For a brief, strange period after the U.S.S.R. collapsed, "real" money was less valuable than tradeable objects like bricks or towels. We look back at the Russian barter economy and we see the nature of money and value underneath all currency. | Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
On Tuesday, the Houston Chronicle reported that Katy ISD was investigating whether Maus—the Pulitzer Prize–winning two-part graphic novel that tells the story of how author Art Spiegelman’s family survived the Holocaust—was appropriate for the district’s middle and high school libraries. It wasn’t the first time in recent months that educators have considered whether its students should have access to the book. In January, the school board in McMinn County, Tennessee (about halfway between Chattanooga and Knoxville) made headlines for banning the book. In response to the ban, high school students in Katy organized a book drive to collect and distribute copies of Maus, as well as Toni Morrison’s Beloved and other widely acclaimed works that, after years as part of the canon, have come under fire…
You can find plenty of gay bars in Dallas’s Oak Lawn neighborhood. One of the few remaining lesbian bars in the country, Sue Ellen’s, is there, as well as an energetic shack known as the Tin Room. There are clubs where you can groove to Latin tracks or square-dance. There are sports bars and drag stages. But there is no place like the Dallas Eagle.The Eagle was a place of red lights, hairy bellies, leashes, and pup masks. Glitter from performing drag queens snowed onto the vests and pants of the leather-clad crowd, and trophy cases were crowded with prizes from leather pageants and photos from cookouts and tournaments. Patrons shot pool near a rectangular bar that served cheap beer and Jell-O shots. To its…
Art League Houston (ALH) has announced the 2022 awardees for the Texas Artist of the Year, Lifetime Achievement Award in Visual Arts, and Texas Patrons of the Year.
In a press release announcing the awardees, ALH Director, Jennie Ash, stated, “ALH has a long history of supporting artists and artistic practices in our state. For almost 40 years, our annual Arts Awards have recognized the creative visionaries who inspire us, engage us, and create transformational change in our communities.”
Art League Houston 2022 Awardees: Earlie Hudnall Jr., Letitia Huckaby, and Melanie Lawson & John Guess Jr.
Fort Worth-based photographer and installation artist Letitia Huckaby has been named Texas Artist of the Year. Earlie Hudnall Jr., of Houston, who has documented Black communities for over three decades, will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award. Melanie Lawson (award-winning journalist) and John Guess Jr. (CEO of the Houston Museum of African American Culture) will receive the Texas Patrons of the Year Award. Learn more about the honorees by visiting ALH’s website.
The artist honorees were selected by a large committee of artists and art professionals from across Texas, which included: Vicki Meek (Dallas, TX); Celia Álvarez Muñoz (Arlington, TX); Rigoberto Luna (Co-Founder and Director of Presa House Gallery, San Antonio, TX), Patrick Kelly (Executive Director and Curator of Exhibitions at The Old Jail Art Center, Albany, TX), and Allison Glenn, (Independent Curator and Writer, Houston, TX and Detroit, MI). The selection committee for the 2022 Texas Patron of the Year was comprised of: Dr. Alvia J. Wardlaw (Art Historian, Director, and Curator, Texas Southern University Museum); Gaynell Floyd-Drexler (Corporate Attorney and Advocate with Decades of Non-Profit and Community Engagement, Houston TX); Frances Valdez (Executive Director/Houston in Action & Owner/FValdezLaw PC, Houston TX); and Catherine Anspon (Executive Editor/Visual Arts + Features at PaperCity Magazine, Houston TX).
Artist Letitia Huckaby (photo: Rambo). Image courtesy of the artist
Letitia Huckaby, “present participle welcoming, 2022,” pigment print on fabric, 48 x 33 ½ inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Talley Dunn Gallery
In a statement, 2021 Texas Artist of the Year and 2022 selection committee member Vicki Meek shared about this year’s awardees, “There’s a certain kind of pleasure that comes from being the first African American woman artist to be awarded the Texas Artist of the Year and one of the judges to select the second. Letitia Huckaby is a perfect fit for the title 2022 Texas Artist of the Year because she understands that art has the power to evoke change in communities and she’s committed to being that change agent in hers. She does this all while maintaining an active studio practice, exhibiting her art nationwide, and being an engaged mom.”
Artist Earlie Hudnall, Jr. (photo: Ray Carrington) Image courtesy of the artist.
Earlie Hudnall, Jr., “Feeling the Spirit, Third Ward, Houston, Texas,” 1987, gelatin silver print. Image courtesy of the artist and PDNB Gallery.
Selection committee member Allison Glenn remarked, “It’s been an honor to participate on this year’s jury with such incredible colleagues. Both Letitia Huckaby’s and Earlie Hudnall‘s practices reflect a deep engagement with their communities, and important contributions to contemporary art.”
Melanie Lawson & John Guess, Jr. (photo: Karen Sachar)
Selection committee member Catherine Anspon said, “Melanie and John have been pillars of the Texas art community for decades. Especially in Houston, their support for nonprofits, galleries, above all, deep friendships and mentorships of artists have been heartfelt, intelligent, guided by altruism, and profound. They are also museum creators and museum builders.”
ALH will celebrate the awardees at its annual gala which will be held on Friday, October 14, 2022 at POST Houston. Additionally, ALH will present solo exhibitions by and will produce limited-edition catalogs for Mrs. Huckaby and Mr. Hundall this fall.
A fantastic template letter for Florida teachers to send to families of students regarding the implementation of "Don't Say Gay" is naturally freaking out a conservative group that backed the law. As usual, vague language and a refusal to define the law exactly to achieve its goals have been shown to make the law so broad as to also block the things "Moms for Liberty" think aren't gay. — Read the rest
Submitter: This book is a “choose-your-own-ending” type of book about dating, but with a heavy religious theme, full of fear, shame, and judgement; and putting all the responsibility on the girl. In my opinion, it has no place in a public library to begin with, but it’s been sitting on my library’s YA shelves since 1990, even though it had not been checked out in over six years, and only a few times total. The cover art is horrendous, the girl looks like either a mannequin or corpse, and the story is even worse.
Stacey has her first serious boyfriend and is faced with deciding to have sex. In some of the paths, she ends up pregnant, and may have an abortion, give up the baby, or keep it. She may or may not marry the father, may or may not finish school. The ending that caught my eye was the one where she went to college and started dating a nice Christian boy, but then he dumps her when he finds out she’s not a virgin. But she doesn’t blame him, she just wonders if she will ever find anyone to love her. You know, now that she’s damaged goods and all. Just gross!
Holly: That’s a new one: Choose your own sex adventure.
Too scared to tell Vladimir Putin the truth about his botched invasion of Ukraine, his military leaders have misled the dictator. Rather than tell him that his war is "using and losing conscripts," or that sanctions are having a crippling affect on Russia, or, more generally, that his invasion has been nothing more than a shitshow, Putin has been spoon-fed feel-good propaganda by his own Ministry of Defense. — Read the rest
“Here are some examples of German compound words belonging to the thematic group Expression of Thoughts, Feelings and Emotions and already, though not quite extensively, used in English context: Abgrundanziehung (The pull of the cliff edge.), Allgemeinbildung (everything that any adult capable of living independently can reasonably be expected to know), Backpfeifengesicht (A face that is begging to be slapped.)”
The first few bytes of the file are clearly recognizable as encoded in UTF-16LE, complete with U+FEFF BOM.
And then something weird happens at the end of the first line of text: You would expect the line to end with the byte sequence 0D 00 0A 00, corresponding to the UTF-16LE encoding of U+000D CARRIAGE RETURN followed by U+000A LINE FEED. But instead, there’s this extra 0D byte stuck into the stream before the 0A, and that messes things up.
Since UTF-16LE encoding uses pairs of bytes, inserting a single byte throws off the synchronization. All the even bytes become odd, and all odd bytes become even. This is why the second line (outlined) comes out as Chinese nonsense: Putting ASCII alphabetics in the high-order byte of UTF-16 code units results in nonsense Chinese characters.
When we get to the end of the (now garbled) line, again there is a mystery 0D interloper byte immediately before the 0A. This second unwanted byte restores parity, which means that the bytes of the third line of text are properly paired again, and they appear normal.
And then when we get to the end of the third line, the cycle repeats, with a rogue 0D throwing off the synchronization and causing the fourth line to become gibberish. This continues for the remainder of the file: The corrupted line ending causes every other line to turn
Okay, so now we know what’s going on, but how did the file get corrupted in this way?
The insertion of 0D before 0A is coming from CRLF/LF conversion. Windows text files end with carriage return and line feed, but Unix text files end with just line feed. The usual algorithm for converting from Windows format to Unix format is to remove carriage returns if they are immediately followed by a line feed. And the usual algorithm for converting from Unix format to Windows format is to insert carriage returns before every line feed.
Of course, if you “insert” and “remove” the carriage return, you have to do so with the correct encoding.
What happened here is that the original file was encoded in UTF-16LE and used Windows line endings. My guess is that this file was then stored in a system that uses Unix line endings, so the line endings were converted, but the conversion code interprets the file as UTF-8, which encodes a CRLF as the byte sequence 0D 0A. That sequence does not occur in the file, so the conversion is a nop, and the file goes into storage unchanged.
Some time later, the file is retrieved from storage, and the line endings are now converted from Unix-style to Windows-style. Again, the conversion code assumes the file is UTF-8 encoded, so it inserts a carriage return 0D before every line feed 0A.
And that is why the 0A bytes are being inserted and messing up the file.
There is a German word for this: verschlimmbessern: To make something worse in a well-intentioned but failed attempt to improve it.
A common place you’ll see this type of corruption is when you ask Visual Studio to create a new project with a git repo.
Some Visual Studio project templates create source files encoded as UTF-16LE, and it’s common to add a .gitattributes file that says that source files are text eol=crlf. If you do that, then git follows your instructions and converts files from Windows line endings to Unix line endings when committing, and performs the reverse conversion when checking files out.
However, git assumes text files are encoded as UTF-8.
To avoid Verschlimmbesserung, you should re-encode your UTF-16LE files as UTF-8 before adding them to the git repo. Note that Resource Compiler *.rc files default to the ANSI code page, even if the file begins with a UTF-8 BOM. You need to explicitly inform the Resource Compiler that the file is encoded as UTF-8 by saying
On Windows editions that support x86 emulation, there are two directories for program files. The C:\Program Files directory is for programs in the native system bitness, and the the C:\Program Files (x86) directory is for programs that run under the x86-32 emulator. But why are they separate directories? Why can’t we combine them? If you have 32-bit Contoso and 64-bit LitWare, you can still put them in C:\Program Files\Contoso and C:\Program Files\LitWare, and they won’t bother each other.
That’s true, but it does create problems if a program is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions, such as Microsoft Office or Visual Studio. You couldn’t install both versions side-by-side; you’d have to pick one.
And it so happens that Windows itself comes with a lot of programs that are available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions, like Internet Explorer and WordPad. Those programs could have installed themselves into separate directories like C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer and C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer (x86) to avoid the conflict, but then that runs into compatibility issues with apps that do things like launch %ProgramFiles%\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe and then start manipulating the Internet Explorer process expecting it to be the same bitness as the program that did the launching.
This sounds sort of like a lazy answer, seeing as this problem could be solved with sufficient application of application compatibility shims. But application compatibility shims are really a solution of last resort, because by their nature, they can be applied only to programs where the problem has already been identified. If there’s a way you can structure your system so that these problems never arise in the first place, then you don’t have to worry about identifying the programs that suffer from the problem: You fixed all of them at once!
Yet another problem is with the pesky Common Files subdirectory under Program Files. This is a directory that is intended for the case of separately-installed programs which nevertheless share some things in common. For example, Contoso might have two products, Contoso Standard and Contoso Deluxe, and both of the programs use the Contoso Framework. The Contoso Framework files can go into the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Contoso subdirectory.
If the 32-bit and 64-bit directories were combined into a single C:\Program Files directory, then you would have a mix of 32-bit and 64-bit components in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Contoso, and that makes nobody happy. Whoever installs first wins, and whoever installs second gets errors.
Keeping the two Program Files directories separate avoids this problem. C:\Program Files\Common Files\Contoso contains the 64-bit Contoso Framework files, and C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Contoso contains the 32-bit Contoso Framework files.
After I wrote up this answer, I realized that I already answered it some time ago, so here’s the video:
1. I accidentally used a very crude expression with my new boss
I’m mortified.
I (cis man, he/him) returned from parental leave a couple weeks ago to find out I had a new boss. I’ve connected well with the new boss and think I will really enjoy working together — she is already empowering me to own things the previous boss never did, plus she has a unique background for my field and I am already learning a ton just from being around her at work.
Today, in a conversation with my boss, I used the wrong colloquial expression;.I meant to say that we couldn’t keep milking that cow forever, but I accidentally said that we couldn’t keep stroking that goat forever. My boss reacted visibly in the moment with a loud and uncomfortable laugh (which is the only reason I noticed my error) and we moved on, wrapped up our conversation normally, etc.
Later I googled “stroking the goat” (PS don’t do this at work) and learned the expression has only one definition, which is quite crude. I feel awful for likely making my boss uncomfortable (based on her laugh in the moment), and I’m concerned this incident will make her question my judgment and professionalism — both of which are critical for me to be effective in my role — and feel the need to manage me more heavily.
I’m debating if I should address the gaffe with her by apologizing, indicating that was not the expression I meant to use and I wasn’t aware of its crude meaning until I googled it after noting her reaction, or if I should instead just hope the incident will pass by and not acknowledge my awareness of the inappropriateness of how I behaved at work. Any advice on how I can humbly recover from this, demonstrate maturity and professionalism, and correct my boss’s perception of me?
Oh no! You should indeed go back and say something so she’s not left thinking that you have the sort of judgment where you would intentionally and cavalierly make a filthy reference to your brand new boss. The conversation might be awkward, but it’s preferable to leaving her with that impression (and if it makes you feel any better, she will probably be relieved to hear it!).
I would say it like this: “I am mortified by something I said to you in our meeting the other day — I thought I was using a colloquial expression meaning that we couldn’t keep doing X (fill in with what you thought you were saying) but realized later that what I said had a very crude slang meaning! I would never intentionally say that at work and didn’t want to leave you thinking I would.”
That will almost certainly take care of it. Also, it might make you feel better to read some of the posts from last year’s Mortification Week.
2. How do I get my coworkers to stop printing things out for me?
I need a script to use with my coworkers who have a habit of printing off things for me that I do not need. I will almost always search my electronic notes for information rather than sift through a pile of papers. If it was just occasionally, I’d probably bite my tongue but I’m getting 2-3 pieces of paper a day!
If I toss it and then we need the info and I look it up on my computer rather than on the paper they printed previously, they print it again!
I’ve already used: “Thanks for this but I have it electronically and prefer storing this type of information on my computer rather than on paper.” And even “I have so many notes I need, I try not to kill all the trees! No need to print me a copy, thanks!” Nothing has worked. Help!
I think your scripts so far have been too long — try just going with, “I don’t use paper, please don’t print copies for me, thanks!”
That said, some people cannot conceive of not printing things out, so you might never fully win the battle. If you want to add additional effort, you could make the request of people not when they’re about to hand you a piece of paper, but totally separately, like: “I wanted to mention to you — please don’t print things for me. I really only use electronic files, so it’s wasted on me.” Even, then, though, people won’t always remember the individual preferences of everyone they work with so you might never fully stamp it out (unless you’re their boss, in which case you can require it).
3. My old job still lists me as an employee on their website
I worked at a small nonprofit for about one year. The organization is very much run by the president and once my direct supervisor quit due the president’s overbearing and erratic leadership, I knew I would have little protection. Things grew more volatile, so a month later I quit and the president was happy to have me quit to find people who “were actually devoted to the mission.” This was six months ago. Despite all the tension, I think I was able to leave on a good note or at least on a quiet note.
I have a new job as of three months ago and I noticed the old president had looked me up on LinkedIn. I happened to glance at my old job’s website and my picture, bio, and position is still listed on their team page (as well as my old supervisor and coworkers who quit)! I’ve now checked back every few weeks and the info has still not been taken down. As the nonprofit is always looking for donors or grants, I feel like it is disingenuous on the president’s part. I know from experience she dictates the website and added new staff to it since I’ve left. On a personal note, after all she put me through, I dislike that she is trying to pretend like turnover of staff isn’t that high (I found out she’s had two deputy directors start and quit within the past six months I’ve been gone, but didn’t add their photos to the site). I just want to not be associated with the organization any more in this public way.
Would it be okay for me to send a message asking her to take down my information? And how can I word that message in a way that is concise and effective?
Yes. And that would be fine even if you didn’t think she had left you up for underhanded reasons; it’s perfectly reasonable not to want to be represented as working somewhere you left six months ago, even if it were a completely innocent oversight.
You could say it this way: “Hi, Wilhelmina. I hope you and the Cinnamon Toast Alliance are doing well. I noticed that I’m still listed as an employee on the website and wanted to ask that you take me down so there’s no confusion about where I work. Thank you, and all the best to everyone there.”
That will probably work, but the more interesting question might be what to do if it doesn’t! At that point you could send your request to whoever there manages the website in the hopes that they’ll quietly fix it themselves or at least put pressure on her. If that doesn’t do it, your options get pretty limited; you could have a lawyer send a stern letter on your behalf, for example, but that’s likely more trouble to pursue than it’s worth.
4. Writing erotic fiction when you work with kids in your day job
I recently have come across the idea of writing and selling erotic fiction. Apparently, it’s the highest selling genre on digital platforms like kindle for Amazon and the passive income builds up. I’d like to supplement my meager income from my 9-5 and prepare to transition from my current field, which I fell into, to my desired field (writing/more creative pursuits). However, I’m not sure if this is a good idea considering I work with children (think a clinic setting but providing a direct support service). I’d use a pen name but I’m still worried about it. Would you err on the side of caution here and just not do it?
If you use a pen name and are careful about never discussing it with anyone who has a connection to your day job, I’d say the risk is very low. Don’t underestimate the importance of that second factor though; make sure you don’t slip up and mention it to someone who could mention it to someone else.
That said, people are really weird about the private lives of adults who work with kids. So if any readers who work with kids want to present a different viewpoint in the comments, please do!
It was supposed to be a simple trip, until things stopped going according to plan. Now, you're stranded after dark in hostile territory, with those who mean you harm hot on your heels. But if you manage to make it home safe, you can say you had "One Wild Night Out on the Town." This subgenre combines "One Crazy Night" and "Caught in the Bad Part of Town" through a specific monomyth-style sequence.
Our travelers leave home (and their comfort zones) behind to venture into questionable realms, to complete tasks they either expect to be harmless and uncomplicated, or regard as obligatory. But unexpected elements and occurrences subject our travelers to successions of chaotic travails, just as random circumstances and fears of punishment likewise separate them from outside assistance. The intrusion of our travelers into domains where they do not belong provokes the ire of those environments' native inhabitants, but it's also possible for our travelers to acquire temporary allies along the way. Even if our travelers are able to return home, they might be required to complete one or more sidequests, often involving MacGuffins, to ensure they're not bringing trouble back with them, or leaving any fellow travelers behind.
Although such adventures may feature epilogue errands, their primary missions (and returns home) must be completed before or during the morning hours of the following day. "One Wild Night Out on the Town" delivers enticingly perilous and transgressive escapades, often candy-coated with dark comedy, through whirlwind tours of the extraordinary.
The Warriors (1979)
There's always a danger war will break out when New York City street gangs come together outside their home turf, but when Cyrus (Roger Hill) — leader of the Gramercy Riffs, the most powerful gang in NYC — calls delegates of all the cities' gangs to Van Cortlandt Park for a midnight summit, the Warriors of Coney Island know they risk losing more by not showing up. Cyrus' popularity makes his speeches advocating pan-gang unity seem feasible, until Luther (David Patrick Kelly), leader of the Rogues, shoots Cyrus dead and blames the Warriors, making the Coney Island gang pariahs among all their fellow gangs as they traverse the 30 miles of urban jungle between them and home.
The obstacles the Warriors face include not only brawls with other colorfully costumed gangs — including a siren seduction play by the all-girl Lizzies — looking to collect the bounty offered by the Gramercy Riffs, but also pursuit by police and fires shutting down the elevated train. One Warrior is thrown onto the tracks and killed by a subway car, while another is arrested for attempting to sexually assault an undercover cop. Along the way, the Warriors' leader, Swan (Michael Beck), winds up with Mercy (Deborah Van Valkenburgh), the girlfriend of another gang's leader, in spite of Swan wanting to shake her off.
When the remaining Warriors finally return to Coney Island at dawn, they find Luther and the Rogues waiting for them. Ironically, the Gramercy Riffs intervene on the Warriors' behalf, after learning Luther killed Cyrus, and the former rivals express their mutual respect.
Tron (1982)
Kevin Flynn's (Jeff Bridges) video games were stolen by his former boss, ENCOM executive Ed Dillinger (David Warner), but the data proving this is secured by ENCOM's Master Control Program. ENCOM programmer Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner), Flynn's former coworker, has developed a security program, "Tron," to regulate the activities of the MCP, which would grant Flynn access to the data proving Dillinger's plagiarism, but the MCP has locked Alan's access to his projects. For Alan to provide the information his Tron program needs to counter the MCP, he needs Flynn to hack ENCOM's system at the source, to unlock Alan's access to Tron.
When Flynn, Alan, and engineer Lora Baines (Cindy Morgan) break into ENCOM after dark, the MCP detects Flynn's presence, and uses Lora's experimental matter-digitizing laser to blast Flynn into cyberspace. Flynn is forced to play gladiatorial video games "on the other side of the screen" by Sark, an evil program that serves as the MCP's second-in-command.
To return to "the real world," Flynn teams with Tron, first to aid him in reaching the I/O tower, to receive instructions from Alan on how to defeat the MCP, then to cross the cyberspace plains with Tron, to fight the MCP directly. Before Flynn sacrifices his digital self to help Tron deactivate the MCP and return to non-virtual reality, he encounters a number of other good programs that, like Tron, share the likenesses and personalities of their "users." When Dillinger returns to ENCOM in the morning, he finds a neutered MCP has publicized proof of his theft.
Streets Of Fire (1984)
When Ellen Aim (Diane Lane), lead singer of the Attackers, is kidnapped from her own concert, in her home borough of Richmond, by the Bombers — a biker gang led by Raven Shaddock (Willem Dafoe) — there's no way Ellen's ex-boyfriend, and ex-soldier, Tom Cody (Michael Paré) isn't coming to rescue her, despite his initial protestations.
Tom insists Ellen's current boyfriend and manager, Billy Fish (Rick Moranis), pay him $10,000 to rescue Ellen, but Tom then pays 10% of his cut to tomboyish fellow ex-soldier McCoy (Amy Madigan), to join his mission as a shooter and driver. Raven is holding Ellen captive in "The Battery," the bad (or rather worse) part of town where the Bombers are based, so Billy, who used to live in the Battery, serves as a Virgil-esque guide for Tom and McCoy's trip into urban Hell.
Rescuing Ellen from "Torchie's" biker bar proves less challenging than making it back to Richmond, as our party ditches their now-hot car to cross the "Streets of Fire" on foot. "Baby Doll" (E.G. Daily), a fan of Ellen's, tags along to warn that police are looking for whoever started the fight at Torchie's, and our party briefly hitches a ride on "The Sorels" band's tour bus, until it's pulled over by racist cops. The Sorels persuade Ellen to make them the Attackers' opening act, and a third-day coda showcases the showdown between Raven and his Bombers versus Tom and the decent people of Richmond (two words: sledgehammer duel), but Tom still gets Ellen home the morning after rescuing her from Raven.
After Hours (1985)
Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) is less than stimulated by his computer data entry job, so when he goes home to his drab apartment, it makes sense he'd want to call Marcy Franklin (Rosanna Arquette), the lively, pretty, well-read girl he'd met at a café earlier that evening, who'd given him her number. A phone conversation yields an invite to Marcy's SoHo apartment, but a high-speed ride in an open-windowed cab sucks Paul's $20 — his only cash on hand, aside from some coins — out the window.
Paul nonetheless arrives at Marcy's apartment, meeting Kiki (Linda Fiorentino), her artistically and libidinously experimental roommate, and receiving mixed romantic signals from Marcy herself, who spurns his advances while disclosing sexual traumas she's suffered with an unsettlingly disaffected air. Between Marcy's behavior and signs she might be disfigured from burns, Paul discreetly leaves, only to find his pocket change can't cover the subway fare. A bartender's attempt to lend him money puts Paul under suspicion for a string of neighborhood burglaries. Paul then learns his wordless rejection of Marcy (who was covering a tattoo, not burns) caused her to commit suicide, breaking the heart of the bartender, who was Marcy's boyfriend.
Paul's no-less-fraught, misfiring interactions with a Mister Softee truck driver and a beehived waitress contribute to a literal mob chasing him down the streets, until he hides in a nightclub by posing as a sculpture. The neighborhood's actual burglars steal the plaster-coated Paul, but accidentally drop him off outside his office that morning, in time for another workday.
Vamp (1986)
Roommates Keith (Chris Makepeace) and AJ (Robert Rusler) are tired of living in the dorms, but to be accepted into their fraternity of choice, they need to hire a stripper. Since their college is an extended drive from the nearest strip clubs in the city, they ask the richest student on campus, Duncan (Gedde Watanabe), to lend them one of his nine Cadillacs, but he insists they bring him along.
A literal whirlwind of a near-miss traffic accident drops our boys into the bad part of town after dark, where they tussle with a switchblade-wielding albino street gang in a café, before reaching the strip club they're searching for. The club's exotic lead act, Katrina (Grace Jones), is more than they could have imagined, but she's also a vampire who kills AJ. When Keith grows concerned over AJ's absence, club waitress Amaretto (Dedee Pfeiffer), who insists she knows Keith, helps him search the neighborhood for AJ. Except Keith also loses track of Amaretto, then flees through streets and sewers from the albino gang and various area vampires, until he discovers AJ's body in a dumpster.
When cops respond to Keith's call, AJ appears alive and well again, but reveals to Keith he's now a vampire. AJ stakes himself to avoid feeding on Keith, who fights his way through the vampire strip club with Amaretto (his fifth-grade classmate Allison), as Duncan also turns into a vampire and is killed. After car chases and multiple explosions, the vampires' nest burns, and Keith saves Allison from Katrina with the morning's sunlight.
Adventures In Babysitting (1987)
Suburban high schooler Chris Parker (Elisabeth Shue) is babysitting Brad (Keith Coogan) and Sarah Anderson (Maia Brewton) when her friend Brenda (Penelope Ann Miller) calls from a downtown Chicago bus station, begging Chris for a ride home ... because Brenda ran out of money while running away from home. To avoid leaving the Andersons unsupervised, Chris takes them and Brad's friend, Daryl Coopersmith (Anthony Rapp), along for the ride in her mother's station wagon, but she forgets to bring her purse, and the car blows a flat on the freeway.
An initially helpful tow truck driver abandons the kids to confront his cheating wife and her lover, and the kids hide from the confrontation's stray gunfire in a Cadillac that gets stolen, taking them to a mob-run chop shop. The kids sneak out of the chop shop, but because Daryl swipes a Playboy the criminals used to take important notes, the mobsters pursue the kids through a blues club, where the kids sing the blues, to Chicago's "L" train, where Chris breaks up a gang war after one gang leader stabs Brad's foot with a switchblade. A misdiagnosis at the hospital leaves everyone relieved to see Brad still alive, and when they stumble across a fraternity party, a sympathetic college student donates almost enough money to recover their car from the tow truck garage.
Before all the kids (including Brenda) make it home without getting caught by their parents, Chris confronts her own cheating boyfriend, and Sarah meets her hero, Thor, before scaling the side of Chicago's "Diamond Building."
License To Drive (1988)
Les Anderson (Corey Haim) gets grounded for failing his driver's license exam, but he'd already promised his crush, Mercedes Lane (Heather Graham), that he'd pick her up for a date, in "his" car, that Saturday. "His" car is his grandfather's 1972 Cadillac Sedan de Ville, which Les' dad drives while Grandpa Anderson borrows his son's BMW (the old man dislikes driving his not-quite-classic car long distances).
Les waits until his parents fall asleep to take the car for a joyride with Mercedes, except she gets so drunk, she dents the hood of the car by dancing on it, then passes out. Because Les' friend Dean (Corey Feldman) is able to repair the damage, Dean persuades Les to load a sleeping Mercedes into the trunk, so the boys can make a pilgrimage to "Archie's Atomic Drive-In," and hook up with other hot girls. After a run-in with hot-rodding punks curtails those plans, the Caddy accidentally enters a political protest attended by Les' sister and her boyfriend, and the cops catch Les without a license. Les gets released as the protest turns into a riot, but he barely retrieves Mercedes from the Caddy's trunk before it's stolen and virtually totaled by a drunk driver.
Les gets the car home by morning, but his dad freaks out over its damage, until Les' pregnant mom goes into labor, and his unorthodox driving gets her to the hospital in time. Grandpa Anderson laughs upon seeing his wrecked Caddy, as he reveals he'd totaled his son's BMW in turn.
Miracle Mile (1988)
Jazz musician Harry Washello (Anthony Edwards) and diner waitress Julie Peters' (Mare Winningham) meet-cute at the La Brea Tar Pits, on LA's "Miracle Mile," leads into a whirlwind courtship that afternoon, with a promise to meet again at midnight, when Julie's shift ends, but Harry oversleeps until 4 a.m. after his power (and alarm clock) fails.
Harry calls Julie from a payphone at her diner, but the payphone receives a misdialed call from a military base, warning that nuclear missiles will arrive from Russia within 70 minutes. When Harry tells those at the diner what he's heard, a well-connected businesswoman named Landa (Denise Crosby) confirms his fears, and plans to schedule a heliport shuttle from the roof of the Mutual Benefit Life Building to LAX, from which she and others can fly to a compound in Antarctica. Landa's group won't take a detour to collect Julie, so Harry arranges to reunite with them at the airport, then heads to Julie's apartment.
Without a car, Harry hitches a ride with a stereo thief, whose own desperation starts a fire that kills two cops and blows up a gas station. After retrieving a Valium-drowsy Julie, Harry resorts to threatening a 24-hour gym with a gun to find a helicopter pilot, to fly him and Julie to LAX. Meanwhile, spreading rumors of nuclear war cause citywide chaos by daybreak. A bodybuilder pilot picks up the couple, but the incoming missiles' EMP crashes their helicopter into the tar pits, where a final explosion turns the soulmates into diamonds.
Mystery Date (1991)
Shy teen Tom McHugh (Ethan Hawke) admires his gorgeous next-door neighbor, Geena Matthews (Teri Polo), from afar, until his visiting older brother, stylish and confident Craig (Brian McNamara), cajoles Tom into taking action. Craig calls Geena, posing as Tom, to set up a date between "himself" (Tom) and Geena. Craig then lends Tom his clothes and wallet — complete with his ID, credit card, and cash — while also furnishing Tom with glasses and a hairstyle both intended to resemble Craig's. And when the limo Craig rented suffers a fender-bender, Tom's only remaining transportation option is Craig's classic 1959 DeSoto convertible, even though he forbade Tom from driving it.
These identifiers are enough for cops, criminals, and random women to mistake a cosplaying Tom for Craig, as Tom visits Craig's favorite fine dining and entertainment haunts in the city. Meanwhile, Geena goes from feeling charmed by Tom's seeming spontaneity to resenting his distracted lack of regard for her, as Tom dodges slaps, assaults, attempted arrests, and even assassinations that Craig's criminal misdeeds and casual cruelty appear to have earned, from fired floral delivery drivers and Chinatown crime lords alike. Tom can't go to the police after discovering a dead body in Craig's trunk, especially when a corrupt cop gets shot and has to be loaded in alongside him.
Gangster James Lew (BD Wong) hammers Tom with his grudge against Craig, and even holds Geena hostage until Tom retrieves a tape proving Lew's collusion with corrupt cops. Tom wins Geena's heart, but his once-beloved older brother breaks his heart.
Judgment Night (1993)
New father Frank Wyatt (Emilio Estevez), his kid brother John (Stephen Dorff) and their friends, conflict instigator Mike Peterson (Cuba Gooding Jr.) and con artist Ray Cochran (Jeremy Piven), depart the suburbs in Ray's luxurious loaner RV to catch a professional boxing match in Chicago that evening, when a shortcut off the gridlocked freeway makes them witnesses to a murder.
The RV accidentally hits a man holding a bag full of money, who's already been shot. Gangsters drag the man from the RV, after immobilizing it, to face local crime lord Fallon (Denis Leary), who executes the man for theft, before ordering his gang to eliminate the witnesses. Frank and his friends run into the railyards, hiding in a boxcar until an altercation with a homeless camp gives them away. The friends then gain access to an apartment in the projects, where they call the cops, who predictably don't come, but Fallon's gang tracks them down again. After Ray falls behind his friends, he offers to pay Fallon $200,000 to spare their lives, but Fallon kills Ray for offending him, by comparing them as "businessmen."
When the friends make a stand in the sewers, Mike manages to kill one of Fallon's gang, but the fight exposes their raw emotions, especially as they fail to flag down a passing bus. The friends finally draw law enforcement by triggering a grocery store's alarms, but when Fallon's diminished forces kill the security guards, Frank must defend his wounded friends by ending Fallon, before he can fulfill his threats to visit Frank's suburban family.
Date Night (2010)
Phil (Steve Carell) and Claire Foster (Tina Fey) are married with two careers and two children, but when the New Jersey couple learns their best friends are getting divorced, the Fosters spice up their "Date Night" by stealing a no-show couple's reservation at a trendy Manhattan restaurant. Posing as "the Tripplehorn's" prompts a pair of crooked cops to demand the Fosters turn over a flash drive stolen from mob boss Joe Miletto (Ray Liotta).
When the couple realizes they can neither turn to the police for aid, nor return home, they call the babysitter to take the kids out of the house, then resolve to locate the actual Tripplehorns. Security expert Holbrooke Grant (Mark Wahlberg), a former client of Claire's, helps the Fosters trace the Tripplehorns' cell phone number, from their restaurant reservation to the apartment of a pair of married hustlers, nicknamed "Taste" (James Franco) and "Whippit" (Mila Kunis), who used the flash drive to blackmail district attorney Frank Crenshaw (William Fichtner), rather than Miletto.
Phil loses the flash drive in the East River, after a shootout and conjoined-car chase with the crooked cops, but since its photos showed Crenshaw with prostitutes at the "Peppermint Hippo" club, the Fosters gain admittance by posing as a prostitute and her pimp. After the Fosters' awkward dancing arouses Crenshaw, they introduce themselves as "the Tripplehorn's." The crooked cops march the Fosters to the club's roof at gunpoint, where both Crenshaw and Miletto demand the flash drive. Phil then tricks Crenshaw and Miletto into declaring their misdeeds, while wearing a wire for a sting operation.
Sarah Cobey, who studies the interaction of immunity, virus evolution and transmission at the University of Chicago, Jesse Bloom and Tyler Starr, both of whom study virus evolution at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, writing for The New York Times: It's impossible to say whether future variants will have more big Omicron-like jumps or more typical stepwise changes, but we are confident SARS-CoV-2 will continue to evolve to escape immunity. While transmissibility of viruses does plateau at a certain point, other human viruses that escape immunity keep doing so. The influenza vaccine has been updated annually for decades to chase viral evolution, and some influenza viruses show no sign of slowing down. Immune escape is an endless evolutionary arms race, because the immune system can always make new antibodies and the virus has a vast set of mutations to explore in response. For instance, Omicron has just a tiny fraction of the many mutations that have been observed in SARS-CoV-2 or related bat viruses, which are in turn just a small fraction of what lab experiments suggest the virus could potentially explore.
Taking all this together, we expect SARS-CoV-2 will continue to cause new epidemics, but they will increasingly be driven by the ability to skirt the immune system. In this sense, the future may look something like the seasonal flu, where new variants cause waves of cases each year. If this happens, which we expect it will, vaccines may need to be updated regularly similar to the flu vaccines unless we develop broader variant-proof vaccines. And of course, how much all this matters for public health depends on how sick the virus makes us. That is the hardest prediction to make, because evolution selects for viruses that spread well, and whether that makes disease severity go up or down is mostly a matter of luck. But we do know that immunity reduces disease severity even when it doesn't fully block infections and spread, and immunity gained from vaccination and prior infections has helped blunt the impact of the Omicron wave in many countries. Updated or improved vaccines and other measures that slow transmission remain our best strategies for handling an uncertain evolutionary future.
I wanted to ask how one can avoid saying where they are moving to after resigning at their job. An ex-colleague (let’s call him Jake) resigned and the boss insisted on knowing where he was going despite Jake trying to avoid saying. In the end, Jake gave the name of the company and the boss reached out to the hiring manager to badmouth Jake (the boss had not been a reference because we KNOW what he is like!). Luckily the hiring manager ignored the boss.
I would like to avoid that whole drama should I resign, but I don’t think I can just not say where I am going. Can one give a false company name? Is that wrong? What are the options if you absolutely have to answer that question?
You don’t need to say where you’re going if you’d rather not.
It’s pretty normal for people to ask what you’ll be doing next when you resign. With reasonable people, it’s usually genuine interest, or even just politeness. It will generally come across as strangely chilly if you flatly refuse to answer, but there are lots of ways to be vague and not give information that would allow someone with nefarious intentions to do what your boss did.
Some examples:
* “I’ll be doing accounting for a small company.” (Focus on the role, not the company.)
* “I’m not ready to announce it publicly yet, but I’ll let you know once I do.” (This can sound a little mysterious; feel free to imply the company you’re moving to keeps such announcements confidential. That can be a thing, especially if your new role is part of a restructure that hasn’t been announced yet.)
* “I’ve got a few options I’m considering — all similar to what I’m doing now.” (However, be aware that if you’re talking to someone other than your boss, saying you don’t have another job lined up yet can sound like you’re not leaving by choice.)
* “I’ve got a few options I’m considering but haven’t made a final choice yet.” (Same note here.)
* “I’m taking some time off before moving on to the next thing!” (Here too, although if you sound excited, that will counter it.)
Keep in mind that with a vindictive boss who’s shown she’s willing to call new employers about you (!), you should probably wait to update your LinkedIn with the new job too.
Bruce Jenner’s The Athletic Body: A Complete Fitness Guide for Teenagers
Jenner and Cobbins
1984
Submitter: This book was weeded from a suburban high school in Georgia. Really everything about this book, including the exercises & title, is outdated. I wonder if Caitlyn would cringe about the ‘sissy’ squats terminology? It could be considered a little offensive in today’s world. My favorite part of the book is the dedication page to “all the future Jenner kids”… who knew there would be so many Kardashian ones as well?!
Holly: Sissy squats? That’s awful! What’s with the kids’ pants on the cover, too? They’re HUGE!
Hey, you pompous little asshole, I was sleeping. Do you know how precious few hours of sleep a middle-aged woman gets in a night? I had finally reached a REM state after two hours of lying awake in my perimenopause-induced anxiety fog, and you’re going to wake me up because you think you got somethin’ to say to me?
What’s that? “The morning sun really shows my age”? Wow. Thanks, Rod. Real classy. You know what else that morning sun really highlights? Your tiny, tiny penis.
Are you acting out some break-up fantasy you’ve cooked up in your little head, where you storm out of here and leave me all alone because you feel like a first-class fool? Because I’ve got news for you, turns out forty is the new thirty, and middle-aged women are living their best lives. So you can do all the storming out you want. I’ve got my dog, my wine, my self-help books, Brene Brown, and Oprah—all of whom are hell of a lot better company than you. Next week I will take my girls’ trip to Napa, where we will drink lots of wine and laugh uproariously about the ridiculous men in our lives, and lucky you, you get to be at the top of that list.
Anyway, I’ve got a few “somethin’s” of my own to say to you. First of all, I’m a woman, so I’m good at providing free emotional labor. I was trying to be a good friend, maybe lend a guiding hand, when you were whining about wanting to drop out of school. You seemed sad, so I went to give you a hug, which you apparently interpreted as something more. I’m like, what the hell? Okay, he’s cute, whatever. I mean, props to me for wearing you out, but I think you’re reading way too much into this thing.
Secondly, you feel like YOU’RE being used? I’m the one with an unemployed twenty-two-year-old poet/student/singer/pool player living in my house. You know how I pay for that house? With an actual grown-up job that pays me an actual grown-up paycheck. Sure, your earnest lovemaking kept me amused, but you know what I should have coaxed from you? A rent check.
And please, spare me your deep poetic metaphors. God, you twenty-somethings are so emotional. I didn’t steal your soul or your heart—contrary to popular Puritan beliefs, single women in their forties are not necessarily witches. And I didn’t wreck YOUR bed. May I remind you whose bed we are sleeping in and whose money paid for that bed? And please don’t refer to yourself as a “blind fool,” that’s super offensive to the visually impaired. Even this old lady knows that.
Oh, and regarding your thoughts about the next steps in your life. Why, why, why are you telling me these things? I could not care less whether you go back to school, make a living out of playing pool (sure, buddy, great idea—you’re basically Paul Newman!), or find yourself a rock ’n’ roll band. The last two definitely seem like ideas you just pulled out of your ass or examples of extreme white male hubris and confidence, but you do you, sweetie.
The last few months have been amusing, and I wish you luck in your future endeavors. Do you need bus fare to get on back to school? And don’t forget to collect your books!
And P.S. You know my name’s Margaret, right? We role-played that “sailor come home” fantasy game ONE TIME.
Good morning. Temperatures have dropped into the upper 40s for inland areas, with most of the metro area seeing low 50s this morning. Highs this afternoon will reach the upper 70s, with sunny skies and light winds. For me, this is the kind of very nearly perfect weather we sometimes see during spring and fall in Houston. The only real concern today is tree pollen, but all of the wind and rain on Wednesday should have knocked a lot of that out of the air. In short, if you can spend some time outside today or this evening, you really should do so!
Thursday
Today started brilliantly. If you were up early this morning, that was Venus shining brightly in the eastern sky, near the horizon before sunrise. With weak high pressure in place, winds today will be light, generally out of the north at 5 mph or so. This will provide a nice contrast from the last several days when we were first buffeted by a strong southerly flow, and then winds quickly shifted to come from the northwest on Wednesday with a cold front. Now things will settle down for awhile. With sunny skies, high temperatures will warm into the upper 70s, and lows tonight should drop to within a degree or two of Wednesday night’s lows. With dewpoints in the low 40s, the air will be pleasantly dry. I mean, come on. On a day like this you could almost forgive Houston’s summer.
Temperatures will be in the upper 70s this afternoon. (Weather Bell)
Friday
Another day not dissimilar to Thursday, but as light to moderate winds shift to come from the east, we’ll start to see atmospheric moisture levels creep up, and this will generate a few clouds. Highs will again be in the upper 70s, probably, but overnight lows likely won’t drop below 60 degrees in Houston.
Saturday
We’ll see a warming trend this weekend as the flow remains southerly, but winds should remain fairly moderate in the 5 to 10 mph range. Highs on Saturday will probably top out between 80 and 85 degrees for most areas, with partly to mostly sunny skies, and slightly sticky dewpoints in the low 60s. Lows on Saturday night should drop to around 60 degrees.
Sunday
Another warmish day, like Saturday, with highs in the 80s, and partly to mostly sunny skies. At some point clouds will start to build in response to increasing atmospheric moisture, but at this point I don’t think that will happen until Sunday afternoon or, more likely Sunday evening. Rain chances this weekend are low, probably 10 percent or less.
Houston will warm up over the next week, from lows this morning. (Weather Bell)
Next week
We’ll continue to see warm weather, with temperatures in the mid- to possibly even upper-80s early next week ahead of a cold front arriving later on Tuesday or Wednesday. There are some decent rain chances on Monday night into Tuesday, but right now the forecast models aren’t too enthused about accumulations. We’ll see. At this distant vantage point, the end of next week looks quite nice, with highs in the upper 70s or 80s degrees and drier air. Hopefully the spectacular weather lines up with the weekend!
I clearly could have written that better, since when I explained to my wife why I was asking who Dwight Shrute was she laughed at how far the character is from a match to my personality. I blame writing the letter in a hurry and editing for a thorough list of examples and brevity rather than tone or context. I see how statements like “I’m not particularly self-conscious” could make it sound like I’m being intentionally conspicuous rather than merely being willing to explain why I’m in stance to write on a low counter or mop a floor.
Anyway, I’ll probably continue some of it since my current job (like many in my past) is pretty solitary, and I still find that incorporating the movements I am already familiar with frequently makes tasks easier, more ergonomic, or faster for me. I started incorporating most of these movements to solve specific practical problems. To use the fall as an example, I needed to basically get low enough to have a shoulder on the floor dozens of times per grocery night shift to pull products on the bottom shelf from the back to the front, and I found that a sit-down back fall was quicker and less fatiguing (for me) than other techniques I tried. The least practical things I do with these at work are things like doing a stance to vary my position to fight hip stiffness (what I had in mind when I made a comment about keeping muscles active), doing a technique or form as a stress reliever/brain break/stim (I’m likely autistic), or killing time around the corner when the work is done but we need to stay a few more minutes in case there’s a last second forklift delivery. I’ll probably trade that last one for something else, but I’ll continue doing the stimming and stiffness examples for the time being.
That said, I will certainly be toning it down. That comments section made it clear that martial arts techniques have too much risk of going beyond my usual “quirky geek” vibe and into “sideshow geek” or “Spongebob in karate gear at the Krusty Krab” territory. I’ll avoid the gentle falls anywhere anyone could possibly be in eyeshot with less than 10 seconds notice (easy at my current job since I don’t take falls anyway due to product contamination concerns and obstacles), and I’ll do the same with forms. I didn’t do those where people could see anyway since I try hard not to be disruptive (and forms are something I actually do get self-conscious about), but I’m increasing my safety margin. I’ll also try to reduce the frequency of stances around people, but there really are times when I need a position between standing and crouching or a way to generate some pushing power or something else where they would be practical for my non-office job. I’ll think about other ways to fill the role of martial arts in my solutions to practical, ergonomic, and stimming problems, but it’ll be a slow process to come up with solutions and retrain my body not to default to these motions in the cases I decide it’s worth it.
In short, message received, commenters, but it’ll be a slow process to tone most of it down.
Never mind the economy. The real inflation is coming from government agencies seeking to justify their waste of taxpayers’ money.
While not otherwise occupied killing state residents with electric grid mismanagement or passing laws restricting their speech, Texas governor Greg Abbott has been touting the success of his personal border surge program — one he insists has led to record-breaking amounts of contraband seizures and arrests.
Governor Greg Abbott, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), and the Texas National Guard today mark the one-year anniversary of Operation Lone Star (OLS)—an unprecedented, comprehensive mission to address the Biden-made crisis at Texas’ southern border. Officially launched on March 4, 2021, OLS integrates DPS assets, including Texas Highway Patrol Troopers, Special Agents, Texas Rangers, Rotary and Fixed Winged Aircraft and Tactical Boat Teams, along with the Texas National Guard and local law enforcement to secure the border.
Since the launch of OLS, multi-agency efforts have led to more than 208,000 migrant apprehensions, along with more than 11,800 charges for criminal offenses— including more than 9,300 felony charges. Members of notorious gangs like the Texas Chicano Brotherhood, Bloods, Mexican Mafia, MS-13, and others have been taken off the streets. DPS has arrested sex offenders, weapons traffickers, previously convicted and deported criminal immigrants, drug dealers, and other wanted criminals. In the fight against fentanyl, DPS has seized over 269 million lethal doses throughout the state.
Some of this is true. A lot of it is barely partially true. Governor Abbott forgot to consider one crucial fact: public agencies produce public records. And those records show the governor — along with his law enforcement partners — moved goalposts, expanded reporting to include areas far inland from the border, and massaged numbers to make the program appear successful. And it completely fails to show how this was an improvement over existing enforcement efforts, which would have saved Texas taxpayers $1 billion/year.
First off, the coverage area of “Operation Lone Star” was expanded to include several inland counties — ones that did not receive additional funding from the state under this program. From the ProPublica report:
According to the Texas Department of Safety, the belated inclusion of counties with zero contact with the border was nothing more than an effort to “better reflect the mission” of the operation by capturing arrest and seizure data occurring up to 300 miles inland. But it offered no explanation as to why these stats should be counted since these counties were not recipients of extra funding or staffing. The DPS — one of the few agencies willing to release data to public records requesters — also failed to demonstrate whether the reported stats showed significant improvement over those generated by normal, non-extra-billion-dollar border enforcement programs.
So, what sort of dangerous criminals were the combined forces (Highway Patrol, National Guard troops, “special agents”) able to stop using this combination of increased numbers and increased funding?
Until this year, Val Verde and Kinney were the only two counties prosecuting people crossing into the country through private property for trespassing.
The misdemeanor charge, punishable by up to a year in jail, makes up about 40% of the operation’s arrests from mid-July to Jan. 27, an analysis by ProPublica, the Tribune and the Marshall Project found.
Trespassing. Hardly the sort of thing justifying 40% of a billion dollars per year. It may be a crime but, in a large majority of cases, no one is trespassing with nefarious intent. They’re simply taking the most straightforward path to cities and towns where they can find food, shelter, and employment.
There’s another reason for the over-representation of this misdemeanor. Going after trespassers gives state and local agencies something to do with their border surge personnel and money. Border enforcement is the fed’s job. Local cops can detain suspected undocumented immigrants, but the arrests and charges are federal. Looking for “trespassers” allows Texas agencies to look useful and possibly explain what they’re doing with all of Abbott’s extra funding.
There is another reason for this border push: Governor Abbott’s continued employment. The governor held campaign events where he handed out fake pill bottles labeled “Beto Biden open border” that pointed to 1,334 fentanyl-related deaths in Texas in 2021. That’s not all the faux bottles said:
Inside was a mock warning label that credited the seizure of 887 pounds of fentanyl, or what he called more than 201 million deadly doses, to Operation Lone Star. Days later, Abbott repeated similar claims in a press release from the governor’s office.
But stats from the Department of Safety tell a different story. Only 160 pounds were seized in the areas the operation targeted. The inflated number Abbott linked to Operation Lone Star was actually the total of all seizures across the state. Even the 160 pounds attributed to the operation by the DPS was inaccurate.
All but 12 of the 160 pounds of fentanyl were captured in El Paso County, which was not one of the ones listed by DPS officials in November as receiving additional troopers and National Guard members from the operation. The county was one of several that declined to sign on to the governor’s border disaster declaration.
The report punches holes in every claim made by Gov. Abbott and the DPS. All that can be said for sure is more than a billion dollars have disappeared into a border enforcement hole with no quantifiable return on investment. And the effort appears to have been more motivated by Abbott’s desire to remain in office than in response to increased threats or danger at the border.
Apple, Facebook and Discord turned over user data to hackers posing as law enforcement officials, according to a new report in Bloomberg. The demands, which were forged to look like authentic legal requests, reportedly came from legitimate email accounts that had been “compromised.”
According to Bloomberg, both Facebook and Apple turned over “basic subscriber details, such as a customer’s address, phone number and IP address.” Discord provided “the Internet address history of Discord accounts tied to a specific phone number,” according to Krebs on Security. The hackers also targeted Snap, though it’s not clear if the company actually turned over the requested data.
As Bloomberg points out, it’s not uncommon for companies like Apple and Facebook to turn over data to law enforcement, and these companies have dedicated teams to respond to such requests. Typically, these requests are accompanied by a court order, but there are “emergency” cases when law enforcement asks for data without one, like when someone’s life is believed to be in danger.
In this case, the hackers exploited this tactic in order to access personal information about specific targets in order to “facilitate financial fraud schemes.” Using hacked emails tied to legitimate law enforcement personnel, they were able to successfully fool the companies into handing over the data.
In a statement to Bloomberg, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said that the company has safeguards in place to verify legal requests and detect abuse. “We block known compromised accounts from making requests and work with law enforcement to respond to incidents involving suspected fraudulent requests, as we have done in this case,” Stone said.
Apple and Snap also pointed to company guidelines, saying they have policies to verify the legitimacy of requests for user data. But these safeguards can fall short if the requests appear to be from emails associated with legitimate law enforcement agencies. As Discord told Krebson Security:
“We can confirm that Discord received requests from a legitimate law enforcement domain and complied with the requests in accordance with our policies. We verify these requests by checking that they come from a genuine source, and did so in this instance. While our verification process confirmed that the law enforcement account itself was legitimate, we later learned that it had been compromised by a malicious actor. We have since conducted an investigation into this illegal activity and notified law enforcement about the compromised email account.”
Interestingly, security researchers have reportedly tied some of the people involved in this scheme to another high-profile hacking group: Lapsus$, whose members allegedly hacked Microsoft and Okta. According to Bloomberg, one person involved with forging the requests is also “believed to be the mastermind behind the cybercrime group Lapsus$.”
We already knew that Donald Trump was in bed with Vladimir Putin, but last night a host on Russian state TV came right out and said it, stating it's time "to change the regime in the U.S." and to "again" reinstate "our partner Trump." — Read the rest
Actor Bruce Willis has had an incredible career for nearly 40 years. His breakout big screen role as John McClane in "Die Hard" in 1988 -- following a successful TV run as the star of "Moonlighting" -- cemented him as an action hero for the ages, and he's been a major Hollywood player ever since. In the past few years, Willis has taken on roles in a number of straight-to-video releases, with eight releasing in 2021 alone and another 11 due to release in 2022. Fans began to question both his performances in the films and his reasoning for doing them, though as rumors began swirling about Willis' deteriorating health, the jokes about his acting mostly turned to concern.
Willis' daughter Rumer Willis released a statement today on behalf of the family, confirming that Willis will be retiring from acting. The statement also explains that Willis has been diagnosed with aphasia, which inhibits his cognitive abilities, and he will be taking time to spend with his family and live it up as best he can.
"To Bruce's amazing supporters, as a family we wanted to share that our beloved Bruce has been experiencing some health issues and has recently been diagnosed with aphasia, which is impacting his cognitive abilities. As a result of this and with much consideration Bruce is stepping away from the career that has meant so much to him. This is a really challenging time for our family and we are so appreciative of your continued love, compassion and support. We are moving through this as a strong family unit, and wanted to bring his fans in because we know how much he means to you, as you do to him. As Bruce always says, "Live it up" and together we plan to do just that.Love,Emma, Demi, Rumer, Scout, Tallulah, Mabel, & Evelyn"
Aphasia is a condition that slowly erodes a person's ability to communicate. Speech, speech recognition, and reading and writing become increasingly challenging as the parts of the brain that recognize those patterns stop working correctly. Aphasia often occurs as the result of a head injury or stroke, but can also happen as a result of any other trauma to the brain, including tumors or degenerative disease. The aphasia could easily explain why Willis was spotted wearing an ear-piece in some of his recent films to help him remember lines, and it could also explain rumors of him appearing disoriented on set. It also opens up a discussion about how much of his slew of final films were exploitative, or if Willis had fully consented in order to bank money for retirement. Whatever the situation, it's truly a shame to see one of cinema's greatest movie stars retiring on such a sad note.
I hope retirement is good to Willis, and he gets to enjoy some rest, relaxation, and love with his family. Thank you for a lifetime of incredible movies, Mr. Willis.
On Tuesday, the Houston Chronicle reported that Katy ISD was investigating whether Maus—the Pulitzer Prize–winning two-part graphic novel that tells the story of how author Art Spiegelman’s family survived the Holocaust—was appropriate for the district’s middle and high school libraries. It wasn’t the first time in recent months that educators have considered whether its students should have access to the book. In January, the school board in McMinn County, Tennessee (about halfway between Chattanooga and Knoxville) made headlines for banning the book. In response to the ban, high school students in Katy organized a book drive to collect and distribute copies of Maus, as well as Toni Morrison’s Beloved and other widely acclaimed works that, after years as part of the canon, have come under fire…
You can find plenty of gay bars in Dallas’s Oak Lawn neighborhood. One of the few remaining lesbian bars in the country, Sue Ellen’s, is there, as well as an energetic shack known as the Tin Room. There are clubs where you can groove to Latin tracks or square-dance. There are sports bars and drag stages. But there is no place like the Dallas Eagle.The Eagle was a place of red lights, hairy bellies, leashes, and pup masks. Glitter from performing drag queens snowed onto the vests and pants of the leather-clad crowd, and trophy cases were crowded with prizes from leather pageants and photos from cookouts and tournaments. Patrons shot pool near a rectangular bar that served cheap beer and Jell-O shots. To its…
He Gave Her Roses
Bruce Jenner’s The Athletic Body: A Complete Fitness Guide for Teenagers
