Cowboy Who?

#KRyo #RoninWarriors

#Rowen #RoninWarriors

Well now ... what do ya think about that? #CowboyWho

A year ago, a family member gave me a 2019 laptop that wouldn’t run Windows anymore. And of course, I immediately installed Fedora Linux on it. While my day-to-day Fedora Linux system is a desktop PC, it’s nice to have a laptop to take with me when I do workshops or conference demos.

However, the laptop has a physical “spinning heads” hard disk, so it is really slow to boot. I timed it; the laptop takes almost two minutes to go from “power on” to “login prompt.” And that’s a very long time when you’re at the front of the room, waiting to start a demo.

I thought about replacing the hard disk with a solid state drive, but when I opened the laptop to make sure the drive was replaceable, I saw that the laptop also supports an NVMe solid state drive in addition to the hard disk.

This presented an interesting opportunity: I could put in an NVMe drive and install Fedora Linux across two disks. Specifically, I wanted to boot Fedora Linux from the NVME drive, and keep extra apps and other data on the hard disk. I use several big third-party apps for my demos, which I install in both /opt and /usr/local, and it’s a huge pain to download and install those extra applications whenever I upgrade Fedora Linux. (I prefer to wipe and reinstall when I upgrade Fedora Linux, so I always have a clean starting point.) If I could keep /opt and /usr/local on the hard disk, I could preserve those when I install the next version of Fedora Linux.

Installing Fedora Linux to the NVMe

After installing a new NVMe drive in the laptop, I needed to reinstall Fedora Linux. I prefer the Xfce desktop, so I downloaded the Fedora Xfce spin and booted the installer. When the installer reached the “Destination” step, it prompted me for the target disk. I clicked “Choose destination” and selected the NVMe disk:

The rest of the installation ran normally. The Fedora Linux installer set up the partitions automatically on the new NVMe drive, encrypted my data, and installed the operating system.

With Fedora Linux on the NVMe drive, booting took seconds instead of minutes. Again, I timed it: about 20 seconds to go from “power on” to “login prompt.” That’s a huge improvement!

Setting up partitions on the hard disk

The disk partition app in the Fedora Xfce is GParted, which makes it easy to set up the hard disk with new partitions. However, GParted’s main limitation is that it can’t set up encrypted volumes for you. If you want to use encryption, you’ll need to use the command line and run cryptsetup on your own.

However, I’m not very concerned about encrypting my /opt and /usr/local partitions. These are just third-party apps, not private data. My personal data will be saved to my home directory, which is safely encrypted on the NVMe drive. So I decided to set up regular partitions, formatted as ext4 filesystems.

I used GParted to delete the old partitions on the hard disk, and define three partitions that were each about 300 GB: /opt (which I labeled as opt), /usr/local (labeled usrlocal) and /backup (labeled backup). GParted created the partitions and wrote an ext4 filesystem on each.

However, the /usr/local filesystem has a directory tree in it already, such as /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/lib, although these directories will be empty after installing Fedora Linux. I wanted to copy the original directories to the new filesystem. The easiest way to do that is to add the new usrlocal partition somewhere else and then copy the old /usr/local to the new partition. Adding a partition to a directory is called mounting, and the directory itself is called a mount point.

First, I needed to create a new mount point for the usrlocal partition, which can be located anywhere on the filesystem. Since this was temporary, I created it under /tmp then mounted the new partition using the mount command:

$ sudo mkdir /tmp/usrlocal
$ sudo mount LABEL=usrlocal /tmp/usrlocal

Then I copied the contents of the old /usr/local to the new /tmp/usrlocal mount point. The -a or –archive option copies everything:

$ cd /usr/local
$ sudo cp --archive * /tmp/usrlocal

After the process is complete, I unmounted the new partition:

$ sudo umount /tmp/usrlocal

Adding the partitions to the system

To make sure the new partitions are automatically mounted every time my laptop reboots, I needed to add them to my /etc/fstab file. This is a special file that contains the filesystem table, which is a list of partitions that the system can find on the disk and where to mount them. For example, my default /etc/fstab file looks like this:

#
# /etc/fstab
# Created by anaconda on Sat May 23 20:15:13 2026
#
# Accessible filesystems, by reference, are maintained under '/dev/disk/'.
# See man pages fstab(5), findfs(8), mount(8) and/or blkid(8) for more info.
#
# After editing this file, run 'systemctl daemon-reload' to update systemd
# units generated from this file.
#
UUID=c10ec138-be4b-4513-89b7-749ef4a0605e / btrfs subvol=root,compress=zstd:1,x-systemd.device-timeout=0 0 0
UUID=a87b1ed4-4951-4da1-a4a4-a5c48f1f3b28 /boot ext4 defaults 1 2
UUID=9AD9-2C52 /boot/efi vfat umask=0077,shortname=winnt 0 2
UUID=c10ec138-be4b-4513-89b7-749ef4a0605e /home btrfs subvol=home,compress=zstd:1,x-systemd.device-timeout=0 0 0

Each line in the /etc/fstab file is divided into several fields: the identifier for the filesystem (to learn more about these, see Persistent Identifiers for Storage Devices in the Fedora online documentation), the mount point, the filesystem type, a list of mount options, and two optional fields that control if backup software should “dump” the filesystem to backup media (use 0 for never) and what order the fsck command should check filesystems when needed (usually 1 for the root filesystem, or 2 for other filesystems). I added these lines to my /etc/fstab file, which defined the mount points for each of my new filesystems:

LABEL=backup /backup ext4 defaults,noatime 0 2
LABEL=opt /opt ext4 defaults,noatime 0 2
LABEL=usrlocal /usr/local ext4 defaults,noatime 0 2

This is an internal drive, so it should be there every time the laptop boots up. If you add removable storage to the /etc/fstab file, such as a USB drive, you should add the nofail option to this list of mount options. Otherwise, if the partition is not available when Linux starts up, the system will hang.

With these lines in the /etc/fstab file, I ran these commands to reload the /etc/fstab file, create the /backup mount point, and mount each of the filesystems:

$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload
$ sudo mkdir /backup

$ sudo mount /backup
$ sudo mount /opt
$ sudo mount /usr/local

This generated an SELinux alert right away, complaining that the new /usr/local filesystem lacked the correct security context. The security information wasn’t “carried over” when copying the old /usr/local directory tree. Fortunately, the SELinux error provides the solution:

To restore the default SELinux security contexts to the new /usr/local directory tree, I ran the restorecon command. The -v option will print what it does to fix the system:

$ sudo restorecon -v /usr/local
Relabeled /usr/local from system_u:object_r:unlabeled_t:s0 to system_u:object_r:usr_t:s0
Relabeled /usr/local/lost+found from system_u:object_r:unlabeled_t:s0 to system_u:object_r:usr_t:s0

Filesystem flexibility

With just a few extra steps, I was able to use two disks with Fedora Linux, which lets me take full advantage of the storage on my laptop. The operating system now runs from the very fast NVMe drive, while my big third-party applications in /usr/local and /opt run from the hard disk.

Margaret Cho is a trailblazer and ‘mother’ to your favorite comedians.

She burst onto the scene in the 90s performing at night clubs and later starred in the ABC sitcom 'All-American Girl', the first network show to center an Asian American family. Margaret reflects on the impact of her groundbreaking show, how she sees her role as a mentor for younger comedians, and why she’s still optimistic about comedy even as it swings to the right. 

Plus, she shares how standup helped her get through a very intense rehab experience. Margaret Cho is also on tour! Her latest standup set is called Choligarchy.

Note: This episode includes conversations about suicide and addiction. Please take care while listening. If you or someone you know needs support, call or text 988. 

Sign up for Sam’s Newsletter to get behind the scenes stuff from every interview each week.

The Sam Sanders Show is a production of KCRW and Sam Sanders Productions.

Joanna Lin, who works under the name Soft Surprise, makes objects that feel instantly legible and slightly off. Hotdogs/glizzies become a chandelier. A watch becomes a gleaming stainless steel status object with no dial to tell time. Consumer forms and brand language remain intact just long enough to pull viewers in before slipping sideways into something less useful, more revealing, and often humorous.

Lin’s background helps explain that tension. A multidisciplinary designer with a BFA in Film/Animation/Video from the Rhode Island School of Design, she has worked as an artist assistant, motion graphics animator, designer, and product developer, including a stint at MSCHF Product Studios. Her practice, Soft Surprise, began in 2019 as what she describes as a “pseudo business” — at once an art container, a commercial experiment, and a space to explore how branding, aspiration, and taste shape the way people move through the world.

If earlier iterations of Soft Surprise often observed consumer culture from a slight distance — through brand voice, product copy, and the co-opted rituals of e-commerce — Lin’s recent exhibition at Zeke’s Projects in Dallas suggests a shift. In works like Cool Bracelet and Words for Men, she moves from simply pointing at the performance of identity through consumption to inhabiting it more directly, trying on its materials, codes, and absurdities like a unitard.

When we spoke recently, Lin discussed the appeal of highly finished objects, the “middle-school” humor that runs through her practice, what she learned from trying to make Soft Surprise function as an e-commerce business, and why stupidity, for her, is timeless.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Francis Chung (FC): You describe your work as transforming “dumb but delightful ideas” into highly refined objects. When did that approach click for you, and what keeps you committed to that tension?

Joanna Lin (JL): I think it came together from a few different places. Around 2018 or 2019, I worked as an artist assistant for someone who had been a toy inventor turned wood sculptor. His objects were so highly finished and so polished that they felt magnetic and undeniable. Even before that, the last time my parents really understood my art was when I was doing figure drawing — it was clear to them that I could draw well. My spouse is also someone who doesn’t necessarily understand all art, but he responds immediately when something is very well made.

Over time, all of that solidified something for me: there’s something powerful about a well-made object. Even people who might not otherwise care can’t help but speculate. How long did that take? How did they make it? That kind of attention matters to me.

On the other side of that, my sense of humor probably crystallized in middle school. I just have a dumb sense of humor. So those two things — reverence for craft and a low comedic register — fused.

FC: What makes a low concept worth elevating for you?

JL: Honestly, it makes me laugh. My practice is one of the only places where I can exercise total control. No one can really tell me what to do there. So if I spend a disproportionate amount of time, money, and brainpower figuring out how to make something ridiculous, the joke is kind of on me. That’s funny to me while I’m making it.

Some ideas are more like one-liners, and those tend to stay more in a product space than in an art-object space. But some ideas feel like emergencies. I just have to make them. The 8008 “clock” was like that. I had a broken clock and suddenly it felt urgent — a craft emergency. I think some ideas just arrive that way.

FC: You’ve said branding is part of your material. What does the language of consumer branding allow you to do that traditional sculpture doesn’t?

JL: Branding is such a universal language. We’re all so deeply inside it. It’s one of the most legible visual systems there is. Even people who aren’t thinking about branding as a category still understand polish, aspiration, repetition, familiarity, slogans, product voice, all of that. Even people trying to build a personal brand on social media are following some version of the same playbook.

I like mixing something unfamiliar with something very familiar, and branding is perfect for that. It has these high claims and aspirational tones. It’s polished. It promises transformation. I like applying all of that to things that absolutely do not deserve it. That gap is a play area for me.

I’m also genuinely inspired by brand language. I used to work on menstrual products, and there would be phrases like “up to 100% leak-free proof protection,” and I’d think: “What do all of those words even mean together?” That kind of overblown language is hilarious to me. I love writing in that register.

FC: So are you satirizing branding, or just playing with it?

JL: I think “playing with it” is closer. I’m not standing outside of it. I’m definitely inside it. I find it funny, but I also find it compelling. At work I learned the term “ideal customer profile,” and that really stuck with me — brands are trying to grab their ICPs, and people are trying to grab onto brands. There’s this loop of identity, projection, and recognition.

Shopping can feel like an illusion of control. People use purchase, taste, home decor, wearable objects — all of that — to signal who they are, or who they want to be. Even tinned fish can become this weird little status symbol once it gets wrapped up in the right aesthetic of taste and aspiration. Branding intensifies that. I’m interested in that structure.

FC: Your objects often look like products, but they don’t fully function like them. How important is that gap between expectation and reality?

JL: It depends on the context. When I was trying to make Soft Surprise work more as an e-commerce business, I leaned harder into useful objects. That’s where the nightlights came from. I had been laid off, and I was really trying to see if I could make it financially viable, so utility mattered more.

But for the Zeke’s Projects show, I didn’t need that. In the gallery, it felt like a safe space to let the objects be more unreasonable. I could make something really polished and labor-intensive that maybe no one would buy, and that was part of the point. It circles back to the joke being on me, which is kind of the point.

I also learned while I was at MSCHF that some of its stickiest ideas didn’t necessarily make the most money. People really respond to highly polished concepts, but that kind of stickiness doesn’t always translate into sales. So for a while I was pursuing those two things in parallel: the useful product and the art object.

FC: Soft Surprise seems to operate as both a brand and an art practice. What does framing it as a business let you explore?

JL: At first, very practically, it was a place where I could write off art supplies. Everybody tells you to get an LLC. But because it lived in the world of e-commerce, and because e-commerce is so heavily branded, it gave me a structure to play in. I could write copy, build a voice, and make product language part of the piece.

That voice came pretty naturally to me. It was a playful extension of the objects. Writing is also much faster than making, though for me it usually comes after the object is made. It’s like dessert. It gave me one more place to joke around after I had already made the thing.

It also helped me separate myself from what I was putting out there. I really don’t love being perceived. Once I had a full-time job again, I stopped posting on Instagram for months. But the Soft Surprise voice let the brand speak a little bit for me.

FC: There’s a recurring use of familiar, humorous forms — hotdogs, nightlights, watches, consumer silhouettes. What draws you to those forms?

JL: I think that’s just my damaged middle-school brain. Truly. I have a lot of affection for forms that are immediate and slightly stupid. Humor is one of the main levers I pull. Branding is another. Craft is another. Ideally all three are working together, and the piece can stand on its own without needing wall text to explain everything.

That’s important to me. I don’t want people to have to decode the work through theory first. I want them to have an entry point.

FC: How did the Zeke’s Projects exhibition fit into your broader practice?

JL: Before this show, I felt like I was mostly observing and poking at consumer culture and performing identity from a distance — through brand voice, copy, and by co-opting those rituals. With this show, I felt more pulled off the sidelines and into actually participating in that behavior.

That became especially clear to me with Cool Bracelet and Words for Men. The watch world, for example, is mesmerizingly performative. There’s so much history, status, and ritual tied up in how people buy, talk about, and display watches. Learning about it was kind of insufferable and outrageous, but also really funny and fertile to me. With Cool Bracelet, I’m borrowing that whole language of the watch — the form, the materials, the seriousness — and perverting it into something that doesn’t tell time.

I’m not even totally sure what wearing it performs, or what it signals beyond literally “stupidity is timeless,” but I do feel peak when I wear it. So in that sense, maybe it’s signaling something aligned and true to me, at least. My original vision was actually to have the center piece cast in platinum because it would have been so funny to spend that much money on the process and the raw material. Jokes on me times 100.

Zeke also gave me a lot of freedom. He basically said I could do whatever I wanted. That really mattered to me. I really respond to people who have self-awareness and a lack of pretension. At the same time, this was my second solo show in a short period, and I think I depleted a lot of my ideas because of that. It forced me to test which ideas really wanted to live in a gallery and which ones were better as products. Some things felt forced in the gallery context, and I cut them.

FC: Did showing in a gallery change how you thought about the work?

JL: Yeah. One thing I realized is that I feel sad when people really connect to something and then can’t afford it because I’ve priced it according to the logic of the piece. With the watch works, for example, if I was trying to mimic luxury-watch energy, the price had to participate in that bit. But that also means a lot of people who would enjoy it can’t access it.

If I had more time and money, I think I would have pushed that even further and made the entire show a fake “watch” store. Not me walking around as the artist among various pieces, but me as a “watch” salesperson, fully in character, taking expressions of interest. That started crystallizing a little too late in the process, but I think that’s maybe where the work is headed.

FC: Your statement talks about how consumer culture teaches us to perform identity through taste and purchase. How do you see that playing out in your work?

JL: This show was the first time I really stepped into that idea instead of just pointing at it. Words for Men came from getting fixated on how aggressively products are marketed to men. It makes me laugh anytime I see it in the wild. Sometimes for inspiration I’ll just pick a product aisle and read all the packaging. Even though those products aren’t being marketed to me, it still feels wild to see soap sold with language like “WOOD BARREL BOURBON HEAVY GRIT,” or a belt sold as “AVIATION GRADE NINJA WEB.”

When you collect that language all in one place, it starts to feel absurd. It exposes how constructed and fragile masculinity is, and that contrast is mesmerizing to me.

More generally, even when the objects aren’t cheap, people justify buying them because they see themselves in that kind of purchase. They want to support a small business. They want to show that they have a certain sense of humor. They want to give a gift that makes someone feel understood.

That’s really interesting to me. The object becomes part of a web of signaling — to friends, to partners, to yourself. It’s impossible to be outside consumer culture, so I’m not pretending I’m outside it either. I’m just trying to make that whole system a little more visible, and maybe a little more absurd.

FC: Where do you see Soft Surprise going next?

JL: Honestly, I might move away from both the e-commerce version and the solo-show version for a while. Last year I gave the e-commerce direction everything I had, and then right when sales started getting easier, I started a full-time job and couldn’t sustain filling orders on top of everything else. I shut the store down in December.

And with the shows, I went all out. When I do things, I tend to do them at the extremes. Once I feel like I’ve done them in a way that satisfies me, I’m weirdly okay leaving them behind.

The next thing I keep circling is a project about stages of life and how little social drama really changes. When we’re in school, we want to be adults, but then we get to the workplace and the drama is basically the same as junior high. I want to cast that drama at the sperm level. I’ve had that idea forever. Office dynamics can feel so menial and so eternal. You think adulthood is going to feel different, but so much of it is still elementary school. The idea has so much labor built into it that I’ve kept putting it off, but I think it might be the next real thing.

At the end of the day, the reason I make work at all is to act like an antenna. Humor pulls people in, execution holds their attention, and if it works, it magnetizes the people who are on the same wavelength as me.

The post Stupidity Is Timeless: A Conversation with Joanna Lin appeared first on Glasstire.

On Sunday, May 31, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH) and the Houston Freedmen’s Town Conservancy (HFTC) will break ground on a new monumental pavilion, marking Phase Two of the ongoing Rebirth in Action: Telling the Story of Freedom project led by Chicago artist Theaster Gates. 

The multiyear project was launched in 2022 as a partnership between CAMH, the HFTC, Mr. Gates, and the City of Houston, to preserve the material and historic legacy of Freedmen’s Town, a community established by formerly enslaved Black Houston residents following their Juneteenth emancipation in 1865.

The focus of the new cultural pavilion, to be designed by Mr. Gates with landscape architecture firm Studio Zewde, will be to house and preserve more than 20,000 red clay bricks used in the construction of the original Freedmen’s Town. Ceramics processes, including brickmaking, form a basis of much of Mr. Gates’ artistic practice, which also focuses on Black craft, urban planning, and social justice. Phase One of Rebirth in Action included the 2024 CAMH exhibition The Gift and The Renege by Mr. Gates, which incorporated Freedmen’s Town bricks. Studio Zwede, based in Harlem, New York City, is run by Houston native Sara Zewde. 

In a press release, Ryan N. Dennis, CAMH Co-Director and Chief Curator, remarked, “This project exemplifies how contemporary art can provide necessary interventions for preservation, remembrance, and celebration. Theaster’s practice articulates how a socially engaged practice can live outside of museum walls, within and alongside communities.”

As part of the project’s second phase, Hines Architecture + Design, a Houston-based architecture firm, will rehabilitate three historic row houses across from the pavilion. 

The pavilion will function as a community gathering space, and along with the row houses will serve as a cultural hub for after-school programming, a food pantry and community garden, and senior services.

Sharon Fletcher, HFTC Executive Director, said, “Rebirth in Action demonstrates the strength of true collaboration, grounded in a community‑centered approach and aligned around a shared purpose. This project elevates the story beyond the bricks, revealing the years of intentional preservation work happening behind the scenes. Today is about restoration — not just of streets, but of history and dignity — underscoring that preservation and reinvestment must go hand in hand.”

The project is expected to be completed with a public unveiling in spring 2027. Visit the HFTC website to learn more about Freedmen’s Town.

The post Theaster Gates to Design New Freedmen’s Town Pavilion as Cultural Hub appeared first on Glasstire.

In brief: A quiet weekend looks to be in store for Houston with standard early summer hot weather and minimal rain chances. Things do turn more active again next week with building rain chances after Tuesday.

The topline here is that things look pretty good this weekend for Houston! As Eric noted yesterday, we’re definitely in the early summer phase of things, and with the calendar flipping to June on Monday, that will track. Some good news today: The U.S. Drought Monitor updated on Thursday and shows virtually the entire Houston area completely out of drought now.

As far as I can tell, this is the first time we’ve been this drought-free in the area since late September. It’s been a long while. Even in Corpus Christi, the reservoir levels in that area are as high as they’ve been since last September also.

Although the weekend looks fine, there are some signs we aren’t quite done with rainy weather entirely.

Today and the weekend

I’m not going to promise this weekend will be completely dry. It is almost June after all, and it’s tough to completely void the area of an afternoon downpour in spots. But any showers would be quite random and isolated. Aside from that, it looks fine. Highs will be near 90 or so, maybe in the low-90s in some spots. Mornings should be nice with lows in the 70s.

Monday

We could see a few additional showers in the area on Monday afternoon. But still, the majority of the region looks fairly quiet. More low-90s for highs and mid-70s for lows.

Tuesday and Wednesday

Coverage of rain and thunderstorms should increase to at least “scattered” levels for the middle of the week. Unlike this past week and weekend’s rains, the setup next week looks to favor activity moving off the Gulf or out of Louisiana initially. We could see some gusty thunderstorms with that, along with locally heavy downpours. I doubt we’ll see any of the 3 AM wakeup call stuff like we’ve had this week. Which, great, because we need sleep.

As a sidebar: There is no real serious tropical system risk in the Gulf right now for next week or the week after. The GFS model is often shown this time of year, but it has a very well known, systemic bias of constantly overforecasting tropical storms and hurricanes in May and June. So it can be safely disregarded. That said, it’s not out of the question that a weak, sloppy system forms in the eastern Gulf over the next 2 weeks. Here in Texas, our rain may fall hard at times, but it should not tied to anything tropical.

Later next week

We may flip the flow in the atmosphere later next week, which means storms could form in Central and West Texas and work their way east more like we saw this week. Or we’ll just end up with scattered rain and thunderstorms each day. It’s too soon to speculate on anything specific, as you know how that goes even 24 to 36 hours out sometimes. Whatever the case, it looks unsettled. Highs should back down into the 80s. But we’ll of course need to watch for localized flooding if the rain comes in higher doses. Consult your meteorologist next week to see if rainfall is right for you.

MENLO PARK, CA—Expressing frustration about the frequent error hampering the overall user experience, Meta Glasses wearers worldwide confirmed Friday encountering a bug where they are able to see Mark Zuckerberg’s memories. “I was filming video of my road trip with my Meta Oakleys and all of a sudden I’m seeing the POV of someone throwing up their first beer in the bathroom of a New England prep school—it’s a good thing I wasn’t driving at the time or it could have been dangerous,” said user Melanie Henderson, echoing the sentiments of hundreds of consumers who noted a persistent glitch where intimate personal events from the Meta founder’s life would flash across the glasses without warning. “I’ll be in the middle of a run or just doing work around the house and the glasses will seem to be functioning normally but then, bam, I’m watching a pair of twins threaten me for stealing their company idea or witnessing Congress raking me over the coals for lying about child safety risks. It’s really disorienting. I’ve tried everything: turning them off and back on again, updating the software, fiddling with the batteries. Sometimes it seems to work but then I’ll be, like, why does my husband look like a frowning Priscilla Chan shaking her head in disappointment? And I’ll realize the glasses are totally glitching out again. You expect a less buggy product from such a huge tech company.” When reached for comment, Meta promised to resolve the glitch as soon as possible as well as a bug that causes the glasses’ speakers to constantly emit the sound of sobbing.

The post Meta Glasses Users Report Bug Where They Can See Mark Zuckerberg’s Memories appeared first on The Onion.

Kacey Musgraves has released Middle Of Nowhere, her seventh studio album. The Onion shares everything you need to know about the country star. 

Genre: Sonically conservative, lyrically liberal

Twangitude: 2.5 Glen Campbells

How She Was Discovered In Nashville: Abandoned by bachelorette party

Awards And Achievements: 4 Grammys turned into bongs 

Hair: Purebred Friesian

Biggest Rival: Sandy Cheeks

Holiday Albums: A Very Kacey Christmas, A High Horse Halloween, A Yeehaw Yom Kippur

Most Frequent Collaborator: Indica

Controversies: Selling non-size-inclusive dog bandanas

Why She Performs Barefoot: Keeps leaving shoes at bowling alley

The post Artist Profile: Kacey Musgraves appeared first on The Onion.

An executive order by President Trump intended to create a deep sea mining industry has spurred millions of dollars of investment, prompting fast-tracked permitting as companies rush to extract material from the bottom of the ocean. What do you think?

The post Trump Executive Order Kickstarts Deep Sea Mining Rush appeared first on The Onion.

The post Top Songs May 2026 appeared first on The Onion.

Former first lady Jill Biden claimed that she thought her husband, former President Joe Biden, was having a stroke while watching his disastrous 2024 debate performance against President Trump that prompted him to drop out of the presidential race, insisting she had “never ever seen Joe like that before or since.”

The post Jill Biden Believed Husband Was Having Stroke During Presidential Debate appeared first on The Onion.

Are you his only dad?

I sometimes worry that there is a part of Mildred that is now and forever, clown.

A reader writes:

Could you please start a Thursday Thread about keynote speaker fails?

Not long ago, our large public library system had its annual staff development day. In the past, we’ve had board presidents, scholars, and community leaders deliver the keynote address. This year, our executive director announced from the podium that they had directly chosen the speaker, after having met them at a local morning news program. The speaker had lost her daughter and husband to a murder/suicide and was now marketing this tragedy as a social media-based lifestyle/self-help company. Did it occur to our director that one of our staffers had lost a child to suicide, that others could have had their own personal tragedies, that the whole thing might be triggering for some, or that many prefer to grieve in private? Apparently not! The keynote speech could have been worse, but it also could have been better. Almost none of what this speaker had to share was public library-related; rather the broad theme was “resilience.”

At the end of the keynote’s talk two things happened: First, our trauma influencer took a bunch of smiling selfies with her social media team. Second, the hundreds of staffers in attendance were directed to think about a loved one and to use the speaker’s branded postcards (complete with QR codes to her website) to write to that person. On the spot. We were told these would be collected and library admin would provide postage and mail them for us. Some staff did as they were instructed, but many were so uncomfortable with the situation that they left their cards blank. The kicker: our executive director — the person who hand-picked this trainwreck of a speaker — spent most of the keynote visibly playing Pokémon Go on their phone.

Why limit ourselves to keynote speakers when we’ve also got the motivational speaker who got drunk and went off the rails (and who talked about balancing work, health, and sex), the speaker who went on so long that everyone got food poisoning, and the very relatable speaker who, immediately after her presentation, let out a loud “UGH MY GODDDDD, BLECHHH,” not realizing her microphone was still on.

In the comments, please share your own story of conference speaker fails!

The post let’s discuss conference speaker fails appeared first on Ask a Manager.

Now let’s review these scenes for the test.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
Having a purpose was your first mistake. Wanting it to have meaning was a mental health calamity.

Today's News:

The post DOJ Launches Criminal Investigation Into All Women appeared first on The Onion.

SUMMIT, NJ—In a surprise attack of astonishing brutality, oral cavity sources confirmed Thursday that the Listerine inside a local mouth was leaving 0.1% of germs alive in order to spread a message of terror throughout the microbial community. “The mouthwash killed my entire colony and then told me to bear witness to the horrors I saw today,” said a rod-shaped Porphyromonas gingivalis, adding that its cell wall was nearly dissolved when suddenly the 20 milliliters of antiseptic liquid retreated, leaving the bacterium with severe but nonfatal injuries. “The Listerine viciously wiped out our entire community. There was nothing left but a wasteland covered in piles of dead cell membranes. It laughed and told us that even God fears the minty power of Listerine.” Sources later refused to verify rumors that shell-shocked survivors had taken refuge inside a decayed tooth.

The post Listerine Leaves 0.1% Of Germs Alive To Spread Message Of Terror Throughout Microbial Community appeared first on The Onion.

South Korean businessman Chung Yong-jin, chairman of an investment group that owns a majority stake in Starbucks Korea, bowed three times to apologize for an ad that appeared to mock the victims of a violent 1980 military crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators. What do you think?

The post South Korean Starbucks Apologizes For Ad That Evoked Massacre appeared first on The Onion.

You’re fired.

You are getting a promotion.

You are getting a demotion.

You are now in charge.

The person you hate here the most is now in charge, and they told me to tell you that you are fired.

No paychecks this week, cool?

Could I borrow you for a sec?

Could I borrow you for a quick sec?

I’ve always loved you.

We’re doubling your salary.

We’re taking your salary and cutting it in half.

We’re taking your salary, cutting it in half, and giving that half to the person here you hate the most.

The Christmas gift this year is a donation to the charity of someone else’s choice.

Layoffs are coming, and you’re safe.

Layoffs are coming. We’re safe.

Layoffs are coming. You’re safe, I’m not.

Layoffs are coming. I’m safe, you’re not.

Layoffs are coming. We’re both fucked.

Lunch?

Guess who’s fucked?

Guess who fucked?

Coffee?

Can you open this doc?

Nevermind.

Underground Artists is an ongoing comic by Ali Fitzgerald (Hungover Bear & Friends) that follows woodland creatures as they create art and search out whimsy in a bleak forest.

OTTAWA – Prime Minister Mark Carney has absorbed the resignation from Parliament by climate activist Steven Guilbeault, immediately announcing that his seat would be replaced with a tar sands tailings pond that will be ceremonially set on fire. “While it is sad to see a colleague go,” said Carney without even breaking stride, “this is […]

The post Carney to replace Steven Guilbeault’s seat with burning tailings pond appeared first on The Beaverton.

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

1. My coworker is constantly on loud phone calls when I need to focus

I am a researcher at a university, and I share bench space with another person from a different lab. They tend to be extremely loud and constantly on phone calls, either work-related or personal ones. It’s usually not a big deal if colleagues or advisors come in to talk a bit of research, but her calls go on forever as she’s either interviewing others or taking work calls. And my research includes a lot of reading and writing, for which this has become an unsuitable environment.

I’ve expressed to her multiple times that she should take calls elsewhere and it’s met with either, “Where though? There’s no conference room free” or being ignored. It’s not really my job to find her one and I think it’s basic decency to not come into a shared workspace if she’s constantly on calls with a booming loud voice such that my noise-cancelling headphones are deemed useless. How do I address this without going to my manager, who already has a lot on their plate as a new manager?

You have clashing needs for the space, but that doesn’t mean that her needs are wrong, just incompatible with yours. It’s reasonable for her to figure she can make work calls in her assigned workspace. If she’s making a lot of personal calls on top of that, that’s inconsiderate — but it sounds like much of this is about her work conversations and if she’s right that there’s no other obvious place for her to make them, that puts both of you in a bind.

I know you’d prefer not to take this to your manager, but that’s really the right next step — your workspace isn’t working well for your needs (because you need quiet for deep focus and your colleague needs to produce almost constant noise). Explain that and ask if you can move to a different space.

2. I don’t want to give a reference to someone who’s posted crappy things on Facebook

A decade ago at a former job, I hired an employee with no experience managing affordable housing, but with transferrable skills. She shared her experience with domestic violence and resulting homelessness and she talked about how she could relate to someone’s situation not defining their future. During her tenure, her family experienced additional trauma, and she cited the generous leave and other supports the org gave as being helpful for her family’s healing. When she outgrew her role and started looking for a new job in a different industry, I gave her a glowing reference and offered to do so again if the new job didn’t work out. She friended me on Facebook, we did the normal liking of each other’s posts, but didn’t connect otherwise. In the eight years since she left, she’s texted me twice to tell me she put me down as a reference for a job. Both times, the job called me the same day and I gave positive references.

About a year ago, I started noticing her Facebook posts were mocking people who use the social service system. I didn’t engage, just unfriended her. Last week, she sent a text telling me she used me as a reference again. Before I could even think about how I was going to respond to her, the potential employer (who also happens to support defunding most social services) called. I just ignored the request. Over the week, she followed up and tried to reach me through various social apps and called a shared former colleague. The only thing she hasn’t done is reach out to me at my job where I’ve worked for the past five years – I don’t think she knows I work here.

I should have just told her I don’t feel comfortable being a reference since we don’t know each other anymore. But at the same time, who just gives old numbers without checking in with the reference? Is there a time limit on reference giving? How could I have handled this situation better?

A surprisingly high number of people offer up references without checking in with the reference, and just assume that a previous “yes” lasts forever. (And actually, a surprisingly high number of people offer up references without even getting the initial “yes.”) They should check in — because you could be dead or living with wolves in a forest or otherwise unreachable, or you might feel too much time has gone by to still be able to give a nuanced reference, and also because if you’re not prepared for the call, you might draw a blank on details when asked for information. But despite that, a lot of people still don’t.

Ideally when she texted you, you would have told her you didn’t feel well positioned to still provide a reference for her. It’s up to you whether you wanted to explain why (personally I would have, but you’re not required to; she made her own bed) or just tell her too much time had passed for you to recall sufficiently useful details. But ignoring the request also sends a message that isn’t unwarranted, given this particular set of circumstances.

3. Is managing AI agents the same as managing people?

I’m attending a tech industry conference for work, which is of course overwhelmingly centered around AI agents and tools. One of the speakers said that a first-time manager may be a manager of AI agents instead of people. It seems like this would set a lot of first-time managers up to fail when they eventually manage real people.

I wondered what your thoughts were on this perspective. Have you seen or heard others implying managing AI agents and managing people is equal?

No! And that is bananas. That’s like saying that managing a garden is the same as managing people, or that managing an equipment fleet is the same as managing people. Managing AI may be a particular skill set, but it is not the same skill set as managing humans. AI agents aren’t going to (or at least aren’t supposed to) get sick, be cranky, take something personally, be defensive, feel they need more appreciation, or any of the other many, many characteristics and challenges that come with managing people. (I was going to say they also aren’t going to have their own independent agendas, but that’s apparently not true.)

4. Coming in as a new manager to an existing team

I work in a hospital as deputy manager of a large administrative team. I have been offered a new role in the hospital on a 12-month contract to cover maternity leave. This will be a step up to manager with my own deputy. The new team does the same work for a different healthcare specialty, so my skills are transferable.

It’s important to me to be an effective people manager. To do this, I need to know about each person. What are their strengths and areas for improvement? Are they looking for development opportunities? How do they prefer receiving feedback?

Should I ask the deputy for an overview of each person? What their current goals are, what their current 1-1s are focusing on, are they undergoing sickness or performance management? Or should I be forming my own opinion without asking the deputy for their views? Also, what questions could I ask in my first 1-1 with each team member?

Yes, you should ask the deputy for an overview on each person. You’ll form your own opinions based on your own observations, but it’ll help you get up to speed faster to hear their perspective too.

When you do initial one-on-ones with each team member, I find it helpful to ask things like:

• What are the most important things for you to achieve this year? Are you on track to doing that? Are there milestones to meet on the way? What things are you worried might get in the way?
• What’s your most pressing project this week / this month? (Follow-up questions should stem naturally from this — about context, timeline, steps, etc.)
• What would help you do your job better? Any obstacles you’re encountering that you need help with?
• Is there anything I should know about how you like to work?
• What’s worrying you most right now with your work?

5. Is this job opening a scam?

I recently (as in, an hour ago) applied to a local landscaping job — one that actually pays fairly generously for the level of work. As soon as I hit “apply” (this was an Indeed posting), I got an automated message from them inviting me to call and set up a remote interview.

Within half an hour, I received both text messages and phone calls from the company. The text message asked if I was available for a quick call; the phone call was shunted to my voicemail because I was driving and they did not leave a message.

I’ve been applying to jobs for a year and I hardly ever get so much as an email telling me I’ve been rejected. All of this seems very fishy, at the least. And I’ve seen three one-star reviews for the company on Google (which were all left without any accompanying text) which the owner responded to saying that they had been applicants. Am I wrong to think that something feels very wrong here?

Yes, it’s most likely a scam. It might not be; you could certainly do a call with them and learn more to be sure, but just follow normal anti-scam hygiene, meaning don’t give them your bank account details or other personal info until you’ve established they’re legitimate, don’t agree to deposit any checks for them, be skeptical if they “hire” you without a real interview, etc.

Related:
I received a job offer — and it was a scam

The post coworker is constantly on loud phone calls, I don’t want to give a reference, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

The post Secret Service Tackles Blood Clot That Jumped White House Fence appeared first on The Onion.

Pope Leo XIV published his first encyclical Monday, warning about the dangers of artificial intelligence. Here’s what you need to know about the document.

Q: What is an encyclical?

A: It’s like a company-wide email, except this one is skeptical of AI.

Q: What is the encyclical titled?

A: Magnifica_Humanitas_final.docx

Q: Were any AI companies or products mentioned by name?

A: Pope Leo specifically called out the Domino’s customer support bot.

Q: Why did the pope write about AI?

A: The Vatican’s SEO rankings have been plummeting for months.

Q: What impact will this have on the public perception of AI?

A: ChatGPT usage is already down 24% among little old Italian women.

Q: How can I read the encyclical?

A: By opening it in a browser tab you might get to in a couple of weeks.

Q: What is his most controversial point?

A: That human life is beautiful and worth saving.

The post What To Know About Pope Leo’s Encyclical On AI appeared first on The Onion.