One of the more perplexing questions in all of the coverage I’ve done on RFK Jr. has been whether or not Kennedy is some misguided true believer or if this is all some grift for power, influence, and/or money. While most people who watch how RFK Jr. has operated on the topic of vaccines, for instance, both before and after he entered government, they assume he’s a real, if stupid, crusader. But they will tell you the same when it comes to processed foods and pesticides, two topics on which Kennedy has also crusaded for years, and two topics that have been noticeably absent or reversed now that he’s in government.

The pesticide topic was recently thrust back into the news. Trump signed an executive order that essentially demanded that two chemicals be produced in higher quantities: phosphorus and glyphosate. Kennedy then came out to cheerlead the executive order as well, which was odd when you consider what glyphosate is chiefly used for.

Trump on Wednesday night signed an executive order invoking the Defense Production Act to compel the domestic production of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides. Glyphosate is the chemical in Bayer-Monsanto’s Roundup and is the most commonly used herbicide for a slew of U.S. crops. Trump, in the order, said shortages of both phosphorus and glyphosate would pose a risk to national security.

Kennedy backed the president in a statement to CNBC Thursday morning.

“Donald Trump’s Executive Order puts America first where it matters most — our defense readiness and our food supply,” he said. “We must safeguard America’s national security first, because all of our priorities depend on it. When hostile actors control critical inputs, they weaken our security. By expanding domestic production, we close that gap and protect American families.”

Bayer-Monsanto has been the defendant in a number of lawsuits over its Roundup product. Specifically, those suits have been powered by claims that glyphosate causes non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a form of cancer primarily impacting blood cells. Whether or not you or I think those claims are true, Kennedy sure said he did, since he acted as counsel in some of these suits.

Kennedy, a former environmental attorney, notably once won a nearly $290 million case against Monsanto for a man who claimed his cancer was caused by Roundup. The executive order came down one day after Bayer proposed paying $7.25 billion to settle a series of lawsuits claiming Roundup causes cancer.

The MAHA crowd is understandably pissed. Building a career on these very concrete health stances, only to reverse course while in government to appease Dear Leader, is a fairly horrible look. And it’s actually a worst of both worlds situation, as his MAHA crowd is pointing to his failed promises and hypocrisy, while those who are generally his opponents are pointing out that this might be a stance in which he was actually acting rationally before pulling a u-turn.

“This was one of the few issues where Secretary Kennedy actually embraced credible science,” said Kayla Hancock, Director of Public Health Watch, a project of Protect Our Care. “But RFK Jr. tossed out his years of anti-pesticide advocacy and conviction like a used tissue to stay in the good graces of Donald Trump, who cares more about making his chemical company donors happy than protecting the public’s health. This makes it clear, Secretary Kennedy has no problem selling out his supposed value if there’s a quick buck to be made for special interest donors, or political points to be scored.” 

This seems as close to a solid answer to the question I posed at the start of this post as we’re likely to get. Kennedy, whatever else he might be, is not a true-believing crusader willing to hold firm to his beliefs. He simply does and says whatever will propel his influence and revenue. That’s it.

You’ve been lied to, MAHA people. Lied to and used to put in office the very people who have betrayed you. Let that sink in.

#Rowen #RoninWarriors

Crimelog: The case 'The Mysterious Disappearance of Cowboy Pat,' host of an alleged kid show, who's been missing since he dissappeared. #CowboyWho

Today's links

• Socialist excellence in New York City: The real efficiency is insourcing and ending public-private partnerships.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: UK antipiracy office will catch Firefox crooks; Batpole flip-top bust; "Order of Odd-Fish"; Scott Walker v fake Kochl; Billg wants to backdoor Microsoft; NSA spied on world leaders; Trump They Live mask; "Unicorns vs Goblins"; Covid German.
• Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

---

Socialist excellence in New York City (permalink)

In her magnificent 2023 book Doppelganger, Naomi Klein describes the "mirror world" of right wing causes that are weird, conspiratorial versions of the actual things that leftists care about:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

For example, Trump rode to power on the back of Qanon, a movement driven by conspiratorial theories of a cabal of rich and powerful people who were kidnapping, trafficking and abusing children. Qanon followers were driven to the most unhinged acts by these theories, shooting up restaurants and demanding to be let into nonexistent basements:

https://www.newsweek.com/pizzagate-gunman-killed-north-carolina-qanon-2012850

And while Qanon theories about children being disguised as reasonably priced armoires are facially absurd, the right's obsession with imaginary children is a long-established phenomenon:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-53416247

Think of the conservative movement's all-consuming obsession with the imaginary lives of children that aborted fetuses might have someday become, and its depraved indifference to the hunger and poverty of actual children in America:

https://unitedwaynca.org/blog/child-poverty-in-america/

Trump's most ardent followers reorganized their lives around the imagined plight of imaginary children, while making excuses for Trump's first-term "Kids in Cages" policy:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44518942

Obviously, this has only gotten worse in Trump's second term. The same people whose entire political identity is nominally about defending "unborn children" are totally indifferent to the actual born children that DOGE left to die by the thousands:

https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/usaid-shutdown-has-led-to-hundreds-of-thousands-of-deaths/

They cheered Israel's slaughter and starvation of children during the siege of Gaza and they are cheering it on still today:

https://www.savethechildren.net/news/gaza-20000-children-killed-23-months-war-more-one-child-killed-every-hour

As for pedophile traffickers, the same Qanon conspiracy theorists who cooked their brains with fantasies about Trump smiting the elite pedophiles are now making excuses for Trump's central role in history's most prolific child rape scandal:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_of_Donald_Trump_and_Jeffrey_Epstein

This is the mirror-world as Klein described it: a real problem (elite impunity for child abuse; the sadistic targeting of children in war crimes; the impact of poverty on children) filtered through a fever-swamp of conspiratorial nonsense. It's a world that would do anything to save imaginary children while condemning living, real children to grinding poverty, sexual torture, starvation and murder.

Once you know about Klein's mirror-world, you see it everywhere – from conservative panics about the power of Big Tech platforms (that turn out to be panics about what Big Tech does with that power, not about the power of tech itself):

https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/13/khanservatives/#kid-rock-eats-shit

To conservative panics about health – that turn out to be a demand to dismantle America's weak public health system and America's weak regulation of the supplements industry:

https://www.conspirituality.net/episodes/brief-maha-is-a-supplements-grift

But lately, I've been thinking that maybe the mirror shines in both directions: that in addition to the warped reflection of the right's mirror world, there is a left mirror world where we can find descrambled, clarified versions of the right's twisted obsessions.

I've been thinking about this since I read a Corey Robin blog post about Mamdani's campaign rhetoric, in which Mamdani railed against "mediocrity" and promised "excellence":

https://coreyrobin.com/2025/11/15/excellence-over-mediocrity-from-mamdani-to-marx-to-food/

Robin pointed out that while this framing might strike some leftists as oddly right-coded, it has a lineal descent from Marx, who advocated for industrialization and mass production because the alternative would be "universal mediocrity.”

Robin went on to discuss a largely lost thread of "socialist perfectionism" ("John Ruskin and William Morris to Bloomsbury Bolsheviks like Virginia Woolf and John Maynard Keynes") who advocated for the public provision of excellence.

He identifies Marx's own mirror world analysis, pointing out that Marx identified a fundamental difference between capitalist and socialist theories of the division of labor. While capitalists saw the division of labor as a way to increase quantity, socialists were excited by the prospect of increasing quality.

(There's a centaur/reverse centaur comparison lurking in there, too. If you're a centaur radiologist, who gets an AI tool that flags some diagnoses you may have missed, then you're improving the rate of tumor identification. If you're a reverse centaur radiologist who sees 90% of your colleagues fired and replaced with a chatbot whose work you are expected to sign off on at a rate that precludes even cursory inspection, you're increasing X-ray throughput at the expense of accuracy):

https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/pop-that-bubble/#u-washington

(In other words: the reverse centaur is the mirror world version of a centaur.)

After the mayoral election, Mamdani doubled down on his pursuit of high-quality public services. In his inaugural speech, Mamdani promised a government "where excellence is no longer the exception":

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/01/nyregion/mamdani-inauguration-speech-transcript.html

Robin was also developing his appreciation for Mamadani's vision of public excellence. In the New York Review of Books, Robin made the case that it was a mistake for Democrats to have ceded the language of efficiency and quality to Republicans:

https://www.nybooks.com/online/2025/12/31/democratic-excellence-zohran-mamdani/

Where Democrats do talk about efficiency, they talk about it in Republican terms: "We'll run the government like a business." Mamdani, by contrast, talks about running the government like a government – a good government, a government committed to excellence.

Writing in Jacobin, Conor Lynch takes a trip into the good side of the mirror world, unpacking the idea of socialist excellence in Mamdani's governance promises:

https://jacobin.com/2026/02/zohran-mamdani-efficiency-nyc-budget/

During the Mamdani campaign, "efficiency" was just one plank of the platform. But once Mamdani took office, he learned that his predecessor, the lavishly corrupt Eric Adams, had lied about the city's finances, leaving a $12b hole in the budget:

https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/01/mayor-mamdani-details–adams-budget-crisis-

Mamdani came to power in New York on an ambitious platform of public service delivery, and not just because this is the right thing to do, but because investment in a city's people and built environment pays off handsomely.

Maintenance is always cheaper than repair, and one of the main differences between a business and a government is that a business's shareholders can starve maintenance budgets, cash out, and leave the collapsing firm behind them, while governments must think about the long term consequences of short-term thinking (the fact that so many Democratic governments have failed to do this is a consequence of Democrats adopting Republicans' framing that a good government is "run like a business").

The best time to invest in New York City was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. For Mamdani to make those investments and correct the failures of his predecessors, he needs to find some money.

Mamdani's proposal for finding this money sounds pretty conservative: he's going to cut waste in government. He's ordered each city agency to appoint a "Chief Savings Officer" who will "review performance, eliminate waste and streamline service delivery." These CSOs are supposed to find a 1.5% across-the-board savings this year and 2.5% next year:

https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/01/mayor-mamdani-signs-executive-order-to-require-chief-savings-off

Does this sound like DOGE to you? It kind of does to me, but – crucially – this is mirror-world DOGE. DOGE's project was to make cuts to government in order to make government "run like a business." Specifically, DOGE wanted to transform the government into the kind of business that makes cuts to juice the quarterly numbers at the expense of long-term health:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2024/10/24/southwest-airlines-bends-to-activist-investor-restructures-board/

But Mamdani's mirror-world DOGE is looking to find efficiencies by cutting things like sweetheart deals with private contractors and consultants, who cost the city billions. It's these private sector delegates of the state that are the source of government waste and bloat.

The literature is clear on this: when governments eliminate their own capacity to serve the people and hire corporations to do it on their behalf, the corporations charge more and deliver less:

https://calmatters.org/commentary/2019/02/public-private-partnerships-are-an-industry-gimmick-that-dont-serve-public-well/

As Lynch writes, DOGE's purpose was to dismantle as much of the government as possible and shift its duties to Beltway Bandits who could milk Uncle Sucker for every dime. Mamdani's ambition, meanwhile, is to "restore faith in government [and] demonstrate that the public sector can match or even surpass the private sector in excellence."

As Mamdani said in his inauguration speech, "For too long, we have turned to the private sector for greatness, while accepting mediocrity from those who serve the public."

Turning governments into businesses has been an unmitigated failure. After decades of outsourcing, the government hasn't managed to shrink its payroll, but government workers are today primarily employed in wheedling private contractors to fulfill their promises, even as public spending has quintupled:

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-government-too-big-reflections-on-the-size-and-composition-of-todays-federal-government/

Instead of having a government employee do a government job, that govvie oversees a private contractor who costs twice as much…and sucks at their job:

https://www.pogo.org/reports/bad-business-billions-of-taxpayer-dollars-wasted-on-hiring-contractors

There's a wonderful illustration of this principle at work in Edward Snowden's 2019 memoir Permanent Record:

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/09/24/permanent-record-edward-snowden-and-the-making-of-a-whistleblower/

After Snowden broke both his legs during special forces training and washed out, he went to work for the NSA. After a couple years, his boss told him that Congress capped the spy agencies' headcount but not their budgets, so he was going to have to quit his job at the NSA and go to work for one of the NSA's many contractors, because the NSA could hire as many contractors as it wanted.

So Snowden is sent to a recruiter who asks him how much he's making as a government spy. Snowden quotes a modest 5-figure sum. The recruiter is aghast and tells Snowden that he gets paid a percentage of whatever Snowden ends up making as a government contractor, and promptly triples Snowden's government salary. Why not? The spy agencies have unlimited budgets, and will pay whatever the private company that Snowden nominally works for bills them at. Everybody wins!

Ladies and gentlemen, the efficiency of government outsourcing. Run the government like a business!

As bad as this is when the government hires outside contractors to do things, it's even worse when they hire outside contractors to consult on things. Under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the Canadian government spent a fortune on consultants, especially at the start of the pandemic:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/31/mckinsey-and-canada/#comment-dit-beltway-bandits-en-canadien

The main beneficiary of these contracts was McKinsey, who were given a blank cheque and no oversight – they were even exempted from rules requiring them to disclose conflicts of interest.

Trudeau raised Canadian government spending by 40%, to $11.8 billion, creating a "shadow civil service" that cost vastly more than the actual civil service – the government spent $1.85b on internal IT expertise, and $2.3b on outside contractors.

These contractors produced some of the worst IT boondoggles in government history, including the bungled "ArriveCAN" contact tracing program. The two-person shop that won the contract outsourced it to KPMG and raked off a 15-30% commission.

Before Trudeau, Stephen Harper paid IBM to build Phoenix – a payroll system that completely failed and was, amazingly, far worse than ArriveCAN. IBM got $309m to build Phoenix, and then Canada spent another $506m to fix it and compensate the people whose lives it ruined.

Wherever you find these contractors, you find stupendous waste and fraud. I remember in the early 2000s, when Dan "City of Sound" Hill was working at the BBC and wanted to try an experiment to distribute MP3s of a radio programme.

The BBC – an organization with a long history of technical excellence – had given the exclusive contract for web delivery to Siemens, who wanted £10,000 to set up a web-server for the experiment. Dan rented a server from an online provider and put it all on his personal card, serving tens of thousands of MP3s for less than £10. It turns out that letting your technical personnel do your technology development costs 1/1000th of what it costs to have contractors do it.

Running your public institution "like a business" is incredibly inefficient. Back when Musk and Ramaswamy announced their plan to cut $2t from the US federal budget, David Dayen published a plan to realize nearly that much savings just by attacking waste arising from running the government "like a business":

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/27/beltway-bandits/#henhouse-foxes

The US government's own estimate of the losses due to contractor fraud comes out to $274b/year – roughly the size of the entire civil service payroll (the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which Musk sadistically destroyed, accounts for 0.012% of federal spending).

Medicare "upcoding" – a form of fraud committed by companies like United Healthcare, the largest Medicare Advantage provider in the country – costs the public $83b/year:

https://www.medpac.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Mar24_ExecutiveSummary_MedPAC_Report_To_Congress_SEC.pdf

Congress has banned Medicare and Medicaid from bargaining for pharma prices, which is why the US government pays 178% more than other governments, for the same drugs, which are often developed at public expense:

https://aspe.hhs.gov/reports/comparing-prescription-drugs

The Pentagon is a cesspit of waste. It's not just firing spies and rehiring them as contractors at a 300% markup – that's just for starters. The Pentagon receives $840b/year and has failed its last three audits:

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4992913-pentagon-fails-7th-audit-in-a-row-but-says-progress-made/

The conservative version of "efficiency" cashes out to "efficient at extracting value from public institutions, workers and customers." Mamdani's (good) mirror world "efficiency" means providing great public service through investing in public excellence.

New York City is overdue for this kind of overhaul. Everywhere you look in the city, you find high price consultants making out like bandits and starving the city of the funds it needs to deliver. The Second Avenue subway spent more on consultants than it spent on digging tunnels:

https://gothamist.com/news/mta-plans-to-hire-186m-consultant-to-oversee-second-avenue-subway-construction

Mamdani has pledged to audit the Department of Education's 25 largest contracts (the DOE spends $10b/year on outside contractors). He's rolling out "fiscal training and certification" for any government employee involved in procurement.

Mamdani isn't pretending he can bridge the gap that Adams left in the city's finances through efficiency alone: to make up the difference, he is going to tax NYC's millionaires, and ask the state to "rebalance" its relationship with NYC's taxpayers (NYC contributes 54.4% of the state budget, but only gets 40.5% in return).

As Lynch writes, NYC was the birthplace of austerity-driven outsourcing, following from the city's bankruptcy in 1975. 50 years later, Mamdani is bringing that age to a close.

Mamdani knows what the stakes are, too. He called efficiency "the most paramount left-wing concern, because it is either the fulfillment or the betrayal of that which motivates so much of our politics":

https://www.derekthompson.org/p/what-speaks-to-me-about-abundance

Mamdani is reviving the tradition of "sewer socialism," a governing philosophy based on "bringing people into your politics by improving their lives in obvious ways":

https://jacobin.com/2025/12/digital-sewer-socialism-public-ownership

Sewer socialism, public excellence, real efficiency: these are the (good) mirror world versions of the right's obsession with "government efficiency." On the conservative side of the mirror, "efficiency" is an excuse for hamstringing government employees and turning their budgets over to lazy, crooked contractors. On the left's side of the mirror, "efficiency" is building capacity in democratically accountable institutions that care about helping every person, and who deliver tomorrow's excellence by making long-term investments today.

(Image: DAVID ILIFF, CC BY-SA 3.0, modified)

---

Hey look at this (permalink)

• The True North Strong And Speculative https://hugoclub.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-true-north-strong-and-speculative.html

• The Economic Democracy Project is hiring our first Program Director https://www.linkedin.com/posts/vera-franz_edp-program-director-jd-ugcPost-7429172997611003906-GmNW/

• A case study in civic fiction: A Gay Girl in Damascus and the structuring of cosmopolitan sympathy https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14648849261426443

• Your AI-generated password isn't random, it just looks that way https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/18/generating_passwords_with_llms/

• Skull Season https://fieldnotes.christopherbrown.com/p/skull-season

---

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrago UK anti-piracy officer assures Firefox she’ll catch the pirates who copy it https://web.archive.org/web/20060511105535/http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9075-2051196,00.html

#20yrsago Diane Duane vows to finish trilogy as a reader-supported web-book https://web.archive.org/web/20060630094910/http://outofambit.blogspot.com/2006_02_01_outofambit_archive.html#114069083471800451

#15yrago Order of Odd-Fish, a funny, mannered, hilariously weird epic romp https://memex.craphound.com/2011/02/23/order-of-odd-fish-a-funny-mannered-hilariously-weird-epic-romp/

#15yrsago HOWTO make a batpole flip-top bust switch https://web.archive.org/web/20110218013400/https://www.thenewhobbyist.com/2011/02/wireless-light-switch-or-bust/

#15yrsago Travel guide for American invalids, 1887 https://web.archive.org/web/20110225235315/http://www.butifandthat.com/guide-for-invalids/

#15yrsago Archive.org and 150 libraries create 80,000 lendable ebook library https://archive.org/post/349420/in-library-ebook-lending-program-launched

#15yrsago Scott Walker tricked into spilling his guts to fake Koch brother https://web.archive.org/web/20110226135536/https://www.salon.com/news/the_labor_movement/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/02/23/koch_walker_call

#10yrsago Bill Gates: Microsoft would backdoor its products in a heartbeat https://web.archive.org/web/20160223175618/https://recode.net/2016/02/22/bill-gates-is-backing-the-fbi-in-its-case-against-apple/

#10yrsago Wikileaks: NSA spied on UN Secretary General and world leaders over climate and trade https://wikileaks.org/nsa-201602/

#10yrsago Donald Trump They Live mask https://web.archive.org/web/20160224101815/http://www.trickortreatstudios.com/they-live-alien-donald-trump-limited-edition-halloween-mask.html

#10yrsago Unicorn vs. Goblins: the third amazing, hilarious Phoebe and her Unicorn collection! https://memex.craphound.com/2016/02/23/unicorn-vs-goblins-the-third-amazing-hilarious-phoebe-and-her-unicorn-collection/

#5yrsago German covid coinages https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/23/acceptable-losses/#Zeitgeist

#5yrsago A voyage to the moon of 1776 https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/23/acceptable-losses/#Filippo-Morghen

#5yrsago Malcolm X's true killers https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/23/acceptable-losses/#deathbeds-r-us

#5yrsago Private equity's nursing home killing spree https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/23/acceptable-losses/#disposable-olds

---

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Montreal (remote): Fedimtl, Feb 24
  https://fedimtl.ca/

• Oslo (remote): Seminar og lansering av rapport om «enshittification»
  https://www.forbrukerradet.no/siste-nytt/digital/seminar-og-lansering-av-rapport-om-enshittification/

• Victoria: 28th Annual Victoria International Privacy & Security Summit, Mar 3-5
  https://www.rebootcommunications.com/event/vipss2026/

• Victoria: Enshittification at Russell Books, Mar 4
  https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cory-doctorow-is-coming-to-victoria-tickets-1982091125914

• Barcelona: Enshittification with Simona Levi/Xnet (Llibreria Finestres), Mar 20
  https://www.llibreriafinestres.com/evento/cory-doc

• Montreal: Bronfman Lecture (McGill) Apr 10
  https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/artificial-intelligence-the-ultimate-disrupter-tickets-1982706623885

• Berkeley: Bioneers keynote, Mar 27
  https://conference.bioneers.org/

• Berlin: Re:publica, May 18-20
  https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp26-sprecher-cory-doctorow

• Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 19
  https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow.html

• Hay-on-Wye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
  https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2

---

Recent appearances (permalink)

• Making The Internet Suck Less (Thinking With Mitch Joel)
  https://www.sixpixels.com/podcast/archives/making-the-internet-suck-less-with-cory-doctorow-twmj-1024/

• Panopticon :3 (Trashfuture)
  https://www.patreon.com/posts/panopticon-3-150395435

• America's Enshittification is Canada's Opportunity (Do Not Pass Go)
  https://www.donotpassgo.ca/p/americas-enshittification-is-canadas

• Everything Wrong With the Internet and How to Fix It, with Tim Wu (Ezra Klein)
  https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-doctorow-wu.html

• How the Internet Got Worse (Masters in Business)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auXlkuVhxMo

---

Latest books (permalink)

• "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce

• "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).

• "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.

• "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

---

Upcoming books (permalink)

• "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026

• "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

• "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

• "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2027

• "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027

---

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America ( words today, total)

• "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.

• "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

---

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/

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

READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

ISSN: 3066-764X

From Austin to Lubbock to Houston, we asked Texans what’s motivating them to vote early in Texas’ 2026 party primaries — plus the biggest issues on their minds this election year.

A damaged Xcel pole owned sparked the Smokehouse Creek fire, the largest in state history.

A company is repurposing the batteries to store electricity and sell it to the grid when power from wind and solar dwindles.

High-cost housing in Texas’ third-largest city reflects challenges across the state, which has faced an affordability crisis amid extraordinary growth.

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

1. My coworker doesn’t want me to lift heavy boxes

I work in a supply store that sells a variety of goods and also does returns for a large, very well-known company. One of my coworkers, a middle-aged man named “Carl,” has attempted to stop me (a woman in my 20s) from moving the closed return boxes every time we’ve worked together, warning me “they’re heavy.” (Our computer system ensures that nothing weighs over 40 pounds). I’ve told him that I don’t mind moving heavy boxes, but it doesn’t seem to register.

Yesterday, when he told me not to take a full cart of boxes to the back room, I said, “You seem concerned about me moving the boxes, but it’s not a problem.” I didn’t smile, but I think I said it respectfully. A few minutes later, he called me over and said, “This is a male thing.” He went on to explain that he “wasn’t picking on me,” but “in my country, we don’t let our females lift anything heavy.” He also told me that he didn’t doubt my ability to lift the boxes, but still thought I shouldn’t.

Today, we went to the back room to unbox a recent delivery and restock the store. Carl made a big deal about putting together a cart of items for me to stock without anything heavy on it. He even had me lift one of the bins that only contained a few items to feel how light it was. Then, towards the end of the day, he tried to take the package of bottled water I was carrying, but I didn’t let him.

I don’t know if Carl doesn’t understand why I find this demeaning, or if he’s actually being malicious. Overall, he’s a friendly person and seems well liked in the store, so I’m leaning towards the first possibility, but that doesn’t make it less infuriating!

I know you’ve covered this topic before, but I feel like I’ve already used the scripts you’ve mentioned in other posts. Saying “I’ve got it” doesn’t make it stop, nor does asking Carl why he’s doing it, nor does ignoring him. Do you have any advice on how to proceed if/when this continues? The store manager is very reasonable, and I’d consider asking her to talk to Carl if it came to that, but I’d rather try and solve the problem on my own first.

“I know you don’t mean to be rude, but this is coming across very disrespectfully. If ever need help, I will ask you for it. If I don’t, please give me the respect of trusting me to do my job.”

If he tells you again that he doesn’t let women lift anything heavy, you can say, “At work, you should be treating men and women the same. Again, please respect that I know what I am doing.”

If that doesn’t work, then yes, ask your store manager to tell him to cut it out.

Related:
how to decline men’s help carrying things at work

2. Should I ask an employee about her computer background?

I have a direct report whose cube is open to the general office. The other day I noticed their computer background (attached). Having watched the entire series of The Good Place, I know exactly what this background is and what it represents. (Spoiler alert, everything is not fine and this is really The Bad Place). Does this mean they think of work as The Bad Place? Have they never seen the show and related to the general tone of “Everything is Fine” since the world is a mess?

They’re somewhere in their early to mid 20’s and I’m about 20 years older, if that matters. We do have semi-regular check-ins and they seem generally satisfied with their role. I feel I am pretty open and approachable as a supervisor. I have tried to figure out the language to ask if this has a deeper meaning, and the versions I tried on my partner at home all came out very Big Brother-y. Advice, please!

If your concern is whether it has deeper meaning about their satisfaction with their job, leave it alone. It’s likely just an expression of general cynicism and/or “the world is a mess / capitalism is a mess.” Probing into it would be putting too much weight on it and, yes, a little Big Brother-y.

However, if you’re concerned about the optics of it to others (particularly if she has a public-facing job where it could be pretty inappropriate in the sense of “we don’t telegraph our dissatisfaction to clients”), that’s not off-limits to raise.

3. How much detail should I share in a phone screen?

I’m a manager hiring for a position with a couple unusual aspects, and I’m wondering how much information to include when I’m phone-screening candidates.

First, the role is temporarily remote but will eventually transition to hybrid. This job is located outside our main service area where we don’t currently have an office space. So this person will initially work from home but once we establish a worksite, they will be in-office twice a week with the rest of the organization.

Also, for equity reasons, our organization doesn’t negotiate salary. Our range is $70k-$100k for the role, and starting salary is based solely on years of relevant experience. It is very rare for a new hire to come in over the mid-point of the salary range.

Much of this is described in the job posting as well, but in my experience, applicants usually don’t remember details other than the salary range.

During the phone screening, is it best to explain all of the above and allow time for questions? Or do I simply say, “This position is temporarily remote but will eventually transition to hybrid. Starting salary is $70k,” then move into the typical first-interview questions?

In other words, how much detail belongs in a phone screen so candidates can decide if the role feels like a fit, but don’t feel overwhelmed or discouraged?

You should share details about all of this. It’s exactly the kind of information where the details could make or break whether the candidate is interested in the job.

You shouldn’t just say “starting salary is $70,000” because that doesn’t give enough information for candidates who are looking for (and would be offered) more. Ideally you’d say, “The range is $70k-$100k and is based on solely on years of relevant experience. For a candidate with your background. I’d expect you to be offered right around $X. I want to be up-front that for for equity reasons, we don’t negotiate our offers. On your end, does it make sense to keep talking?”

For work location, ideally you’d share a likely timeline for them needing to be in the office since there’s a big difference between “you’ll be in the office sometime this quarter” and “getting an office space in your area is probably a few years away.”

Related:
employers say they appreciate that I tried to negotiate salary, but they won’t budge

4. Leaving for a new job when my boss is terminally ill

I’m at a small firm, and I am something of an executive assistant in addition to my main job. I worked very closely with a director at our company, as well as my grandboss, the owner/founder. Other than that, I’m a one-person department.

Last fall, my grandboss, who was my director’s long-time mentor, got very sick. He’s been taking a leave of absence, which has been somewhat fraught. I moved into more executive assistant duties for the director instead of for owner, and this long-suffering director has come to rely on me. Around new year’s, I reevaluated my goals and started applying for new roles, which had more to do with the consistent punching-bag nature of my position and almost nothing to do with the changes surrounding my boss’s illness. I’m pleased to say I anticipate having an offer very soon.

Things haven’t been improving for my boss, and I’ve learned today that he will be entering palliative care. I feel bad leaving for a new role and leaving the director in the lurch during this very sad and strange time. I don’t know anyone who has gone through anything remotely similar. I think I know what to do, that I should do what’s right for my career and take a good role if one comes my way … but I don’t have a sense of what’s a normal way to behave under these circumstances. Is this unusually heartless? Or would anyone else in my position accept a new offer?

It is not unusually heartless. You can care about your coworkers as people but still make career decisions that are in your best interests. (And for all we know, the director could be job-searching, too — if you turned down an offer out of loyalty, there would be no guarantee that she wouldn’t leave herself soon afterwards!)

Your obligations here are to give a normal amount of notice and transition your work as best as you can; no one reasonable would expect you to put your own career progression on hold.

I’m sorry about your boss.

5. Ashes at work for Ash Wednesday

I’m not client-facing and I work remotely, but if an employee were client-facing and they observed Ash Wednesday and the imposition of ashes, could an employer require them to wash off the ashes prior to any client or public meetings? I’m guessing not, but could the ashes be considered distracting? (For the record, I’m Christian and observe Ash Wednesday, but the imposition of ashes was never an option at the churches I attended, so I never really gave this any thought.)

No. The ashes are a religious observance, which employers are required to accommodate as long as doing so doesn’t cause them what the laws calls “undue hardship.” Courts have been clear that clients’ potential biases don’t qualify as “undue hardship” to the business (similar to how you also couldn’t decline to hire someone of race X or gender Y because clients might find their race or gender distracting, or discomforting, or so forth).

The post my coworker doesn’t want me to lift heavy boxes, how much detail should I share in a phone screen, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

Eating bacon was a bad idea!

The lieutenant governor’s request to delay renewing the camp’s license came hours after parents who lost children in the July 4 flood sued the state for its alleged failure to enforce an evacuation plan requirement.

A federal court ruling means the new Utah voting districts that give Democrats an improved shot at winning a U.S. House seat can be used in this year's election.

WASHINGTON—In an effort to protect visitors to the violently contested territories south of the U.S. border, the State Department advised American tourists on Monday to temporarily avoid shootouts with Mexican drug cartels. “While at this time, we see no need for American travelers to cancel their vacations, we do strongly recommend that they refrain from exchanging gunfire with pistoleros from the Sinaloa Cartel or any other drug-trafficking enterprise with paramilitary capabilities,” said State Department spokesperson Hannah Griffin, who added that the Mexican military’s killing of the leader of the notorious Jalisco New Generation Cartel had inflamed the region and made the situation far more precarious for tourists hoping to carry out targeted assassinations and public executions of collaborators. “We’re not officially prohibiting American visitors from ambushing a group of soldados in the back of a pickup truck and publicly displaying their severed heads to intimidate police who might investigate. But we are suggesting that U.S. visitors focus on keeping themselves safe and, for the time being, leave their AK-47s in their hotel rooms.” Griffin later emphasized that once the situation in Mexico had stabilized, American tourists would be welcome to resume murdering with impunity.

The post U.S. Tourists Advised To Temporarily Avoid Shootouts With Mexican Drug Cartels appeared first on The Onion.

Higher education faces looming threats from every direction. Dwindling enrollments. The demographic cliff. The enduring myth that professors have the time, inclination, and personal charm to brainwash the nation’s youth. Fire. Brimstone. Eternal damnation. The philosophy department getting merged with seven other departments, leading to your redundancy, your likely firing, and your doomed attempts to spin your PhD in poststructuralist theory into a job as whatever a “project manager” is.

But have you heard the good news? The college is rolling out a new strategic initiative.

We know the faculty feel overworked. Between teaching, research, advising, and ever-increasing but little-acknowledged service to the college, you’re beyond burnout. One more request for additional uncompensated labor and you might literally explode into a nerdy-ass ball of flame.

But the strategic initiative has a bigger plan for us all. You’re suffering now, but if you fight through the pain and work extra hard in support of the new strategic initiative, you’ll taste the sweet afterlife of a successfully executed strategic initiative. Once the prophecies of the strategic initiative have been brought to fulfillment, budget deficits will shrink, prestige and reputation will grow, that weird smell on the first floor of the student center will dissipate, and you’ll never be frazzled or beleaguered again.

Praise initiative!

A lot of you are probably wondering what the new strategic initiative is. Well, it’s complicated and hard to explain. It moves in mysterious ways. We’re building this plane as we fly it, as they say in the new strategic initiative biz. But fear not, because the strategic initiative will reveal itself in all its glorious details at a time when you are ready to comprehend it.

When we reach the kingdom of the new strategic initiative:

• The low enrollment shall be made high.
• The once apathetic students shall do the reading gratefully.
• Tweed blazers shall give “dark academia chic” rather than “thrift store clearance.”
• The US president shall cease his extortion, and the state legislators shall cease their content surveillance.
• The anxiety-induced eczema shall clear up, and your mother shall cease her intimations that law school would have been a better choice.
• The humanities departments shall be respected, or at least tolerated, or at the very least, the science departments will let their Humanities colleagues teach service courses like Medical Narratives and Medical Ethics, and maybe even History of Medicine.
• The art studio, once damp and unventilated, shall become exalted—as exalted as the shiny locker rooms of the recruitment-driven sports teams—unless the new strategic initiative involves cutting Studio Art in favor of a new Corporate Logo Design degree, but we’re not saying that is part of the new strategic initiative; again, all the details have not been worked out.

Thanks be to initiative!

Yes, we understand that some of you may feel that the new strategic initiative does not substantively address the college’s problems. That’s because those heretics don’t yet have a personal relationship with our Lord and Savior, the college’s new strategic initiative. All you need to do to attain that personal relationship is to welcome the new strategic initiative into your hearts.

And you can invite the new strategic initiative into your hearts by filling out the volunteer survey, which will arrive in your email shortly after this meeting. Time commitment and compensation are among the details that have not yet been worked out. However, the strategic initiative giveth and the strategic initiative taketh away, and we’d wager a guess that it giveth minimal compensation and taketh away loads of time.

Two-time WNBA champion Kara Braxton has died after being in a car crash in Atlanta. She was 43.

The post U.S. Populace Appoints Designated Survivor appeared first on The Onion.

Police are investigating Mandelson over documents suggesting he passed sensitive government information to Epstein a decade and a half ago.

A reader writes:

I have a few employees who have told us they do not celebrate birthdays, but they do sit to eat the lunch the company buys for the birthday person and then leave when it’s time to sing “happy birthday.” (One of them asks for cake after everyone goes back to work.)

These same employees say they do not observe holidays and do not attend parties (like the employee Christmas party), but they say they can receive the Christmas bonus that the company gives out.

Would the company be in the wrong not to invite them to the lunch or give them a monetary Christmas bonus since we are trying to comply with their religious beliefs?

Yes, the company would be 100% in the wrong.

Your employees are the experts on their own religious beliefs, and if they are comfortable receiving Christmas bonuses or eating birthday cake, then that’s how it works for them. The company has no standing to say, “Actually, we know better about your religious observances than you do.”

You can’t really claim that you’re trying to comply with their religious beliefs while overruling them about what that observance should look like.

It sounds like the subtext here is that you think they’re trying to get away with perks they somehow don’t deserve — like that they don’t really object to holiday celebrations when it can benefit them — but even if that were true, the stakes would be so low that it shouldn’t matter in the slightest. They’d be “getting away” with, what, eating cake without sticking around for a birthday song? Skipping a party? Who cares?

It would be different if the impact was greater, like if they said they couldn’t work Sundays for religious reasons and so other people always had to cover Sundays, but then suddenly they were willing to work on a Sunday when Rihanna was scheduled to tour your plant. Even then, you’d have a tricky time navigating that — because again, they’re the experts on their own religious observances, but it would at least be more understandable for it to raise some eyebrows.

But it would be astonishingly petty to try to withhold cake from them — and flat-out illegal to try to withhold the bonus on religious grounds.

The post if people don’t celebrate holidays for religious reasons, can we take away their holiday perks? appeared first on Ask a Manager.

Odds are she’s eating ramen noodles tonight.

The post Trump Invites Caucasian Half Of Alysa Liu To Visit White House appeared first on The Onion.

the future is still old news

...

description

Girls and Machines

• archive
• journal
• support/store

Time for yet another Q&A post, in which we answer your questions about area weather and Space City Weather itself. If you missed past Q&As, we keep an archive of them here. Submit your own questions via the Contact link on the blog’s home page, or post it to our Weather Talk topic on our Discourse forum.

---

Q. Every year for the past 20 odd years I’ve been raking leaves on my property in North Houston and this would normally stop by mid January. It’s mid February and maples and water oaks are shedding like crazy, not to mention that it seems like the drought made pines start dropping their needles like a month earlier. What is going on!?

A. First of all, I’ve noticed this phenomenon as well this winter, and have wondered the same thing. Second, I am not an arborist (although I do love trees). However, I do think the weather is involved here, and probably explains what has happened.

Live oaks typically keep their leaves well into winter, as you note. Then, they finally drop their leaves just as new ones are ready to emerge. So why is it happening later this year?

I would go back to our very warm weather in December (especially the second half of the month), followed by similar conditions through the first three weeks of January. This led to a delayed drop. Then, I suspect the Arctic fronts in late January and early February were a shock, causing most of our trees to lose all of their leaves at once. Our region’s lingering drought may well have also played a role. When you’re done raking at your house, would you care to come to mine?

– Eric

Q. We appreciate and rely upon your succinct forecasting and reporting our weather. However, we are frustrated by your haphazard timing each morning. We need to have your forecast by 7 a.m. and some mornings we have it, but often we miss it.

A. The only thing a lot of people really need before 7 a.m. in the morning is coffee, but I take your point.

Over the years the time I’ve posted on Space City Weather has varied based on the time I needed to get up and write a forecast before dropping one or both of my girls at school. That generally was before 7 a.m. However they’ve both graduated now, so there’s no forcing factor. Sometimes I “sleep in” until 6:30 a.m. or so, and this causes the post to be published later in the morning. There are also some days when the forecast is really complex, and I spend a lot of time trying to really understand things before writing a word.

But these are excuses, and in reality you are not the only person who has asked for this. So dear reader, I will commit to trying very hard to get the daily posts out by 7 a.m. There may be some mornings when I’m traveling for my day job, or when life happens. And I am not going to commit Matt to this deadline because he still has young kids.

But most days we’ll hit ‘publish’ by or before 7 a.m.

– Eric

Q. As a meteorologist, the usage of AI to make slop art is pretty disappointing. I think the comments on your posts about it tell you everything.

A. Wait, did we receive some negative feedback for the use of this image? I’m kidding. There were lots of comments and concerns, so I want to explain why we did so, how we use AI, and to try and allay reader concerns.

We have used AI-created images (always clearly labeled as such) only seven times in the history of Space City Weather, but most recent time we did so came on February 5th, here. This was, by far, the most controversial time. I used the image that morning because it was a humorous post, and I wanted a similarly “fun” image. I thought the AI-created image really fit the tone of the post, so I ran with it. It was a spur of the moment decision. This did not put a graphic artist out of business. Had I not used the AI-generated image, I would have just used a standard weather map or something.

I feel very conflicted about artificial intelligence, and its increasing prominence in our lives. A line in a recent op-ed in the New York Times really resonated with me: “”All of the people I love hate this stuff, and all the people I hate love it.” Basically, some of the most powerful business leaders in the world are aggressively pushing this stuff on us, and I don’t think they have our best interests at heart. I worry about the environmental implications. And I worry about the disruption to society a lot, and what the future is going to look like for my kids. So one one level, yes, I’m definitely uncomfortable with AI.

However, like it or not, this stuff is coming. And it behooves me—a perpetually online writer, forecaster, and journalist—to understand the technology and its implications. So yes, I experiment with AI tools and have found some utility in them. For forecasting, some of the AI-based weather models are quite good and Matt and I use them daily alongside traditional, physics-based models.

About one year ago we published an article outlining how Space City Weather will, and will not use AI. In that article, I wrote, “We have not, nor will we use any AI-based service for the writing of our forecasts. Very occasionally we may use an AI-based illustration, but if we do it will be clearly labeled as such.” That is the commitment we made to readers at the time, and we stuck with that, including our controversial use of an AI image a couple of weeks ago. However, I do want to reiterate that every word printed on this site in the past, today, and in perpetuity will be written by a human hand.

– Eric

Q. Houston’s such a big place, the weather is all over the place and yes, that pun was intended! Why do you only have 12 cities to pick from on your app? Why isn’t my city/town/neighborhood included?

A. Did you know that the city of Houston covers more than 600 square miles? It’s true! And that one of my favorite jokes about living here is that “Houston is an hour away from Houston”? “A big place” is something of an understatement …

This is one of our most-asked questions. When we first set out to build and release a mobile app for the site, we had to make some hard choices about which locations to include in the city picker (tap the 3-line menu on the upper left corner of the app’s home screen to see it). Eric and Matt tried to ensure that the region got wide-ranging coverage, but we only had five slots in the initial design. We were able to expand to a dozen in later updates, where we remain today.

Besides Eric’s & Matt’s judgement calls, there are some technical and design limitations. On most phones and tablets, we didn’t want to force users to scroll through a bunch of city names (though on smaller devices there may be a bit of a scroll), and we wanted to keep the app “lite.”

In addition, we use location-based conditions and forecast feeds from the National Weather Service, and if there is not a feed for a particular city, we can’t provide that data.

Your best bet if you don’t see your exact location in the picker is to choose the city closest to you. Yes, Houston’s spread out, but the weather source nearest you is very likely to have the conditions and forecasting info you need. For example, I live in the Montrose/River Oaks area, so I choose Hobby as my location. That works out pretty well.

And here’s a tip: The Houston item on the app’s list is Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH), so if you live around there you can choose it. (IAH is also Houston’s “official” weather station.)

One of the other reasons for our current approach is that we don’t track anything you do in the app, and that includes location. But we are considering changing that – location tracking may be added to a future version of the app as an opt-in feature. If you wanted to know the conditions and forecast at your current location, this feature would do that. But again, it would be off by default.

Also, we are looking at the feasibility of adding cities for every available NWS feed and letting users pick their 12 cities – or letting the app choose for you based on location, if you opt-in. A big under-the-hood change planned for this year could enable that. These are all proposals, nothing yet set in stone; let’s just say it’s … aspirational!

As always, thank you for using the Space City Weather app on your iPhone/iPad/Mac or Android devices. And don’t forget we have a dedicated topic on our Discourse forum for talking about the app!

–Dwight

Q. I’ve been dealing with some serious allergies. Have you noticed any data showing a surge in allergens like pollen or cedar? Does this seem earlier than usual for the season, or could it be tied to that big temperature swing from the hard freeze to the 80s this week?

A. This question tends to come up each spring, or late winter as it is in Houston. Is allergy season starting earlier than it has? There’s some evidence in research that says this is occurring as the climate warms. But looking practically at recent data specifically in Houston, it’s a little more mixed. Tree pollen is considered high once levels hit about 80 or so. But the first really, really bad day of spring typically hits when we get to around a level of 500. If you’re curious, the worst day we’ve had since we’ve tracked this back to 2017 was April 7, 2022 when pollen levels exceeded 12,000!

So when has Houston hit that first “500” of the season?

2017: January 4 and again February 9
2018: January 12, 23, and February 2
2019: January 24, 29, and February 5
2020: January 27 and February 4
2021: January 7, several more times through Feb 1, then not again til mid-March
2022: February 18
2023: January 6, 13, 24, and February 7
2024: January 2 and February 1
2025: January 31 and February 10
2026: February 12

What can we make of this? Well, for one it seems like we almost always get 1 to 3 bad allergy days before February. Usually that’ll be a bunch of cedar blowing in behind a cold front with strong winds. But we don’t really see our true “season” establish until around the first week or two of February. From that point of view, this year seems to be right on time, if not perhaps a little late.

The glaring outlier is 2021, when the mid-February freeze likely caused enough damage to trees to keep pollen from becoming an issue again til March and April. But as you can see from the chart, we are quite early in the game. We haven’t seen anything yet, and it’s likely the next 2-6 weeks will be rough for seasonal allergy sufferers.

– Matt

Q. For a while there, it seemed like Houston had a flood every year, sometimes more than one. That seems to have faded in the past few years. Is there a bigger-picture thing happening, or is it just the roll of the weather dice?

A. If you look at the history of Houston flood events, you’ll find a mix of all sorts of years and event types that triggered them. In some ways 2015 (Memorial Day) and 2016 (Tax Day) were just dumb luck thunderstorm events. Neither were “freak,” per se, but they had a sense of randomness to them.

Then, in 2017 Harvey was caused by a remnant hurricane and 2019 was a stalled out tropical storm (Imelda). You are correct that since then, things have tended to be a little calmer. Since 2019, Houston has only had one year of above average rainfall (2024), and of course that was tied heavily to one event (Beryl) and an active spring thunderstorm season. So just generally speaking, we’ve been drier than usual, reducing the overall odds of rain events.

Also, keep in mind that Houston is merely a dot on a map. Regionally, there have been some bad flooding events since our bad luck finally eased up. News of the recent massive expansion in floodplain coverage across Harris County, however, should give us all pause that while we’ve been more than deserving of a few years of calm, the pendulum will one day swing back again.

– Matt

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon said the release of the report would present a "manifest injustice" to Trump and his two co-defendants.

The National Weather Service called travel conditions "nearly impossible."

Mexico introduced tactical robot dogs as part of security preparations for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, with officials claiming the robotic units will assist police with surveillance, monitoring, and intervention operations during the international soccer tournament. What do you think?

The post Mexico To Deploy Robotic Police Dogs For 2026 FIFA World Cup appeared first on The Onion.

If passed into law, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act will create new barriers to voting in federal elections by requiring documentation of citizenship to register and imposing strict photo-identification rules at polling places. The Onion shares everything you need to know about the SAVE America Act.

Q: What is the goal of the bill?

A: To ensure the pristine integrity of American elections by making sure they never happen again.

Q: What form of ID can be used to confirm citizenship?

A: NRA membership cards.

Q: Is the Senate expected to pass the SAVE America Act?

A: Depends on which senators die between now and the vote.

Q: Where’s my birth certificate?

A: Did you check the bottom drawer of the living room cabinet? There should be a purple folder underneath all those old receipts.

Q: Why did Trump endorse it?

A: To stop the many thousands of immigrants who aren’t here anymore from voting.

The post What To Know About The SAVE America Act appeared first on The Onion.

OTTAWA – Following the closing ceremonies of the 2026 Winter Olympics, Canada’s athletes received an unusual message from President of the United States Donald Trump, stating simply “Give me all of your Olympic medals.” The blunt demand arrived amidst ongoing trade negotiations, and was delivered at 1am via Trump’s Truth Social platform. “Canada wouldn’t have […]

The post Trump demands Canada give him all their Olympic medals appeared first on The Beaverton.