This week on Lost Terminal: Lyosha joins a team, Meg makes a discovery, and Seth gets an upgrade.
Lost Terminal will return next week!

📓 Free transcript: https://www.patreon.com/posts/150085861/
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🎙️ Recorded using a RODE NT-1 v5 USB in 32-bit float, edited with REAPER on Linux

🙏 CREDITS

• Credits narrated by Lucy Stringer
  ❤️ Thank you so much to everyone who supports me, but especially my Patreon Producers:
• Ada Phillips
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Cowboy Pat disappeared? #CowboyWho

E-commerce giant Vevor is expected to open its first U.S. flagship store sometime this week. The company is best known for white-labeling home improvement, kitchen, and gardening tools under the Vevor brand. Meaning Vevor doesn’t manufacture products directly; instead, it contracts with existing factories to produce them. Vevor’s business model to date has been exclusively online, through third parties such as Home Depot and Amazon. According to a representative at the new Vevor store in ...

As a child, my secret “cool kid” skill was the ability to eat the sourest candy—the kind that children only pop into their mouths when dared by the neighborhood bully—and shrug it off like it was absolutely nothing. The mean kids would encourage me to eat yet another Warhead or Tear Jerker, but I’d wolf it and stare back at their surprised faces without so much as an eye twitch. I not only tolerated the sourness well, I reveled in it. Warheads, sour gummies of any shape, entire lemons: If it had that puckering taste, I would demolish it.

No sour confection is safe when I am near. So when my friend Wyatt first introduced me to Trolli sour gummies years ago, I promptly asked him to hide the bag from me. Because for me, there was only eating Trolli sour gummies until I burned away all my taste buds, and my lips, teeth, and tongue turned toilet-cleaner blue.

Recently, I discovered the appropriately named “frozen novelties” aisle in my local Kroger. That’s where, as I paused to consider which flavor of vegan ice cream to take home, I found Trolli Gummi Pops staring back at me. They more than called to me; they screamed.

I immediately purchased a box and ripped into it the second I got home.

I tore open the wrapper, eager for that sour hit mixed with saccharine delight, and was disappointed to learn that Trolli Gummi Pops are not, in fact, sour. Not at all. Which was surprising given that every package of regular Trolli gummies promises three things: 1. Sour. 2. Brite. 3. Crawlers. (And occasionally 4. Electric.) Trolli Gummi Pops make good on number two: the grape-strawberry flavor I tried is brighter than a Peeps factory at peak Easter-season production. And Trolli Gummi Pops come fairly close with number three, crawlers: These frozen treats certainly look like original Trollis, albeit larger, girthier, and frozen-er. But the sour coating that truly coalesces the pucker-to-sweetness ratio into perfection? Nonexistent.

This soft, gummy, yet also frozen hard popsicle has the mouthfeel of chewing on a silicone kitchen utensil. The taste is your standard artificial flavor frenzy, but the texture falls somewhere between licking plastic and eating a slimy carrot—a texture that can only make you wonder how many microplastics you’ve just ingested. The box showcases an image of the Trolli popsicle jiggling, and I can confirm that once the freezer burn has nominally warmed, this stick of sick delight does wiggle back and forth, if you wave it around like a conductor in a candy confection orchestra.

Thanks to the classic Trolli gummy taste that’s engineered to make you eat an entire bag in one sitting, the popsicle was impossible for me to stop eating, even as the texture made me consistently question if I’d mistaken an eraser for food. (In fact, it didn’t wear down through lickage alone. It’s the only popsicle that I’ve ever had to chew.)

I gobbled it in less than three minutes.

But my husband, who was initially intrigued by this frozen novelty, was not nearly as tempted. He left two-thirds of his to melt in our kitchen sink. Yet melt it did not. For five. Solid. Hours. Instead, it formed a gloopy glob, making me wary of rinsing it down the sink for fear of repercussions on our fragile plumbing.

Unlike a bag of Trolli sour gummies, the remaining four Trolli Gummi Pops from the package will stay in my freezer until after the apocalypse, when, starving and desperate, we will drag them out and be grateful for the disturbing amounts of corn syrup, xanthan gum, and artificial strawberry flavoring that will no doubt keep Trolli Gummi Pops shelf-stable for millennia. But what if (it being the apocalypse) we don’t have a functioning freezer? Fortunately, we’ve already established that Trolli’s Gummi Pops will indeed hold their shape and resist the urge to melt into a puddle of artificial sweetener the way that inferior popsicles with better texture inevitably will.

Because when the end times come, I won’t just want a popsicle. I’ll want one that jiggles.

Oh no! 45 minutes of work down the drain.

Thanks for putting a label on my life’s work.

The post Luge Gold Medalist Probably Main Luge Guy Now appeared first on The Onion.

 Gray walls, gray floors, gray ceilings, gray fixtures, gray appliances, gray home inspector, gray Realtor, gray real estate lawyer, gray grass, gray life, gray Earth, gray eternity. $1,300,000.

Reference #44439

The post It’s Gray Time! appeared first on The Onion.

Robert Donahue, 58, died suddenly while crawling through the woods in his deer costume.

The post Robert Donahue appeared first on The Onion.

The Food and Drug Administration has refused to review Moderna's application for an mRNA flu vaccine, the company revealed Tuesday.

While the move came as a surprise to the high-profile vaccine maker, it is just the latest hostility toward vaccines—and mRNA vaccines in particular—from an agency overseen by the fervent anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In his first year in office, Kennedy has already dramatically slashed childhood vaccine recommendations and canceled $500 million in research funding for mRNA vaccines against potential pandemic threats.

In a news release late Tuesday, Moderna said it was blindsided by the FDA's refusal, which the FDA cited as being due to the design of the company's Phase 3 trial for its mRNA flu vaccine, dubbed mRNA-1010. Specifically, the FDA's rejection was over the comparator vaccine Moderna used.

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Wikipedia editors are discussing whether to blacklist Archive.today because the archive site was used to direct a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against a blogger who wrote a post in 2023 about the mysterious website's anonymous maintainer.

In a request for comment page, Wikipedia's volunteer editors were presented with three options. Option A is to remove or hide all Archive.today links and add the site to the spam blacklist. Option B is to deprecate Archive.today, discouraging future link additions while keeping the existing archived links. Option C is to do nothing and maintain the status quo.

Option A in particular would be a huge change, as more than 695,000 links to Archive.today are used across 400,000 or so Wikipedia pages. Archive.today, also known as Archive.is, is a website that saves snapshots of webpages and is commonly used to bypass news paywalls.

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

1. Our new work stations will be outside our building’s security screening

I work in a government office, in a building that does full security screening of every person who comes in, with metal detectors and an x-ray machine for their bags. My department does some cashiering.

As part of renovations to the building, they are adding cashier stations to our office that will be pre-security, meaning people can come directly to us off the street with no screening. We’re assured these stations will operate as check-only, no cash, but I’m still nervous about doing this. I’ve expressed my concerns but have been told our department doesn’t have a choice, and we’ll just have to try it.

Do you think it’s reasonable to refuse to man these stations? And if I do so, what is the most professional language I can use?

Can you band together with coworkers and push back as a group? One person refusing to staff those stations is more likely to hear, “Well, it’s a requirement of the job so you’ve got to decide if you want to stay in it or not,” whereas a group of you all pushing back will have more power.

In doing so, you might point out that the fact that the building has that level of security indicates there’s reason to think there’s a need for it, and you and other cashiers shouldn’t be randomly excluded from those safety measures.

2. My boss surveyed the entire staff on my work after 90 days

After 10 years with my organization, I was thrilled to accept a big job as a division director. Among the department’s directors, I was relatively junior; however, leadership insisted that all they wanted was for me to be successful. I was new to the department and had not worked with anyone in it previously.

About 90 days in, my boss informed me that he’d circulated a survey to the entire staff (including the 20 employees who reported to me and 20 others who were not in my chain of command) to gain insights on “areas warranting additional focus” on my part. I thought that kind of feedback would be useful and said so.

The results of the survey were all over the place. More concerning, a couple respondents consistently left really vicious and in some cases wholly untrue comments about my conduct, professionalism, and qualifications for the work, to the majority of questions.

Before presenting me with the results, division leadership fed all the comments through ChatGPT to create a summary. When I requested the original responses, I could tell by their writing styles that three who reported to me made negative comments or false statements about me or my performance. A few others used the survey as an opportunity to air grievances about the division in general, including problems that had long pre-dated me and couldn’t possibly be resolved in under 90 days. So, the summary skewed heavily negative. Unfortunately, this was all leadership was able to focus on.

I won’t bore you with all the details, but ultimately, given the lack of support offered to me both before and after the survey, I chose to resign, and haven’t looked back.

How typical is it for team members to be asked to do a formal evaluation of their new director within 90 days of their start? I’ve worked professionally for over 15 years and was never asked to offer feedback about any of my supervisors. Is this an unusual practice?

It’s very normal to ask around about how things are going with a new manager; the new manager’s manager should be doing that, so that they hear about how things are playing out on the ground that they otherwise might not see. It’s much less usual to do it via an anonymous survey that apparently made it easy for people with an axe to grind against the organization to grind it against you simply because it was a chance to air broader grievances.

But what’s more problematic is that your leadership then just accepted that feedback unquestioningly and passed it on to you without getting more info or applying their own judgment to it. Part of the reason for managers to have actual conversations when gathering feedback about this kind of thing is so they can bring their own judgment to bear on what they’re hearing, as well as being able to probe when something seems surprising or off.

3. Two of us left and only one person is getting a leaving gift

Last week I left my job for one in another department within the same organization, and left on really good terms with my current team: leaving tea, cake, card, and promises to stay in touch.

As I’ve not yet been taken off the department mailing list, today I got copied into a message laying out details for another colleague’s (Tessa’s) departure: saying that there would again be a leaving tea, there was a card in the office to sign … and a link to an optional collection pot for a gift for the entire department to contribute to.

Logically I know I shouldn’t expect a leaving gift. I didn’t expect a gift! I was perfectly happy without a gift! And now I’ve seen my colleague is getting a leaving gift when I didn’t and, if I’m completely honest, I’m pretty stung by it. Adding insult to injury, I was in the department a lot longer than her, have been described as having turned around the area I was working in, and had periods where I felt very under-appreciated by my boss. It genuinely feels like a snub after I put in a hell of a lot of work into my role.

I suspect the main reason why this might have unfolded in such a way is because Tessa is part of a sub-team that has worked together for a long time, with a manager who is very on it with this sort of thing. I, on the other hand, recently got reorganized into a team that hasn’t worked together all that long, with a boss is pretty useless with “pastoral” stuff, so in some ways it doesn’t surprise me that this happened. Nonetheless, I still do feel decidedly under-appreciated by how this unfolded. (It doesn’t help that I’ve had a look on the collection pot website and seen that people throughout the department – including people within my chain of command who could have organized any hypothetical gift for me — have donated. If this was just amongst Tessa’s sub-team, I wouldn’t care quite as much.)

I’ll be going to Tessa’s leaving tea next week and am feeling uncomfortable about what a sour taste this has left in my mouth (and I obviously don’t feel that way about Tessa or most of my teammates!). I want to stay on good terms with my department, and my former boss has already expressed a hope that I’ll provide useful insight for him into the team I’ve relocated to, so I know I’ll be hearing from him again. I feel embarrassed about how much this has struck me, but I feel so tempted to say something to my former boss. Is there any way I address how bad this looked from my perspective – short of going, “Oh, I didn’t know this department did leaving gifts’ rather pointedly when Tessa gets her present, which I rather suspect would be slightly inappropriate(!)?

It’s absolutely because you’re on different sub-teams, and Tessa’s team has a manager who’s on top of this kind of thing and your team doesn’t. That’s all it is!

I hear you about people throughout the department having donated to Tessa’s gift, and so why didn’t they realize no one was organizing one for you … but most people don’t think that much about this stuff. Someone tells them a gift is being organized, they donate, and they don’t put much more thought into it. Yes, ideally someone would have thought, “Wait, Jane just left too and I didn’t see a gift for her” — but it’s not personal that they didn’t! It’s just people being consumed with their own stuff.

I do think there’s room to say to your old boss, “I don’t know if you realized this, but it didn’t feel great that Tessa is having such a fuss made over her departure when that didn’t happen for me, and I just wanted to flag it in case it’s something you can watch for when other people leave.” In other words, frame it as feedback for the future, not as “give me a gift now.” But it’ll be way more helpful for your peace of mind to just see that as reflective of things you already knew about your boss and not read more into it than that.

4. Should I tell my interviewer I like that the city is LGBTQ-friendly?

I have an interview coming up with a university in a famously queer-friendly area, and part of the reason I’m interested in this job and others like it is because I live in a less friendly area. Normally, I wouldn’t bring up anything identity-focused in an interview, but being a visible trans woman interviewing in one of the trans capitals of the world, I wonder if it makes sense to say something when they inevitably ask, “Why are you interested in this role?”

More generally, I’m just curious about how you’d advise any marginalized person to handle this, especially in the current moment where a lot of folks are considering these types of moves. One friend recommended saying something like, “This area is a really good fit for me culturally” and leaving the rest to them to figure out. What do you think?

They want to know why you’re interested in the job — meaning the specific role and its work, and so a strong answer will speak directly to that. You can definitely mention that the area is a good fit culturally (and that can be helpful when they know you’d need to move to take the job), but it should be more of an aside, not the focus of your answer.

5. How should my resume list many projects under one company?

I’ve worked at the same company for the past 10 years, but due to *gestures broadly*, I’m looking for a new position. The company I work for is basically a contractor, and I have worked on probably over 20 projects at this company, some for 3 months and some for 3+ years, and I’m usually simultaneously working on at least 2 projects.

The problem is, I don’t know the most useful way to put this experience on a resume! For any job posting I’m looking at, I probably have at least 2 projects that are the most relevant that I assume I should put first, but I still have room on my resume, so then what? Should I list the current projects I’m working on, or the longest running projects I was on? The most impactful? And what is the clearest way to show these aren’t the only projects that I’ve worked on, just like a relevant/recent subset?

Secondly, I’ve been promoted multiple times at this company and was also an intern before starting full-time. Putting just my current role makes it look like I’ve been that role the entire 10 years, so I assume I should put all of the roles I’ve been, but do I need to also put the dates? Can I just list them?

Yes, list the most relevant projects first. After that, choose the projects to list that (a) most closely demonstrate the skills that will be relevant to the job posting or (b) speak to a track record of achievement in general (so if you did something really impressive — built something, saved a failing project, overcame a challenge that had stumped others, etc. — include those things because they demonstrate that you are a competent person who gets things done).

You should list all your titles, and while you don’t have to include the dates for each role as long as you have the overall dates for your employment at that company, it’s often info that hiring managers want and that will strengthen your resume. So for example, it might look like this:

Oatmeal Association, June 2016 – present
Tasting Director, August 2025-present
Tasting Manager, December 2024 – August 2025
Oatmeal Taster, May 2020 – November 2024
Oatmeal Stirrer, January 2017 – May 2020
Groats Intern, June 2016 – December 2016
* accomplishment
* accomplishment
* accomplishment
* accomplishment

Or you can list the accomplishments for each role under the title they go with, depending on the specifics of what you’re listing.

The post boss surveyed the entire staff on my work after 90 days, new desks will be in an unsecured area, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

The post Keys, Spare Change Fly Out Of Luge Athlete’s Pocket On First Turn appeared first on The Onion.

A reader writes:

In 30 years, I have been late to work twice.

The first time, management used my emergency contact number to track me down when I was one hour late. I believe this was a misuse of my personal information, and I removed this contact information from the company systems.

Now, years later, it has happened again. My manager sent police to my home for a “wellness check” because I was two hours late. In this day and age, when federal agencies are claiming that they can come into your home without a warrant, it’s more than a bit alarming to see police at one’s door.

Is this even remotely acceptable? I do realize that some employers will simply terminate on a no call/no show, but these actions have me not wanting to share any personal information at all, and have me questioning whether it’s even worth waiting the 10 months I have till retirement.

Both these incidents were due to scheduling confusion, and I am not completely blameless. But I work third shift, and it was freaky being awakened at 1 am by police at my door.

Both of these were bizarre overreactions. Calling your emergency contact after one hour? And sending police to your home for a wellness check after two hours?

The point of a wellness check or calling emergency contacts is supposed to be, “We’re genuinely concerned about this person’s safety because we haven’t heard from them for an extended period of time.” Two hours — let alone one hour — doesn’t meet that standard.

If you’re an hour or two late, they should call you. If they don’t reach you, they should leave a message. In most cases, I wouldn’t think about calling emergency contacts unless you’re still not reachable the next day. And escalating to a police wellness check should take longer than that and should only come after they’ve attempted to reach your emergency contact (and in the current moment comes with a particularly high need to be cautious about your safety). In both cases, we’re not talking about acting after only a few hours.

That said, this is fact-specific and there are situations where the circumstances could warrant acting more quickly — like if you’re someone known to have a potentially life-threatening health condition and you normally show up like clockwork — but we’re still not talking about taking those steps when you’re only an hour late.

Acting within one to two hours reads like they were using your emergency contact and the police as ways to get you to work, not because they were genuinely concerned for your welfare.

The post my job sent police to my home when I was 2 hours late appeared first on Ask a Manager.

Internal Department of Homeland Security documents revealed that less than 14% of the nearly 400,000 immigrants arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement last year had charges or convictions for violent criminal offenses. What do you think?

The post Report: Less Than 14% Of Those Arrested By ICE Had Criminal Record appeared first on The Onion.

As the associate vice provost for the Office of Asynchronous Online Courses for Student-Centered High-Impact Learning (OAOCSCHIL, an office we created in the last few years after realizing how lucrative these things are), I want to address a growing concern on campus: the rumor that asynchronous online classes are “basically a scam.”

I understand the confusion. Outsiders are quick to pass judgment on these courses stocked with hastily recorded video lectures from 2020, auto-graded multiple-choice quizzes, and reflection message boards that are now 87 percent bots talking to other bots. Because there are no scheduled meetings with professors or classmates, and grading consists of counting whether students clicked the correct buttons, the fact that we charge tuition for the privilege of participating in these experiences could be mistaken for a scam: one in which no learning and very little effort are exchanged for grades and credits.

But, I assure you, this is not a scam. This is innovation.

Let me walk you through our new pedagogical model, which we in the OAOCSCHIL call Vibe-Teaching. You may have heard of “vibe-coding,” the revolutionary new software methodology in which programmers no longer understand code, write code, or even read code. They simply tell a large language model (LLM) what they want, run whatever it produces, and then tweak the prompt until the contraption is complete. Coding becomes cycles of evaluating outputs driven by persistent hopefulness.

Vibe-Teaching brings this cutting-edge, iterative feedback loop to higher education. Rather than building courses through faculty expertise or disciplinary knowledge, faculty gather complaints from alums now trying to get real jobs, feed those complaints into AI, and allow the system to revise the course accordingly. This continuous-improvement cycle transforms real-world disappointment into automated course updates, freeing faculty time for research (about AI), service (related to AI), and existential despair (you can guess the topic).

This instructional design reflects our commitment to inclusive pedagogy: All learning pathways are valid, whether students engage as manual human learners or outsource their consciousness to a chatbot. We support all modalities, confident that each demonstrates a different facet of multiple intelligences—or whatever we’re calling it this year.

In Vibe-Teaching, faculty are no longer required to read the AI-generated slop that students themselves have not paused to read. We only uphold one high-touch requirement: Vibe-Teaching faculty must log in every two weeks to respond to the pop-up message, “Are you still teaching?”

Some have asked why we don’t simply focus on helping students learn things. We appreciate the sentiment. Unfortunately, AI has made it impossible to measure actual learning. Every assignment is now an unverifiable collaboration between a stressed undergraduate and a VC-backed robo-parrot. Detecting “authentic” student thinking is technically possible, but prohibitively expensive. Think about it: We would need to pay real human faculty to interact with real human students. We do not have the budget for that.

So we have stopped trying to change student thinking. Instead, we focus on the continuous improvement of vibes. In lieu of learning outcomes, we now ask whether students have a warm sense of what learning might feel like and whether they can recall, with confidence, that they took “chemistry.” If so, we mark that as “exceeds expectations.”

And because we are a modern, data-driven institution, we have checked our dashboards to confirm the effectiveness of this approach. GPAs are rising, fail rates are down, and student satisfaction with online learning is trending in the right direction! Our website now proudly proclaims our AI-enhanced commitment to student success. The naysayers may fret about a post-literate world, but they have clearly not looked at the data. Numbers don’t lie.

From an institutional perspective, the benefits are substantial. Vibe-Teaching allows us to maximize enrollment and graduation rates without expanding facilities, faculty positions, or effort. It satisfies student demand for maximum flexibility, minimal cognitive effort, and zero human interaction, while meeting accreditation requirements (in vibes, if not in letter).

There is, of course, some risk of corroding the very foundations of our university’s mission. But institutional survival requires adaptation. Our graduates must become “AI-resilient and future-ready members of the workforce”… whatever that means.

The truth is, everyone wants this. Why they want it is beside the point. In light of these market demands, we humbly ask everyone to stop referring to asynchronous online courses as a “scam.” That word implies deception. In Vibe-Teaching, we are fully transparent:

We provide the illusion of education.
Students provide the illusion of engagement.
Together, we uphold the illusion of academic integrity.

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Hovertext:
I knew Grimm's fables were pretty dark, but some of them seem to have been written purposefully as a time capsule to frighten the future.

Today's News:

YOUR PC NEXT?

uuoiog

• archive
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#Sage #RoninWarriors

#CowboyWho

Some time ago, I noted that the Windows 95 CD contained a variety of multimedia extras, partly because they were fun, and partly to show off Windows 95’s multimedia capabilities.

One of those multimedia extras was the music video for the song Buddy Holly by the band Weezer. Acquiring permission to redistribute the video took multiple steps.

First, Microsoft had to secure the rights to the song itself, which was negotiated directly with Weezer’s publisher Geffen Records, and apparently without the knowledge of the band members themselves. They were reportedly upset that they weren’t consulted but later realized that it was “one of the greatest things that could have happened to us. Can you imagine that happening today? It’s like, there’s one video on YouTube, and it’s your video.”

But that only secured the rights to the music. What about the video?

The video takes place in a reconstruction of a location from the Happy Days television program, and clips from that show were spliced into the music video to create the illusion that many of the characters from the show were part of the video. The lawyer responsible for securing the rights to the video had to contact all of the actors from Happy Days to get their permission. That lawyer thoroughly enjoyed the assignment. I don’t know whether he got to talk to the actors directly, or only to their agents, but I can imagine it being an interesting experience trying to find Henry Winkler’s telephone number (or his agent’s telephone number) with a chance of talking to The Fonz himself.

The post How did Windows 95 get permission to put the Weezer video <I>Buddy Holly</I> on the CD? appeared first on The Old New Thing.

In brief: In today’s update we discuss a weak front that will work its way into Houston today. We also look ahead to a soggy Valentine’s Day, and then ample sunshine for the remainder of the holiday weekend.

Valentine’s Day outlook

Well, this won’t be the frigid holiday weekend that Houston experienced five years ago, that’s for sure. However, Saturday and Saturday evening do look pretty soggy across the region as a disturbance moves into the region, preceding a cold front. Rain chances are nearly 100 percent on Valentine’s Day, although most of this should fall as light to moderate rain showers. It won’t be constant, and it probably won’t be severe, but if you’re planning anything romantic outdoors I would definitely have some fall back plans. Most areas will likely pick up between 0.5 and 1 inch of rain, although as usual totals will vary widely. Rains should end sometime on Saturday evening or early Sunday.

Wednesday

We are seeing some mostly light showers north and northwest of the city this morning (i.e. in locations such as The Woodlands). This rain is associated with a weak front that is slowly moving into the area. This front is not particularly strong, and it is fading. But I expect it to bring some drier air into the region today and tonight, probably at least down to the Highway 59/Interstate 69 corridor, and possibly even closer to the coast. High temperatures today will still reach the upper 70s for most locations, with partly sunny skies. Lows tonight probably will drop into the 50s for inland areas with the drier air, but I am less certain about temperatures near the coast.

Thursday and Friday

These days both should be partly sunny and warm, with temperatures in the upper 70s. Winds will be generally light, from the south. Lows on Thursday night will drop to around 60, while Friday night will be a few degrees warmer.

Saturday

As noted above, Valentine’s Day is looking fairly wet, with showers likely and perhaps a few thunderstorms. Highs will probably reach the mid-70s, with lows on Saturday night in the upper 50s.

Sunday and Monday

For many people this will be a three-day weekend, with President’s Day on Monday. Luckily, both of these days will be really nice with sunny skies and highs in the low 70s. Sunday morning looks breezy, but things should settle down some by Sunday afternoon, hopefully. Lows on Sunday night will drop to around 50 degrees in Houston, with cooler conditions for outlying areas.

Rest of next week

Most of the rest of next week will see warmer temperatures in the upper 70s to 80 degrees, with nighttime lows generally around 60 degrees. Another weak front may arrive by Thursday or Friday of next week, but there is no clear signal in the models either way. As noted in the title of today’s update, spring-like weather is here to stay for awhile even though we’re still in the middle of February.

BOSTON—In a move hailed as a breakthrough for round-the-clock gambling, sports betting company DraftKings announced Tuesday that users would now be able to place wagers directly from within their dreams. “At DraftKings, we know the action never sleeps, and you should be able to wager however—and whenever—you want, even from deep REM sleep,” CEO Jason Robins said of the innovation, an easy-to-use wearable device that, when placed behind the user’s ear, populates their dreamscape with personalized betting opportunities for more than 20 major sports leagues, including daily fantasy. “Users can now sleep soundly knowing that if a spread moves overnight, they’ll be able to lock in their wager using subconscious biometric cues,” he added. “No more missing out on the perfect parlay just because it’s 3 a.m. on a Wednesday and you’re fast asleep. DraftKings lets you dream big—and win bigger.” Robins confirmed that payouts would be kept safely in escrow for up to 60 days for those winners who placed their bets while in a severe coma. 

The post DraftKings Introduces In-Dream Betting appeared first on The Onion.

The severely hungover pair woke up married Sunday morning after an alcohol-fueled six years of courtship and dating.

The post Allen Goltham and Ryne Baxter appeared first on The Onion.

The post Mom Strong Arms Cashier Into Accepting Expired Coupon appeared first on The Onion.

https://kingsheadtheatre.com/whats-on/blink-df19

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

1. Is stubble unprofessional?

Is having a few days of facial stubble unprofessional? What about showering every other day? How do I know when I’m well-enough groomed?

I’m a cis man who is reasonably adept at social interactions generally but struggles to pick up on unwritten norms/rules (like how often to shave). I got rid of a goatee in college and have generally shaved all my facial hair for every in-person workday since then. I also currently shower every day I go into the office, though I sometimes skip it for WFH days.

I’m considering a change for three reasons: (1) I was reminded of how much of a literally bloody hassle it is when I got to stop shaving for a couple months during parental leave. (2) I’m no longer at a job that has on-site showers for production reasons and safety reasons to shave. (3) I just learned that a lot of men shave every other day rather than daily, and it wasn’t that long ago I heard the argument that daily showers are bad for skin and hair, so I’m beginning to question my previous understanding of grooming rules.

I’d be happy to shave like once or twice a week, as waiting longer between shaves seems to reduce my rate of nicks and irritation. Is it a bad idea to go into the office having showered 2 nights before and shaved 2-4 nights before? My wife knows little about male grooming expectations, so I don’t know who to ask.

Showering: it varies by person. Some people need to shower daily to meet our culture’s expectations around looking and smelling clean enough for work. Some people don’t. Is there a noticeable difference to a bystander between how you look and smell when you showered in the last 24 hours versus when you didn’t? If not, you are someone who can go longer in between showers. If there is, you are not.

Stubble: as long as it looks like an intentional style choice (and not patchy or unkempt), stubble is fine in many, and probably now most, offices. There are still some conservative fields where it’s frowned upon, but they’ve quickly become the exception to the rule. (That said, avoid stubble for an interview, where you’re generally expected to turn up looking more polished.)

2. Should I try to keep an employee who’s leaving because of my predecessor?

I have just joined a small startup as head of engineering. Upon joining, I found out that one of the more experienced engineers has handed in his notice after accepting an offer elsewhere. As this is a team of four, his leaving would be quite impactful.

The reason he gave for leaving is that he wants to be promoted to senior engineer but his old boss wouldn’t do that. In private, he has told me that the previous head was not respecting him and would say things like, “I don’t need to listen to your opinions, you’re not a backend engineer.”

Less than two weeks after I’ve arrived, said employee has come to me and said that he feels my management style is so vastly different from the previous manager’s that he wants to stay; I have given him autonomy and trust which I believe he was previously lacking.

So far, I have said to him that if he proved to me over the next month or two (during his notice period) that he could show the maturity and drive expected of a senior engineer, and show a significant improvement in his soft skills, we could have a conversation about him staying. My concern is that I am encouraging him to leave it quite late to possibly renege on his accepted offer, and that he may end up leaving the company anyway if I don’t immediately promote him.

Should I keep him on this path, giving him the option that we revisit his notice? Or am I lining myself up for trouble down the line? Is there anything else I can or should do?

This is tough because you just joined the team and are still getting the lay of the land.

Normally I’d say that if someone was leaving for a reason that is now moot, and they’re someone who you were sad to see go, you should absolutely be open to letting them stay (assuming you haven’t already hired their replacement). There’s no reason to just oppose that on principle.

But this is messier, since you don’t necessarily have enough info to know how much you should want to keep him — and it sounds like there are some soft skill issues, at a minimum. I would not be leaping to keep someone with soft skill issues.

I’m also not sure it made sense to tell him that if he was able to do XYZ during his notice period, then you could talk about him staying. That’s leaving it very up in the air when you both need to be able to make solid plans (you so you know whether you need to hire a replacement and transition his projects, and him so he knows whether he’s actually taking that other job or not). Plus, is he really going to be able to demonstrate those things in a month or two? Particularly when you’re still new and learning the team?

In your shoes, I’d be seeking insight from others who work with him to try to make a decision now, rather than a month or two from now.

3. Was I wrong to settle with my company rather than continuing on to court?

In my previous role, I was subject to harassment, discrimination, and retaliation for over half a year prior to being terminated. I knew that I had a strong case, had been collecting evidence throughout, and connected with an attorney right away. In the end, I took a settlement. I decided that it would be better for my mental health to stop reliving those experiences. I also worried that a jury trial might be risky in my libertarian state, not to mention the expensive court fees.

I am proud that I stood up for myself while I worked there and after. But since I opted for the settlement, I have also entered into a confidentiality agreement. So while my former coworkers can probably make educated guesses about what happened, the wider world doesn’t know. New hires and new external partners won’t know what kind of company this is. And the bad actors can continue to skirt the laws.

I wonder what can be done, if anything, to help future victims of this company and their discriminatory practices. Was my choice of a settlement too selfish and short-sighted?

No, settling wasn’t selfish or short-sighted. It’s not your responsibility to make this company change, no matter what the personal cost to you might be; it’s the responsibility of the people running the company.

Moreover, even if you hadn’t signed a confidentiality agreement, your ability to hold them accountable would be limited. Yes, you could tell people in your network about how they operate and leave online reviews. But the impact of those things generally won’t outweigh the impact of making them pay financially — which has at least some potential to motivate them to clean up their act so they don’t get hit with future legal bills too. (That doesn’t mean they will! It just has a shot at it.)

4. How to make a conference travel request at a brand new job

I’m in the final stages interviewing for a role that uses a niche tool, and which I’ve been an active member of this tool’s user community for a few years. In recognition of my contributions to this community (knowledge sharing, answering questions on forums, etc.), the company that owns the tool recently sent me a voucher for free admission to their annual conference. The conference is scheduled for three months after the estimated start date of the role I’m interviewing for, and flight/hotel costs are not covered by the voucher.

I would love to attend the conference if possible, but am unsure how and when to approach the subject with my new employer if I end up with the job. The hiring manager had mentioned that some team members have attended in the previous years and I think it could be a great way to get to know the team if others attend as well this year, but I don’t want to press the issue so new in the role. What do you think?

Once you start the job, say this to your new manager fairly early on: “ToolCompany actually sent me a voucher for free admission to the conference since I’ve been an active member of its user community, but it doesn’t include travel. If NewCompany wants to send me, I’d be happy to go if so and could do ___ there.” (Fill in with things beneficial to NewCompany.)

5. Resigning right before or after a stock vest

I have a stock vest scheduled for February 15. I’ve accepted a new job that starts March 2, and I was originally planning to give notice on February 2, with my last day being February 17. That would allow me to give two weeks’ notice and still have a short break before the new role.

However, I’ve seen multiple colleagues in the past give notice and then be walked out or have their resignation accepted immediately, which would have caused them to forfeit unvested equity. I’ve also seen other teams allow their staff to work through the notice period. My specific team hasn’t had any good data either way, though I think I’m on good terms with my manager and team.

Because of that, I’m now considering resigning only after the vest occurs, possibly even the same day or shortly after.

My concern is that this could make my employer upset or feel blindsided, but I also don’t want to put myself at financial risk by giving notice too early. I’m not trying to be deceptive, just careful.

From a professionalism and workplace norms standpoint, is it reasonable to wait until after the vest to resign, even if that means giving little or no notice?

Yes, it is reasonable to wait until after the stock vest; people do that all the time, for this exact reason, and it’s additionally a good idea because you’ve seen that you might not be allowed to work out your notice period. However, ideally you’d find out if the new employer has any flexibility on your start date so that you can still offer two weeks notice; if you explain that leaving earlier will affect you financially, they might be very willing to give you an extra week or two. (People request this all the time, too. They may or may not be able to agree, but it’s not unreasonable to ask.)

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WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S . President Donald Trump has threatened to halt the opening of a international bridge linking Windsor and Detroit, excluding Canadians from country that they have absolutely no interest in travelling to. The Gordie Howe International Bridge, under construction since 2018, will stretch across the US/Canada border. However, Trump weighed in on […]

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