Voters in Denton, San Marcos, Killeen, Elgin and Harker Heights overwhelmingly supported the local ballot propositions to decriminalize low-level possession. These moves followed Austin voters’ similar decision in May.
GOP donors spent millions to unseat Hidalgo, a Democrat who leads the state’s most populous county, and take back a seat they lost four years ago. Republican Alexandra del Moral Mealer conceded the race Wednesday morning.
Maxwell Frost, a 25-year-old Democrat, has beaten his opponent in Tuesday’s midterm elections to represent Florida’s 10th Congressional District as the first Gen Z member of congress. What do you think?
“The Menil Collection is pleased to announce Walter De Maria: Boxes for Meaningless Work, the first museum exhibition survey of the more than fifty-year-long career of American artist Walter De Maria (1935–2013). The show presents the artist’s remarkable exploration of space, time, and spirituality through works from the museum’s permanent collection, most of which have been recently acquired and never before publicly displayed.
De Maria actively participated in New York City’s avant-garde music and performance circles in the early 1960s. The artist’s radically simple works from this time, with their modest materials and construction, embody the up-and-coming ideas that led to development of the Minimalism, Conceptualism, Earth Art, and participatory art movements that shaped De Maria’s career in the years that followed.”
“Arturo Herrera: Constructed Collage will feature more than 20 artworks from Ruby City’s permanent collection, including several recent acquisitions on view for the first time. Celebrating Herrera’s expansive practice, the show will feature works ranging in date from 1998 to 2019, including collage, a cut felt wall-hanging, drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture and an offsite wall painting. The exhibition, curated by Elyse Gonzales, director of Ruby City, is the first to examine the enduring importance of collage through the artist’s ongoing use and expansive conception of the medium. Constructed Collage demonstrates how this art form continues to shape all facets of the artist’s practice.
Herrera became well known in the 1990s for his abstract collages that featured intricately cut forms taken from popular culture source material with portions of recognizable elements that only hinted at potential meanings. Over the years, he has continually mined this art form, viewing collage as the quintessential expression of, as he states, “our fragmented world which we make sense of by associative thinking.” As a result, all his work is deeply informed by collage, using it as a means of expression and guide. When making any of his works, no matter the medium, Herrera relies on a unique visual language rooted in the methodology of collage—cutting, fragmenting, layering.”
Desireé Vaniecia, “Am I Wrong?,” 2022, Flashe on canvas, 36 x 60 inches.
“Each of the seven new paintings in the exhibition Is This Living? explore one of the Seven Deadly Sins, the Christian tradition’s definitive list of humanly vices. They are each an intimate, personal experience of the artist’s relationship to the faith she was raised in, her relationship to herself and her inner motivations. The Dallas-based painter is known for her portraits, mostly of females, that evoke vulnerability and strength within the figures, either through posture, physical interaction, or compositional format.
Gesture and poses are presented as powerful, whether through sexuality or assurance, while facial expressions and anatomical detail are left reduced and neutral within empty or vague settings. The paintings presented in Is This Living? are densely packed with symbolism as each work becomes a thorough and personal exploration by Vaniecia of our complicated relationships with lust, envy, pride, wrath, greed, sloth and gluttony.”
Dave McClinton, “Heavy,” 2022, digital collage on paper, 48 x 32 inches.
“Ivester Contemporary is excited to present, PYRE, a solo exhibition of new work by Dave McClinton. PYRE is a continuation of McClinton’s Black Life series, an ongoing project which began in 2015 and aims to illustrate the inner life-cycle of Black people in America. This newest body of digital collages explores the idea that the anger of the African-American community is often portrayed as a threat, whereas the anger of ‘traditional’ communities is depicted as righteous. This paradigm stokes the fires we try to simultaneously hide and harness. McClinton’s intention is to seize this moment in history to create work that compels his audience to seek out empathy and activism for the sake of others, and to turn this spark into a fire.”
A work included in Lahib Jaddo’s show, “Collage songs and narratives,” on view at Charles Adams Gallery
“In March of 2020, my son passed away, and COVID locked us up. My world shattered. I stopped painting. I started making these collages to express simple ideas. Some are based on Middle Eastern songs, some on narratives in my head. It felt cleansing.
Lahib Jaddo is an Iraqi-born artist based in Texas who has worked across the mediums of painting and sculpture for over three decades. Lahib was born in Baghdad in 1955 to Turkmani parents from Kirkuk and Tel-Afar. The first of five siblings, she spent her formative years in Iraq and Lebanon before immigrating to the US in 1976, eventually settling in Lubbock, Texas, where she earned a Master of Architecture and Master of Fine Arts at Texas Tech University. She began her studio practice in 1990 and went on to teach for twenty years in the College of Architecture at Texas Tech University. Jaddo’s work initially focused on painting, but gradually shifted to mixed media and sculpture. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally and is the subject of the award-winning feature-length film, Jaddoland.”
The Houston Endowment, a private foundation that supports the city’s arts, public parks, civic engagement, and pre-K through 12th-grade public education needs, moved into a new, custom-built building earlier this fall. The Foundation worked with Weingarten Art Group to curate works of art for the new space.
Formerly housed on the 64th floor of the JPMorgan Chase Tower in downtown Houston (the tallest building in Texas), at the end of September the Endowment moved to its new building at 3683 Willia Street, at the edge of Spotts Park, west of downtown. The headquarters’ neighborhood is bordered by Buffalo Bayou, Montrose, and the Heights.
Designed collaboratively by Kevin Daly Architects, PRODUCTORA, and TLS Landscape Architecture, the 31,718-square-foot building boasts flexible collaborative spaces and an array of eco-friendly features, including solar panels and geothermal HVAC. Additionally, the new building is the first hybrid steel and cross-laminated timber project in the city. While the building likely meets LEED platinum certification requirements, the Foundation has determined that the investment needed to pursue the certification will be better spent towards its overall mission.
Ann Stern, the president and CEO of the Houston Endowment, told Glasstire that though the organization had art on the walls of its past offices, its acquisition of new pieces marks the beginning of the organization’s permanent collection. To take on the important process of building a collection, the Foundation first assembled an advisory council, which consisted of a few board members, the Foundation’s arts program officer, and a former board member. The group then submitted requests for proposals to four local art advisors. Ultimately, Weingarten Art Group was the unanimous choice.
The advisory council’s goals for the collection were to feature Houston-based artists and/or artists who have a strong Houston connection, and to choose artworks that reflect the idea of Houston as a vibrant and diverse city. The process started with Lea Weingarten presenting the council with a slideshow of about one hundred works of art. From there, the council voted on their top twenty pieces and Ms. Weingarten started conversations with artists. The first two works acquired for the collection were by Rick Lowe, founder of Project Row Houses, an organization which the Foundation has supported for decades, and Jamal Cyrus.
The works hanging throughout the building incorporate themes important to the Foundation’s mission, such as community, resilience, culture, and nature. All of the works were created within the last five years, many were made this year, and a few, like Julia Barbosa-Landois’ piece, were created specifically with the Foundation in mind.
Ms. Stern told Glasstire that the Foundation does plan to expand the collection in the future, and starting in the first quarter of 2023 it will create a rotating gallery which will feature commissioned pieces by emerging local artists. For this, the Foundation will pay artists to create and display new work, and at the end of the exhibition the pieces will be returned to the artists who can then sell the work.
See below for a full list of artists and artworks included in the Houston Endowment’s newly formed permanent collection.
Rick Lowe, “Untitled #011322,” 2022, acrylic and paper collage on canvas, 98 x 108 inches; and Delita Martin, “The Moons: Edition 8 of 9″ and “Night Garden: Edition 4 of 10,” both 2022, mixed media, 40 x 30 inches. Installed on the lower level of the Houston Endowment’s headquarters. Photo by Lawrence Elizabeth Knox
Ami Mehta, “Vibrant Emerald,” 2022, enamel on aluminum panel, 120 x 168 inches. Photo by Lawrence Elizabeth Knox
Julie DeVries, “Memory Drawing: Grasses in Shadow,” 2022, digital painting on vinyl, 88 x 340 inches. Photo by Lawrence Elizabeth Knox
Phillip Pyle II, “Forgotten Struggle Series,” 2022, giclee on paper, 43 x 32 inches. Photo by Lawrence Elizabeth Knox
Julia Barbosa-Landois, “Hold,” 2022, silkscreen, acrylic, and collage on paper, 42.75 x 72.75 inches. Installed in a meeting room at the Houston Endowment’s headquarters. Photo by Lawrence Elizabeth Knox
Gerardo Rosales, “Carnival,” 2018, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48 inches. Photo by Lawrence Elizabeth Knox
Mark Francis, “The Boys: A Coming of Age Story,” 2022, mixed media drawing on watercolor paper, 35 x 55 inches. Installed in a meeting room at the Houston Endowment’s headquarters. Photo by Lawrence Elizabeth Knox
Sherry Tseng Hill, “Still There Inside,” “Gini’s Dragonfly Wings,” and “Neither Day Nor Night,” all 2021, paper, 36 x 24 inches. Photo by Lawrence Elizabeth Knox
JooYoung Choi, “Dreamship Resilient,” 2022, original reproduction on vinyl, 102 x 140 inches. Another work, not pictured: JooYoung Choi, “Enough Room for Everyone Island,” 2022, original reproduction on vinyl, 102 x 140 inches. Photo by Lawrence Elizabeth Knox
Jamal Cyrus, “River Bends to Gulf (Double Time),” 2021, denim and cotton thread, 73 x 110.5 inches. Photo by Lawrence Elizabeth Knox
Kate Mulholland, “Paper Agates,” 2020-2022, laminated paper, (45) 7 x 5 inches (unframed). Photo by Lawrence Elizabeth Knox
Preetika Rajgariah, “love is an experience of infinity,” 2020, Auntie’s sari, acrylic + latex paint, yoga mats, 65.5 x 48 inches. Photo by Lawrence Elizabeth Knox
Matt Manalo, “Wave 01,” 2019, raw canvas, ink, charcoal, raw cotton, tracing paper, heavyweight watercolor paper, polyester fiber, wood glue on canvas, 21 x 12 x 3.25 inches & Matt Manalo, “Structure 02,” 2017, raw canvas, raw cotton, gesso, acrylic paint, graphite, charcoal, wood glue, gel medium on panel, 12 x 12 x 5.5 inches. Photo by Lawrence Elizabeth Knox
Disclosure: Glasstire is a grantee of the Houston Endowment.
The Houston area is seeing moderately drier and cooler air this morning, with lows in the mid-60s. We will continue a slight downward trend in temperatures until the arrival of a strong cold front on Friday that ushers in much colder air for the weekend, and beyond. It still looks as though inland parts of the area will drop down into the upper 30s by Sunday morning, so this should be our first real taste of what passes for winter-like weather in Houston, since March.
Thursday
Western parts of the area are again seeing some patchy fog, but this will burn off within an hour or two of sunrise as air temperatures warm. Highs today will likely be in the low 80s, with mostly sunny skies, and light easterly winds. Those winds will be transporting moderately drier air as a result of the overall circulation of Hurricane Nicole, which struck the eastern coast of Florida early this morning. Low temperatures Thursday night will drop into the mid-60s.
In this water vapor image, dry air is seen wrapping around the circulation of Nicole, and making its way into east Texas today. (NOAA)
Friday
Veteran’s Day will start out a lot like Thursday, and if you are attending any ceremonies during the morning hours the chance of rain is low. We will see the potential for at least some scattered showers during the afternoon hours, however, with the best chances during the evening hours before midnight. The front itself should move into the area, from northwest to southeast, during the late morning to late afternoon hours. As a result, highs on Friday will probably reach the upper 70s, with mostly cloudy skies. Temperatures will plunge overnight, into the 40s.
Saturday
Skies will be mostly sunny on Saturday, with highs topping out at about 60 degrees. Winds will be brisk, gusting out of the north at up to 20 or 25 mph, although these will start to ease off during the the afternoon and evening hours. Temperatures will bottom out on Saturday night, likely in the low 40s in central Houston, with cooler conditions further inland.
Low temperature forecast for Sunday morning in Houston. (Weather Bell)
Sunday
Skies should be partly to mostly sunny on Sunday, with high temperatures around 60 degrees. Lows on Sunday night will be about 5 degrees warmer that Saturday night as our air moderates somewhat.
Next week
Houston’s air will start to warm up, and become more humid on Monday in response to a more southerly flow. A low pressure system in the Gulf of Mexico is likely to bring a healthy chance of rain on Monday, as highs get into the mid- to upper-60s. But just as you think warm weather might be coming back, a reinforcing cold front will arrive later on Monday to bring winter-like conditions back. Most of the rest of next week will likely see partly cloudy days, with highs in the upper 50s to lower 60s, and nighttime lows in the 40s.
Fundraiser
On Tuesday Space City Weather kicked off our annual fundraiser, and we really appreciate the support so far. Head over here to our fundraiser page to choose from a selection of merchandise, or to simply donate money (select “make a donation only”). This is your one chance during the year to directly support the work we do!
I have been noticing for the last 18 months or so that my employer has been putting a lot of emphasis on their culture, most likely in response to the Great Resignation, but they have done little to change pay and benefits, or what I like to think of as the reason that I go to work.
There is nothing about my employer that is different from any other employer. The values and expected behaviors are rather cliché and there are no particularly interesting perks that you wouldn’t find in any other office. When it comes to pay, what we get at hire is usually good, but annual raises aren’t anything to write home about, and it sounds like our next round of annual increases will only be slightly higher than normal despite inflation (like 3.2% instead of 3%). When it comes to benefits, premiums for health plans have skyrocketed, and I’m noticing any benefits besides health plans and PTO are slowly being cut.
It feels to me like they are just trying to get everyone to drink the Kool-Aid and ignore that we are fall farther and farther behind the rest of market. In other words, they think a great company culture is a substitute for good pay and benefits. Am I being too cynical or am I seeing a potential warning sign?
You are not being too cynical.
Whether or not they really think the culture is enough to substitute for good pay and benefits isn’t really the point. (They might think that! People running organizations often have an incredible ability to delude themselves about things like that.) What matters is what they’re trying to convince you of and why, and it sounds like you’re seeing that pretty clearly.
I am not currently job hunting but am interested in keeping my ear to the ground on salaries across my industry. I frequently receive LinkedIn messages from recruiters with possible job opportunities and an invitation to have a phone call to discuss. Every time, I respond with, “To make sure we’re in the same ballpark and not waste anyone’s time, can you tell me the salary range for the role please?”
The response is either (a) silence or (b) refusal to give a straightforward answer.
This week, a recruiter’s response to this was: “Let me throw this back to you and ask what salary you would find acceptable.” I read that as, “Tell me the figure you’d accept and, if it’s thousands and thousands below what we would have offered, we can low-ball you.” I told them I was not interested if a simple answer on salary was not possible. They responded by saying conversations about salary were difficult when there were various company benefits to consider on top. Trust me, my mortgage lender would not take that as an answer.
Is there a better script to solicit an up-front number on salary, or are recruiters always going to be this slippery?
They’re going to stay this slippery until a critical mass of states pass the same sort of pay transparency legislation that California, Colorado, Rhode Island, Washington state and others (most recently New York City) have passed.
Or at least a lot of them will. Good recruiters have realized that they’re increasingly pissing off candidates and wasting everyone’s time, including their own, by not being up-front about pay. Unfortunately, there are still lots of bad recruiters out there who don’t see it that way.
Your “to make sure we’re in the same ballpark” language is fine. It’ll work with people who aren’t playing games. With people who are, there’s not really language that will get through.
However, sometimes continuing to hold firm after you get their non-answer will push them to budge. So when they turn the question around on you and ask what range you’re looking for, you can ignore that question just as they ignored yours and simply say, “I would need to know the salary range in order to move forward.”
Hell, if you want you can say, “I’m sure you know companies are moving toward salary transparency in order to combat salary inequities among women and people of color. I’d need to know the salary range in order to move forward.”
Sometimes that will work. Sometimes it doesn’t. But it’s a reasonable thing to say, and a useful thing for them to hear.
Join SPARC’s Heather Joseph for a chat with author Sarah Lamdan about the companies that control & monopolize our information.
Book Talk: Data Cartels with Sarah Lamdan & Heather Joseph Co-sponsored by Internet Archive & Authors Alliance Wednesday, November 30 @ 10am PT / 1pm ET Register now for the virtual discussion.
In our digital world, data is power. Information hoarding businesses reign supreme, using intimidation, aggression, and force to maintain influence and control. Sarah Lamdan brings us into the unregulated underworld of these “data cartels”, demonstrating how the entities mining, commodifying, and selling our data and informational resources perpetuate social inequalities and threaten the democratic sharing of knowledge.
About the speakers
Sarah Lamdan is Professor of Law at the City University of New York School of Law. She also serves as a Senior Fellow for the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, a Fellow at NYU School of Law’s Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy.
Heather Joseph is a longtime advocate and strategist in the movement for open access to knowledge. She is the Executive Director of SPARC, an international alliance of libraries committed to creating a more open and equitable ecosystem for research and education. She leads SPARCs policy efforts, which have produced national laws and executive actions supporting the free and open sharing of research articles, data and textbooks, and has worked on international efforts to promote open access with organizations including the United Nations,, The World Bank, UNESCO, and the World Health Organization.
Book Talk: Data Cartels with Sarah Lamdan & Heather Joseph Co-sponsored by Internet Archive & Authors Alliance Wednesday, November 30 @ 10am PT / 1pm ET Register now for the virtual discussion.
As we approach the season of office potlucks and other meals with coworkers, let’s discuss the many ways they can go wrong … from alarming cuisine to the person who takes an obscenely large share and never contributes anything of their own.
To kick us off, some stories from years past:
• “One of my old workplaces had a cookie baking contest, and the winner used store-bought dough. It became the source of gripes about cheating for years.”
• “I had a coworker who thought any treats were just for him. If breakfast tacos were ordered for my department, we’d usually offer other departments nearby any leftovers. As soon as he heard that leftovers were being offered, he’d go through and get *all* of the ones he wanted (example, all the brisket) and hide them in his desk drawer before the other department could get any. He’d also get in line first or near-first (he volunteered to help with setup), and would take massive amounts of what was there. If some folks didn’t get firsts while he was loading up his second, he’d say folks should have gotten there faster. Management did talk to him, but his answer was that he didn’t care.”
• “Our department used to have a huge holiday potluck every year. One coworker would always bring the same thing every year, a certain stew. But it wasn’t enough that he brought it; he hyped it up. Like, he’d send emails beforehand to the whole department alerting everyone that he was bringing his stew! On the morning of the potluck, he’d let everyone know what time the stew would be arriving! And send a special email thanking everyone that helped him do his job, and the stew was his repayment. It was like he believed the entire potluck revolved around his stew. (It didn’t.) Thing is, I don’t think anyone actually liked the stew. I think the only people who tried it were new people to the department that hadn’t tried it before.”
• “I used to work with an awful guy who used to dig his hand into bowls of catered food at our work lunches. Like pasta salad. it’s one thing to grab a few chips with your hand, but he’d put his dirty ass hand into a BOWL OF MACARONI. he was a total pig and if there was an email that said ‘leftovers from whatever meeting in the kitchen now!’ people would run to make sure they got there before old filthy hands got there because once he was spotted in the kitchen, all food was officially considered contaminated.”
In the comment section, please share your stories of potlucks, cooking competitions, and other office meals gone awry.
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Half of the universe is filled with expansionist alien civilizations, and it’s only a matter of time before they’ll reach us. OK, that sounded a little sensationalist. But it’s also the conclusion of a recent astrophysics paper. Let’s see how they figure this, and whether we should take it seriously.
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“This and That” is an occasional series of paired observations. See past “This and That” posts here. – Ed.
Today: Blue tiles
Teresita Fernández, “Stacked Waters,” 2009, cast acrylic, 240 x 795 x 561 inches, commissioned by the Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, through the generosity of Jeanne and Michael Klein, 2008.
Sarah Crowner, “Platform (Blue Green Terracotta for JC),” 2022, ceramic tiles (by Cerámica Suro, Guadalajara, Mexico), site-specific commission and installation for the Chinati Foundation
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No matter how original, innovative or crazy your idea, someone else is also working on that idea. Furthermore, they are using notation very similar to yours. – Bruce J. MacLennan
Good morning! Houston will see one more day in the mid-80s today, with slightly cooler and drier weather to end the work week. And then, straight from the blue white north, a cold front will arrive and smack the region into late fall or early winter-like conditions, potentially driving low temperatures into the upper 30s for inland areas by Sunday morning. After that, we’re unlikely to see daily highs warmer than the 60s for at least the next week.
On Tuesday Space City Weather kicked off our annual fundraiser, and the support so far has been tremendous. Head over here to choose from a selection of merchandise, or to simply donate money (select “make a donation only”). Some sharp eyed readers noticed a minor error on the Four Seasons of Houston t-shirt. Thank you for letting us know. Rest assured that will be corrected before the shirts are printed and shipped.
High temperature forecast for Wednesday. (Weather Bell)
Wednesday
With dewpoints nearly matching air temperatures, some parts of the region are seeing fog this morning. This will quickly burn away as temperatures rise. We are going to see another mostly sunny day, with highs likely reaching the mid-80s. Overall, today should pretty much be a carbon copy of Tuesday. Overnight lows might be a degree cooler, but again much of the area will drop into the mid-60s. Of note: Today’s high will probably be the warmest temperatures we see for the remainder of 2022.
Thursday
Some slightly drier air will begin to work its way into the Houston area from the east, and this should help bring temperatures and humidity down slightly. Look for highs of around 80 degrees, with sunny skies. Overnight lows should drop into the low 60s.
Friday
A cold front will arrive on Friday, Veteran’s Day. If you are planning to attend ceremonies that day, I think conditions will be alright. Some scattered showers are possible during the daytime hours, but this does not look to be an in-your-face frontal passage. The bulk of the drier air will be delayed, and unlikely to move into Houston until later on Friday night, when surface winds will kick up. The bottom line is that we can expect scattered daytime showers, with highs probably in the upper 70s. Rain chances increase during the evening hours, with drier and colder air moving in after dark, and rains ending overnight. Much of the area will probably see between 0 and 0.5 inch of rain before sunrise on Saturday.
How low will Sunday morning go? (Weather Bell)
Saturday and Sunday
We’ll wake up to temperatures in the upper 40s to 50 degrees on Saturday morning. Skies should start to clear out some by the afternoon. Highs will probably reach about 60 degrees, but it will still be chilly out with a northerly breeze gusting to 20 or 25 mph. These winds should die down over night, and with clearing skies lows will drop into the upper 30s for inland areas, and low- to mid-40s for most of the rest of the region. This probably will be out coldest night since mid-March. Sunday should be partly to mostly sunny, with a high of around 60 degrees. Sunday night will be a few degrees warmer than Saturday night.
Next week
Most of next week will feel fairly winter-like for Houston, with highs around 60 degrees, partly to mostly cloudy skies, and lows in the 40s or perhaps low 50s. Some scattered rain chances will be sprinkled throughout the week. Looking even further ahead I’d love to be able to offer you some early guidance about what to expect for Thanksgiving, but it’s just too early to have any confidence, and I’d be a turkey if I told you otherwise.
The norm at my org, like many, is to keep your calendar updated so that meetings can be scheduled without doing the “Are you available at X time?” dance. Because of this, I include non-work appointments on my calendar, and I typically mark them as “private.” In the past month, I’ve done this for two medical appointments, picking my dog up at the groomer, and once blocking the 4:30-5 pm slot to ensure I don’t get scheduled for a meeting and can leave work on time to make an after-work commitment. All of these absences are fine with my boss; she truly does not mind as long as our calendar is updated so we don’t get scheduled for a meeting we cannot attend and our work gets done.
However, she always asks what the private appointments are on my calendar. Just yesterday she chatted me: “What is the private appointment on your calendar for on Wednesday?” As far as I know, she was not in the process of scheduling anything with me for Wednesday or any other time this week.
Am I wrong in assuming that, if I marked them private they are … private? I mean, yes, she is my boss, and it is my work calendar, so maybe she thinks she should get to ask, but I would never ask someone that. If she needed info, she could ask something like: “I see an appointment on your calendar for Wednesday around lunchtime. Is that something that can be moved?” I don’t know if it’s relevant, but we are both women working in a female-dominated field, the same age, and have worked together for 2+ years. This boss also has some pretty significant boundary issues, which is what I’ve always chalked this behavior up to, but for some reason it’s starting to get under my skin.
Is this okay for her to ask because it’s on my work calendar? And if so, how do I mark myself as unavailable in Outlook but avoid these questions? Also, what is the best way to respond? In a previous job, we were told to mark PTO requests with “business that cannot be conducted on any other day” but that seems out of place here partly because that is not my style at all and because it’s me marking myself as unavailable, not a request. I’ve tried a vague, “Oh, I have an appointment,” but sometimes she pushes for more info.
No, it’s not okay!
It would be one thing if she thought the “private” stuff was work-related — like if you’re in a job where you have confidential meetings and don’t want to put “meeting about Jeremy’s performance issues” or “meeting to finalize layoffs” on your calendar where other people will see it. But it doesn’t sound like that’s the case, particularly given what you said about her boundary issues generally.
The next time she asks, try saying, “Oh, whenever I mark something private, it’s a personal thing, not a work thing.”
For most bosses, that would be enough. But it sounds like it won’t be for her, so you could handle it this way:
Boss: What is the private appointment on your calendar on Wednesday? You: Oh, whenever I mark something private, it’s a personal thing, not a work thing. Boss: But what is that appointment? You: Just a personal thing I need to take care of. If it’s creating a conflict, I can see if I can move it. (Or if you can’t move it: I can’t move it, but I can move stuff around the rest of the week if you need me to.)
Even nosy bosses will usually leave it there — you’ve just got to be willing to do that second round of pushback.
But if she does keep pushing to know what the appointment is, there’s no reason you can’t say, “Are you saying you want to know what the personal, non-work thing is?” … followed by, depending on her answer, “I’m pretty private about that stuff.” And maybe, “But if blocking off that time is causing an issue, let me know and I will try to change it.”
That’s just the one interaction though. You’ll probably be able to get her to back off in the moment (and hopefully without needing to get all the way to the end of that script), but you’ll still likely need to repeat the same exchange when she asks about other appointments in the future.
Assuming you do indeed find yourself having this exchange over and over, it’s also reasonable to say something like: “I’ve noticed you’ve been asking what appointments on my calendar marked private are. That’s always personal stuff that I prefer not to share at work. Is there a different way you want me to mark non-work appointments to make that clear?”
Or: “I’ve noticed you’ve been asking what appointments on my calendar marked private are. That’s always personal stuff that I prefer not to share at work. I’d be grateful if you’d assume that’s the case when you see slots marked that way. But if there’s a different way you want me to mark them, I can.”
With nosy bosses, it’s always interesting to ponder whether (a) their nosiness stems from thinking their position entitles them to poke around in your private business or (b) they’re nosy people in all areas of life and haven’t realized that nosiness toward someone they manage has a very different power dynamic than nosiness toward, say, their neighbor or their sister-in-law. I tend to think it’s about 70% B and only 30% A (there are a lot of nosy, boundary-violating people out there and some of them become managers) … but in some ways a manager who’s oblivious about power dynamics can be almost as bad as one who intentionally exploits them.
“The Republican Party outside of Florida has no message. No discipline. No leadership. No courage to confront the important issues head-on. That’s why they’re losing to literally brain-damaged candidates. We need a total overhaul.” — Conservative commentator Matt Walsh, November 9, 2022
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As a reasonable conservative analyst, I found myself shaking my head at the midterm results. By any measure, it should have been a Republican blowout. President Biden’s approval ratings are low, inflation is high, and the Democrats were barely hanging on to both houses of Congress to begin with.
But it wasn’t a wave—it was barely even a ripple. I am therefore forced to conclude that the Republican Party must conduct a thorough, unflinching audit of our electoral strategy. And when that audit is complete, I believe we’ll all agree: it’s time for the GOP to do a whole lot more of the exact same thing.
In senate race after senate race, the trend was clear: candidates in the mold of Donald Trump fell wildly short of expectations. During the next cycle’s primary season, we can play no more games: we must find candidates who are even more like Donald Trump. Pennsylvania voters made it clear that they didn’t want a celebrity TV grifter from out-of-state to represent them in Washington—when his name is Mehmet Oz. But can you imagine if he changed his name to something just slightly more populist? If anyone could connect with working people, it’s Dr. Trump.
In the House, several election deniers were summarily rejected, even in districts they should have won in a landslide. Here, they made the crucial mistake of expressing too much confidence in our electoral system. Yes, it’s a good start to tell your voters to wait until Election Day to vote because mail-in ballots can’t be trusted. But next time, let’s take it a step further, and tell voters to skip the election altogether. Then, when the results come in and the mainstream media claims we got zero votes, that will strain credulity even more than the idea that we could narrowly lose when absolutely everything was going our way.
Meanwhile, voters across the country showed up in unprecedented numbers to support pro-choice ballot initiatives—and lifted up a number of Democratic candidates along the way. I’ll admit, seeing that indisputable backlash to the Dobbs decision gave me pause. And after that pause, I wondered if someone should tell Samuel Alito to hurry up with overturning voting rights and giving state legislatures the unilateral power to decide federal elections? We wouldn’t want too many more votes or federal elections between now and then.
I find myself replaying the last few months over and over—thinking about our party’s full-tilt campaign against trans youth, our authoritarian, racially inflammatory rhetoric on crime, and our insistence on rallying behind candidates who either sympathized with Nazis, personally impregnated half of their home state, or both—and I keep coming to the same conclusion. It may feel satisfying to consistently give in to our most base ideological impulses… and that’s actually the end of the thought.
The one bright spot for Republicans, as always, was in Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis scored an enormous twenty-point victory. With 2024 around the corner, I think it’s obvious what we need to do with this momentum: vote overwhelmingly for Donald Trump again the second he calls DeSantis “Stinky Ron” on Truth Social.
It was a difficult night for conservatives, but if there’s a silver lining when you lose an election, it’s that you have an indelible moment of clarity. You get to take stock of all the information you’ve learned, and reassess accordingly. And there is no ambiguity here: the Republican Party needs to present a vision catered to a nation that feels we’ve gone off the rails. We need to avert the alarming course that this country is on and go back to a simpler, more reasonable era.
Message received: you want us to Make America Great Again. See you at Mar-a-Lago on November 15.
AUSTIN, TX—Reeling in the wake of a difficult loss in the Texas gubernatorial race, Democratic candidate Beto O’Rourke reportedly asked his advisors Wednesday if getting paralyzed by a tree might help his 2026 election chances. “Look, we’ve got to be honest with ourselves and admit something is holding me back as a…
PITTSBURGH–Speaking to the Republican candidate over the phone early Wednesday morning, a smiling John Fetterman reportedly asked Mehmet Oz if he would mind slowly repeating his concession for the fifth time. “I don’t know if you knew this, but I’ve been experiencing some auditory processing difficulties–would you…
NEW YORK—Following reports of the first-ever mass layoffs at Facebook parent company Meta, sources confirmed identical twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss spent a joyous Wednesday afternoon jerking each other off. “Make pleasure of me as we rejoice in Zuckerberg’s demise, my dear brother,” Tyler Winklevoss said as he…
Science fiction allows us to explore worlds of imagination and possibility, the bigger and the wilder the better. However, the line between smash hit and cult darling is hard to pinpoint, much less cross. The show that doesn't win this blindfolded coin toss is often doomed to go forgotten, its episode order cut short, and its effects budget cruelly slashed just in time to limp to a half-baked finale or worse, a cliffhanger.
It's a fate that often hits this genre harder than others because big concept science fiction shows can look like money pits to studios worried about their bottom line. Money makes it difficult for showrunners to realize their full vision, much less attract strong writers to help them on the way. Despite these hurdles, there are years of great science fiction lurking under an ocean filled with "Star Trek" yachts and waves of reality TV. Of course, not everything that's lost is worth digging back up. So we're doing the work of finding 12 of the best lesser-known science fiction shows that deserve the spotlight.
Hard Time On Planet Earth
Once upon a time, Martin Kove, best known as villainous Sensei John Kreese of "Karate Kid" and "Cobra Kai" fame, could've played the Punisher just as well as Jon Berenthal. With a face like a rock and a gift for the unforgiving stare, Kove playing a likable character would be shocking. How about a half-hour science fiction comedy about an alien convict sentenced to Earth?
"Hard Time on Planet Earth" is a relic of the late '80s, a Disney product loaded with the blatancy of the time — one episode takes place at Disneyland — that flopped like a Magikarp against the Elite Four. Kove plays "Jesse," a traitorous alien prisoner. His sentence includes an observer robot that looks like a pink flying snail. The robot is an idiot. The critics loathed it, which is fair, but that's also not reflective of the show's charm. It's a show ahead of its time that dared to take its absurd premise and have fun with it. Kove does a marvelous job of lampooning his own character type. It's utterly forgotten. It's not even on Disney+, and that's a shame.
V
The 1980s cult sci-fi series "V" includes a two-part miniseries that dares to go as grim as possible with its historical fascist parallels, the three-part "Final Battle" miniseries, and a weekly TV series. The 2009 two-season reboot gave it a good college try, but let's stick with the original. It's overeager with its concept, leaning hard into its evil space lizard Nazis with an enthusiasm that makes the whole thing thrive in spite of itself. With that blatant theme comes a timelessness that overcomes the huge hair and shiny nylon jumpsuits.
It's easier than ever to watch the Visitor Diana (Jane Badler) eat a live rat and think a politician would do it today to get a vote, going on to argue that the woke left is trying to give the eaten rat more rights than their reactionary base. The most astonishing thing about "V" is that the Visitors start by triumphing in terrible, familiar ways. The series goes on to follow the struggle to get Earth back, with all the deaths, setbacks, and terror that come with rebellion. It stumbles hard in places by the end, and it's not on par with "Andor" with its tale of strife and sacrifice, but it remains a lesser-known classic.
Alien Nation
"Alien Nation" is an excellent movie and a pretty good TV series. Both have the same premise: What if "In the Heat of the Night" was about literal xenophobia? The show doesn't try to ascend James Caan's excessively gruff cop, it eventually goes in a different direction — and it works. Matthew Sikes (Gary Graham) starts as tough and bigoted as Caan's iteration but has a lot more time to be drawn into the intricacies of Newcomer life. He's changed by his experiences, forced to recognize them as people. While it's never forgotten that the Newcomers are aliens, by the end, their differences are familiar and welcoming. It's a nice lesson.
George Francisco undergoes a bit of an unavoidable downgrade, going from Mandy Patinkin to Eric Pierpont, but his blander normalcy, again, benefits the character in the long run. "Alien Nation" suffered an early, "Firefly"-style death, but it's also one of the few canceled sci-fi shows to receive an unlikely rescue. Its plot was wrapped up several years later in a series of five TV movies.
Babylon 5
Better known than many of the shows on this list, "Babylon 5" still had the bad luck to be overshadowed by the curiously similar "Star Trek: Deep Space 9." With a fully outlined story mapped to multiple planned seasons, creator J. Michael Straczynski envisioned a grand epic, a science fiction homage to the depth and detail of "The Lord of the Rings."
Astonishingly, it succeeds. Over five seasons, we explore the fifth and last of the Babylon stations. All its predecessors ended in disaster. It's Earth's best chance at preventing another war like the one that nearly obliterated it. It nearly fails at its mission, as a great evil rises from an off-limits world. Against the backdrop of this sprawling drama, the series explores topics still all too relevant like bigotry, fear, and the rise of fascism. It's still beloved by its fans. Straczynski is still pushing for a reboot, put on hold by the buyout of Warner Brothers. Watch the original, streaming on HBO Max in full, and find out why we need more "Babylon 5."
Space Battleship Yamato
Don't turn your nose up at anime. Yeah, there's a lot of iffy stuff shoved out every year, but c'mon, how many cop shows do we need per night in America? Yet, as "The Wire" proves, there's high quality among the glut of police doing police things. Anime has major standouts worth everyone's time. For science fiction fans, the foundational work is "Space Battleship Yamato."
This is one of legendary director Leiji Matsumoto's earliest works, paving the way for his better-known space operas like "Captain Harlock" and "Galaxy Express 999." The Yamato is a lifeboat as much as it is a battleship, the last gasp of humanity. Its mission is to reach the source of a mysterious message offering a way to save an already ruined Earth. Brutal and complex, it's the series that paved the way for the war-scarred mechs of "Gundam" and the wrenching psychological damage of "Neon Genesis Evangelion." Like a lot of early anime, its first visit to US shores was via a mangled localization called "Star Blazers." And like other Japanese classics, "Space Battleship Yamato," with its princesses and planet destroyers, just might've inspired George Lucas more than he wants to admit.
Legion
It was easy to miss one of the best MCU-adjacent shows on television. FX, and by extension, Hulu's few Marvel series never achieved the public awareness of Netflix's offerings, nor did Disney ever throw the power of the Mouse behind them. It's a fate that's ended several excellent shows too early, including "Runaways" and "Cloak & Dagger." However, it's the forgotten "Legion" that may be the most painful sting.
Starring Dan Stevens as David "Legion" Haller, the mutant son of Charles Xavier, the series uses its faint X-Men backdrop to explore mental illness and trauma. David isn't who he thinks he is, nor does he understand what the forces around him want him to be — or even what those forces are sometimes. It's a complex, deeply psychological exploration of one of the franchise's most tormented mutants, a guy who doesn't always understand the impact of the things he's doing. "Legion" needs a fan's full attention for its biggest twists to land with all the import they deserve, and its three seasons tell an entire, if tangled, story. Satisfying and criminally underrated, Dan Stevens deserves his own canon MCU cameo to honor what he accomplished here.
Fringe
"Fringe" is the spiritual descendent of "The X-Files" and deserves to be mentioned in the same breath far more often than it is. As the show opens, the Fringe Division is relegated (with more respect than poor Mulder got) to investigating the wealth of weird crap going on in the world. Like its kin, the anthological nature of these early episodes quietly lays the groundwork for an intricate myth arc, crossing time and multiverses to tell a tale about families and about loving them enough to do anything to save them.
Anna Torv is the heart of the show as Agent Olivia Dunham, a capable investigator with a past she's not initially aware of. With her is an excellent cast that includes the tomato-munchin' Lord Denethor himself, John Noble and Lance Reddick, who uplifts everything he's in, even if it flops. "Fringe" even brings out Leonard Nimoy for one of his best roles, treating him as more than Spock and letting him showcase his complexity and depth as an actor in his final years. With five satisfying seasons, "Fringe" is a bigger — and a banger — and should never be forgotten by sci-fi fans.
Space Dandy
Everybody loves "Cowboy Bebop," the anime sensation that survived a pretty good Netflix live-action adaptation with its rockin' soundtrack intact. However, Shinichirō Watanabe's multiple follow-up series were never going to be "Cowboy Bebop 2: Beboping Harder," and that kept fans from falling as deeply in love with his next projects. "Samurai Champloo" made out alright, but "Space Dandy" goes almost entirely forgotten.
It's a riot of pulp sci-fi tropes, cheesy machismo behavior and all. The titular Dandy is a Han Solo with no child safety features. He's a butt man, a lech who knows what he likes and spends his free time ogling it at a questionably named Hooters knock-off. He's also an instinctive physicist, and one of his crew members is a sentient space cat — not that sentience gives them any smarts. Meow has an orange-brown blot on his head, and that's enough to qualify him as the occasional maintainer of the one brain cell all orange cats share. This is not a series for deep thinkers. It's here to have fun, and that's, well, just dandy.
Almost Human
Karl Urban and a cult sci-fi wonder that leaves him hanging ... it's weird that it's happened to him twice. The first is the ultra-violent glory of "Dredd," of course, but the second is a sedate little wonder from the creators of "Fringe" called "Almost Human." At one season of 13 intriguing episodes that showcased a grimy cyberpunk future of androids and ethical dilemmas, it got the "Firefly" treatment, right down to FOX airing episodes out of order.
As Detective John Kennex, Urban gets to serve the best Adam Jensen vibes a "Deus Ex" fan could desire. Kennex didn't ask for this: a 17-month-long coma, cybernetic prosthetics, and his new android partner, Dorian (Michael Ealy). Dorian is the heart of this too-short series, an exemplar of a line of droids that were too human for their makers' comfort. An anthological police procedural, it showcased some great stories. Slain cuties reveal the seediness behind genetic engineering, and a prescient episode with a live-streaming killer (guest-starring David Dastmalchian) are standouts. "Almost Human" was on the cusp of big reveals about its own myth arc when the plug was pulled. Check it out and discover why we're still bitter about its cancellation.
Orphan Black
Tatiana Maslany earned praise for her vibrant charm as Jennifer "She-Hulk" Waters, but she'd long since put in the work to master her brand of whiplash humor. "Orphan Black," a story about a sprawling conspiracy to master cloning, puts Maslany in the center as Sarah Manning, a clone with some unique characteristics. She also plays Beth, the dead cop that sets the series off, and Allison, a twitchy soccer mom ... and Cosima, a research scientist ... and Helena, a religious fanatic ... and Rachel, a clone who works inside the institute behind their genetics program ... and more clones — like, a lot more. You get the point.
Each clone is made distinct, not just in looks but by Maslany's masterful performances. And each one is being hunted down for reasons Sarah is racing to understand. The reasons for her complex new life allow discussions to range from the religious to the ethical. More than anything else, it's a wild ride uplifted by Maslany's performance and smart writing. It's the BBC cult show everyone's heard of by now but hasn't yet watched. It's worth it, and there's more coming.
Lexx
Picture it: your living room, late at night, at the end of the '90s. You're flipping through cable channels for something to watch, and there it is, one of the most bizarre things you've ever seen. It's a phallic spaceship that also looks like an incredibly detailed fly's head, and it's full of sketchy people — people that probably shouldn't be on TV. You double-check the channel. It's not some late-night Showtime softcore porn. It's the Sci-Fi Channel, and it's something called "Lexx."
"Lexx" is "Red Dwarf" by way of Quentin Tarantino's fetish diary. That's a compliment. There's something compelling about this show, which doles out an actual plot about eternal recurrence and multiversal good and evil in between its boundary-pushing sex romp set-ups. It features a cast of losers and dead people, most of whom are following their primal desires, not any noble cause. Yet, smartly, it uses this same basic humanity to put its villains on equal footing with their prey. Nothing is sacred in Lexx, not death, not the bathroom, and certainly not chastity. There's nothing else like it. That's probably for the best, but still, it's an experience to be cherished.
Sliders
There's no Time Variance Authority in charge behind the scenes of "Sliders," a series with a premise that would've made He Who Remains throw a fit. A little like Sam Beckett of "Quantum Leap," inventor Quinn Mallory (Jerry O'Connell), and a handful of people who never signed up for this, get lost in an unending parade of parallel Earths.
"Sliders" leaned hardest into the potential of its premise in its first two seasons, with episodes in which Elvis never died and dinosaurs claim San Francisco for their own a year before a Tyrannosaur clawed through San Diego in "Jurassic Park: The Lost World." Worlds of magic and alien invasion awaited the hapless protagonists, and the series earned enough love to survive a hop from Fox to the Sci-Fi Channel. But its rescue also led to a gradual decrease in quality, with iffy scripts and plot devices torn wholesale from popular sources. With a cliffhanger ending and a cast that's long since moved on — Jerry O'Connell is enjoying a well-deserved renaissance as Jack Ransom on "Star Trek: Lower Decks" — the end of the series is bittersweet. It's still a great ride.
I’m having trouble managing an expectation gap. Someone I manage, Elizabeth, is probably in the middle (maybe lower middle) of our organization’s performance ranks but is upset she is not on track for promotion.
Elizabeth is not the most skilled but she’s adequate and organized. Where she falls behind others is the volume of her impact. We’re in a highly competitive white collar company where it is not uncommon for top performers to work 50-60 efficient hours a week to go above expectations. They tend to be young, or child-free, or have a partner who has sacrificed their own career to support them. Or they are exhausted active parents. It’s a biased system, I get it.
Elizabeth has two small children so I sympathize that “going the extra mile” is maybe beyond her capacity. She works at most a 40 hour week and has expressed zero desire to further develop her skills or take on stretch opportunities when we’ve discussed what a promotion trajectory might look like. She has stated how she is already at full capacity in her work-life balance. I have no problem with her just meeting expectations. However, she has also been upset (to the point of tears) that her career trajectory is stagnant, complaining to me and others about the company and culture that makes it difficult for her to succeed. She has become increasingly disengaged and resentful about this, which doesn’t help how others perceive her for promotion either.
How do I help her reconcile all this? I cannot change the reward system of the company or capitalism. I want to show empathy for her and support her but the cold hard reality is that she is unlikely to improve her career trajectory without making some of the same sacrifices as our top performers or changing company/industry. Or just learn to gracefully accept it. Even just typing that to you sounds harsh. I can’t imagine the tears if I said it.
Ugh, there are two problems here … one of which you probably can’t do anything about.
The one you probably can’t do anything about is your company’s culture. But to be clear … this sucks. No one should have to work 50-60 hours a week (that’s up to an extra 50% every week) to be considered for a promotion. That’s an excessive amount of work for people to put in week after week, particularly if it’s the year-round expectation. So the culture — whether it’s just your company or your whole industry — sucks. If you’re in a position to push back on it, you should.
That said, it’s also true that if you go into a field like, for example, Big Law, you generally know what you’re signing up for.
The fact that Elizabeth is so out of sync with those expectations makes me wonder whether or not she did know what she was signing up for. Is this an industry-wide expectation, or is it more specific to your company? If the latter, did anyone talk to her about this during the hiring process so she knew what she was getting herself into? If not, that’s one thing to change going forward; make sure prospective new hires know.
Either way, though, that’s the conversation to have with her now. Sit down with her and speak frankly about the realities of the culture you’re working in. I can’t tell how frank you’ve been about it in the past, but strip away any sugarcoating you might have added to soften the message — she needs to hear the unvarnished, plain-spoken version. Lay it out as candidly as you can: “The reality is that people who get promoted here are working 50-60 hours a week, taking on stretch projects, and sacrificing personal time. I’m not defending that system — I think it’s a problem. Not everyone can do that, or wants to do it. It’s not the system I would have set up myself. But I want to be up-front with you that it is the culture here. I see you getting increasingly frustrated by your inability to advance, so I want to be really transparent with you about what it would take. I also know you’ve shared that you’re already at full capacity, so I want us both to be realistic about what that means for your advancement potential here so that you can make the best choices for yourself.”
You’re worried about tears, but it’s far, far more kind to spell this out than to dance around it. You’ll be doing her an enormous favor by laying these expectations as bare as possible, because if there’s any part of her that has avoided looking head-on at how this really works, coming face-to-face with it will help her make better decisions for herself, even if she does respond emotionally in the moment.
From there, it’s up to Elizabeth to figure out what she wants to do with this information. But the most supportive thing you can do is make sure she’s clear about it.
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