Almost 50 years ago, a band made an incredible song about Inflation. Then the song was lost to the dustbin of history. Now, Planet Money is on a mission to make this record a hit.
It’s Halloween! Let’s revisit some Halloween questions from past years. (Also, there is an amazing interview coming later today with a haunted house cast member!)
1. My coworker goes overboard with grisly Halloween decorations
People in our office go bonkers over Halloween. Recently we were encouraged to decorate for Halloween. I would take that to mean a little black and orange garland, maybe a plastic pumpkin, right? Well, not hardly. People go overboard and apparently the only rule was no trip hazards in the aisle. The woman in the cubicle next to mine must have emptied out her storage area of Halloween decorations. Now there are gross bloody looking, ghoulish figures hanging from the ceiling above our desk space. There are skeletons with teeth, cobwebs strewn about, and a lifelike bloody head cut off at the neck with facial wounds and hair that appears to be matted with more blood, and a plaque with some sort of satanic looking symbol was hung up. Then she brings in a black cauldron that when plugged in emits what looks like smoke, gurgles, and has neon lighting. There is not a pumpkin in sight!
To me, it’s very dark and not the atmosphere or space that I wish to spend my day in for weeks and yet I have no choice. This is very disturbing. I complained to my manager about the dead people hanging from the ceiling and she just said they weren’t dead people! Everyone thinks this person is so cool because she has a lot of decorations and they ooh and ahhh over it all day long. What is wrong with this picture? This is a large professional corporate office — the finance office for a huge group of physicians, no less. The manager encouraged this and thinks it is just great good-spirited fun and I am looking around thinking, “What is wrong with people”? Too late now, but is this even normal?
Well, it’s pretty oblivious to the fact that not everyone is comfortable with macabre decorations, and I’m alarmed that your manager was so dismissive when she heard about your discomfort.
Do you have HR? They might be more receptive than your boss. But otherwise, next year you could try approaching your coworker ahead of time and explaining that you were creeped out by some of what she put up last time and ask if she’d be open to a different motif. If your sense is that she won’t care, you could try with your boss again, despite her lackluster response this year. I do wonder how clear you were with her; if you didn’t plainly say that you can’t comfortably work around that kind of grisly imagery, it’s worth restating it that way.
2. My office’s “kid-friendly” Halloween party was terrifying
My office held a Halloween party this week after hours (immediately after the work day in the office), and said in the invitation that kids and significant others are welcome. Some of us brought our young kids (ages 2-5 or so). When we arrived the signs were pretty ghoulish (dismembered bloody body parts, etc), and one employee, “Bob,” brought this very gruesome and realistic zombie puppet. It’s just as creepy as it looks in the video and it truly terrorized the kids in attendance. The parents are really upset, and would not have brought their kids if we knew that there would be this kind of adult Halloween horror.
The person who did this is otherwise lovely, and is also very close to the CEO. It’s not like management was unaware before it happened, I think they were just clueless about how inappropriate this was for a family event. Before Bob arrived, the CEO was telling people, “I heard Bob is going to bring his special friend Sally” (meaning the puppet). How do we address this with management? Its hard enough in our company for moms of young kids, and I don’t want us to be seen as spoil sports, but I am also really really not okay with the company saying this is a bring your kids event and then having something like this happen. Any advice?
Yes! Talk to whoever is in charge of party planning and logistics for your office and explain this wasn’t kid-appropriate at all! I’m guessing someone involved didn’t understand what is and isn’t kid-friendly and needs that spelled out more clearly. This won’t be you being a spoil sport; this will be you giving someone highly relevant info that they apparently didn’t have and probably would want. (Think if you’d done something similar — you’d want to know!)
You could say, “I think there was a disconnect between whoever said the party would be kid-friendly and whoever planned the decorations. It definitely wasn’t kid-appropriate for small children — my kids and some of the the others were really upset by the some of the gruesome decor and Bob’s puppet. In future years, can we be more careful about that? It of course doesn’t need to be kid-friendly but if we say it is, I want to be sure it won’t terrify our kids.”
Also, next year, make a point of raising this again in case people have forgotten or someone else is doing the planning. Mention that kids were scared last time, and ask for info about exactly what’s being planned. (Maybe talk to Bob in advance of next year’s too.)
I have an interview on Halloween. Would it be ok to wear a costume to show my fun spirit?
Nooooo. Unless you’re interviewing someone where “fun spirit” is a major and key job requirement, this would be a very bad idea (and even then, I wouldn’t do it).
While I’m sure there’s some interviewer out there who would appreciate it and think it’s awesome, there are far more who will find it off-key and inappropriate for a professional situation. Plus, you want the focus on your qualifications, not what you’re wearing.
4. Do I really have to wear a Halloween costume to work?
I am the assistant to the executive director of a nonprofit human services agency. The culture of the agency includes having the employees and the volunteers wear costumes to work on Halloween. In all of my long work history, wearing costumes to work on Halloween has never before been a part of the workplace culture. Part of my work involves interacting with the public, and my personal standards include the belief that it is not correct to for staff to wear Halloween costumes in the workplace, especially when interacting with members of the public.
When I joined the agency four years ago, I wore a black pantsuit on Halloween and purchased a witch’s hat, and kept the latter item visible next to my desk. I have followed this practice since that initial year, without engendering any negative comments from my manager or other staff members. Halloween is almost upon us again. In the last staff meeting, my manager reminded everyone to wear costumes on Halloween, and said that the staff members who wore costumes would get to go home early on that date, while anyone not wearing a costume would have to stay until the normal 5:00 closing time.
Going home early on Halloween is not a special treat for me, as I have work that needs to get done. I plan on following my usual practice of wearing a black pantsuit and bringing the witch’s hat to work. Although almost all of the rest of the staff, including the manager, show up each Halloween in new and specially purchased costumes, I believe that I am observing the letter of the office culture custom, if not the spirit. Am I under any obligation to go beyond my usual practice of wearing a black pantsuit and bringing the witch’s hat to work on Halloween?
I wouldn’t think so, not in any reasonable office. I mean, some might think that you’re being a bit of a party pooper, but it’s not something that should have any real ramifications for you at work. In fact, it seems clear that it’s not a requirement, based on your manager’s wording that people not wearing costumes will just work until their normal ending time.
That said, for what it’s worth, I think you’re probably being a bit too much of a stickler when you say that people shouldn’t wear Halloween costumes to work, especially if they’re interacting with the public. There are certainly some jobs where that’s true — for example, if you’re a doctor, you shouldn’t be giving patients bad news about their health while dressed as a giant banana or something — but for most jobs, it’s not inherently unprofessional to wear a costume, and if the culture of a particular office is one where people do that, that’s a perfectly reasonable way for that office to run.
None of that obligates you to dress up if you’d rather not, and anyone who gives you crap about that is being a bit of a jerk, since different people have different preferences around this stuff. But at the same time, just as they shouldn’t be judgy about your personal preferences on this, I’d urge you not to judge the people who enjoy dressing up as incorrect either.
The photo for our annual Christmas card is being taken on Halloween, prior to our office Halloween potluck, while people will be in costumes! (We are an medical software company, and our recipients include hospitals, clinicians, and universities.) Ugh. I feel that this is unprofessional, tacky, and weird — I don’t understand why we would use a clearly dated photo for our Christmas card. How, if at all, do I raise this concern to our higher-ups?
If you want to raise it, you can be direct about it: “I think it will look really out of place for the season if we send a Christmas card where people are obviously in Halloween costumes. What about taking the photo next week instead?”
But I wouldn’t worry terribly much about it. It’ll be a weird Christmas card! That’s okay.
I wore one fake flower on my hair at our wedding and I spent the entire evening extremely self-conscious about not accidentally crushing it. I don't know if I want that kind of anxiety on a full- scale.
A new study found that Americans die younger in conservative states than in those governed by liberals, with simulations showing that changing state policies to fully liberal could have saved more than 171,000 lives in 2019. What do you think?
There’s a new Apple II firmware update for the BMOW Floppy Emu Disk Emulator. This update makes a small but important change to the emulated drive behavior after a disk is ejected. The current track number and other drive state is now maintained even after a disk is ejected, and is applied to the next disk that’s inserted, instead of resetting the state to defaults. A few multi-disk Apple II games appear to rely on this behavior, including Captain Goodnight, which otherwise would fail after the insertion of side B. The new firmware is version 0.2W-F33 and 0.2W-F34. You can download the latest Floppy Emu firmware from the project home page.
Hovertext: Judging just by the sensation of concern, my brain regularly assigns greater than 25% probability to thousands of literally impossible dangers.
As first revealed back in May 2022, former "Doctor Who" star David Tennant is returning to the seminal sci-fi series alongside his former companion Catherine Tate as Donna Noble as part of the show's 60th anniversary. Whovians got their first glimpse of the returning Doctor in the recent special that marked the end of Jodie Whitaker's time in the TARDIS. However, Tennant's appearance in "The Power of the Doctor" wasn't exactly under the circumstances that Whovians expected to see the Tenth Doctor again. Well, I guess it's actually the Fourteenth Doctor now!
In the episode, due to reasoning that doesn't exactly make sense, the Thirteenth Doctor is forced to regenerate into the Master. During this time, when Sacha Dhawan's mad Time Lord is in control of The Doctor's body, she meets a mysterious figure in what is essentially the Ancestral Plane. Dubbed the Guardians of the Edge of Existence, this being inside The Doctor's consciousness can change their appearance to resemble her past regenerations -- specifically the first (David Bradley), fifth (Peter Davison), sixth (Colin Baker), seventh (Sylvester McCoy), and eighth (Paul McGann). They tell the latest incarnation of the Doctor that a Time Lord's body is still unstable following a regeneration, but especially after a forced one, so time is running out to take back their body.
The Doctor eventually regains her body thanks to Yaz, but is mortally wounded in her final confrontation with the Master. After one last ice cream cone with her closest companion from this era of the show, the Doctor's time has come to actually regenerate. And when she does, she emerges with the familiar teeth of Tennant's Doctor.
But how is that even possible? Some clues from some the past decades of the series might offer a bit of an explanation.
Once Upon A Time
Chris Chibnall's run on "Doctor Who" was largely met with a mixed response, but the former showrunner certainly had some big ideas with lots of potential. One thing that he addressed was the Doctor's ability to regenerate past the Time Lords' maximum regenerations of twelve.
By the time Chibnall boarded Team TARDIS, we had already learned of the existence of the War Doctor (John Hurt) and how each number after him from the Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) onward was technically off count, which means Nine was actually the character's tenth regeneration, Ten was the eleventh regeneration, and so on. With Peter Capaldi's Twelfth Doctor actually being the thirteenth incarnation of the character, the adventurer from Gallifrey should have died rather than regenerating into Jodie Whitaker's Thirteenth Doctor.
But as we learned from the season 12 episode "The Timeless Children," the Doctor actually isn't the Time Lord from Gallifrey that they believed themselves to be. They were discovered near a boundary to another dimension by Tecteun, a Shobogan traveller and scientist who became one of the first inhabitants of Gallifrey. Once she learned of the Timeless Child's ability to regenerate, Tecteun extracted DNA from the child and was able to splice it into her own body and her Shobogan companions so that they could regenerate as well -- but only up to twelve times.
On top of the revelation that the Doctor is the biological foundation of the Time Lord society, we also learned that a clandestine organization called the Division enlisted their services as they got older, then erased any memory of their missions. Basically, that would all explain the existence of the Fugitive Doctor (Jo Martin) and another incarnation we previously met with an affinity for art.
Twice Upon A Time
The Doctor having the ability to regenerate more than twelve times is a topic that has been explored in the past, but mostly in talking about the future. During the show's 50th anniversary special, titled "The Day of the Doctor," Steven Moffat introduced the Curator, a mysterious figure who resides in the Under Gallery and resembles the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker).
It's implied that the Doctor becomes this character when he retires from his adventuring ways and decides to become "a humble curator" for an art gallery. While speaking to the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) at the end of the episode, the Curator explains that he looks familiar because the Doctor never forgets a face and decides to revisit a few in the years to come, "but just the old favorites." So with this in mind, there is a precedent for a Doctor's regeneration to bring back an old look, even though Whovians didn't expect it to happen in the timeline for a good while.
Time For Another Familiar Face
Of course, David Tennant isn't the only familiar face returning for the upcoming anniversary special. Former companion Donna Noble will be making an appearance as well, but no one knows how that's even possible (except returning showrunner Russell T. Davies).
When we last saw Donna, the former temp worker from Chiswick was imbued with the totality of the Doctor's knowledge accumulated over the course of his long, wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey life. Since her human brain can't handle all of that information (despite using it to defeat Davros in the season 4 finale, "Journey's End"), the Doctor erases Donna's memory of him and all their adventures together against her will in order to save her life. If she does remember, the results could be fatal for her. We get a glimpse of this in the final episode of the Tenth Doctor's run when the "DoctorDonna" nearly regains her memories and a failsafe installed by the Doctor is triggered and knocks her out with a telepathic pulse.
When it comes to Donna's return, there's not a lot of information available. There's some speculation that "Heartstopper" actor Yasmin Finney's Rose is actually Donna and Shaun's daughter, but there's no confirmation on that rumor. If that is the case, then maybe Donna actually has retained some flicker of her time with the Doctor deep down in her memory. Or maybe Russell T. Davies just loves having a Rose in the TARDIS. Either way, Donna's presence alongside the Fourteenth Doctor cannot be a coincidence. And there's one more fan theory that may explain it.
Play Time
Based on Davies' warning of "Doctor beware!" after the casting, fans assumed that Neil Patrick Harris is playing a villain when he appears on "Doctor Who" next year. The showrunner confirmed this theory when he called NPH's character (via Den of Geek) "the greatest enemy the Doctor has ever faced." While that tagline could apply to a number of foes in the show's rogues gallery, if we're going by looks alone, the actor looks like an old-timey toymaker in some of the photos shared since the initial announcement. But what if he wasn't just any toymaker?
Originally a thorn in the First Doctor's side, the Celestial Toymaker was essentially a mix of John de Lancie's Q from "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and Marvel's Arcade. The villain -- who was played by Michael Gough (whom many may recognize as Bruce Wayne's butler, Alfred, from a number of Batman movies) in a mostly missing serial from the third season of the Classic Who era -- is an all-powerful immortal entity that takes joy in toying with his victims. Literally. He would bring people into his Celestial Toybox and force them to take part in his twisted games that were often impossible to win.
But are we really suggesting that Harris is playing this role just because he looks like a literal toymaker? Of course not! If he was in fact playing this classic character, then that could explain the return of Donna. It's possible that the Fourteenth Doctor finds himself in the Toymaker's clutches and the antagonist plucks Donna from the Doctor's memories to mess with our unknowing hero's head. The trauma associated with their adventures is surely enough to throw the Doctor off his game during his latest round with the Celestial Toymaker. Weirder things have happened on this show.
Unprecedented Times
Speaking of weird things happening on "Doctor Who," one of the more unusual occurrences in "The Power of the Doctor" was the Doctor's clothes regenerating along with their "new" face. As far as I can tell, that's never happened before in the series' long history. Even earlier in the episode when the Doctor is forced to regenerate by the Master, he emerges from the process wearing the Thirteenth Doctor's clothes. But during the regeneration at the end of the episode, the Fourteenth Doctor ends up in a variation of the Tenth Doctor's trademark attire of a trench coat over a suit.
At first, I thought that this could have been the Celestial Toymaker's doing as well. Maybe he made it look like the Doctor reverted to an "old favorite" just to mess with him. But then when Russell T. Davies and the rest of the official "Doctor Who" channels started referring to Tennant as the Fourteenth Doctor, that somewhat ruled out that possibility.
More likely, this has to do with the botched forced regeneration. There's really no good explanation why, since this is uncharted territory, but that has to factor in somehow, right? Either that or the device that the Master shot the Doctor with during the final moments of their battle affected the impending regeneration. Either way, Chibnall really left a lot on the table when it comes to regenerations, so hopefully RTD picks up on some of those loose threads and addresses them with either the Fourteenth Doctor or Ncuti Gatwa's Fifteenth Doctor, because some kind of explanation would be nice.
Unfortunately, we'll have to wait a while for those answers. Keep coming up with your thoughts and theories because "Doctor Who" returns in November 2023 on Disney+.
Correction to what I say at 6 minutes 54 seconds: There's no evidence that Peter Thiel has financially supported the Future of Life Institute. He has merely expressed sympathy for the idea of longtermism. Sorry about that.
Longtermism is a currently popular philosophy among rich people like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Jaan Tallinn. What do they believe and what are the pros and cons? I sort it out for you.
Hovertext: SMBC will not be held liable in the event that the user of the aforementioned knock-knock joke is shamed by co-workers, loved ones, or the face in the mirror.
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Elon Musk took control of the social media site Twitter this week with a $44 billion deal. The Onion asked conservatives what they thought about Musk buying Twitter.
SteamOS is the system that makes the Steam Deck tick and could be compared to, say, Android for mobile phones. It’s the basis that everything on the device needs to run on, and needless to say, quite important for the Deck. Anyways, a brand-new development on SteamOS seems to have found its way onto the news cycle, so let’s break it down.
According to SteamDeckHQ, the OS is getting various developer repository updates. Most notably, the fact that the SteamOS Media Creation tool’s existence in the first place really puts this idea into relative credence. Earlier this week, the Media Creation tool was updated.
If one were to download and run the Media Creation tool, they’d get a window telling them to select the SteamOS image from the machine.
It should very much go without saying, but you shouldn’t try running this to reimage your computer as of current (since it’s not officially out in any way). Meanwhile, the fact that SteamOS could very well come to PC has become more prevalent. This is because a Steam Deck-like variant of Big Picture was launched for testing today.
Coming from Valve themselves, PC users can opt into this Big Picture feature set and try it themselves by opting into the Steam Client beta and then adding the term -gamepadui to their Steam shortcut. Players are able to run their games through here and access most of Steam’s capabilities like normal, and you can go to Steam’s forums and report bugs that are found.
This makes the idea of SteamOS being a reality on PC a real possibility. However, they should add the feature to switch between the base Steam desktop layout and the updated SteamOS one in the future, so players still have that choice.
If you prefer not to use the new Big Picture layout, you can remove the aforementioned -gamepadui from the shortcut, close Steam, and launch the program normally. We’ll continue to update you as more information on SteamOS and Steam Deck is released.
Bass pioneered stop-motion animation with Arthur Rankin Jr. The duo produced and directed 1960s TV classics including Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman.
I (30F) got a new supervisor in the last six months, who is also part of the C-suite. She is very talented, knowledgeable, and friendly. She has done a lot in terms of supporting and mentoring me, and I am really appreciative of her efforts. However, one issue with her is that she can often be unpredictable, especially when it comes to pointing out things that others may be sensitive about.
I have adult acne partially due to some health issues. I am working with appropriate medical professionals to find solutions/diagnoses (and a lot of it takes time to fix). However, in the meantime, I often get break-outs. I cover them fairly well with makeup, but some days are worse than others. On those worse days, I just grit my teeth and try to get through it, but it really is doing a number on my self esteem, especially since I am not a teenager anymore and worry that it could hurt my professional image.
Enter unpredictable boss: on multiple occasions where I have had some rougher skin days, my boss has asked me directly, IN FRONT of other people, “What’s going on with your skin?” When I make a vague comment about having a bad skin day and she shouldn’t worry about it, she continues to press and badger me about it, with an audience. It is absolutely mortifying and distressing for me. Trust me, I know what is going on with my face and just want people to ignore it. It happened again today, and has left me unable to get work done because I am so upset.
I definitely need to address this with her as it is affecting me emotionally and professionally. I think that because she likes to have more of a friendly, collegial approach, she might just think she is just engaging in girl talk, when it reality, it has a much bigger impact. But really my question is in regards to how to address it — should I be doing more in the moment to shut it down, or should we discuss it in my next one-on-one? My supervisor does have the tendency to make insensitive comments about others’ appearances as well, and I think because she doesn’t take things personally, she forgets that not everything needs to be said. I do want to communicate directly that she is not to discuss my skin or physical appearance beyond what is needed to get my job done, but I worry she will think I am too sensitive.
What on earth is up with your manager?!
And what does she think you’re going to say? It’s not like your skin is suddenly turning green while you’re talking and she’s speaking up from alarm. It’s acne. It’s not a big deal. Is she looking for you to launch into a detailed account of your skin care journey?
And then she presses and badgers you about it in front of other people when you try to shut it down?!
I’m willing to believe she intends it as girl talk if that’s the vibe you’re getting — some people think everyone will be excited to talk skin care or makeup or hair problems, regardless of the setting or context — but when your response makes it clear you’re not receptive to that, it’s incredibly obnoxious that she keeps pushing it. It would be one thing if she’d brought it up once and then realized from your reaction that it wasn’t welcome and left it there. But she’s continuing to raise it!
It definitely makes sense to address it with her one-on-one. The next time you meet, you could say, “You’ve asked multiple times what’s going on with my skin. I have acne. What are you asking about when you ask me that?”
Then, depending on her response, you could say, “I would appreciate it if you didn’t keep asking about it. It’s just acne.”
Be prepared for her to try to express concern and/or make recommendations — have you seen a dermatologist, have you tried this product, etc. — which would be overstepping and none of her business. If that happens, you could say, “I do have a dermatologist but it’s not something I want to get into at work.” (You could drop the dermatologist mention if you want but — annoyingly — you might shut her down more easily if you say that part. Otherwise she might feel compelled to urge you to.)
Hopefully that will take care of it. Frankly, it would be over-the-top outrageous for her to continue bringing it up after you’ve told her to stop. But if she does again ask, “What’s going on with your skin?” you should feel free to say any of the following:
* “Nothing, what do you mean?”
* In as flat and bored a tone as you can produce: “Acne.”
* “This is my face.”
* “Wow, you’re still asking me that.”
* “It’s getting really weird that you keep asking that.” (This one is heavily dependent on the relationship. It would be a complete no-go with some managers, and it would be okay with others. It’s justified, but you’d need to judge if it’s safe to say or not.)
But hopefully the clear, direct, one-on-one “please stop” will put an end to this.
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