning in work that wasn’t communicated as part of the job and was continually expected to pick up new projects and create new system processes. On top of that, the whole structure was being reworked, which removed the previous dates for wage consideration I had been told about. I am very overworked and underpaid at the new job, and so have still been working my last job to make ends meet. The new place is extremely toxic on top of everything else, and I have been actively looking for a new job either back in my old industry or something new.

The issue I have run into is when people ask my why I left my previous position after 15 years, and why I’m looking for something else so soon. I have been told that telling the people whole scenario would make me to look emotional and lacking in judgment. So my typical answer has been along the lines of, “I took a chance to learn something new, and unfortunately I found that this line of work is not the right fit for me.” Despite my best efforts, I have been unable to find a new job. Financially I am stuck, and I can’t help but wonder if my answer to this question is what is holding me back in my job search. I have only had a few second interviews and no promising leads. I’ve been told my resume looks great, I have a lot of experience and great references, and they always sound so pleased with my interviews at the time, so I’m really not sure what’s holding me back besides this.

As long as you’re prepared to talk about why you’ve concluded this line of work isn’t for you, I don’t think that answer is holding you back. (And it’s definitely better to sum up the situation with something concise like this rather than get into all the details.) But it would also be fine to say something like, “I came on board to do X, but the job has turned out to be much more Y.”

5. Is my company violating overtime law?

I have a job that used to be on-call shift work and now is transitioning to hourly work. We only work one week a month. We used to work an average of ~10-20 hours in that week, but it really varied. I can’t think of a time it ever went over 40 hours in a week. Now they are asking us to significantly increase our hours, along with a pay raise. It’s essentially mandatory to keep this job. The new system would mean that people are being asked to work 50+ hours in a single seven-day period, unless they chose to swap shifts.

My questions are twofold. One, does overtime law protect periodic workers in our position? We all have other jobs, and this is not a job we work every week. Two, are there rules for our company having to use fair-play in deciding how a week is measured? For example, let’s say my one week a month is usually Tuesday-Monday. But they measure their payroll week as Friday-Thursday. I could have a situation where I worked 50+ hour over a seven-day period, but according to payroll I worked ~20 hours one week, and ~30 the next. How does overtime law impact this scenario?

No and no, unfortunately. In answer to the first question, no law prevents employers from assigning 50+ hours in a seven-day period, even if you’re only a periodic worker. The law assumes you’ll either accept or decline the job based on whether that works for you, but doesn’t prevent an employer from making that the job they’re offering. In answer to the second question, an employer is allowed to set their payroll week as any seven consecutive days they want (even if they choose it for the purpose of reducing overtime costs); however, they can’t keep changing it to get out of paying overtime. Once they pick a workweek, they’re expected to stick to it long-term.

Tupperware, the 77-year-old U.S. maker of food storage containers, warned that it could go out of business unless it can quickly raise new financing. What do you think?

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NEW YORK—Guaranteeing their weight-loss program would deliver permanent results, Noom officials announced Thursday they would issue a full refund to any new customers who failed to develop a full-fledged eating disorder in two months. “Noom isn’t like other weight-loss programs—we use psychology to make you hate…

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AMARILLO, TX—In a detailed tutorial on what they described as one of the most basic rules for handling a weapon, instructors teaching a local gun safety course Thursday stressed the importance of always making sure a firearm was completely unloaded into a victim before storing it. “Every last bullet in the magazine,…

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NEW YORK—Contradicting earlier recommendations on the proper amount of rest adults need each night, researchers at Columbia University released a report Thursday claiming that two hours of sleep was plenty for anyone who didn’t think psychosis was a big deal. “If you’re fine with completely losing touch with reality,…

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OTTAWA – Conservative opposition leader Pierre Poilievre has reached out publicly to Twitter CEO Elon Musk, asking him to label CBC as “government-funded media” and also if he wants to attend Poilievre’s birthday party happening at Chuck E. Cheese’s this Saturday at 2pm. “We must protect Canadians against disinformation and manipulation by state media,” Poilievre […]

The post Poilievre asks Elon Musk to label CBC as “government-funded media” and also to come to his birthday party appeared first on The Beaverton.

Welland, ON – In a big win for optometry patients around the country, the nation’s eye doctors have finally come clean, admitting there is no difference between lens number one and lens number two.  “For decades, we’ve been asking patients to tell us which is better: one or two,” says Dr. Elizabeth Harper. “I’ve seen […]

The post Optometrists finally admit there is no difference between one and two appeared first on The Beaverton.

Portland, Oregon – Walmart CEO Doug McMillon recently stated the rise in thefts from Walmart stores is very bad, unlike the hundreds of million dollars Walmart stole from its own employees. “Several stores in lefty states have had to close due to an increase in theft,” explained McMillon. “I think we can all agree that […]

The post Walmart CEO claims stealing is really bad, unless it’s wages from your employees appeared first on The Beaverton.

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has three segments. Here are bits of each of them:

• • Helluva Twist — CHARLES DICKENS and his writings are still being “interrogated” (that’s the word in use) by scholars, at least one of whom is almost electrified by what might be there.Jeremy Parrott, an antiquarian bookseller and a stalwart of the Dickens Society, says he has identified a supply of electricity that flows, in a literary way, through the people in Dickens’s novel David Copperfield. Parrott announced his discovery in the March issue of the Society’s Dickens Quarterly, with a jolting 27 pages of facts – and perhaps some conjectures – all wired together with the title “Electrical undercurrents in David Copperfield”….
  • Catatonia from Catalonia — Inspiration about medical knowledge can come from almost anywhere. Musical inspiration about the aetiology of pneumonia comes, for some people, from the song I’ll Never Fall in Love Again by Hal David and Burt Bacharach. Some people call it “the pneumonia song”. David died in 2012, Bacharach in February this year, neither from pneumonia: “What do you get when you kiss a guy? / You get enough germs to catch pneumonia….
  • Unmasked Advice — Imagine a restaurant host saying: “Welcome, diners! Tonight’s 78-course roast beef dinner includes generous portions of rotten meat, cardboard and solids that we are unable to identify. We are commendable for including (rather than excluding!) these ingredients and for telling you that we include them. We did a vast amount of careful work.” As you digest that, consider the Cochrane Report that led to misleading public outcries, such as this one in The New York Times: “the verdict is in: Mask mandates were a bust”. …

A spokesperson says the operator, whose name is not being released, admitted fault, saying he “was curious to see if ATO (Automatic Train Operation) would work.”

A shmick animated video for one of my earlier songs, done by the inextinguishable Rebecca Kartzmark!

Bec’s twitter: https://twitter.com/Kartzmark?t=5KKYbqsQTXLNzXV2MuSNig&s=09

Bec’s YouTube : https://youtube.com/@TheNumanumaeh

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
Interestingly they're both reading AI image generation subreddits and pretending it's not to see the pinups.

Today's News:

Due to rising prices, regressive attitudes toward pay raises, and my 2002 Honda Civic’s engine exploding, I’ve had to come up with creative ways to pay the bills. That’s why I’m announcing my Patreon.

I know what you’re thinking. “Pay for education? That’s not what public school is about!” But I want to reassure you I’m not putting your child’s education behind a paywall. I’m merely offering more to those who want to help me afford rent, groceries, and a used scooter for getting around town. Think of it as Education+.

To further assuage your fears, here are my Patreon levels.

$10 a month: Thank you for being a supporter. I’ll give you a personalized shoutout during roll call every Monday.

$50 a month: Pressure is poison to education. So let’s give your student an extra five minutes on every spelling and math test. Plus, three “phone a friend” lifelines to use throughout the semester if they need a little extra help.

$100 a month: For the music lovers. As non-supporters sit and read quietly, your student will explore rhythm and flow with cowbells, tambourines, and everyone’s favorite, the recorder. We’ll all get a valuable lesson in the difference between music and noise.

$200 a month: Bring back the science! While non-supporters are busy with worksheets on outdated skills like roman numerals, cursive, and telling time on an analog clock, your student will be learning useful STEM concepts like the food web, scooter repair, and how to balance a budget in the face of rising prices.

$400 a month: Parenting is hard, and you’re swamped. But now you can send your student to this once-a-week after-school class, where I have the tough talks for you. Sample topics include, “Where did the dog go?”; “Why doesn’t grandma remember my name?”; and the always difficult, “What’s a divorce?”

$1,000 a month: For the Ivy League climbers. Your support at this level means I can ditch my second job at Starbucks. My new side gig will be writing letters of recommendation for your child. As far as anyone will know, your kid pulled me from my burning Honda Civic on their way home from tutoring refugees. Support me at this level for the whole school year, and no admissions counselor or federal prosecutor will get the truth out of me.

I’m excited to see just how many of you are invested in your children’s education. These early years really set the foundation for later success, and you can’t put a price on that. The state certainly doesn’t.

CHICAGO—Sending the region’s 68 million residents into a state of alarm, confusion, and panic, the American midwest was reportedly battered by beautiful weather Thursday. “We’re talking about unrelenting blue skies and a light breeze you feel gently on your face—trust me, folks, you do not want to get caught in this,”…

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Several states recently passed laws legalizing genital inspections for trans children who wish to play sports in school. The Onion asked conservatives why they support state-sanctioned genital inspections for minors, and this is what they said.

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