Cowboy Who?

A student at Seabrook Intermediate and one from Clear Lake Intermediate are being charged with making a terroristic threat, a felony, according to a district spokesperson.

A 33-year-old man was arrested by Houston police for allegedly throwing the beer at the Texas senator. HPD said it was the only arrest of the day at the parade.

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

This post, is it wrong to remind coworkers to vote, resting your eyes at work, and more , was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

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

1. Is it wrong to remind coworkers to vote?

I’m taking the temperature on something that happened in a meeting last week. It was a virtual meeting with about 25 people. It is our custom, as people are logging in, to have chit chat. One of my coworkers said she wanted to take the opportunity to remind everybody that the mid-term elections are on Tuesday and provided a very common website link if anybody needs it to register to vote.

Another team member told her this was inappropriate at work, and she said she wasn’t asking people if they voted or who they voted for, just giving a reminder. The team member responded that he has voted in elections longer than she has been alive and doesn’t need her help. The person leading the meeting intervened and said, “Thank you for the information and let’s get into the agenda.”

This weekend my spouse and I were talking about this and we think the person running the meeting handled it well, but was it right or wrong to say this before the meeting?

In normal times, I would have thought nothing of it. Your coworker’s statement was non-partisan and pro-voting, not advocacy for a particular candidate or issue.

In current times, the atmosphere is so wildly poisonous around politics that it’s not surprising that it quickly turned heated. But the coworker who complained is the one who was out of line.

P.S. Please vote today.

2. Closing my eyes at work

I work in a grey cubicle in a grey building with no windows, no natural light, almost no human interaction, and the constant white noise of the air system. As a result, my supervisor has seen me close my eyes at my desk a few times and had sent me an email about it. I’m staring at a computer screen for eight hours, my eyes get tired! And I’m not actually sleeping! I just close my eyes for a minute or two, then I get back to work. How do I approach this? It seems so normal and human to me?

It’s normal and human to need to rest your eyes for a minute … but it’s also normal and human that if you walk by someone who’s at their computer with their eyes closed, it will look like they’re asleep.

Can you switch things up a little to avoid that impression? For example, can you turn so your back is to your door when you close your eyes, so it’s not as easily observable? Or is there another type of break you can substitute, like standing up and stretching, walking the long way around to the printer, or grabbing a beverage?

Again, it’s not that you’re doing anything wrong by resting your eyes for a minute. But it’s going to look a certain way to anyone who happens to pass by right when you’re doing it, so it’s smarter to head off that impression.

3. Our letter terminating an employee never reaches her

We had a new employee, Robin, who after six weeks abandoned her job. After three consecutive missed shifts (which stretched over a weekend, so it took a full calendar week) and no response to our phone messages, texts, and emails, based on our procedure we decided that she had voluntarily resigned and was no longer employed due to job abandonment. There was no PTO banked to pay out and due to how payroll dates fell, she had received her last paycheck in the middle of the week of missing shifts.

As part of the process, we mailed her a letter summarizing the situation and officially declaring that we had designated her as no longer employed due to job abandonment. The letter was mailed with tracking via the U.S. Postal Service. After five days of watching the tracking, it was clear that the letter was lost in transit. It never made it to its destination.

When mailing the letter, I had remarked that the closest post office to our work (Post Office A) seemed very disorganized, and another member of administration stated that she never went to that post office, always the next closest one (Post Office B). Post Office B happens to be the one that serves the area where ghosting employee lives. So one week after the first letter was mailed, I went to to Post Office B to mail a second copy of the letter (now noting that it was being re-sent on X date due to post office delay).

Once again, the tracking indicates that after three days, the letter disappeared into the abyss. It has now been 21 days since last contact with Robin and 11 days since we changed Robin’s status in our system. Robin’s former manager doesn’t want to post the new job until we know Robin has gotten the letter. I have called the USPS customer hotline. I have personally visited Post Office B again to ask them what we can do (answer: nothing).

So I mailed the letter a third time, this time via UPS. The letter now contains a notice that this is the third time it has been mailed due to mail delivery delay. I have been assured by UPS that the letter will be delivered tomorrow.

Did we have other options? If the two lost letters end up finally making their way through the system, Robin will receive this letter about abandoning the job three times, and I don’t want her to think that’s due to unprofessionalism on our end. Was there a better way to handle this, or is this just one of those series of unfortunate events?

Just bad luck. It made sense to switch delivery services after the first two attempts failed, which you did, and you included a note explaining the situation so if she does eventually receive the first two letters, she’ll have context to understand why.

If you hadn’t included that explanatory note, I would worry that it would look like you were inexplicably firing her over and over (and by multiple delivery methods!) but that note should put you at ease.

(I assume you’ve checked on her welfare in some way, such as through an emergency contact?)

4. Outplacement company is giving me bad advice

Like so many folks lately, I was laid off along with the rest of the team I was on. Part of my package included sessions with an outplacement group. So far the recommendations have been incredibly basic (look up companies in your area) or seeming out of touch with how things are done these days (try emailing recruiters and ask if they have jobs). What I would like to know is: is this normal? Would it be appropriate to call the outplacement company and ask for a different person or is the issue just their process? I’m certainly experienced enough that my resume and job search skills are very decent, but there’s no way that they are absolutely perfect. Even with plenty of time on my hands, I’m tempted to tell the outplacement company that I’ll call them if I need their support.

Yeah, a lot of outplacement groups are really bad. I’m skeptical that asking for a different contact will change that — they often have all their reps work from the same curriculum — although it won’t hurt to try and, if nothing else, it’s useful feedback for them to hear. What might be more helpful is telling your old employer that the service (which they are paying for!) has been subpar. They might not care terribly — providing outplacement services is often more a PR move than anything else — but who knows, they might.

5. Ghosted by my volunteer job

I’ve been a volunteer for an international nonprofit on a part-time basis for 2.5 years. One of our supervisors will be on medical leave for a few months and I was asked to interview to take over a few of their duties on a paid part-time basis. I interviewed a week ago.

I am actually am not very interested in doing the job (due to other circumstances) but they had told me that they wanted the successful candidate (only three of us were interviewed) to start in a week and I’ve heard nothing from them since the interview, so wondered if I should reach out to the HR people about this. HR was not part of the interview but was cc’d on email correspondence that set it up.

My disappointment at being ghosted like this has affected my enthusiasm for a main part of my job and I am pretty sure I’m going to step back from it. Do you think I should ask HR about why I was ghosted? I don’t want them to think it’s sour grapes if I didn’t get the job, but want to register my unhappiness at being treated like this.

It’s way too early to conclude you’re being ghosted! A week is nothing in hiring, and that’s true even though they told you they wanted the person to start in a week. It’s really common for interviewers to say that (and mean it) and then miss that timeline significantly, often by weeks. Give it another two weeks before you conclude anything.

If it does become apparent at some point that they ghosted you, then it would definitely be reasonable to tell HR what happened. Employers shouldn’t be ghosting anyone who interviews, and doing it to a volunteer (one who they invited to apply!) is particularly bad.

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KEENE, NH—Sighing as he checked his watch again, an armed conservative man monitoring a local polling place Tuesday expressed disappointment over how few people vote in midterm elections. “I had hoped a lot more voters would turn out for me to intimidate, but I guess some folks can’t even be bothered to show up and…

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WASHINGTON—Shortly after seeing a poll showing 40% of Americans are still convinced the 2020 election was stolen, Barack Obama announced plans Tuesday to take advantage of widespread belief in conspiracy theories by claiming that he was still president. “Look, if this country is seriously at a place where I can…

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This post, the gong, the missing reply-all button, and other weird things companies thought would boost productivity , was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

Last month I asked about weird and misguided things your company has done in the name of boosting productivity. Here are 12 of my favorite stories you shared.

1. The gong

“I had a boss (one of THREE CEOs at a tiny company) do a lot of reading on what other CEOs/companies were doing and decide that he should implement it without giving much thought to:
1) was it good in the first place?
2) does it make any sense for that thing to be implemented where we worked?
3) what bad knock-on effects could that cause?

We had a one-room completely open-office plan and all of us were on phones all day. It was already hard to hear candidates/clients with everyone talking all the time, but CEO had read that a sales company somewhere had a gong in the office and they banged it whenever they made a sale, which caused excitement and made people work harder I guess. He then purchased a gong and decided every time we recruited someone/got a recruitment deal, we had to come over and bang the gong, so all day long:

‘Hi is this Jane Sm-‘ *GONG*
‘Sorry. Is this Jane Smith? I came across your resum—’ *GONG*
‘Sorry. I came across your resume and thought you’d be a great fit for a position we have opening in finan–’ *GONG*

and so on. It didn’t last long but was awful while it did!”

2. The missing reply-all button

“After a reply-allpocalypse, they removed the reply-all button altogether from Outlook.

Someone pretty junior at a subcontractor sent an email to a list that had the entire company (thousands of people) on it and people were able to reply to that list with all the usuals: why am I on this? This wasn’t meant for me. Please remove me. Stop replying all. The volume was so enormous that it shut down our network.

The CEO was really mad and he had IT literally remove the button for reply all. Even though obviously this was an IT problem — that list shouldn’t have existed unrestricted and they should have been able to shut down the list/replies right away!

People freaked out about the loss of reply-all and then they started a task force for employees to come up with new ideas to prevent another reply-allpocalypse. All normal stuff like restricted access to large lists and I think there was also a warning/confirmation if you were replying all to a group larger than 8. And most importantly, IT implemented controls on their end.

It hasn’t happened again. Much to my disappointment because I love a good reply-allpocalypse.”

3. The color changes

“I once spent a full three weeks of work making minute changes to the workflow charts. Think: highlighter yellow bubbles become lime green, then yellow again because Susan doesn’t think lime green is eye-catching enough, but then Tom suggests maybe a soft shade of maroon? But then Paula says that maroon gives her a headache, so what about lilac? Ad nauseam.

This was all supposed to be part of an organizational push to review processes and increase productivity. My team decided that that meant reviewing workflow charts (good!) by making small aesthetic changes (mind-numbingly stupid).”

4. The group song

“My supervisor decided to boost morale (and therefore productivity) by having a ‘group song.’ He excitedly told us we were going to sing this song at each meeting and he planned to hire a professional choreographer to create dance moves for it. He wanted the song to be selected by employees, so he put out a call for nominations. I don’t think he got much of a response because he repeated his demand for nominations multiple times. Finally, weeks later, we got an email with four song options we could vote on. If I recall correctly, they were ‘Livin’ on a Prayer,’ ‘Country Roads,’ ‘Get Lucky,’ and ‘Don’t Stop Believing.’ Journey won and we were then forced to end every meeting by singing along to the song. He was clearly expecting us to act like we were doing karaoke at a bar, but instead everyone looked at the floor and mumbled along with the words awkwardly. I worked there for six more months and had to go through that awkward experience at EVERY meeting until I left. I’m just glad I got out before the choreographer came and staff were forced to dance along with the music as well.”

5. The mandatory lunch

“The financial organization I worked for back in the late 00s painted all the windowless break rooms red and burnt orange on the advice of some behavior specialist, and took out the comfortable furniture in there to discourage relaxation so people would get more work done … while also instituting a mandatory hour lunch break. Computers locked for an hour to stop people working through. It got to the point where people would eat in the car park, then management sent out emails telling people not to do that as it looked messy, so we’d all roam the nearby streets. We were in a weird industrial estate that had no food or coffee options within a 30-minute drive, I don’t know why we couldn’t just have padded chairs and normal walls.”

6. The aggressive sales

“One store I worked at decided that we’d sell more if we approached customers more. Those of us who actually worked with customers knew that approaching them typically got you blown off or worse, and the ones who wanted/needed help would come to you.

Management, who never listened to the floor workers anyway, decided the best way to accomplish this was to get on the loudspeaker and order the floor workers to ‘perform an ACN now.’ ACN = Approach Customer Now so it was a stupid acronym and redundant all at the same time.

It flopped after less than a week because they tended to call for an ACN when there weren’t enough customers in the store to go around, some employees (like me) refused to do it, and the customers caught on pretty fast when this announcement came on and every employee on the floor started swarming after them and they’d hustle for the nearest exit.”

7. The garbage cans

“We had a large garbage can and different recyclce/compost bins in the kitchen/coffee area. To decrease the amount of time people spent walking to the kitchen to dispose of their trash, garbage cans and recycle compost bins were placed in every hallway usually near the elevators. As soon as you stepped out, your nose was hit with the smell of garbage because they weren’t emptied out every day. Carpets were stained from leaking cups and containers because people didn’t always rinse them out because it meant a trip to the kitchen … but we were so much more productive.”

8. The video monitoring

“For three days in high school I worked at a greeting card shop. I never saw the owner, and was trained by someone who had only worked there a few weeks. This was pre-cell phones, and I worked hard all three days. On the fourth day, the owner called and said she had watched all the tapes and wanted to go minute by minute with me over everything I had done wrong. I quit on the spot.”

9. The meeting ban

“Our company has gone after all meetings after an employee survey has like 60% of people thought we had too many meetings. No one asked which meetings, or where they were located, just ALL meetings.

As a hybrid workforce, we often spend five minutes with some ‘water cooler’ talk. But that’s no longer allowed. We have to have very specific time limits on each agenda item, and meetings can be no longer than 45 minutes, with a preference for 25 minutes.

Well, literally NO one in leadership follows that. Directors and above regularly schedule meetings with no agenda, they go over, and generally waste time.

I believe the core issue with meetings is lack of prep, and a lot of meetings aren’t necessary. But instead we have these inane rules where people are getting yelled at (like they are asking for proof that a catch-all meeting I sometimes have with a coworker I work very closely with has an agenda) for not following directions, when it’s not being modeled by leadership.

But we have really long presentations about not burning out at work, and how to take care of yourself in the after hours, and achieving a work life balance.

it’s frustrating, and they think the new rules will help with productivity. But it’s just made us have multiple 45 minutes meetings in a week, most of which could be fixed with a well worded email and a 30 minute meeting.”

10. The initiatives

“My workplace keeps announcing these ‘initiatives’ to supposedly inspire us to be more productive. They come from various department heads who are people I’ve never met or seen. The dumbest was the ‘dance your pants off’ initiative that featured emails from these department heads that I’ve seen or met with badly photo-shopped pictures of their heads put on the bodies of clip art ballerinas. (There were matching posters in the office.) We were going to ‘dance, dance, dance our way into closing more cases’ and processing more transactions and letters. I really don’t know how it turned out. The current one is the ‘chipping away at our mountain of inventory’ initiative in which we are going to use our ‘picks’ to chip away at and mine things to get ‘gems’ and eliminate the mountains. Every week we get an email that says we’ve added more gems to something. They really don’t inspire me and they really don’t even make sense.”

11. The talking ban

“After law school, I worked as a clerk at an incredibly toxic family law firm. The managing partner brought in his wife as our ‘office manager/HR/supervisor’ who decided that walking one foot to your neighbor’s cubicle or asking them a question out loud ‘led to too much socializing,’ which was clearly affecting our productivity. Enter the IM only rule – quite literally, no one was supposed to talk unless it was an emergency and all communications between staff had to be via IM only. We were reminded that management could review IMs at all times and to keep conversations ‘brief and only about work-related matters’ (that was a direct quote). Funnily enough, though, that manager wasn’t that computer savvy and didn’t know how to monitor the IMs, so everyone had became even more unproductive, just over IMs. The managing partner had no idea why everyone was so quiet until he tried to ask a paralegal a question and she would only answer him over IMs. Man, that place was crazy. We also had cameras in the office, but you could only monitor them over a computer, which was located in my office(?) At least once a week, the manager would come into my office and pretend to ‘adjust the server’ while she watched what everyone was doing.”

12. The malicious compliance

“I had a boss who needed to know via email every. single. time. we stepped away from our computers (we were all fully remote). So I decided to comply 100% with her request.

I told her when I’m using the restroom, that I had to put cream in my coffee, that I’m going to put on a sweater bcuz I’m cold, I’m about to open my living room blinds, you get the point. Others did that too and after like 2 weeks, she said we no longer have to notify her unless it’s going to be over 15 minutes.”

1. You wonder how much this is going to hurt.

2. You lose track of your drinking.

3. Your stomach is in knots.

4. Holy crap!

5. You keep googling possible outcomes.

6. You fear seeing red.

7. Your phone buzzes with messages from concerned friends and family.

8. The word “probe” makes you flinch.

9. You hear too much noise coming from assholes.

10. You have no idea when the results will be in.

11. People keep saying, “What a mess!”

12. There’s got to be a better, less painful way.

13. There are some very close calls.

14. The night seems like it’s never going to end.

15. Shit! Is this normal?

16. You think about how things might be better if you were somewhere else. Like Canada.

Election night coverage: 1-16
Preparing for a colonoscopy: 1 -16

The Houston Astros defeated the Philadelphia Phillies to claim the franchise’s second World Series title, three years after the team’s sign-stealing cheating scandal that made them the most hated team in the MLB. What do you think?

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The representative from Houston said fellow Republicans admitted behind closed doors that the 2020 election wasn’t stolen, and he warned that such messaging could dangerously mislead voters.

The Houston Astros win their second World Series title as a 4-1 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies helps them clinch the seven-game series 4-2.

A former Miss Argentina and former Miss Puerto Rico revealed to fans online that they are married, two years after meeting at the Miss Grand International competition where both contestants made it to the top 10. What do you think?

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This post, boss confided family issues to me, I don’t want my horrible manager at my wedding, and more , was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

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

1. Boss confided family issues to me … and my manager is interrogating me about it

I have worked for a small company for just under a decade. The owner of the company is very active in day-to-day operations. During 2020, the owner’s teenage children started working random shifts at our company because they were going stir crazy at home. They are good kids and I have no issue with their work. They still come in during school vacations and summers.

During this time, I noticed behavior from one of the kids that was concerning enough to me that I brought it up to the owner. He confirmed my suspicion and told me the entire situation. He asked me to keep the conversation private and apologized for unloading his personal life on to me. The situation is something I have personally dealt with, so I was just glad he was aware and getting help for his kid.

Fast forward to now: I get unprompted updates on the kid (I worry I am the only person besides his wife who he feels comfortable talking to about it), who hasn’t been doing well. The owner is getting incredibly mentally fatigued by the situation. He has days where he is a total jerk and snaps over the littlest things and can be awful to work with. My manager is ready to strangle him since he’s also started to neglect certain aspects of the business (nothing major, but things that get annoying and create more work for the rest of us).

Since I know what is going on, I’ve had more patience and tried to get my manager to give him some slack. In retrospect, since I usually engage in my manager’s complaining about the owner, my response was a dead giveaway to her that I know something she doesn’t. I am now being interrogated by her on a weekly basis about what I know. I have not confirmed nor denied anything, but she guessed what the situation is on her own and asked me if I agreed. So she basically knows at this point even though I haven’t said a word.

I’ve told owner the manager is asking me questions about his kid and I am getting uncomfortable with it. He is refusing to do anything to alleviate the position he put me in. Is it fair for me to ask him to tell the manager something like “Kid is going through medical issues right now and I’m under a lot of stress” and apologize for acting like a jerk because of it? If she knew for certain what was going on, she would absolutely give him more grace than he’s currently getting, I would stop being questioned, and things would feel much less tense at work, too.

You can suggest it. You could frame it as, “I’m in a tough position with Jane. She’s really pushing me about what’s going on, and I’m uncomfortable knowing and being badgered by her about it. I understand you want to limit who you share the situation with, but you would make my life a lot easier if you’d tell her something. Could you tell her Alex is dealing with medical issues, or even just that there’s family stuff going on, and you’re under a lot of stress? I’m certain she’d back off of me if she knew, and she’d give you a lot more grace too.”

But frankly, your manager bears a lot of responsibility too. She shouldn’t be hassling and interrogating you, and ideally you’d say to her, “I’m really uncomfortable being questioned about this. This is Bob’s private business, we’ve crossed a line by speculating about it, and I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

2. I don’t want my horrible boss at my wedding

I work as a physical therapist for a small wellness company. I love my work and my clients and overall it’s very rewarding.

The problem is my boss. The company is led by the founder and her husband, and they are terrible people. They’re awful leaders, horrible communicators, narcissistic, greedy, and manipulative. Some of the lowlights of my time at this company include: sharing a bed with my boss at her insistence on a work trip when there was an empty sofa sleeper in the next room, my colleagues and me working 18-21 days straight because of staffing issues instead of closing the business for one of the seven days to allow us time to recuperate, constant gossip by the founder about other employees (including private medical information that no one had any right or need to know), a culture of intimidation around the topic of money, constant questioning about details of our personal lives, extremely shady financial practices, repeated violations of privacy, racist and transphobic remarks by the founder … I could go on. The only reason anyone stays is because the money is good. The founder also has very loose lips so we all know everything that’s going on in her marriage and with the company and none of it is good.

I’ve made the decision to leave, but I have about 6-8 months before I can quit. I’m planning to get married at the end of that time, and I’m adamant that I will NOT invite my bosses. I know the founder will ask me about the wedding and has already said she assumes she is invited. Do I keep my planning secret and pretend I don’t have the date set to avoid it? She’s relentless when anyone keeps something from her, as I discovered the hard way with a medical issue that I didn’t want to talk about. (She questioned my colleagues about it for two weeks, trying to find out what procedure I needed time off for, before finally cornering me and making guesses about what it was.)

As long as you’re willing to hold firm with your boss even if she’s relentless about wanting to be invited, you shouldn’t need to completely hide your wedding plans. But you’ll need to stick to saying, “We’re having a small wedding with only family” and “our head count is really low and we’re not inviting anyone from work.” However, if you think you’ll be in danger of caving — or if you just want to minimize how often you hear from her on the subject — then yes, don’t talk about it at work. It sounds like it’s going to come up regardless though, so be ready with the “only inviting family” line.

Also! I know it’s too late now, and working in an environment like this can wear you down and warp your norms, but you do not need to let anyone insist that you share a bed with them. You get to say, “No, I’m not going to do that” and take the sofa.

3. My coworker is preemptively telling customers about colleagues who were laid off

My company announced sudden layoffs today. Our department is customer-facing, where a small team of people manage accounts. One of my colleagues, Sam, started emailing his customers saying things like, “As you likely saw, Widget Company made the difficult decision to lay off staff and, as such, XYZ is no longer with us.” Our account management structure is such that Sam is the primary contact 95% of the time, and the secondaries who were laid off were only looped in by Sam for relevant escalations, so it’s not like the customers have to change the way they communicate with us. None of Sam’s customers ever asked what happened, and we weren’t told to reach out, we were only given guidance by HR on how to respond to direct questions about the situation. He also sent the messages less than an hour after the departures were announced. Am I right in thinking this person is totally out of line?

Unless someone told him to do that or he has the authority to decide on those communications on his own, yes, wildly out of line. Companies generally put a great deal of thought into how to message situations like this to clients and don’t want people taking it upon themselves to send out public announcements. (Also, less than an hour after the layoffs? I’m curious about what his agenda is.)

4. Should I stay in a new job where I’m miserable?

I started a new role with a different team and department at my large corporation in August, and so far it hasn’t been a good fit for me and I’m not sure it’s worth sticking it out.

It’s a very small team, but I really don’t interact much with my coworker or manager at all. We don’t have weekly team meetings and my work so far isn’t very collaborative; my assignments are given to me via email and I work independently to complete it. I didn’t get any formal training for most tasks. We are in office one day a week, but it is rare that I interact with my team while in office and often my manager and coworker aren’t there or leave mid-day (without notifying me most of the time, either). In addition to feeling pretty isolated, I don’t find that most my assignments are the best use of my years of skills and experience and, frankly, are quite boring. This is pretty different from my prior role and department at the company where there were at least weekly team meetings, a more collaborative work environment, and more work assignments that better fit my skills.

But on the other hand, my new position is a small pay and title bump compared to my last, and the team reports directly to top management. The company is also going through a notable business change which might be a good opportunity for me to be involved in this role at this time.

I am just unsure if it’s worth sticking around this miserable work environment long enough to potentially gain relevant experience that would carry me to my next role. So far, I don’t feel very confident that I’m going to get the support and opportunities that I had anticipated in this role. I also don’t think my manager or team will change how it currently operates. I wanted to stay on at least for the early part of the year so that I can receive my annual bonus, but I have concerns about my mental health further declining and impacting my work ethic.

It’s not worth staying in a job where you’re miserable just because maybe you might get relevant experience for your next role. There are other jobs that will give you that where you won’t be miserable.

5. How to throw a holiday party instead of a Christmas party

What are your tips for throwing a holiday party vs a Christmas party?

My work has a pretty entrenched Christmas party culture, where the party activities all revolve around Christmas themes, and I get the sense that they are struggling to figure out what to do if there isn’t a Christmas theme. What are some games/activities that an office could do together to make it a “we’re getting together to celebrate This Time of Year that is Not Exclusively Christmas”?

You don’t really need activities at all. You can just … get together for food and drinks. Lots of office holiday parties work that way! (Think other adult parties that are basically just social get-togethers without activities and games. Same thing here.) That said, I’m happy to throw the question out to readers for suggestions.

Meanwhile, some don’ts: Don’t treat Hanukkah as the Jewish Christmas (it’s not; it’s a very minor holiday that just happens to be around the same time as Christmas) and don’t let anyone claim that Christmas decorations are secular (they’re not).

Yordan Alvarez hit a moon shot that sent Space City into a frenzy, and the Houston Astros to their second World Series title.

(Image credit: David J. Phillip/AP)

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: 70 new text adventures are now online and available for playing — as a long-standing tradition continues. The 70 new games are the entries in the 28th annual Interactive Fiction Competition (now administered by the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation, a charitable non-profit corporation). With wacky titles like "Lazy Wizard's Guide" and "Elvish for Goodbye," each game offers its own original take on the classic choice-based text adventures, sometimes augumented with ambient background noises and even music. Each of the 70 games has some kind of fanciful "cover art" — one even generated using OpenAI's image-generating tool DALL-E. And you're invited to help judge the games! Just create an account, and then play and rate at least five of the games by November 15... Slashdot first covered the competition back in 2004. (And in 2006, Slashdot editor Hemos called interactive fiction games "some of the best I've ever played.") But this year the competition raised over $10,000 (so far!) to be distributed among the top two-thirds of entries, with the first-place finisher receiving $489 and each subsequent finisher receiving a little less, with the lowest-finishing prize recipient awarded $10. (And in addition, top entrants are each allowed to choose one prize from a pool of donations.) Game on!

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Personally, I find it liberating to think about how stupid it all sounds.

Today's News:

Encyclopedia Sciplayer made these two videos, each about a different Ig Nobel Prize winner:

“Why can itch can be relieved by mirror scratching”:

“How do wombats make cubed poo”:

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

"An Apple archivist has had his YouTube account disabled after Apple filed multiple takedown requests against his account," reports the blog Apple Insider: Brendan Shanks, owner of the Apple WWDC Videos channel on YouTube, tweeted that Apple had filed a series of copyright removal requests against his channel. The videos in question were decades-old recordings of WWDC events. "I still have all the original files (and descriptions, which were a lot of work!), and I'll be moving things over to the Internet Archive," Shanks posted on Twitter. "It'll take time though, and unfortunately videos get a lot less visibility when you're not on YouTube. "I wasn't super surprised this happened (there were a few takedowns a couple years ago)," Shanks mused in an earlier tweet. "I'm honestly more annoyed that it wiped out my personal YoutTube account and even YouTube TV, which I was just billed real money for. "A cease and desist in the mail would be much friendlier."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Try out my quantum mechanics course (and many others on math and science) on https://brilliant.org/sabine. You can get started for free, and the first 200 will get 20% off the annual premium subscription.

How much of what you hear about quantum computing is real promise and how much of it is hype? What is the "quantum winter" that so many physicists have been warning of? In this video I sort it out for you.

The Physics World article about quantum hype (which is a great read) is here:
https://physicsworld.com/a/the-quantum-hype-cycle-revisited/

The news item about IBMs mega fridge is here:
https://research.ibm.com/blog/goldeneye-cryogenic-concept-system

The paper about factorizing 21 on a quantum computer is this:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nphoton.2012.259

Dyakonov's book is here:
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-42019-2

The quote about the quantum winter from Hoofnagle and Garfinkel is from here:
https://slate.com/technology/2022/01/quantum-computing-winter-scenario.html

And their book is available here:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/law-and-policy-for-the-quantum-age/026A5CE2FE7FE277B94DA01A519B2DAD

The Linkedin post from Galitski is here:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/quantum-computing-hype-bad-science-victor-galitski-1c/

The piece from Gourianov in the Financial Times is here:
https://www.ft.com/content/6d2e34ab-f9fd-4041-8a96-91802bab7765

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00:00 Intro
00:37 Quantum Hype
04:58 How Does a Quantum Computer Work?
07:20 Problems With Quantum Computers
12:57 Quantum Winter
17:40 What Does It Mean?
18:20 Check out my Quantum Mechanics Course on Brilliant


#quantum #physics #science

HOUSTON—Following their victory over the Philadelphia Phillies to clinch the title, the Houston Astros credited their World Series win to the subject of a future MLB investigation. “We couldn’t have done it without the tactics that will be at the center of a wide-ranging probe by MLB officials roughly 18 months from…

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This is all kinds of hilarious if you’re aware of the history of the Motion Picture Association (MPA), formerly the MPAA. Basically, the group’s entire existence has been built around lobbying government for ever more ridiculous laws that protect the bottom line of the movie studios. In the late aughts, the studios decided they needed to fight for special “release windows” to make it harder for people to rent movies (this was the pre-streaming, DVD era).

Specifically, Hollywood had a pretty clear release window schedule (we’ll leave aside how the industry fought the existence of a “home” movie market all the way up to the Supreme Court, where they lost): movies get released in theaters. Many months later, DVDs (and VHS tapes) would be available to purchase at inflated prices. Many months after that, you could finally rent them at your local rental store. The issue in the late aughts was that a new entrant, Redbox, was bucking that last window by buying the DVDs… and just renting them out, relying on the first sale doctrine.

And, hoo boy, did the movie studios lose their shit. 20th Century Fox declared Redbox a menace and ordered its wholesalers not to sell to the company. Redbox and Universal went to court after Universal demanded Redbox wait 45 days after DVDs were released for sale to rent them. Warner Bros. then blocked Redbox (and Netflix, long before Netflix became a member of the MPA) as well. The studios insisted that these windows were vital to their own business interests.

How things have changed.

DVDs are now relics. Streaming rules the day. Netflix is a member of the MPA and one of the biggest “studios” around.

And… now, the MPA is freaked out about release windows. And how they might increase piracy. Gee, that kinda sounds like the thing we talked about a decade ago, when we pointed out that all these release windows that the studios demanded, were contributing to piracy.

So I find it absolutely hilarious that, as reported by TorrentFreak, the MPA is fuming at laws in France and Italy (almost certainly pushed for by theater owners) that require mandatory release windows. The MPA filed its usual overwrought list of concerns about “trade barriers” (historically, this has always been “copyright laws that are too weak”) to the US Trade Rep (USTR). And these mandatory release windows are part of their concerns.

In France, where the ridiculous “media chronology law” was recently updated so that streaming services had to wait 15 to 17 months after a theatrical release to stream a film (before that it had been three years). But now the MPA is suddenly concerned that these laws lead to piracy there:

Release Windows – France mandates the chronology of how cinematographic content is released. The media chronology was last updated in January 2022. However, several international and local stakeholders have argued that the chronology lacks flexibility, that the mandated release windows are too long, and that such windows exacerbate piracy. There are ongoing discussions to re-update the media chronology.

They’re similarly concerned about a release window law in Italy, which is currently at 90 days and is looking to extend it:

Release Windows – In 2022, the Italian government considered extending a 90-day mandatory release window to all theatrical films, including foreign productions. The Italian government introduced a mandatory window for Italian subsidized motion pictures in 2018. MPA is concerned about the impact of such an extension on a broad scale, as this mandatory window would have serious repercussions on producers’ ability to adequately market their works. It remains unclear at this stage if the new government elected in October 2022 will further pursue plans to regulate theatrical release windows.

So, everyone agrees with the MPA here that these mandatory release windows are really, really silly, and serve no one’s interests but theater owners’. But I find it pretty rich that the MPA is running around calling these “trade barriers” when it was just over a decade ago that they were fighting for the same sort of release windows, when they (falsely) believed they benefited the studios.

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

oneheadtoanother:

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

“Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor of Arizona, refused to commit to accepting the results of her election, using much of the same language that former President Donald J. Trump did when he was a candidate.” — New York Times

It has been brought to my attention that certain media outlets are speculating on whether or not I will accept the results of the upcoming election. I want to take this opportunity to clear the air and state on record that whatever the election outcome, as long as I win, I pledge to honor the results.

Furthermore, if I win, I will not undermine the democratic process. I firmly believe that the right to vote, free and fair elections, and a tradition of candidates graciously accepting defeat are the pillars that hold our democracy aloft. The founders of this great nation understood the importance of voting. It’s what makes our Constitution so unique. It’s what separates our country from the likes of China or Russia. Our founders gave us the building blocks to hold free and fair elections. And as long as I win, I vow to uphold the election process and carry on the traditions that our founders set forth so many years ago.

To be specific, if it is determined that I have more votes, I give you my word that I will not accuse local election officials, voting machine manufacturers, or even my opponent’s party of cheating. I will not cry foul.¹ When I win, I will accept the results graciously. On social media (after it has been announced that I have more votes), I will thank my opponent, my supporters, and this great state. And I promise not to post baseless claims of voter fraud from dubious Russian websites, immature memes, or even speculate that a cabal of lizard people are conspiring with world leaders to ensure that I never become governor.²

What if the election is close? What if the results hinge on a single district? Or perhaps a thousand votes? As long as I win, even if it’s only by a margin of ten votes, I promise not to request a recount. Frankly, as a fiscal conservative, as long as I win, I see no reason why taxpayers should foot the bill to count the votes a second time. The votes have already been counted once; we don’t need to count them again.³ I pledge not to waste a single dime recounting the ballots by hand.⁴ Or hiring my friends as “independent” consultants.⁵ Big government means big bureaucracy; I say let’s cut the red tape and stick with the initial results of the election.⁶

If I win, I also promise not to delay the election’s outcome. Citizens deserve to learn the results of an election in a timely manner. Keeping people waiting for an indeterminate amount of time is not fair. Therefore, if I win, I will immediately accept the outcome. Assuming I win, I will not drag my feet by appealing to the court system. I will not pressure local leaders to find votes in my favor or ask the attorney general to intervene.⁷ If it is determined that I won, I see no reason to obstruct the voting process in any manner.

My constituents can rest assured that regardless of the outcome, I will accept the election results as long as I win. In fact, to expedite the democratic process, I may declare victory before the polls close. I may even claim victory before polls open.

Thank you for voting and for trusting me to safeguard the democratic process.

¹ As long as I win.

² As long as I win.

³ As long as I win.

⁴ As long as I win.

⁵ As long as I win.

⁶ As long as I win.

⁷ Assuming that I have more votes.