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M.C. Escher, (With Jette Umiker Escher), “Study of Majolica Tiles, at the Alhambra, Granada, Spain,” 1936, colored pencil, watercolor, ink and graphite on graph paper

“I kinda want to see the Escher show,” I whispered to a friend when he asked what I wanted to do on a recent trip to Houston. M.C. Escher is one of those artists who falls outside the cannon of modern art. While he was making work during the golden years of Modernism in Europe and America, he seemed to be out of touch with the major trends of the 20th century. He is sometimes described as a “one-man art movement.” Conceptually, his work is not too far from Surrealism, as it often explored cerebral themes. However, he lived a life too far away from the avant-garde of Paris and other social scenes to be included in any of the movements of the early 20th century. This was precisely the reason for my timid tone when talking about his show. 

Perhaps Escher is excluded in art history books because he didn’t see himself as an artist in the same ways that many modern artists did. Evidently the singer/songwriter Graham Nash called Escher to tell him how much he enjoyed the work, and Escher responded by saying, “I am not an artist, I am a mathematician.” Truth be told, a fair amount of his work could be considered mathematical illustration, which alludes to a rift between fine artists and illustrators, where talented painters like Norman Rockwell, N.C. Wyeth, and Fredrick Remington are looked down upon. 

M.C. Escher is clearly a graphic artist known worldwide for his visually complex imagery. His work has decorated many a college dorm room, and has been viewed through a haze of pot smoke and under the influence of hallucinogens by millions. Don’t judge me, but I used to be a hippie — at least the 90s version of one — and personally have owned no fewer than three M.C. Esher t-shirts. This psychedelic commercialism may detract from Escher’s legacy, but the man himself admitted to not liking San Francisco hippies because they were stealing his design and making money from them. 

M.C. Escher, “Eye,” October 1946, Mezzotint with drypoint on wove paper, state VII/VII edition #1; “Eye,” October 1946, Mezzotint with drypoint on wove paper, proofs I-VI/VII

Despite all the detracting factors to his artistic legacy, M.C. Escher is an artistic force to be dealt with, and the exhibition Virtual Realities: The Art of M.C. Escher from the Michael S. Sachs Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston does an effective job of proving this point. The show is expansive, with over 400 objects, and while it does play to some of the aforementioned commercialism by including black light posters, album covers, and Escher cover art, curator Dena Woodhall also included a considerable amount of ephemera surrounding his most popular pieces. The exhibition could teach even the most skeptical critics of Escher why his work is important.

While the artist is best known for his prints, and for the fact that he explored several print processes, including lithography and mezzotints, his most prominent works are wood cuts. In the hierarchy of printmaking difficulty, mezzotint sits at the top because it is extremely labor intensive. A form of intaglio, it involves a rigorous process of rocking a plate to get rich blacks, then burnishing areas back to get a full spectrum of mid-tones. To demonstrate this challenging process and Escher’s dedication to perfection, six proofs are displayed along with the final version of Eye, a photo-realistic eye with a skull reflected in its pupil. The difficulty is amplified by the in-depth commentary of the process in the audio guide by Liv Monique Johnson, Instructor and Print Studio Manager at the Glassell Studio School at the MFAH. Eye also just so happens to be the work that was featured on one of the t-shirts I owned. 

M.C. Escher, Study For “Spirals” (2), c. 1953, graphite on tracing paper; Study For “Spirals” (5), c. 1953, ink on tracing paper; Study For “Spirals,” c. 1953 red, black and green ink on wove paper; Study For “Spirals,” c. 1953, graphite and ink on tracing paper; “Spirals,” c. 1953, woodblock for tone; “Spirals,” December 1953, Wood engraving in black and gray, printed from two blocks on handmade paper

A major strength of the show is this inclusion of Escher’s preliminary sketches, printing plates, and studies alongside the works themselves. To see the amount of planning and preparation that goes into the pieces is as impressive as realizing that Escher had to execute most final designs in reverse, meaning he had to invert the marks as negative space when transferring them to a print plate.

One work, Spirals, is accompanied by four preliminary sketches along with one of the woodblocks used to print the design. The image is a torus made of spiraling bands, based on an illustration from Daniele Barbaro’s La Practice della Perspectiva, which Escher was unimpressed with and spent months improving upon. Escher’s craftsmanship is undeniable, but it was built upon through years of practice. 

To highlight Esher’s printmaking prowess, the first two rooms of the exhibition are filled with landscape prints he made while touring southern Europe. After this time, he lived in Italy from 1923 to 1935. While these pieces are not as well known as his late career works, they show an artist at the beginning stages of developing a mastery of print design, and of rendering expansive landscapes and architecture. I still use Escher’s work to teach my own print students how to render grayscale without gradients in order to create the illusion of depth.

M.C. Escher, “Infant (Arthur E. Escher),” February 1929, Woodcut in red-brown and pink, printed from 3 blocks on handmade paper

Even with a mastery of technical skill, Escher’s imagery could appear cold. Commonly devoid of human figures — which are often drawn crudely, if included at all — Escher’s work appears to have little humanity, even when it does. The exhibition, however, offers exceptions, with a few examples of portraiture. A notable work, Infant (Arthur E. Escher), is a portrait of his second son printed in shades of red. The proficiency of the rendering is excellent, but the result just comes off as a creepy baby portrait and illustrates that Escher’s talents lie with other subject matter. 

Considering the fact that Escher was in Europe, working and witnessing the horrors of the Second World War, the seeming lack of humanity in his work presents a quandary. The war directly affected Escher, like it did anyone that lived through it. He was forced to leave Italy in 1935 because of the rising tide of fascism, and relocated to the home of his wife in Switzerland, which he hated because of the snow. They then relocated to Belgium until the Nazi’s invaded, and he had to return to Holland, where he was from originally, and which was already under Nazi control. Here, the war hit closest to home. 

Earlier in his life, Escher studied under the Dutch graphic artist Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita at the Haarlem School of Architecture and Decorative Arts. Upon his return to Holland in 1944, Escher wished to reconnect with de Mesquita, but when he went to visit the artist’s studio he found it empty and in shambles. De Mesquita, a Jew, had been taken away and would later die at Auschwitz. Legend has it, Escher found a drawing by de Mesquita with a Nazi boot print on it that he kept for the rest of his life. Despite this loss, and while many other artists directly addressed the war and other socio-political issues head on in their work, emotion seems to be almost as absent as the figure in most of Escher’s art. One could read the skull in Eye, made in 1946, as a hint of a socio-political message, and it is likely he found some catharsis from the hours of toiling over the mezzotint process, which he called “the Black Art.” But while the specter of death was heavy in Europe in 1946, Escher was adamant in keeping politics out of his work.

M.C. Escher, “Puddle,” February 1952, woodcut in black, green and brown, 3 blocks on handmade paper, state II/II; “Puddle,” c. 1952, woodcut on wove paper, proof of tone block and puddle block; “Puddle,” c. 1952, woodcut on wove paper, proof of tone block; Puddle Blocks, 1952, (r to l): wood block for tone, wood Block for puddle, wood block for black ink

However, one piece in the show caught me off guard. The work has a smooth gray gradient with a simple circle in the lower corner. Always the fan of Minimalism, I wondered where this serene composition came from, before I realized it was the first layer of the three-color print Puddle. The next two images show the build up ending with the final result of a puddle of water reflecting the night sky. The woodblocks used to make the print sit in a vitrine in front of the sequence of print separations, which could be individual works of art on their own. The edges of the puddle are broken by tire tracks in mud, and boot prints surround the puddle. This print was made in 1952, and one can speculate that the piece was both Escher’s response to finding de Mesquita’s boot-dented drawing, and the result of a decade of coping with the loss of his teacher. Puddle makes a strong case that Escher believed art exists above the mud and mess of this world.

On the front end of the war, Escher was able to visit the Alhambra in Granada, Spain for a second time and before it also descended into fascism. On his original trip in 1922 he found the tessellated tiles covering the walls appealing, but on his second visit in 1936 the patterns had a different, new impact. With the assistance of his wife, Jetta, he began to make sketches of the tiles.

Tessellations are a way to cover planes with repeating geometric shapes so there are no overlaps or gaps. They are composed of interlocking tiles, and this feature is a prominent factor in my own work; I began to use them because of their calming effect. Many years ago, I was looking through a pattern book when I received a call about an infuriating family situation. As I continued to look at the pages of tessellations, they brought me a palpable peace. I have used these geometric patterns in my paintings and prints to bring comforting order to the chaos found in life ever since, and I would like to believe that Escher and his wife found the same calm looking at the walls of Alhambra, despite the approaching storm clouds of war.

Coincidence or not, Esher does attribute this second experience to a fundamental moment in his future work: the exploration of “mental puzzles.” The show includes several drawings from his time at the Alhambra, the first of which shows an off-center pattern tile. “Busted!” I said to myself, because in this sketch it appears as if Escher didn’t understand the tiling of tessellation yet. However, my sense of superiority quickly evaporated as the next portion of the show demonstrated he did, in fact, truly understand tessellation more than I ever hope to. This section culminates with 15 drawings (made of hundreds) of tessellations where shapes are replaced with animals. This work is the beginning of Escher’s mathematical investigations, or the style that he is best known for. These symmetry drawings, as he called them, represent the Four Types of Symmetry and allude to 17 Wallpaper Groups, both of which are used in art, as well as fields like crystallography, geology, and biology. In fact, Escher corresponded with scientists and mathematicians about many of his late-career works.

M.C. Escher, Symmetry Studies: “Symmetry No. 107 (Fish),” December 1960, ink and watercolor on graph paper; “Symmetry No. 117 (Crabs),” April 1963, colored pencil, ink and watercolor on graph paper; “Symmetry No. 69 (Fish, Duck and Lizards),” March 1948, ink and watercolor on graph paper

I could fill the rest of this article with geometric terminology, but I will prevent the eye-glazing that often occurs when nerding out over math. Instead, I’d prefer to return this review to the tangible world and the hidden humanity of Escher’s work. One of the most exciting things that happened while I was at the show was hearing a father yell while trying to prevent his toddler from playing in a 3D model of the lithograph Waterfalls, arguably one of Escher’s most well-known images of an aqueduct that feeds itself. While the architecture itself is impossible, this sculpture does an excellent job of bringing it to life, as long as it is viewed from the correct angle. The inclusion of sculpture in the show was an intelligent and intriguing aspect — Escher himself designed geometric constructions that would make amazing contemporary public sculptures if enlarged. Another piece, Heaven and Hell Sphere, a 3D wooden carving of interlocking angels and devils, is based on Escher’s 2D symmetry studies. Both represent his attempt to render infinity. 

M.C. Escher, “Waterfall,” 1961, lithographic stone; Bruce Winkler, After M.C. Escher, 3D model based on the lithograph Waterfall, painted wood

I attended this show the week before flying to Mexico City to begin a residency at Tajo Taller, and the timing could not have been more perfect. At Tajo, I worked with a CnC machine and 3D printers, and seeing Escher’s work was invaluable to illustrate the methods of expanding my own tessellations into the third dimension. The use of these new technologies also represents the fusion of science, math, and technology, and during my time in Mexico, I had to reteach myself trigonometry to get accurate 3D models of my designs. I also found myself embroiled in battle with a Drawbot, a device found in many STEAM labs. Drawbots are simple robots designed to hold a pen, and they’re rife with limitations, which I found to be a unique foil to my design process; they produced results I would have not gotten any other way. This process of integrating the tool into the work reminded me of Escher trying to figure out how to render his expansive landscapes and forced-perspective architectures using the single tone allotted to his early series of prints. 

M.C. Escher, “Three Stellated Dodecahedrons,” c. 1952, transparent plastic, paper and wood; “Two Interlocking Cubes,” c. 1952, paper; “Circle Limit IV,” July 1960, woodcut in black and ochre, printed from two blocks, on handmade paper; “Heaven and Hell Sphere,” 1942, maple wood, stained in two colors

Escher’s art is a problem-solving process, and this concept plays out into the work of art history mainstays like Bridget Riley, Victor Vaserely, Josef Albers, Sol Le Witt, and even Houston’s hometown hero, Suzie Rosmarin. Sequentiality and experimentation are the threads that tie these artists together. Escher may not be included in the abstract or conceptual cannon because of his use of representational imagery, but his images have the unique ability to connect with the general public.

At the MFAH, I found myself perusing the show behind a grandfather talking to his grandson about the work. He would discuss the imagery, then expound on the mathematics behind the works. The child was young enough for this to be a core experience, and I could not help thinking how these intimate lessons would expand and shape his future. I can now see how my stoner t-shirts and trippy posters of Escher’s work fed into my own growth as an artist, from my discovery and implementation of tessellations to the inspiration that became central to my time at my recent residency.

Escher’s work is a foundation on which we build structures to understand art, math, science, life and the universe. Whether we like it or not, his work can be expanded on in innumerable combinations, and in that way he was successful in capturing infinity. Virtual Realities at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston does Escher’s work justice by presenting his career in full periphery. Now, I can say with confidence, “I saw the Escher show!” 

Virtual Realities: The Art of M.C. Escher from the Michael S. Sachs Collection is on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston through September 5, 2022. For additional reading on Escher’s work, see the 1992 book M.C. Escher: His Life and Complete Graphic Work, or listen to Stuff You Should Know’s episode about the artist. 

The post Infinite Staircase: “Virtual Realities: The Art of M.C. Escher” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston appeared first on Glasstire.

This post, I flashed my entire team during a video call , was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I would love any and all advice on this because I’m sincerely lost on what to do.

To preface this, I do have a privacy camera cover which makes this mistake even more avoidable.

I work remotely and during a morning meeting with our entire team, I noticed an incessant knocking at my door, I picked up my phone to message (presumably) my roommate that I was in a meeting and would answer her later, when I saw an abundance of doorbell camera notifications that someone I had cut contact with, whom I did not give my address to, was now at my door and had been spamming the doorbell until my roommate (who did not know any better) opened the door for them.

Without thinking. I felt a rush of anxiety that made me disoriented and panicked, and I immediately went to change from my shorts into pants (I understand completely this wasn’t necessary, I just really wasn’t thinking) to tell them to leave … all while still connected to the meeting on video. Right after I finished putting on pants, I heard,”For chrissake OP turn off your camera.” I realized I just flashed my ENTIRE team, was mortified, and turned off the camera and left the meeting and dealt with the unwelcome person.

Based on the influx of messages sent to me afterwards from coworkers, some were asking me what happened since they weren’t paying attention … and others offered condolences/checked in on me as they saw exactly what happened. I haven’t answered any of them because I have no excuses to give and I’m honestly beyond mortified and humiliated that this happened, and now I’m just a sobbing mess from both incidents and I really don’t know how to recover.

You had two upsetting incidents happen at the same time, and I think that might be your brain conflating them in your reaction now.

Of course you were and are incredibly rattled by someone you had cut contact with incessantly pounding on your door, particularly someone who shouldn’t have even known where you live. That’s a genuinely scary and upsetting thing. I think it is possible that the completely understandable “something bad is happening” response to that is now also wrapped up in the way you’re processing the pants incident, since they happened simultaneously and both shocked your system.

In other words, I think you might not be a sobbing mess right now if the doorbell intruder hadn’t happened. You’d be embarrassed, of course, but I bet your response would be less intense. If you can look at it that way and try to separate the two, it might help you feel better about the work part.

You changed from shorts to pants in front of your team. I know it’s cold comfort, but YOU ARE NOT ALONE. So, so, so many people have had incidents like this (and worse!) since attending meetings on camera from our personal space became so ubiquitous two years ago. I would be surprised if you’re the first person in your organization to have done something embarrassing on camera in front of a group! And I’m sure your coworkers know how easily it can happen — many of them are probably well aware it could have been them. No decent person would judge you for it; they’ll just feel bad and want to make sure you’re okay/not feeling humiliated.

I don’t think you need to do anything to recover in their eyes. Assuming you don’t already have a reputation as, like, a creepy flasher, no one is going to think you did it intentionally; people know it was a mistake. It’s okay to just … move forward. You don’t need to send out a mass apology or anything. You don’t even need to respond to all those emails people sent if you don’t want to; most people will get that you’re not looking to relive it. (That said, if one was from your manager, do respond to that one — but it doesn’t need to be a big thing, just “agggh, mortified, will of course be more careful in the future about remembering my camera is on.”)

You will move past this. (And everyone else has probably already moved past it!)

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

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The problem then is people start trying to get the record n-vorce.

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Enlarge / Digging into bleeding-edge Chrome code has made some bloggers hopeful, but Google has been focused on its own feeds for a while now. (credit: Getty Images)

Does Google enjoy teasing and sometimes outright torturing some of its products' most devoted fans? It can seem that way.

Tucked away inside a recent bleeding-edge Chrome build is a "Following feed" that has some bloggers dreaming of the return of Google Reader. It's unlikely, but never say never when it comes to Google product decisions.

Chrome added a sidebar for browsing bookmarks and Reading List articles back in March. Over the weekend, the Chrome Story blog noticed a new flag in Gerrit, the unstable testing build of Chrome's open source counterpart Chromium. Enabling that #following-feed-sidepanel flag (now also available in Chrome's testing build, Canary) adds another option to the sidebar: Feed.

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Studies have shown that a significant number of people struggle to afford menstrual products, and going without can cause people to miss school or work.

(Image credit: Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images)

A colleague of mine shared a story from Windows XP product support. A major computer manufacturer discovered that playing the music video for Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” would crash certain models of laptops. I would not have wanted to be in the laboratory that they must have set up to investigate this problem. Not an artistic judgement.

One discovery during the investigation is that playing the music video also crashed some of their competitors’ laptops.

And then they discovered something extremely weird: Playing the music video on one laptop caused a laptop sitting nearby to crash, even though that other laptop wasn’t playing the video!

What’s going on?

It turns out that the song contained one of the natural resonant frequencies for the model of 5400 rpm laptop hard drives that they and other manufacturers used.

The manufacturer worked around the problem by adding a custom filter in the audio pipeline that detected and removed the offending frequencies during audio playback.

And I’m sure they put a digital version of a “Do not remove” sticker on that audio filter. (Though I’m worried that in the many years since the workaround was added, nobody remembers why it’s there. Hopefully, their laptops are not still carrying this audio filter to protect against damage to a model of hard drive they are no longer using.)

And of course, no story about natural resonant frequencies can pass without a reference to the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1940.

Related: Shouting in the Datacenter.

Bonus chatter: Video version of this story and a Twitter poll.

Also, Larry Osterman had a similar experience with a specific game that crashed a prototype PC.

The post Janet Jackson had the power to crash laptop computers appeared first on The Old New Thing.

The cancelation in federal student debt for 208,000 borrowers came after authorities found "widespread and pervasive misrepresentations" at the defunct college chain, the Education Department said.

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After a summer of fishing for things to talk about in each week’s Eye on the Tropics, we’re quickly transitioning into peak season now, with a number of things to discuss. Today’s post will explain one system that should bring us some boosted rain chances heading into the weekend or next week, the chance of activity in the Atlantic, and what the pattern change expected over Texas will mean for us in terms of tropical risks.

Tropical outlook in a sentence

Activity should begin to ramp up this weekend and next week with a possible weak system in the Bay of Campeche, followed up by some additional tropical waves in the pipeline across the Atlantic worth watching.

Bay of Campeche & south Texas

This weekend saw tremendously beneficial rains in far south Texas. There may be more coming but who sees them remains a question. A tropical wave located over the southwest Caribbean is expected to move generally northwest over the next few days.

The National Hurricane Center is giving this about a 20% chance of developing into a depression or storm over the next 2 to 5 days. While a lot of folks will see this and be alarmed, there are reasons to think this system will struggle in terms of organization. For one, while wind shear was low in the Gulf as Invest 98L came crashing ashore on Sunday, wind shear in the western Caribbean and Bay of Campeche is not low. It’s fairly robust, and based on most model data I’ve looked at, some elements of shear are going to persist around this system until it comes ashore. My hope is that this will cap the ceiling on intensity potential.

The other reason not to really worry is that the pattern is going to likely keep it from coming up the Texas coast. It will track toward northern Mexico or the Rio Grande Valley as a disorganized tropical low, depression, or low-end storm. No credible modeling shows anything worse than that right now.

While South Texas saw a heck of a lot of rain from Invest 98L, where the rain falls this time around will be a little trickier to project. If the system can organize some, heavier rain is possible again in South Texas, while scattered storms would impact the Houston area at times. If the system remains rather disorganized, it’s possible that South Texas will see limited rain, but the bulk of the moisture coming from this wave will end up entrained in a cold front stalled over north Texas, bringing heavier rain to the Panhandle, DFW area, and into northern Louisiana and Arkansas. In that case, again Houston would see just scattered storms.

So for now, while I wouldn’t worry about this one specifically, I would continue monitoring it to see how rain chances will evolve.

Atlantic waves

Behind this wave, there are a few others in the deeper Atlantic.

Modeling is showing a lot more noise in the Atlantic from these waves now, meaning more ensemble model members are developing some of them. However, there’s not a whole lot of signal in the noise. That’s both good news and bad news. It’s bad because it doesn’t give us anything to hone in on just yet. So, all we can say is “Hey, the tropics are going to be active in late August.” Bold statement! But it’s good because there’s always a chance that the lack of signal indicates the environment will remain somewhat hostile toward tropical development. We’ll continue watching this to see if there’s anything to latch onto in the coming days, but as of now there’s nothing to hang our hats on.

Does the pattern change mean a change in Texas’s tropics risk?

We’ll close today’s note with a quick comment about the big picture pattern. For most of summer, Texas has been shielded by high pressure over the southern Plains and Central United States. This is why June and July were so hot.

That high pressure system acted to basically keep us hot, dry, and protected from any Gulf threats all season. The pattern is changing now, rather dramatically. The new look will feature high pressure mostly anchored in the northern Rockies or western Canada, as well as near Bermuda, with a rather healthy trough in the Eastern United States.

This means a couple things. For one, we’re no longer really “shielded” from the Gulf. So anything that can get into the Gulf will be apt to gain a bit more latitude than it would have back in June, July, or early August. That certainly doesn’t guarantee that we’re at risk for storms, but it has made us more vulnerable. That said, the other element to this is that the trough in the East *may* act to help “pick up” Atlantic systems more easily. In other words, the stuff coming off Africa may be more likely to get lifted north earlier, which favors either out to sea tracks or up the East Coast tracks. So our focus would probably be less on long-tracking storms from Africa and remain on systems like 98L, this week’s system coming out of the Caribbean, or anything that can spin up on the tail end of old fronts. So, this is a good news/bad news sort of scenario for us. The key points I want you take away from this post today are:

• The tropics are finally coming alive, as is usually the case in late August.
• The main system to watch right now, a tropical wave in the Caribbean, will likely track toward far south Texas or Mexico this weekend and increase our rain chances some.
• Additional waves have the potential to develop farther out in the Atlantic next week, but none looks like a slam dunk just yet.
• The general pattern change we will see in Texas is going to leave us open to local, “homebrew” Gulf threats, but there is a chance that the pattern in the Eastern U.S. will favor deep Atlantic systems turning out to sea or perhaps getting closer to the East Coast.
• With the season ramping up now, it’s time to start checking in once each day or two to see what’s happening and make your final checks on emergency kits and plans while we grind through things into September.

This may or may not be our last weekly post on the tropics, as we may have enough to discuss daily now. Regardless, stay with us for updates on anything of note in the days ahead.

This post, I sent my boss a long, angry email … but I turned out to be wrong , was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I jumped to conclusions after misunderstanding someone else’s statements, and responded quite badly.

I have worked at my current company for six years, under the same manager. The first five years were virtually incident-free, and we had an extremely positive working relationship. Last year, he lost some faith in me after I got into some personnel drama in another department. That drama ended around 10 months ago, after most of the involved parties left the company. Our working relationship was still good, but I could tell that his opinion of my professionalism had been compromised.

Last week, we had an impromptu conversation to discuss a very high-stakes project that we own, which is ~80% complete. He expressed that while other key players were confident in the strategy we were using to tie up the remaining loose ends, he was not so optimistic. In order to get cooperation from others, we had to agree to try their approach. But he still had reservations about it. He emphasized several times that I/we “were getting a bad performance review” if progress was not made.

I went into panic mode after hearing that. Based on what he said, my performance review was going to be all or nothing, and only that one thing would be taken into account. We’d had several conversations four months ago where we discussed multiple items that would heavily influence my review. But now it sounded like the entire thing was going to be decided by one project, and the performance review was only a month away. I started thinking that it was too late to turn things around … that my contributions to other projects earlier in the year had been in vain, since they would have little or no impact on my impending review … and that the things we agreed on four months ago had not been honored.

I wrote him a rather long and aggressive message, explaining how I felt that I had been blindsided about the criteria that was going to be used in my review, and how the criteria had seemingly changed at a time it was too late for me to do things differently. Phrases I used included:
• “The rules were changed halfway through the game”
• “I felt I was misled and deceived by inconsistent messages”
• “Hit a constantly-moving target”
• “Not conducive to building trust and reliability”
• “I was shocked and surprised to learn that only one thing would decide my review”
• “I don’t think it would be fair if work I did in the past (work which was considered important at the time it was done) gets treated as unimportant afterwards, because something else later became a higher priority”

Three days later, my manager reached out to me. He was visibly upset and said he was shocked that I would say these things about him, and that none of the things I wrote was an accurate interpretation of what he said. I explained what had led me to think that way. He was even more surprised that I had interpreted his comments that way. He insisted that he never said my review would only be decided by one thing, or that nothing else would be taken into account. What he meant was that the part of the review related to that specific project would be graded badly, but that the rules had never changed: the overall review was always going to take multiple things into account.

He acknowledges that he did say that I “would get a bad review” if the current approach to this project didn’t work out. But he thought it was wild that I interpreted this to mean the entire review (and not just one part of it) would be decided by a single thing.

The conversation ended with him suggesting that I was lashing out under pressure. It is true that I have been more negative and irritable than usual in the past two months, because we suddenly had a wave of Covid-related absences from other key employees closely involved in these projects. He advised that I take one to two days off and think more about what I wrote, and then we would reconvene to continue this discussion.

In retrospect, I realize this entire situation could have been avoided if I had simply asked him to clarify his comments. But I freaked out after hearing those initial statements, and didn’t think that they could possibly mean anything else. Rather I took them at face value and thought that I was doomed to get a very lopsided and imbalanced review. Then I wrote a very long, inaccurate, and defamatory message based on what I thought he meant, and not what he actually meant.

If this results in my getting a bad review, I am ready to accept that. But I may have done irreparable damage to our working relationship. What can be done?

Oooooh. Yeah, that’s not good.

For future reference, never do stuff like this by email. If you’re upset or angry or feel yourself getting heated, that is a flag to back away from your computer and talk in person. Not just because that will minimize miscommunications or clear them up faster — although it will — but because email just isn’t an appropriate medium for heated conversations. With anyone, but especially with your boss. There are a ton of reasons for that:

* Sending a long, incensed email means you’re essentially just delivering an angry monologue. If you talked in person, you presumably wouldn’t open with a speech; you’d have a back and forth (and in this case you would have realized quickly that your interpretation had been wrong).

* It can be easy to find yourself sounding harsher in an email than you would be willing to sound when talking in person. Talking in person usually (although not always) tends to have a moderating effect on tone and word choice, particularly in work situations.

* Most managers will see it as a worrying sign about your judgment and professionalism that you chose to put this all in an angry email rather than just having a conversation, and will worry about what might be happening in your email communications with others too.

* Committing this all to email means there’s a written record for your boss to see in the future; it won’t fade from memory in the same way that an in-person conversation can.

So I’m less concerned that you jumped to the wrong conclusions (you’re stressed and overworked, it happens) and more concerned that you decided an email was the right move. Combine that with the drama with colleagues from last year (which apparently lasted until the other people left the company) and if I’m your boss, I’m going to be worried about your professional maturity.

I suppose my question for you is: Is that something you’re taking seriously? Do you see a connection between what happened last year and this recent incident, and do you see how they both tie into judgment and professionalism, and is that something you’re committed to working on? Because if not, my worry is that stuff like this will continue to happen and really damage your reputation. (To be clear, without the incident last year, this would be different. If it were a one-time thing, it would be much easier to dismiss as the result of stress and overwork.)

As for what to do about your relationship with your boss: The smartest thing you can do is to own it. As in, “I’m embarrassed that I sent you that message rather than simply talking to you, which as you pointed out would have cleared it up right away. You’re right that I’ve been under a lot of pressure the last few months, and that might have played into this, but I’m still responsible for the choices I make and I was wrong to handle it that way. In the future, if I’m feeling strongly about something like this, I’ll take that as a sign to have a face-to-face conversation to sort out what’s going on rather than sending an emotional email, and also to hold off on assuming anything before talking it through. I wish I had done that here.”

If I were your boss, that would be the most reassuring thing I could hear. It wouldn’t lay my concerns completely to rest, given the stuff from last year, but when you’re worried about someone’s maturity and they respond professionally, own their error, and draw lessons for the future, that’s about as good as it gets … and it will likely buy you some time to demonstrate that you are in fact working on all of this.

We are excited to announce that the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded nearly $50,000 through its Digital Humanities Advancement Grant program to UC Berkeley Library and Internet Archive to study legal and ethical issues in cross-border text data mining research. NEH funding for the project, entitled Legal Literacies for Text Data Mining – Cross Border (LLTDM-X), will support research and analysis that addresses law and policy issues faced by U.S. digital humanities practitioners whose text data mining research and practice intersects with foreign-held or licensed content, or involves international research collaborations. LLTDM-X builds upon Building Legal Literacies for Text Data Mining Institute (Building LLTDM), previously funded by NEH. UC Berkeley Library directed Building LLTDM, bringing together expert faculty from across the country to train 32 digital humanities researchers on how to navigate law, policy, ethics, and risk within text data mining projects (results and impacts are summarized in the white paper here.) 

Why is LLTDM-X needed?

Text data mining, or TDM, is an increasingly essential and widespread research approach. TDM relies on automated techniques and algorithms to extract revelatory information from large sets of unstructured or thinly-structured digital content. These methodologies allow scholars to identify and analyze critical social, scientific, and literary patterns, trends, and relationships across volumes of data that would otherwise be impossible to sift through. While TDM methodologies offer great potential, they also present scholars with nettlesome law and policy challenges that can prevent them from understanding how to move forward with their research. Building LLTDM trained TDM researchers and professionals on essential principles of licensing, privacy law, as well as ethics and other legal literacies —thereby helping them move forward with impactful digital humanities research. Further, digital humanities research in particular is marked by collaboration across institutions and geographical boundaries. Yet, U.S. practitioners encounter increasingly complex cross-border problems and must accordingly consider how they work with internationally-held materials and international collaborators.

How will LLTDM-X help? 

Our long-term goal is to design instructional materials and institutes to support digital humanities TDM scholars facing cross-border issues. Through a series of virtual roundtable discussions, and accompanying legal research and analyses, LLTDM-X will surface these cross-border issues and begin to distill preliminary guidance to help scholars in navigating them. After the roundtables, we will work with the law and ethics experts to create instructive case studies that reflect the types of cross-border TDM issues practitioners encountered. Case studies, guidance, and recommendations will be widely-disseminated via an open access report to be published at the completion of the project. And most importantly, these resources will be used to inform our future educational offerings.

The LLTDM-X team is eager to get started. The project is co-directed by Thomas Padilla, Deputy Director, Archiving and Data Services at Internet Archive and Rachael Samberg, who leads UC Berkeley Library’s Office of Scholarly Communication Services. Stacy Reardon, Literatures and Digital Humanities Librarian, and Timothy Vollmer, Scholarly Communication and Copyright Librarian, both at UC Berkeley Library, round out the team.

We would like to thank NEH’s Office of Digital Humanities again for funding this important work. The full press release is available at UC Berkeley Library’s website. We invite you to contact us with any questions.

The post Launching Legal Literacies for Text Data Mining – Cross Border (LLTDM-X) appeared first on Internet Archive Blogs.

In this portrait series, I ask artists working in Texas the question: “As a contemporary artist, how is your practice shaped by current events?”

Chelsea Akpan. Illustration by Natalia Padilla.

Below, Chelsea Akpan responds:

I feel like oftentimes I’m looking back and reflecting on things that have already happened. Much of my inspirations stem from my childhood; interpersonal relationships, cartoons, comics, etc. I think that’s why so much of my art has a nostalgic feel to it for viewers.

I also like to play with themes and motifs that are more timeless. So, no matter what’s happening in the world at any given moment, it can still apply in a way. When I write and illustrate about characters with arrested development or fears of isolation, I’m pulling from my own feelings and experiences. But this can also be the feelings others have had during the first year of the pandemic.

Maybe subconsciously I do pull more from current events than I realize. History repeats itself, and the conversations we’re having now will continue.

About the Artist
Chelsea Akpan is a cartoonist based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Most of her work is characterized by color and original characters, evoking a sense of comfort and nostalgia. She’s currently working on a few comic projects, and she also aims to write and illustrate a children’s book.

The post Texas Artists of Today: Chelsea Akpan appeared first on Glasstire.

Exhibition view, “Hot Girl Summer” at Anya Tish Gallery, Houston

Hot Girl Summer at Anya Tish Gallery in Houston features Adela Andea, William Cannings, Dan Lam, Jacqueline Overby, Shannon Cannings, and others. The show takes its name from Houston rapper Megan Thee Stallion’s audacious 2019 hit song “Hot Girl Summer.” For Megan, a “hot girl summer” and being a “hot girl” means to be confident and have fun in a way that uplifts oneself and their community. While Megan is loved by fans for encouraging others to feel comfortable and sexy in their own actions, many of the pieces in this exhibition employ an opposing notion of playing with audience expectations by using materials that appear different than their final product. Hot Girl Summer also pays affectionate homage to the iconic Texas heat, with vibrant and energetic works that reference popsicles, water guns, melting drips, pool floaties, and retro toys. Houstonians that experienced the record-breaking highs of June 2022 will connect with the nostalgia and aesthetic in the exhibition. 

As soon as I stepped into the gallery, I felt an instant sense of satisfaction that this show perfectly captures Megan’s “hot girl” attitude, as well as the scorching summers that Houston is known for. Each piece is unique and yet somehow unified, a visual feast of color, texture, and light. Apart from references to Houston summers and Megan Thee Stallion, the primary motif of Hot Girl Summer is the use of materials that belie their subject matter in unexpected ways.

A personal favorite was an eye-popping piece that perfectly captures the severity that summer 2022 has been for Houston. Not unlike scoops of ice cream threatening to melt off their cone in front of a Houston creamery, Dan Lam’s Aura is colorful and exudes the bold cheekiness of Megan’s attitude; Lam’s sculptures often play with opposites, such as appearing liquid while being made of foam. Despite the form the work takes, this polyurethane foam sculpture won’t actually melt, but the glossy finish and changing colors perfectly capture the notion of sweltering heat in Houston. There are four lumps that are hollow inside, and the material begins as pink on the top then drips down to purple, blue, green, yellow, and then finally, orange.

Lam’s vibrant blob-type works that sometimes seem to defy gravity have gained her a strong following on social media, and indeed her pieces have that effortless attention-grabbing “Instagramable” quality that’s enviable among aspiring influencers. Nevertheless, her sculptures play with color and texture in a free-spirited manner that perfectly coincides with Megan’s individuality, and suggest the same vivid colors of summer aesthetic seen in commercials and on social media. Perhaps Lam’s evocation of a “hot girl summer” is to enjoy experimenting with laying different colors of acrylic and resin to create unexpected sculptures.

William Canning’s sculptures, like Dan Lam’s, also play with contradictions and unexpected materials. His work Dreamsicle is a true centerpiece of the show, positioned in the center of the gallery for viewers to see right as they enter. At first glance, this piece looks like a small floatie — too small for an adult, but maybe perfect for a child. As the bright orange color draws people in, viewers discover the piece is not a soft plastic, but rather it is made from inflated steel. Many of Cannings’ works use hard metals to create “soft objects.” The popsicle shape makes one dream of a paradise pool party to escape the burning Houston summer, and invokes memories of playing with floaties and other pool toys as a child. 

Adel Andea, “Aqua Splash,” dimensions variable

Taking up a single wall was a collection of light works by Romanian-born, now Texas-based Adel Andea, with Aqua Splash at the center. Andea considers light her medium, and creates artificial environments with technology to simulate the beauty of nature. Aqua Splash, which is one of Andea’s smaller works, uses Plexiglas and light bulbs to create a vibrant energy inspired by water and glaciers. The bright blues are energetic yet calming, alluding to the cool escape of water from the summer heat, but perhaps also reminds viewers of the current fragility of nature.

Aqua Splash takes up the most space at the center of the wall, casting a faint blue light on several other smaller pieces that scatter out from the center. These rock-like works could also be inspired by rough terrain, like rocks on a beach or boulders on the ocean floor. Aqua Splash acts as the pool or lake to accompany Dreamsicle, the floaty, and Aura, the cool summer treat, tying together a playful summer aesthetic.

Hashtag Tik Tok Famous stands near two other works by Jacqueline Overby, which instantly invoke a feeling of nostalgia. The San Antonio-born, Austin-based artist works with felt material to create small soft sculptures that foster a conversation between the comfort of childhood toys and adulthood trauma. The bulbous head with upswept “hair” mounted on a cubical body is reminiscent of the Troll Dolls that were a popular toy during the 1990s. Herself a survivor of sexual assault and domestic violence, Overby uses her practice as a way to process her own issues. Akin to the feelings of many millennials and Gen Z adults, this work plays on nostalgia and longing for a simpler time. The bright colors and title of the work allude to social media culture and the quick-burning fire of fragile internet fame. Similarly to how Megan has worked to stay connected with and pay homage to her Houston community, Overby has also organized several projects that aim to gather her art community together. One of these is Blast Suppers, which brings the Austin creative community together through potlucks.

Jacqueline Overby, “Hashtag Tik Tok Famous,” 2022

Hot Girl Summer inspires the imagination and encourages viewers to revel in the colors and textures presented by the artists. The selected pieces perfectly reference the Houston heat and Megan Thee Stallion’s “hot girl summer” attitude by combining nostalgia, cheekiness, and summer aesthetic. By referencing pool toys, ice cream, and water, Hot Girl Summer applauds how H-town Hotties deal with record-breaking heat in a confident and sexy manner.

Hot Girl Summer is on view at Anya Tish Gallery until August 27, 2022.

The post Houston Heat and H-town Hotties Brought Together in “Hot Girl Summer” appeared first on Glasstire.

This post, I disagree with my partner on how to run our business, another manager dislikes my employee, and more , was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

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

1. My partner and I disagree on how to run our adult business

I am a partner in a social club for “like minded adults.” When my partner and I first started this club, we agreed on “no sex with our members while we were open.” This did not last long with my partner. His girlfriend is our bartender and didn’t know this. Now our club has grown, and now he wants to “interact” with our members while we are open (probably with his girlfriend as well).

I think this is a terrible idea and neither one will back down. Of course, he can use the club on the days/hours we are not open. It has gotten so toxic, that I am seriously thinking of selling my half and leaving. I gave him examples of how management does not eat their meal during the dinner hour; they eat their meals before or after.

Am I wrong in my thinking? This is our job. I explained in other jobs, you don’t “interact” with your members-customers during opening hours. Any advice you can give me I would appreciate.

If he’s having sex with members while you’re open for business, he’s not available to do his job during that time — meaning that you’re left carrying the full burden of keeping things running while he’s otherwise engaged. Then there’s the fact that having sex with an employee raises the potential for abuse of power and legal liability. And then there are the potential conflicts of interest involved; for example, if there’s an issue with a club member that the two of you need to resolve, he’s far less likely to seem impartial  (people will need to wonder if he’ll favor those he’s interacted with sexually, or be biased against a member who has declined his advances, and so forth). So it’s a really bad idea, on multiple fronts.

But it also seems like the two of you have fundamentally incompatible ideas about how to run your business. You’ve tried to convince him to change his behavior, and he’s not willing to. At this point it sounds like you need to assume he’s not going to change his thinking, and decide if you want to continue to be part of the business as he’s currently operating it.

2. Another manager doesn’t like my employee

I joined my current company a little less than a year ago. At that time, I had a boss Peter, who managed Mike. Peter and Mike had been at the company for a few years prior. When I joined, I did find them to be a bit disorganized and definitely outspoken, but didn’t think it was a big deal.

Peter has since left, and now I manage Mike. Another manager, Nina, who worked with Peter and Mike has complained about Mike’s past behavior — more than 1.5 years before I joined — to me repeatedly. The complaints aren’t exactly about work quality, more that she thought he was arrogant, dismissive, etc. While Mike could definitely improve his soft skills, I’ve realized that whatever happened 2-3 years ago left a bad impression on Nina. Her comments verge on personal/vindictive and unprofessional vs. just a work complaint about a colleague. I also think that there is more internal politics involved here and the “arrogant attitude” probably came from Peter or even higher up, and blaming Mike is scapegoating him.

I looked up Mike’s old performance reviews, to get some color on what was happening before I joined, and the 360 reviews say nothing like what Nina said.

How do I handle this? Should I speak to Mike about performance issues that I don’t see? When Nina responds to new project ideas with “Mike did this wrong two years ago” how should I respond? I’ve been trying to just be matter of fact and forward looking, while acknowledging that there was some issue in the past. Nina is senior to me but not my boss.

The next time Nina complains to you, say this: “I can’t speak to what happened a couple of years ago, but I can tell you that I haven’t seen those issues with Mike since I’ve been managing him. I can’t manage a situation from before my time, but if there are any current issues, I can make sure those get resolved now. Can I ask you to give him another chance and see if you find the same issues popping up? If you do, I’d work with him on that right away, but I’m hopeful that you’ll have a different experience now.” (And then work with Mike closely during any work he does with Nina so that you can spot it early if there is going to be another clash.)

Meanwhile, you shouldn’t speak to Mike about performance issues you don’t see any evidence of, but since you noted his soft skills could use some work, it’s worth figuring out if there’s coaching you need to do there — totally aside from the Nina situation.

3. Etiquette on getting work done after layoffs

My company recently went through a round of layoffs, and my department was particularly affected, with some teams being completely decimated. The communication has been left up to individual managers with no centralized source of information and we’re relying on word of mouth to know who is the worst affected.

Some people were asking regular workday questions as the layoffs were ongoing— in many cases tagging people in Slack who had just been told that they were let go. Obviously they had no way of knowing, but I opted to focus on individual work on the day of for obvious reasons. But now it’s been a few days, and I’m not sure to what extent I should be going back to “normal.” I do a lot of collaboration with other teams, and I’ve accumulated a lot of questions for them which I would normally ask immediately … but they’re not strictly speaking urgent, and I’ve heard through the rumor mill that some of these teams have lost 60-80% of their staff. We’ll need answers eventually— and I’m expecting in some cases the answer is going to be “We can’t take this on anymore, you’ll need to start managing it,” in which case we should start figuring out those transitions ASAP to hit our deadlines.

But I really don’t want to be insensitive to the turmoil and emotion. My own team lost a lot of people, and I’m sad and angry about it, and I know that there are still a lot of open questions about how certain holes will be filled. It seems rude to go to someone who’s lost most of their teammates and start asking about the TPS reports when they probably have much more immediate concerns! What’s the etiquette here? How long do you wait for the dust to settle and for people to process before you start trying to get back to “business as usual”?

It would be insensitive to do that on the day layoffs were happening, yes, but it’s been a few days and you do need to be able to move work forward. It would be insensitive if you appeared to be oblivious to the fact that their teams had been decimated, but you can acknowledge the situation and how it might impact their response. For example, send over your questions and include a note like, “I know you have a lot of your plate and may not be able to get to this any time soon. Just let me know what’s realistic.”

Depending on your role, it might also make sense to reach out to the manager of any teams you work with regularly and ask if they need you to change anything about the usual workflow between you and their team. (If you’re pretty junior, though, this is generally something for your manager to do instead.)

4. My husband is in detox and I need to talk to his boss

As a long-time reader, I know that normally talking to my husband’s boss about work issues is forbidden. However, he was admitted into detox last night (I highly doubt his employer is aware of any issue). I called his boss last night to say my husband will be out of work for at least this week because he is sick and has a medical issue he needs to have treated, but I am not sure how to handle follow-up. I am sure he will be out for more than this week and I will likely be applying for FMLA for him, and I am not sure how/when to update his boss. He is extremely concerned about his job and while I want to convey to his boss how much he cares, I also feel like I should keep it concise and to the point. Side note, he has a great relationship with his boss and when I called him he seemed very understanding and just said to let him know if my husband needs anything.

Your instinct to keep it concise and to the point is good. Stick to the logistics that his manager needs to know about right now — he’s expected to be out for X amount of time, how to get them the FMLA paperwork, etc. You can certainly throw in something like, “He asked me to make sure you know how eager he is to get back to work as soon as he’s cleared to” but that’s all you really need to (or should) say. When someone is out for emergency medical treatment, good managers aren’t generally thinking, “Hmmm, do they really care about this job?” They’re thinking, “Oh no, I hope he’s okay.”

As for timing on when to update his boss: once you have a better idea of how long your husband might be out. If you don’t get a better idea this week, check back in on Thusday-ish to explain that (“it’s not clear yet exactly how long he’ll need, but I think it will go past this week and I’ll let you know once I know something more certain”). You can also continue to keep it vague — “medical issue he’s having treated” is accurate.

5. Was I really “temporarily furloughed”?

In May, I was temporarily furloughed after the restaurant I was working at hit a slow patch. I was told it was because my boss couldn’t afford to pay me, and because I was bored. (I was the dishwasher and was told by her to wait for dishes come, and not to send the dish rack in partly full.) So I would do as asked. Even on a day that was not slow, I would do as told. So I don’t know why she said I was “bored.” Anyway, after a while she never called me back although I saw on social media that business was picking up. She then said I was “laid off.” Then when I saw they were hiring, she said they were looking for cooks, and that they were back to doing the dishes themselves. I worked my butt off for that restaurant, even one of the bartenders vouched for me. What do I do? I sense that she fired me, but didn’t have the heart to tell me.

I’m not sure why it unfolded the way it did: did she intend to let you go from the start but didn’t want to be up-front about that, or did she really not have enough work for you and then decided not to bring you back later? Or are they really not hiring dishwashers yet? But regardless, it does sound like you’ve been laid off rather than temporarily furloughed, and you should assume the job isn’t coming back, no matter what does or doesn’t change there. I’m sorry!

As you know, the Internet Archive is currently being sued by four corporate publishers. The publishers want to stop libraries from owning books. In the age of Netflix and Spotify, ownership of culture is increasingly in the hands of large corporations rather than people, artists and public institutions.

We’re fighting back by celebrating book ownership with the #OwnBooks campaign. 

It’s very easy to take part. Choose a book that you’ve owned for a long time – ideally the oldest book you own! You can also choose another media piece, such as a record, CD, or DVD. Take a photo with the book and share it on social media. Tell us how long you’ve owned your book and use the #OwnBooks hashtag.

You could also tell us the story of your relationship with the book – what were the circumstances in which you acquired it? Does it spark any special memories for you? If you prefer, you could make a selfie video and record yourself telling the story of the book. 

We’ll retweet your posts. Make sure to use the #OwnBooks hashtag and mention @internetarchive to help us find them.

The post Why it’s Important to #OwnBooks appeared first on Internet Archive Blogs.

This post, my boss wants us to help his coach get certified in pseudoscience , was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I work for a successful small business that has acquired two even smaller businesses in other states over the past several years.

Our company president really wants to create a unified company culture and help the employees in all three locations feel more like a cohesive team. This has been hampered by distance and the pandemic preventing us from gathering in the same place in person.

Over the past year, the president has been working with an executive coach whom he has found very helpful. The coach has recently decided to get certified in a modality of pseudoscientific personality typing that is supposed to help people change their mindsets and become more productive at work. She needs to work with a certain number of people in order to obtain her certification and has offered to lead a program for our company for free. The president has seized on this as a great opportunity to help out his coach and do some team-building at no cost to the company.

This coaching program will require a significant time investment (two hours/week for about two months, no reduction in workload, and several employees who only work part-time) and will involve all of us taking pseudoscientific personality assessments designed to pinpoint our personal weaknesses so that we can help each other confront them and be more positive. It also requires meeting regularly with a coworker buddy to track and share our progress.

Based on our initial meeting about this, a few people are excited about the program, a few of us are horrified, and most people seem noncommittal but willing to go along for the sake of team-building.

Those of us opposed to the program have raised our concerns about its not being scientifically based and the potential for people’s results to be weaponized against them by coworkers. The president thanked us for sharing our concerns, suggested we raise the pseudoscience issue directly with his coach, and promised to guard against people weaponizing results against each other. He is a thoughtful, conscientious boss who is usually quite logical — he’s just really bought into this coach! I am not optimistic about our chances of convincing him not to do the program, especially since most of us objectors are junior employees without much capital to spend and the senior employees are either enthusiastic or neutral.

I really don’t want to do this program! I am a very private person and high performer whose primary productivity struggles are due to diagnosed anxiety, depression, and ADHD, for which I am receiving medical treatment and therapy and which no one at work knows anything about. Having my coworkers all up in my personal business reminding me not to “give in” to “negativity” sounds like my personal nightmare.

How do I get through this “training program” without either letting my coworkers in on my personal health information or being labeled a non-team-player for not participating fully? Do you have any tips for navigating personality-based testing with minimal invasiveness or friction? Are there any answers I can give that will make my coworkers continue to think, “Wow, she’s nice, good at her job, and boring”?

Before you resign yourself to having to do it, please consider trying to opt out!

Yes, the president brushed you off when you and your coworkers raised concerns earlier, but it sounds like you might not have been firm enough about not being willing to do it. You raised concerns about the program not being scientifically based and whether people’s results might be used against them … but why not raise it again and say, “I’ve thought about this more, and I am not comfortable participating. I’ve looked into the program further and it crosses boundaries that I’m not comfortable with at work. So I’m planning to opt out and wanted to let you know.”

This will have more weight if you can convince some of your coworkers to say the same thing — and then it can be “we are opting out” — but you can do it on your own if you need to.

Also, note that the language isn’t “can I opt out?” It’s “I am opting out.” If your boss truly wants to force you to participate as a requirement of your employment, make him say that … but it’s pretty likely that he won’t, since you say he’s normally thoughtful, conscientious, and logical.

I know you’re concerned you don’t have the capital to spend on this, but you’re bothered enough by it that it’s likely worth doing. If you were just annoyed but ultimately not that upset, I’d agree that you might as well play along. But you sound genuinely upset by it — you’re calling it a personal nightmare! — and have serious concerns about it violating boundaries around your mental health. It’s reasonable to take a firmer stand.

Whenever someone is bothered by this kind of thing, they’re always sure to hear from someone who feels differently, “Give it a chance! It’s not that bad! It helped my team learn to communicate better,” etc. etc. etc. But you’re being asked to spend two hours a week with no reduction in your workload on something that violates your boundaries and is potentially contraindicated with the private work you’re doing in therapy. It’s not outlandish to opt out.

If you do end up participating, though, I wouldn’t worry terribly about figuring out what answers will make your coworkers continue to think, “Wow, she’s nice, good at her job, and boring.” Personality testing is going to put you all into broad groupings and you’re not likely to end up categorized in a way that makes people think you’re something shocking (and definitely not that you’re not nice, bad at your job, or plagued by scandal). But if you’re worried, you can always pick the answers that feel the most bland or that represent traits you know are valued by your team.

I’d be more worried about the part where you “help each other confront your personal weaknesses and be more positive” and share your progress with a coworker. Without knowing exactly how this particular program works, it’s hard to advise on how to navigate that — but if you have the option, I’d choose incredibly bland weaknesses or ones (real or fake) that you won’t mind having to discuss, like “improve my work-life balance” or “disconnect from email more often” or “read more industry news.” Also — and this is important — try to ensure that your progress “buddy” is one of the coworkers who’s opposed to the program like you so you can agree to do as little of it as possible.

It also might be interesting to push to know what work you should set aside so that you have two hours a week for this. And if that doesn’t happen, you and your similarly opposed coworkers might be able to fall back on “We didn’t have time for (pseudoscience coaching) this week because we needed to focus on our deadlines for X and Y.”

But really, try just matter-of-factly opting out.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
I hereby release that last bubble to all humans wishing to attract other humans.

Good morning. After several days of on-and-off showers due to an infusion of tropical moisture, high pressure will begin to reassert its influence over our weather today, and this will push our temperatures back above normal for August. The heat will peak on Wednesday before a weak front brings some relief in the form of clouds, showers, and slightly lower daytime temperatures. Miraculously, we may then be looking at a week or so of near- or slightly below-normal temperatures for August in Houston. Yes, please.

On a completely unrelated note, I’m participating in the Bay Area “Dancing with the Stars” event on September 10 that will be held at the Doyle Convention Center in Texas City. I am not a dancer by an means, but I’ve been working hard with my partner for the event, Nassau Bay City Secretary Sandra Ham, to fix that. By some miracle, Mariel Blain of Dance Visions has taught us a more than 2-minute tango. In a few weeks we will compete on stage with five other couples to raise money for the Bay Area Alliance for Youth and Families. You can find out more information here, and if you’re so inclined you can support your favorite couple by text, or buying a table.

Monday

Today will bring partly sunny skies to the region, with temperatures generally topping out in the mid-90s for much of the Houston region (far inland areas will be hotter). This is somewhat of a transition day, as high pressure is still building over the area. As a result there may still be a 10 or 15 percent chance of rain, but consider yourself lucky if you see a brief shower. Winds will be light, out of the southwest, at 5 to 10 mph.

Tuesday and Wednesday

With high pressure fully in control we’ll see highs jump into the upper 90s to 100 degrees for much of the region. Wednesday looks like the hottest day of the week, when much of the metro area should reach triple digits. Rain chances will be low to nil for the region.

Thursday and Friday

Thursday will probably start out hot again, but the aforementioned weak front should push into the Houston area during the daytime, bringing clouds and an elevated chance of rain through Friday or Friday night. Much of the area will probably see 0.5 to 2 inches of rain during this period, but that is a general guess at this point rather than a high confidence forecast. Thursday will be hotter ahead of the front, but highs on Friday may top out at around 90 degrees. The front will not result in appreciably lower dew points, but it will at least take the sting out of daytime highs.

Saturday, Sunday, and beyond

High pressure should not reassert itself this weekend, or heading into the weekend. As a result, I think we’re looking at a fairly sustained stretch of weather in the low 90s for this weekend and beyond, with decent 30 to 40 percent daily rain chances. This could be weather like we were supposed to have in June, but did not. Either way, for the historically hottest time of the year, we’ll take anything we can get.

Invest 98L, the tropical disturbance we’ve been watching over the Gulf the last couple days, is now ashore in South Texas, ending any potential development concerns. And it’s probably a good thing, as the disturbance finally starting organizing more rapidly overnight and this morning.

Another 12 to 24 hours over water probably would have led to a formidable named storm. Thankfully, that isn’t the case, and the steady march westward of 98L will continue through the day. For our neighbors to the south, this is about as good an outcome as you could ever ask for: Widespread drought-easing tropical rains without the damaging impacts of a strong tropical storm or hurricane.

Additional rains will add up to about 1 to 4 inches, maybe a bit more in some spots in far south Texas or northern Mexico. Flash flooding is definitely a possibility in spots, but in most cases, it should be brief and manageable. More importantly, reservoirs and rivers in that region will get a boost.

Houston weather

For the Houston area, 98L’s last minute organization really robbed us of moisture to work with initially. As winds turn back onshore today, we should see a slight bump up in shower activity leading to more scattered action. The highest odds of rain will be near Matagorda Bay, with the lowest odds northeast of Houston. Still, there will be scattered showers around anywhere today, and even if your neighborhood will probably remain dry, it will be good to take an umbrella with you if you’ll be out and about. Highs into the mid-90s, cooler south, hotter inland.

Rain chances drop off substantially Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Look for a return to upper-90s, if not 100 degrees in much of our area to start the upcoming week. Better rain chances are still on target to return Thursday or Friday, as a generally wetter, cooler pattern tries to establish over Texas. I don’t want to overstate anything, but modeling continues to strongly argue for a bonafide pattern change in Texas heading into and beyond next weekend. Eric will have more for you tomorrow morning.

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Friday saw some very scattered rain across the area. Most inland areas got nothing, but a few spots picked up a half-inch to an inch or so. A few areas around Galveston Bay and along the coast saw a bit more. That refrain will be with us today, with inland areas mostly escaping storms, but coastal areas seeing the highest odds. This is thanks to Invest 98L, the tropical disturbance off the coast that will be tracking toward the southern part of Texas, keeping most of the rain to our south.

Invest 98L

A look at satellite this morning shows that 98L is spinning away in the Gulf. It remains ill-defined, so any development is not going to happen quickly, and it will almost certainly run out of time to become anything of note before coming ashore.

A reconnaissance aircraft is on the schedule to investigate this system around midday today, if it is still deemed necessary. The three big points from our perspective are:

1.) Any tropical development is going to be low-end and short-lived.

2.) No direct impacts are expected in the Houston area or along the coast north of Freeport.

3.) The primary issue in South Texas (Rio Grande Valley, Brush Country, Corpus Christi) from 98L will be heavy rainfall, mostly beneficial but perhaps enough to produce some flash flooding.

Minor coastal impacts, like some erosion or wave runup are possible from Matagorda Bay south. For Galveston down through Surfside Beach, the water may runup the beach a good bit at high tide but flooding is not expected.

Houston area

With 98L not a direct concern for us, we will be on shower watch today. From downtown Houston to the north and west, minimal shower activity is expected today, with just a handful of downpours possible, much like yesterday. South and east of downtown, the odds of showers are notably higher, but even there it will be mostly just scattered in nature, meaning some folks won’t see rain. Wherever showers do fall, a quick half-inch to inch will be possible. Highs will range from the 80s on the coast to upper-90s inland.

For Sunday, expect much more of the same. Some of Sunday will depend on how organized 98L gets before coming ashore. If it can consolidate most storminess, it may keep most areas, even near the coast dry. If it remains broadly disorganized, scattered showers will be more likely, mainly south and east of downtown Houston. We’ll update you on this tomorrow!

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