Cowboy Who?

Employees:

Now that we are all finally starting to return to the office, I just thought it would be helpful to remind everyone of the rules we have in place for keeping food in our shared refrigerator. Please follow these guidelines to help ensure the fridge remains a sanitary and healthy space for everyone who works here:

- Our cleaning staff will throw out everything in the fridge each Friday by 6 p.m. If you don’t want your leftovers to end up in the trash, TAKE THEM HOME!

- Do NOT eat any food that isn’t yours, whether it’s a mostly full container of pad thai or a mysterious glowing paper bag that has been wedged in the back of the fridge since our company moved in to this office on June 6, 2006. If you see someone else’s name on it, leave it alone. If you don’t see someone else’s name on it but know it isn’t yours, leave it alone. If the glowing seems to be getting more ominously radiant as your flesh inches closer and closer toward the bag, definitely leave it alone.

- If you accidentally eat someone else’s food, just own up to it. Do not pretend that you brought in the same meal or try to blame it on the glowing bag, as that generally just seems to make it angrier. Glen was the last person to try that, and we never saw him again.

- No, Glen was not fired. We honestly have no idea where he went and are pretty worried.

- If you see something in the fridge with a note on it that says FOR ANYONE, I guess you’re technically allowed to eat it, but keep in mind that this may just be the glowing bag trying to trick you into consuming something for sinister purposes. We’re pretty sure it gained the ability to write while we were all working from home and is using this skill to foster a false sense of trust among our employees.

- We know the fridge gets crowded, but try to keep your food at least a quarter-inch away from other people’s food—especially if it contains peanuts—and at least six inches away from the glowing bag. Stacy hasn’t been quite the same and is much more fluent in Aramaic since she left her salad right next to it all weekend. This is one of the reasons why we instituted the “food gets thrown out on Friday” rule, just FYI. That, and the smell was attracting flies.

- The glowing bag is exempt from that “food gets thrown out on Friday” rule, in case you didn’t already assume that. The last cleaning lady who tried to throw it away vanished soon after, and now the temperature instantly drops by twenty degrees whenever we say her name.

- Yes, we assume she and Glen are in the same place. We just don’t know where that place is.

- We really don’t like to ask about our employees’ religious beliefs, but we will say that one time a certain accountant put some sacramental wine in the fridge, and everything except the paper bag was covered in blood three minutes later. It totally spoiled the piece of pumpkin pie I had been looking forward to all day, so please don’t bring in any sacramental food items going forward.

- Make sure to always shut the fridge door completely. Leaving it open even just a crack could cause the food to spoil and allow the essence inside the glowing bag to escape its current confines and spread to all other parts of the office.

- Do not adjust the temperature settings. We have confirmed with a sustainability expert and an exorcist that the fridge’s current temperature is optimized to be environmentally friendly and ward off evil spirits. Any adjustment could put both of those things at risk.

- Clean up all spills immediately, unless the spill comes from the glowing bag, in which case flee the office immediately.

- If you open the bag, you are subject to immediate termination. But you should let us know what’s in it before you leave. I’ve always assumed it was a demon, but Joe is convinced it’s just some really old egg salad.

Sincerely,
Keith from HR

For most filmmakers, a film is a labor of love; the product of countless hours of manpower, painstaking attention to detail, and thorough teamwork. As such, a director might be precious about their work. When it's mocked or the analysis seems especially off, said director might take to social media and get into spats with critics. It's happened on occasion. Some directors, however, are built differently.

"Mystery Science Theater 3000" is a show that critiques with love, and always has since its first episode aired on KTMA-TV in Minneapolis, in November of 1988. The show has undergone several iterations and hopped several channels over its 218 episode run, but the structure follows a host (first played by series creator and showrunner Joel Hodgson, then others) trapped by a pair of mad scientists called "The Mads" on an orbital vessel, Satellite of Love. There, he is compelled to watch B-movies (in most cases, the B is for Brutally Bad) while they note his reaction to each one. To keep his sanity, Joel fashions together some robots for company: Tom Servo, Crow T. Robot, and Gypsy. Together, the group watches the movies and riffs on them to hilarious effect. Past episodes have featured the likes of "Sharknado" and "Manos: The Hands of Fate," and not all of these films' creators appreciated the feature-length roasting.

In Wired's oral history of the series, Hodgson, host Mike Nelson, and assorted cast and crew reminisce about the early days of the show in the '90s, when the show received steady fan mail that contained praise and condemnation alike. Nelson explained:

"Sometimes we'd open them up and say, 'Oh, mine's a "Why the hell are you guys talking over my movie?'" letter.' It was really exciting to get one of those. Most of the time we heard that sort of complaint secondhand, because nobody's going to call you up and say, 'How dare you make fun of my really, really crappy movie that everyone acknowledges is crappy?' But privately you would hear, 'Oh, I worked with this director, and I brought up MST3K, and he started yelling'"

But again, some directors are built differently. One of the funniest MST3K episodes was the product of a director sending their film directly to Hodgson. A 1988 creature feature that's totally not a "Gremlins" and "Critters" nick but is definitely a "Gremlins" and "Critters" nick: Rick Sloane's "Hobgoblins."

'I Knew Then That We Were In Trouble.'

"Hobgoblins" is a through and through low-budget indie, for better and for worse. The story has a lot going on, but its central gimmick is a horde of magical furry hobgoblins (aliens who crash-landed on a Hollywood studio lot and then escaped) who can make their victims hallucinate their wildest fantasies before the mythical creatures kill them. This leads to a sort of "Trouble With Tribbles" situation, with the little scamps running any which-a-way and slaughtering citizens at will. Writer-director Rick Sloane not only loved his work, he loved it so much that he found a way to make sure it stays in the public eye for way longer than the box office would have allowed: He sent his movies to the MST3K production company Best Brains for one of their televised evaluations.

Sloane elaborates:

"I actually submitted three movies to them. I really avoided giving them 'Hobgoblins,' because I had a bad feeling that they were going to grab that one. But I know 'Hobgoblins' is bad. I mean, I was there when we made it. On the very first day of photography, when the script called for a puppet fight, we threw a puppet on one of the actors. But the puppets couldn't do anything, so the actors were pulling them on and off themselves. I knew then that we were in trouble.

"Eventually, I submitted the film to them, and they had it 12 hours before calling me and saying they wanted the movie. The night the MST3K episode aired, I phoned all my friends and told them to watch. But if I had seen it first, I wouldn't have told anybody when it was on [Laughs]. They improved that movie — they made it watchable. But I've never been fond of the fake interview they did with me over the end credits. They drag down a cardboard cutout and say, 'Let's do an interview with director Rick Sloane,' and ask, 'Is it true you have rat droppings for brains?'"

A Good Sport

Sloane loved the episode, which aired on Jun 27, 1998, during the show's stint at the Sci-Fi Channel (now SyFy). In fact, he enjoyed the ribbing so much that when he developed the 2009 sequel "Hobgoblins 2," Sloane penned music for the film based on a goofy ditty sung by Mike Nelson and the bots, from the same episode. This writer is paraphrasing, but the central theme of the lyrics states that "Hobgoblins everywhere!"

In recent news, "Mystery Science Theater 3000," long departed from cable tv, was revived and predictably canceled by Netflix in quick succession, but found a second life via crowdfunding. The show just entered its 13th season on the Gizmoplex, a streaming service crafted just for the show and all things MST3K. The season premiered on March 4th exclusively for backers following a robust Kickstarter campaign, but the rest of us will have to wait until May 6, 2022 to get our fix from the peanut gallery.

Read this next: The 15 Best '80s Comedies Ranked

The post Not Everyone Was Embarrassed to Have Their Films On Mystery Science Theater 3000 appeared first on /Film.

Millions of Ukrainians (over three million as of this writing) have left their homes for other countries in a relatively short period of time. Sara Chodosh, Zach Levitt and Gus Wezerek for NYT Opinion put the total as of March 13 into perspective. Over just an 18-day period, Ukraine refugee counts have surpassed counts during those of other refugee crises over one-year periods, since 1975.

Tags: New York Times, refugees, scale, Ukraine, war

A change that had been expected but finally buttoned up in time for next month's Jammy Jellyfish release: Ubuntu 22.04 LTS will now default to using the GNOME Wayland session when running the NVIDIA proprietary driver. The caveat/limitation is that's only the case when using the NVIDIA 510 series driver or newer and not when using any of the older legacy driver branches...

There is a very small group of celebrities whose reputations are stellar enough that their fans would still flock to see them even if it meant having to hear about exceedingly dull and confusing things like cryptocurrency or NFTs. Dolly Parton, most reasonable Americans would agree, is one such star. Making her first-ever South by Southwest appearance, the country legend arrived in Austin as part of the Dollyverse—a Web3 experience and limited-edition NFT drop timed to promote her debut novel, Run, Rose, Run, and its accompanying album. Thankfully, though, there was very little blockchain talk to be found. So little, in fact, that, aside from knowing I’m now the owner of a limited-edition Dollyverse NFT, I couldn’t explain the words “powered by the blockchain” if my…

The post Welcome to the Dollyverse: Dolly Parton Makes Her First-Ever SXSW Appearance appeared first on Texas Monthly.

OBJECTIVE/STANDARDS: Empathy, nonnormative cisgenderism, white shame, heterosexual ostracization, and liberal critical thinking.

MATERIALS/RESOURCES: All That’s Wrong with the Bible by Jonah David Conner, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson, Why Are Conservatives Always Wrong? by Douglas Ting, and anything by Oscar Wilde—the more flamboyant, the better.

SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL LEARNING: Teach students to empathize with people of other cultures and races by lacing lesson with generous amounts of a critical theory meant only for graduate students.

BELL RINGER: (10 minutes) White students will stand and hang their heads in shame for ten minutes because they are white—include students of color to avoid lawsuits.

HOOK: (10 minutes) Students will make their own TikToks explaining their parents’ outdated ideologies. (If students have trouble thinking of examples, remind them of Amy’s parents, who are destroying the environment by washing their clothes every week.)

CONNECTION TO PRIOR LEARNING: Unnecessary. Students have yet to learn anything.

ACTIVITY: (20 minutes) Begin with Oscar Wilde and review his life. Emphasize that although Wilde was married to a woman and had two sons, he had a salacious secret—an affair with a man sixteen years younger than he was. If time, read Salome and an uncensored copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Formative check: Students will write a paragraph response to the following question: “How does knowing Oscar Wilde’s sexuality influence my own sexuality?” Any student who has not experienced a sexual-identity crisis will lose points.

ACTIVITY: (20 minutes) Jigsaw puzzle: Students will split into groups of five and review Gibson’s Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents and Ting’s Why Are Conservatives Always Wrong? Together they will brainstorm a list of ways their parents are immature and non-PC. They must support each item with detailed evidence from their own lives. Students will then move to different groups to share ideas and write down their findings.

NOTE: If students are struggling, show them the trump card: heterosexual cis white men. Examples: Homer Simpson, Darth Vader, Tucker Carlson, etc.

Formative check: Students will fill out a graphic organizer comparing and contrasting their parents’ parenting styles and their own life experiences to those of their peers. The most underprivileged and disadvantaged students will receive an automatic “A” for the rest of the school year.

ACTIVITY: (20 minutes) Students will read All That’s Wrong with the Bible for homework. In class, they will draw a picture of Adam and Eve. We will make a list of characteristics that describe Eve, and a list that describes Adam. Students will then swap the lists. Eve will have all of Adam’s traits and vice versa. They will then rewrite the creation story with Eve as a man and Adam as a woman. If they haven’t felt their gender turn fluid by the end of this activity, they’ve failed.

Formative check: Students will draw themselves as a gender they don’t identify as and list at least one way they will dress to defy the gender standards forced on them since infancy. This could include anything from fishnet tights and push-up bras to strap-on dildos.

NOTE: Students who can record their parents saying phrases like “Boys will be boys” and/or “That’s not ladylike,” will receive extra credit. (Bonus if their parents get canceled on social media.)

NOTES FOR NEXT TIME: Remind students that I’m a poor, bitter English teacher with a bachelor’s and master’s degree and years of teaching experience that prove I know how to babysit. I’m not skilled enough to have a real job, but I’m skilled enough to be the biggest influence in their lives. So they need to remember that my foremost agenda is to prove that I’ve joined the woke-teacher club and am on my way to being a cult-leader-level brainwasher.

Creative Recreation for the Mentally Retarded
Amary
1975

I pulled this book from an academic library. The library in question had a large education program and this type of material would be appropriate from an academic perspective. Obviously, the use of “retarded” is inappropriate for a modern publication. Academic collections have different criteria since the use is primarily for scholarship and not for actual consumption. Different use requires different standards for weeding.

Special education students were largely ignored by most public schools until 1975 with the passage of Education for All Handicapped Children Act. The 1970s and 1980s saw huge changes in the laws and education of special needs children. In a public library setting in 2022, the title is disrespectful and smacks of “otherness.”

To researchers, this book may have value. To parents and educators dealing with special needs education issues, this book is all wrong. Weeding isn’t just re-purposing or recycling. It is about finding the right place for a title.

All seriousness aside, what is the deal with these illustrations?

Mary

The post Creative Recreation for Everyone appeared first on Awful Library Books.

For the first time in eight years, the election for land commissioner is wide open, with the outgoing Commissioner George P. Bush running for attorney general against incumbent Ken Paxton. Bush has come under fire for not taking his post seriously, and treating it merely as an audition for more prestigious elected offices. In 2015, he infamously minimized the importance of the General Land Office (GLO) by comparing running for land commissioner to running for state “dog catcher.”

But Bush isn’t the only one: “So many people use the GLO as a political stepping-stone,” said Jim Blackburn, an environmental lawyer and professor at Rice University.

Now, four candidates are headed into runoff elections in hopes of succeeding Bush. On the Republican side, state Senator Dawn Buckingham—the presumed frontrunner—is running against former congressional candidate Tim Westley. On the Democratic side, family counselor Sandragrace Martinez of San Antonio is running against Austin-based environmentalist Jay Kleberg of the famous King Ranch family.

The stakes are higher than Commissioner Bush might make them seem. Many Texans only know about the land office because of its role in a heated controversy over the future of the Alamo. But more important, the approximately 700-person agency is meant to manage Texas’ public lands, including its 367-mile coastline, and respond to oil spills and hurricanes. It also oversees leases for energy production, and uses the revenue to fund public schools and veterans’ facilities.

The GLO under Bush has faced significant criticism for botching the distribution of disaster recovery funds to Houstonians and others after Hurricane Harvey in 2017. 

“They haven’t really learned best practices,” said Julia Orduña, the southeast regional director for Texas Housers, a housing nonprofit that advocates for low-income Texans. “It’s very important for the GLO to understand not just who they’re serving, but who they’re leaving behind.”

In fact, last Tuesday, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development published the results of an investigation into the land office, finding that the state agency illegally discriminated against residents of Black and Latinx neighborhoods after Hurricane Harvey—giving them less financial help than homeowners in white neighborhoods.

The two Republican candidates who will face off in a May runoff have addressed coastal management and disaster recovery to some extent, but focused their campaigns on issues that appeal to their party’s right-wing base and have little to do with the main responsibilities of the GLO. 

Dawn Buckingham, a Travis County physician who has served as a state senator since 2016, got a little over 40 percent of the Republican primary votes. She’s campaigning as a champion of strict border security, and has pledged to continue constructing a wall on state-owned land along the U.S.-Mexico border. Buckingham has racked up endorsements from prominent Republicans, including Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz, as well as from advocacy groups like the National Rifle Association and the Texas Oil and Gas Association. She did not respond to an interview request.

Tim Westley, a former pastor and college professor who’s now the official historian for the Republican Party of Texas, got just under 15 percent of his party’s primary votes. Westley, who’s from Bexar County, opposes changes to the Alamo historical site proposed under Commissioner Bush. Many conservatives, including Buckingham as well, view the renovation project as a politically correct attempt to rewrite the traditional narrative of the 1836 battle that (wrongly) portrays Texan separatists, mostly Anglos, as immaculate freedom fighters and the Mexican army as oversimplified oppressors. 

Westley’s Alamo activism, combined with his experience as an Army veteran and an educator, inspired him to run. He pointed out that veterans’ nursing homes run by the GLO have been hit especially hard by COVID-19, and said the agency isn’t taking good care of veterans’ cemeteries, either. 

“We have 1.4 million veterans in the state of Texas,” he said. “We should be doing our best to make sure they’re getting better treatment.”

The two Democrats have taken starkly different approaches.

Sandragrace Martinez, a licensed mental health counselor from San Antonio, has emphasized her professional experience—as a staffer in the state legislature, a parole officer, and a Child Protective Services investigator—and her personal perspective as a bilingual Hispanic candidate. She received 32 percent of the Democratic primary votes, a surprising outcome based on her campaign’s relatively low profile.

Even though mental health is not explicitly in the GLO’s mandate, Martinez sees the issue as a common denominator connecting its roles supporting veterans, schoolchildren, and survivors of natural disasters. 

“Knowing the human condition has, for me, been critical in understanding the needs of the people that I have crossed paths with in this election,” she said, adding that mental health is an underrepresented area of expertise among elected officials.

Jay Kleberg, a longtime conservationist who grew up as Anglo Texas royalty on his family’s 825,000-acre King Ranch, received just over 25 percent of the primary votes. He described the GLO as “the state’s top environmental post” and wants to use the office to strengthen Texas’ resilience to climate change. The GLO does have some coastal resilience work underway, including the Texas Coastal Spine Project, a $29 billion investment in seawalls and levees developed with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to protect Galveston Bay from storm surges and flooding.

Kleberg has cited research by Rice University’s Blackburn suggesting that data the GLO uses is out of date, and said he feared this planned infrastructure would be “obsolete on arrival.” Kleberg wants to make sure the agency is using the latest climate science. He also plans to pursue a wider range of energy production on state land—including geothermal, solar, and wind—as a way to “future-proof” funding for Texas public schools against potential dips in oil and gas revenue.

The seriousness of climate change is such that without someone in office who’s “willing to face the future,” he said, “so much could be lost. And it’s not just the environment, it is our quality of life, it is 25 percent of the GDP, and our communities.”

One group of Texans is acutely aware of what’s at stake: the survivors of Hurricane Harvey.

James Burford, a 71-year-old military veteran and Houston resident, applied for assistance from the GLO after his house was damaged during Hurricane Harvey. Years later, and after submitting dozens of documents to the agency, his application is still being vetted to see if he’s eligible for assistance. “I have tried to respond to every request they’ve made to me. Now I’m at a loss,” Burford said. “The ball is in their court now.”

In the meantime, Burford and his teenage daughter can’t live in their house, which has pervasive water damage and mold that could exacerbate his emphysema. Burford and other Houstonians have taken some matters into their own hands, forming a group called the Harvey Forgotten Survivors Caucus to give mutual aid during storms and lobby the government for better help.

Whoever becomes the next land commissioner, Burford would like to see him or her provide  better training for GLO employees, or even get out of the disaster recovery business and have the state form a separate agency dedicated just to natural disasters. “It’s quite obvious they’re in over their heads,” he said.

The agency only started administering disaster recovery funds in 2011 under Commissioner Jerry Patterson, after Hurricanes Ike and Dolly hit the Texas coast. According to Patterson, the GLO hired plenty of people with specific disaster expertise at the time. He blames the agency’s current problems on Bush, or firing or otherwise letting go many of those experienced staffers. Patterson, a former state senator, served as land commissioner from 2003 to  2015 and then unsuccessfully challenged Bush for his old job in the 2018 primary.

“Bush has led a “wholesale slaughter of the disaster recovery division,” Patterson said in an interview with the Observer, “all because he was a formulaic Republican” acting supposedly on the party’s traditional fiscal conservatism.

Patterson thinks both Buckingham and Kleberg are running good campaigns and have the chops to be the next land commissioner. But he cautions that the candidates’ campaign promises on things like the border wall and environmentalism might have little to do with the office’s day-to-day responsibilities..

Other experts disagree, and consider environmental matters, at least on the coast, very much under the GLO’s purview. While hurricanes might be the coastal danger that most immediately worries people, Texas also needs to grapple with quieter but more insidious threats like sea level rise, land subsidence, and oil spills.

The GLO has already investigated 11 oil spills on the state’s coastline in 2022, and a total of 204 oil spills in 2021, according to data provided by the agency’s public information staff. And a recent report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that the Gulf Coast, where land is actually sinking (due to the extraction of groundwater and oil) in addition to the ocean rising, could see more than a foot of sea level rise in the next thirty years—well within most Texans’ lifetimes.

Residents and state agencies need to have “an honest conversation about risk to the coast,” said Blackburn, whoever leads the agency next.

The post Will the Next Texas Land Commissioner Forget the Alamo—and Focus on More Important Duties? appeared first on The Texas Observer.

In an order late Monday, the Third Court of Appeals reinstated a statewide injunction into the practice that was previously granted by a state district judge earlier this month.

In the 1990s, reformers adopted a radical economic program in Russia. It devastated ordinary Russians and created a new class of oligarchs. And it explains the rise of Putin and the leader he is today

(Image credit: Alexei Nikolsky/AP)

This post, my boss is lying about having a PhD, companies that say you can’t ask coworkers to wear a mask, and more , was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

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

1. I think our boss is lying about having a PhD

We have a new boss. She is textbook terrible: critical, micromanaging, creates make-work, and sets priorities that actively harm the company/brand in ways that make us miss our targets. She also recently asked us to attend a scientific conference that a Google search revealed to be a predatory scam with no peer-review that defrauds people in developing countries.

She claims to have a fancy PhD in a very abstruse topic (think, super fancy math/physics topic) and insists on everyone calling her “Dr.” However, her Wiki entry shows only a master’s, and it’s really hard to believe someone who is so incompetent could hack it in a PhD program in this field. When we google her research record, we find no published research papers, which is very unusual (her supposed field is so collaborative that any grad student who does even the barest amount of work will get their name on at least one paper with dozens of co-authors.) I really suspect she is lying about her degree.

We spend hours of our day working around her/pushing back on the most egregious things so we can meet our targets despite her and life would be so much easier if we were not reporting to her. Is there any way to discreetly ask the company to check on her credentials without blowing everything up? For reference, our grandboss is bad, our head of HR left, and tons of senior management are leaving, which means our company is generally a hot mess. And if we did ask them to investigate, would lying about her degree even matter? It’s not technically needed for her position and she was taken on as part of an acquisition, so I’m not sure if they ever interviewed her or vetted her resume, meaning she may not technically have “lied” in an interview.

I wouldn’t count on her Wiki being an accurate source, although you could still be right. Ultimately, though, your problem isn’t what degrees your boss does or doesn’t have, but that she’s a terrible manager. I realize you’re seeing the degree as potentially an easy, clear-cut way to get rid of her but, as you note, you have no way of knowing what she put on her resume or whether your company would care … plus her boss is bad and your HR person is gone. It’s just not sounding like a way out of the problem.

I’d focus instead on how you want to respond to the bigger problem that she sucks as a manager. Are there parts of that which her boss might care about, despite not being a great manager themselves? Do you want wait for a new HR person to be hired and see if they might be more helpful? (Don’t put a ton of stock in that option though; HR can coach and flag problems and provide support but generally can’t just get rid of a bad manager on their own.)

Maybe more to the point, if you knew your boss would still be there in a year, more or less unchanged, would you want to stay in your job? That’s likely the most relevant question, unfortunately.

2. Companies that say employees cannot ask others to wear masks

I am seeing some organizations establish policies saying “individuals may not request or require that others wear masks” (quote from the MIT Vice Chancellor but I think this is a wider issue). I have questions about forbidding even a request of this nature. Is this legal? Is this reasonable? How should employees handle such policies? How should low- and mid-managers at organizations implementing such policies handle employees who are not happy about it? How should people considering a new job find out about the potential new organization’s approach?

Even in states that have banned mask mandates, those bans generally apply to local government, not to private employers. Private employers are free to implement mask requirements and other Covid precautions. So employers that tell employees they can’t ask others to wear mask have either (a) made an internal decision to make that their policy or (b) profoundly misunderstood how the law applies to them and probably haven’t bothered to seek competent legal guidance.

And no, given that masks remain one of the most effective ways we have to curtail the spread of Covid, these policies aren’t smart or reasonable. Employees who are concerned about this type of guidance from an employer should band together and push back (and in particular, push the employer to explain the legal foundation of their reasoning, since they likely won’t be able to provide one).

As for finding out about masking policies when interviewing for a new job, it’s very reasonable to say, “Can you tell me how you’ve been handling Covid and what precautions you have in place for employees?” If masks aren’t addressed, ask, “Are you still requiring masking?” (However, keep in mind that policies on this stuff are changing very quickly right now, and what’s true right now may not be true in a month.) And if you’re high-risk or live with someone who is, once you have an offer you can try negotiating for specific accommodations, which could include, for example, the ability to ask people to wear masks when meeting with you. (The Americans with Disabilities Act will cover you but not a high-risk loved one. But not all negotiations need to be restricted to what’s protected by law, although having that legal protection does make it easier to ensure accommodations are honored.)

3. How can I get out of helping with an office move?

I work for a division of state government as a lawyer. We are in the process of moving to a new building, which is great, but we have all been asked to help with the move, which is not so great. I really enjoy my coworkers and am happy to assist in any way needed, but obviously, being a mover is not in my job description.

We’ve been able to work almost exclusively at home through the pandemic which has been amazing. Our office move is being coordinated by a lovely lady, but organizing and coordinating the move is not her forte. A month ago, she issued a general plea for help, asking everyone to come in one day a week to help with the move. I have done so for the past five weeks and I would like to find a way to politely ask to not come in any more.

During my days in the office the past few weeks, I’ve done what was asked — boxed up 50-year-old files (my fingers were black with dust — thank goodness for masks), catalogued other ancient records, and built countless bankers boxes. I consider what I’ve done to be the bare minimum of what should have been done months, if not years ago to properly retain records and generally keep up with the times. At the end of each day I’ve been in to help, my coworkers are amazed at what I’ve accomplished and can’t believe how much I’ve completed. Bless their hearts, but it really is not impressive.

At any rate, other coworkers seem not to be putting in the same level of help, so I’d love to stop. How can I nicely beg off?

“I’ve done more than my share over the past five weeks and I can’t keep neglecting the rest of my work, so others will need to step up.” And then just … stop coming in to do it. It sounds like you’ve done plenty; decide it’s no longer in your hands.

But also, why isn’t your office hiring professional packers and movers? It’s one thing to be asked to box up some files in your own office, but relying on staff for this amount of moving work is ridiculous. (I’m assuming there’s no point in suggesting it or it already would be happening … but if that assumption might be flawed, please do consider it.)

4. My boss talks about “femtors” and “herstory”

My boss is very enthusiastic about women’s issues, which is great! But she insists on using phrases like “femtor” (for female mentor) and “herstory” instead of “history,” and these drive me nuts. Part of the reason is that the “men” in “mentor” and the “his” in “history” have nothing to do with gender, but it’s also because it seems patronizing in the same way that “girl boss” does. Is there a way I can bring this up?

That would be annoying as hell, and it’s also a quirk of your boss that you probably just need to accept. The exception would be if you have excellent rapport with her and she’s open to pushback in general, in which case you could maybe raise it … but I’m skeptical it’ll have much impact, and you’re almost certainly better off saving your capital for other things.

5. Are you supposed to base your notice period on how much vacation time you get?

I’m on my way out from an organization, and I was talking to my mother about it. I’m biased, but she’s pretty awesome and done some really cool things career-wise, and she’s a great source of career advice 99% of the time. She surprised me by saying that the amount of notice you’re supposed to give is equivalent to the amount of vacation you accrue in a year — so for example a temp employee with no vacation benefit would be obligated to give no notice, someone getting three weeks vacation would need to give three weeks notice, etc. She claims she learned this back when she was starting out (so probably the early 1980’s in the U.S.?) but I can’t find even a smidgen of evidence this exists. Is this a thing, or was it ever? I was completely thrown for a loop. And for what it’s worth, I’m sticking to two weeks notice regardless of my vacation accruals!

I can’t say whether it was ever a thing (although I’ve never heard of it), but it’s definitely not a thing now. It’s true that you don’t always need to give notice at some types of temp jobs, but that’s because it’s a temp job and not because they’re not giving you vacation time. Outside of unusual situations like that, standard notice is two weeks. In cases where more is expected (in some jobs, three or four is the convention), it’s just about conventions of the field, not about how much vacation time you receive.

This post, how do I write a peer review for my horrible coworker? , was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

How do I give an effective peer review of a coworker who I do not like personally and professionally?

We work in a busy medical clinic and our doctors see 30-60 patients a day. We fill a niche need (think specialized pharmacy, but not quite). There are three of us in this location: Lana (she/her), who is the trainer for the 13 other locations, Mike (he/him), and me (she/her.)

Mike got yelled at by a customer, and took it out on me because I hadn’t put notes in. When I asked him to stop shouting at me, he shouted that he was NOT shouting at me. He pouted and sulked for 14 minutes. He left work for the rest of the day without saying anything to Lana or me. Our direct supervisor is in the building maybe once every 10 days.

Mike is openly angry with me and about 20 % of patients. He has flounced off the retail floor saying, “I won’t talk to you if you’re being like that” or “No need to get an attitude with me!” to customers. He will burp audibly in public, and not say excuse me. He had explosive diarrhea in the employee bathroom and left poo all over the seat. Another employee called housekeeping to clean up his literal sh*t. He suffers from depression and gets irrationally angry for small reasons. Yes, I have read most of your posts on accommodating coworkers with mental illness. About once a week, he will refuse to work with a returning patient because of his bad experience with them. He believes in the silent treatment and noticeably pouts.

He has sleep apnea and doesn’t wear his C-Pap machine, so he is often tired when he comes in and routinely falls asleep in his chair at work. I’m talking closed eyes, light snoring. The doctor’s techs and patients apologize for waking him. At work! An actual text message he sent at 8:37 am for his 8:30 shift read: “Hey team. Just about made it to the highway before realizing my phone was sitting on my kitchen table. Too many irons in the fire to be without it today. Sowwy.” Then followed by: “Be there in 12ish.” He arrived at 9:08 am.

Our supervisor Chad did talk to Mike about his tardiness after our doctors complained. The next day, Mike called out sick. I have only worked here a year, and there has never been a week where he is on time. No, it’s not cultural. Mike’s a middle-aged white guy. Yes, Chad is ineffective, because there is no consequence for Mike’s continued tardiness.

It is tough to find a qualified person to fill our niche position, so firing Mike would put a severe work burden on Lana and me. Our location is the busiest location, doing over $1.5 million in sales for the year.

I have been asked to do peer reviews for Lana and Mike. We are asked to evaluate strengths, weaknesses, and how each employee meets the seven listed corporate values. Do I just damn with faint praise? “Mike meets expectations.” Or do I say the truth? “Mike’s mood and mental health issues burden the us and make patients feel unwelcome?

Don’t damn him with faint praise! That’ll just make it easier for Chad to go on not managing him.

Frankly, Chad’s management negligence sounds severe enough that he may not take any action no matter what you say — but this is as clear-cut an opportunity to give input on Mike as you’re likely to get, and you should take advantage of it. If you don’t, you’re basically resigning yourself to living with Mike as he is — and while that might ultimately be where things end up, there’s no point in starting there without at least trying to highlight what’s going on. Plus, managers like Chad often take the path of least resistance; make his current course of non-action more painful by laying out all the problems Mike is causing and he might be nudged into doing something.

That said, you should keep your feedback factual and leave Mike’s mental health out of it. If Mike wants to raise his mental health with Chad and ask for reasonable accommodations, he can do that (although yelling at people and sleeping around customers are unlikely to be considered reasonable accommodations). But his mental health is his to raise; you should keep your feedback focused on what you’re seeing at work, without speculating on the causes.

It’s absolutely fair game — and, I’d argue, necessary — to point out that Mike yells at customers, yells at you, sulks when asked to stop shouting, is angry with 20% of customers, leaves work in the middle of the day without saying anything, refuses to work with returning patients who he doesn’t like, gives people the silent treatment, sleeps at work and in front of customers, is routinely late, and is generally obstreperous and difficult to work with. In fact, to really illustrate what’s going on, I’d group your feedback into three categories — behavior with customers, behavior with coworkers, and reliability — and then list the relevant concerns under each area.

I wouldn’t bother with the burping because it’s not on the same scale as the rest of the issues. The same goes for the toilet incident, which although gross and unacceptable hasn’t been repeated. Including those introduces the risk that you’ll sound like you’re listing anything and everything you don’t like about Mike; you’ll be more credible if you stick to the obvious and severe work issues above. They’re plenty on their own.

I’d begin your written feedback with something like, “Mike’s behavior at work is causing significant difficulties for his colleagues and for our customers, and has made our working environment unpleasant and hard to tolerate. We are at the point where we cannot manage around these problems on our end, and we need a serious and sustained management intervention to resolve the situation.” Then go on to list your three categories and the specifics under each of them, and then end by again stressing the need for solutions.

Also, while I know you said that firing Mike would put a severe work burden on you and Lana, it’s worth considering how that compares to the severe work burden Mike is putting on you both now. There’s a good chance that not being yelled at, not having someone yell at and alienate customers, and not counting on someone who’s not going to show up would go a long way toward making up for whatever gap Mike’s absence would leave. He’s not there or reliable now much of the time anyway! If that were made that permanent and you could subtract all the yelling and attitude issues you’ve got to deal with now, you might come out ahead.

And keep in mind that there’s never any guarantee that any coworker will stay. For all we know, Lana could leave tomorrow if the Mike problems aren’t dealt with — and then you’d be down Lana and still have to deal with Mike. Of the two, it’s better to lose Mike.

Last, if the market where you are is so tight that you’d struggle to replace someone who left, that’s a great sign that you yourself might have an easy time walking away from this situation and into a better job, one with a manager who actually manages. Give that some thought.

“Call me Greg.”
— Moby-Dick

“Yep, that’s me… you’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation…”
— The Metamorphosis

“Life is a highway, I wanna ride it all night long.”
— On the Road

“We slept in what had once been a Planet Fitness.”
— The Handmaid’s Tale

“They used to call him the Good Gatsby, but then…”
— The Great Gatsby

“Remember video games and movies from the ’80s and ’90s? They were pretty cool, right?”
— Ready Player One

“Kids suck.”
— Lord of the Flies

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is just one empty ice cube tray away from a full-on argument.”
— Anna Karenina

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of an anaconda must be in want of buns, hun.”
— Pride and Prejudice

“MY WIFE!”
— Revolutionary Road

“I know I’m 107 and she’s 17, but she’s a very mature 17.”
— Twilight

“I am a sick man… and if you don’t believe me, watch me land this sick as hell kickflip.”
— Notes from Underground

“‘Harry Potter was a Wiznard— Shoot, I meant wizard.’”
— Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that weird Folgers commercial where it implied the brother and sister were hooking up.”
— One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Okay… but what is that in Celsius?”
— Fahrenheit 451

“Our story begins with a young boy and a lake.”
— The Old Man and the Sea

“There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand, but it may very well be a monster mash, or even a graveyard smash.”
— Frankenstein

“Why don’t you tell me why you think the caged bird sings first, and then I’ll tell you if you’re right?”
— I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“Everyone knows it takes more than five butchers to run a slaughterhouse, right?”
— Slaughterhouse-Five

“Look, this story is set in 1984, and yes, that means that Winston Smith has a Flock of Seagulls haircut, but it’s really not important to the plot, so I won’t be mentioning it again, okay?”
— 1984

“If you’re seeing this, congrats; you’ve now read more of Infinite Jest than the majority of people that buy the book!”
— Infinite Jest

“Handwashing and Detergent Treatment Greatly Reduce SARS-CoV-2 Viral Load on Halloween Candy Handled by COVID-19 Patients” [by Rodolfo A. Salido, Sydney C. Morgan, Maria I. Rojas, Celestine G. Magallanes, Clarisse Marotz, Peter DeHoff, Pedro Belda-Ferre, et al., Msystems, vol. 5, no. 6, 2020, e01074-20] is a featured study in “Pandemic Dining: Gelato, Candy, Lettuce, Frozen Meat“, which is a featured article in the special Viruses and Pandemics issue of the magazine—Annals of Improbable Research.

We’re looking into Texas’ border security initiatives, including what has worked, what hasn’t and how they affect residents. If you have experience on the border, we’d like to hear from you.

Good morning. Houston faces the threat of severe weather later today, and especially tonight, as a slow-moving cold front advances toward the region. This system will be bringing storms across central and east Texas during the next 24 to 30 hours before it finally moves east. During that period we face both the threat of severe thunderstorms, including hail and tornadoes, as well as heavy rainfall. To account for this heavy rainfall, we have instituted a Stage 1 flood alert for the Houston region for areas north of Interstate 10.

Monday

We’re not expecting too much action during the daytime. There will be some scattered showers, but nothing too extreme, as temperatures reach the low 70s beneath cloudy skies. Winds, however, will be noticeable out of the south, with gusts of 30 to 35 mph or even higher at times. For areas west and north of downtown Houston, conditions will start to become more favorable for strong thunderstorms around sunset. At that point storms are likely to sag southeastward, toward central Houston and the coast overnight.

Monday night and Tuesday morning

There will be an abundance of moisture and energy in the atmosphere tonight, which translates into the potential for vigorous thunderstorms. This system will be capable of producing large hail, briefly strong wind gusts, and tornadoes. While this system will be dynamic, and the details are to be determined, generally I think we can expect an initial round of strong thunderstorms during the overnight hours, to be followed by a band of heavier rainfall (with less potential for severe effects like hail and tornadoes) sometime around sunrise on Tuesday morning.

Overall rain totals will likely be 2 to 4 inches for areas north of Interstate 10, and 1 to 4 inches for locations south of the freeway. Some inland locations will see more than 4 inches, and therefore we have placed areas north of Interstate 10 under a Stage 1 flood alert. Street flooding is the most likely outcome.

If this forecast gives you anxiety, please consider that NOAA’s forecast for storm activity locally is mostly in the orange or “enhanced” category (see above). This is relatively high, but there are two higher gradients of storm potential. So while our area is likely to see some severe activity, your personal chances of being directly affected by a tornado are really very low. With that said, due to the potential for inclement weather, this is time to pay attention. It is important that you have one or more ways to get weather warnings tomorrow night (such as you phone, a weather radio, etc.) Matt and I will provide additional updates today, tonight, and Tuesday morning.

Tuesday

As the front moves through on Tuesday morning it should begin to sweep away the rainfall, with rains likely ending mid-morning for most locations. Skies should clear out fairly quickly on Tuesday as drier air pushes in, with sunny skies in the afternoon and highs in the 70s. Lows on Tuesday night should drop into the upper 40s for Houston, with cooler conditions inland.

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday

The rest of the week should yield mostly sunny, pleasant weather with highs in the 60s and 70s, lows in the 40s and 50s. Look for a reinforcing shot of drier air sometime around Thursday.

Saturday and Sunday

At this vantage point, the weekend looks nice as well. Look for highs in the 70s or possibly low 80s, lows in the 50s, and partly to mostly sunny skies. Dewpoints will recover some, but the air should still feel pleasant dry outside.

500 Delicious Salad Recipes
Culinary Arts Institute
1954

Submitter: To be honest – I expected more gross Jello salads than were found in this book. But the Frozen Seafood salad made up for it. The only request I got for this book was not to dump it in the lunchroom recycling bin and to use the one out in the hall.

Holly: How many books are there in this series?? Please note the “perky shapes” on the fourth image below (top, left-corner of that page), the molded jellied salads.

Looks more like: 

The post 500 Salads appeared first on Awful Library Books.

This post, my boss is angry that I couldn’t work while I was sick with Covid , was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I am hoping you can help me get some perspective on a recent situation between me and management at my company. I have shared this story with a few different people and everyone has a different opinion.

Here is the background: Three years ago, I was hired at my current company to do office admin/billing stuff. At that time, there were three employees (we are a very small local branch of a large international company). When I came on, they quickly discovered that I was able to handle a higher workload than my predecessor and had me train so that I can do all functions of every job in our office. This was not part of the job I was hired for, but I actually enjoy it as much as, if not more than, the work I was hired to do. So I quickly moved from just handling billing/admin work to all operations, auditing, quoting, and miscellaneous tasks. Long story short, I can (and have) run the office completely on my own. Nobody else in the office, including my manager, can say that.

I loved my job. A year later, Covid hit and upended everything. We downsized from three employees to two, even with a much higher workload than we had previously. For the entire first year of Covid, my boss worked from home 2-3 days per week while his elementary-aged children were stuck doing school from home. To say it was frustrating is an understatement. I was alone most of the time at the office, holding down the fort while everyone else was at home… we are an essential industry, so I had to be there in person. I knew my boss was in a tight spot and even though it was insanely frustrating and he was very difficult to get ahold of, I dealt with it. Then 2021 happened, and that caused even more issues. Our parent office (3-1/2 hours away in another state) lost most of their employees in an important department, so management asked me to travel to that office and help with the workload. Every other week for seven months. In addition to my existing workload. Then I was asked to not only take on their workload, but to train the new employees. So I did. At that time, I was not given a raise or anything in the way of additional compensation for all of the extra work I was doing — just vague promises of a raise to come later on.

They finally got enough staff last July, so I was able to stop assisting with day-to-day operations and focus on my own work, which was months behind. They did eventually give me a promotion, but I was not promoted to the level I was told I would be, so that was additionally frustrating. They framed it as “management can’t promote you too high, too quickly, or there will be nowhere for you to go in a few years.” That doesn’t seem entirely fair to me, but fine. Then they called me a few weeks ago and asked me to travel to them again to train more new hires. I went without question or hesitation. I contracted Covid on that trip and two days after returning home, I was sick. I am vaccinated and still wear a mask around other people just to be safe. I found out I was positive on a Saturday, and immediately texted my boss to let him know. I thought that would be pretty cut and dry.

I got no response from him at all. I texted my other boss in the head office the next day to let them know as well, because I was afraid they might have been exposed, and because I had told them I would assist with one of their employee’s vacations that week. All I got in response from that manager was “wow.”

The next morning, Monday, my boss called me like he usually does, seemingly thinking I was going to be working as usual. I told him no, I had Covid, I couldn’t work. HR called me and I sent them my positive test and again, thought that was the end of it.

Two days later, I got an angry text from my boss, asking if my computer was broken and why I wasn’t working. I was shocked and just told him no, I have Covid. I’m at home, sick. He responded that I was “screwing him over” and he couldn’t believe me. I assumed he was having a rough day and, while I thought it was completely inappropriate, I just chalked it up to him venting. Well, he did the same exact thing the next day — he texted and went off on me for not working, and when I asked why he was acting like this and again stated that I was sick, he called me to personally tell me I was “f^&%ing him over.”

I hung up in tears and called HR. I told them an abbreviated version of what had happened, and she told me that management was “disappointed in me” and that I had “left them hanging” by not working. I was so shocked and hurt by this all that I hardly slept that night, and the next day, I logged on and worked from home. My bosses have never acknowledged any of this or apologized, and I know my boss thinks he did nothing wrong.

I am ready to find a new job over this. I call off once or twice per year. I take so few days off that I have almost a month of PTO banked right now, and we are only three months into 2022. I always make sure that if I take time off, it is scheduled around the needs of the business. Before this, I was very highly regarded. Now, I feel like my worth is solely tied to how much work I can do for them. Nobody ever even asked how I was doing. I feel completely undervalued and taken advantage of. I haven’t even tried to talk about it with my boss because he thinks everything in life goes back to sports, and you just need to “rub some dirt on it” and get back in the game.

When I have shared this story with people, I have gotten reactions ranging from “BURN ALL THE BRIDGES” to “eh, that’s just business. you should try to understand their perspective.” So I hope you and your readers can weigh in on this and tell me if you think I am being unreasonable, or if they did in fact behave as badly as I feel they did. How do I navigate this moving forward?

Run run run.

They have taken advantage of you every step of the way: piling on more and more work, well outside the scope of your job description, and declining to compensate you for it … having you travel 3-1/2 hours away every other week for seven months, again without compensation and when you could have declined,  … not promoting you to the level they promised and giving you a BS reason for it. And now when you get sick — while doing extra work for them, no less — they act as if you’re betraying them by being ill?

The audacity blows my mind.

To be clear, their response to you being sick would have been wildly out of line even if you hadn’t gone above and beyond in all those ways. Their response would have been unacceptable even if you were a mediocre employee, or a bad one. People get sick. It’s a normal part of doing business, and only cartoon-villain-level bosses respond the way yours did.

But in particular, to treat you this way after you’ve bent over backwards time and time again to be helpful and accommodating? It’s honestly one of the most disgusting things I’ve heard of in nearly 15 years of writing this site, and considering that we’ve had letters about bosses demanding their employees’ livers, that’s saying a lot.

I do think there might be something in here about you having been so accommodating in the past, far past what you should have done, that perhaps your employer was trained to think they could expect you to always accommodate them, like some sort of work robot who never gets tired or sick. If we could go back in time, I’d tell you to push back on some of their expectations much sooner. But their reaction now is so beyond the pale (and being defended by their HR person? WTF?) that this isn’t anything you created; it’s 100% on your boss for being a terrible person and spoiled manchild.

I don’t know who in your life is telling you that this is “just business” and you “should try to understand their perspective,” but those are probably not people you should take advice from on anything work-related ever again. Something is very strangely calibrated within them!

Please start an active job search immediately. Now’s a great time to do it. These people don’t deserve your labor. Get out get out get out.

This post, the quiet floor, the ghost cat, and other stories from college RAs , was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

Last week I asked for stories from people who were RAs (resident assistants) in college. Here are some of my favorite stories you shared.

1. The dog

Rather than write up a student for having a dog illegally, I just made an agreement that I could let myself in when she wasn’t there so I could play with it.

2. The skunk

I was an RA to cover housing in a popular private college in a very rural area my junior and senior years. I dealt with a lot of entitled rich kids in the freshman dorms. We had a lot of students from NYC and Boston, almost all of whom had nightmare parents and most of the students freaked out when they saw deer or other wildlife.

One of the more entitled freshman was on his last warning for underage drinking and came to the dorms wasted. This kid thought the dorm was the Ritz Carlton and I was the concierge. I got so many calls from his mom that his (single) room wasn’t being cleaned and his laundry wasn’t being done. That kid was the bane of my existence.

He came back wasted and there was a skunk by the dumpsters and you guessed it. He started waving his coat at the skunk. Me and the RD were outside trying to get him in and quiet because he was also injured and we had called EMS (just some cuts it turned out, but also very drunk and needed an IV). It turns out he was interrupting a skunk family get together and he got sprayed by at least three adult skunks. Because he was waving his jacket he whiffed all the spray at himself. Like he scooped it up out of the air and waved the cloud of it at himself, getting triple dosed. The EMTs couldn’t get him in the ambulance without gagging and laughing. He got back to the dorms later in the morning, a little sheepish saying the nurses made him shower with dish soap and peroxide and gave him scrubs to wear back.

His mother tried to get me fired but the head of housing laughed at her and told her all of his exploits, including his dangerously low GPA. He went home for winter break, came back an entirely different kid, stayed sober the rest of the year he was in my building and even apologized.

3. Say Anything

I was 19 and really didn’t have any life experience to be an RA. A girl on my floor found out her dad was embezzling and it was about to break on the (local) newspapers. He was paying for her college. This was the 90’s. I gave her my VHS copy of Say Anything because I thought it would help. I didn’t refer her to mental health support or anything. This incident is a favorite one my brain pulls up at 3am to make me cringe over at least once a year.

4. The romance

My only story is that one year my RA and a guy on the floor really liked each other and both kept confiding in me. I tried all the subtle ways of getting them to connect but she was too wary of violating ethics and he was a year younger and that seemed like a big deal back then.

So the last week of school that year when he came to me with his sad tale yet again, I had had enough. I took him by the hand, walked him to her room, announced that they both liked each other and they had to sort themselves out.

I learned later that they got married.

5. The cleaning

I had one mother pin me during orientation to ask how often her son’s bathroom would be cleaned (4 people shared 1 bathroom in a suite). I said, “they’re responsible for their own bathrooms.” That was CLEARLY unacceptable. She insisted I had to come in and clean up after her son (not enough money in the world). I said nope, it was on them. “But my son doesn’t know how to clean a bathroom!” I replied, “Well, he’s here to learn. There’s a Walgreens down the street where you can buy him cleaning supplies and show him how before you head home.”

6. The DJ

The RA in my building was terrible. He was the one we complained about. We lived in a portable building, so the walls were super thin and the whole building shook when someone closed a door even a tiny bit harder than they should. Unfortunately, the RA wanted to be a DJ, so he invested a ton of money in equipment, including the biggest speakers I have ever seen. From about 9:00pm to 2-3 am, the RA DJ would practice his skills, sans headphones, in his room. It was so loud that I could play music in my room on full volume and I could barely hear it. Noise canceling headphones made no difference whatsoever. The building vibrated like it was an earthquake. My blinds fell off the window because the vibration somehow made the fittings detach from the wall. I tried talking to him, but he just kept telling me that I was trying to kill his dreams. I tried talking to our housemates, but most of them were buddies of his and I was brushed off for being a drama queen. I reported him to the administrator of our housing, but they were not interested.

This went on all week, and was even worse on the weekend. By Monday I was beyond angry and had moved into titanic rage territory. I mean, this guy was a terrible RA anyway, and was a huge creeper. Plus, this new torment was right before midterms, and I had about 10 books to read for class and 3 papers to write while studying for tests. Something had to be done.

I banged on RA DJ’s door (yet again) to tell him to shut it down, but he couldn’t hear me. I had to break into his room by unscrewing the peephole in the door and using a wire coat hanger to hook the door handle. He didn’t even notice until I unplugged the power strip that his stuff was hooked up to and ran out of the room. The campus was surrounded by forest, so I hid the power strip out in the woods and went back later to dispose of the evidence. RA DJ complained to me about it later, and I was surprised that he was fairly calm and not yelling at me, until I realized that his back had been to the door and he didn’t realize that I was the one who stole the power strip because I left the room before he turned around. To this day he has no idea that I am the power strip bandit. RA DJ was actually pretty freaked out, but I didn’t say a word.

Of course the RA DJ bought another power strip, and was at it again the next night until I called the security/maintenance guy I was friendly with and asked him to talk to RA DJ. He was a really big, intimidating guy, but was normally just a teddybear, so I thought he would just give RA DJ a Stern Talking To. Instead, he banged on RA DJ’s door, yelling about noise level regulations, and confiscated the speakers. He was totally not allowed to do that, but he disliked RA DJ anyway for unrelated reasons so when I asked for help he went a little overboard. The RA DJ got the speakers back a couple of days later, but I guess he gave up on his dj dream job because there were no more music induced earthquakes in our building. The university didn’t reprimand or discipline anyone for any of this. I swear, that campus was like the wild west.

7. The overly enthused coordinator

I was an RA, and oooh boy could I go on and on about how my campus coordinator (my boss’s boss) was insane. For some background, the hierarchy went RAs – one per floor, lived in a dorm room; Hall Manager – one per dorm building, was usually a grad student, lived in one of the dorms but in a special separate apartment; Campus Coordinator – one per cluster of dorms, was an adult in a professional role, usually lived nearby, not typically involved in day to day dorm happenings, but someone who works in the background.

So for starters my Campus Coordinator (CC) skirted the standard option and actually lived inside our dorm. It was technically an apartment, but this was still a woman in her 40s with a husband and two young children living inside a dormitory surrounded by college students. She would even block common areas for her kids’ events – I remember once we were told we couldn’t use the main lobby or backyard area because she was throwing a birthday party for her kid. Again, this is in a college dorm. I guess she lived there and was allowed to do that, but it just seems like a very weird place to bring up young kids.

Another thing about her was the she was INTENSE. I guess that’s to be expected from someone who loved residence life so much she moved her family into a dorm, but it was rough trying to live up to her expectations. In the past, my experience with RAs was that they were around if we needed anything, we said hi in the hallway, and that was about it. CC insisted that we become experts on all the students in the dorm and would routinely quiz us on them. She expected that we knew all of their names, their majors, who their friends were, anything they were involved with on campus, their interests, etc. It was a LOT. And while I was friendly with my residents, I wasn’t their best friend, and it felt really weird (and stressful!) trying to tease information out of them or resort to facebook stalking so that CC wouldn’t flip out on me for not having a new thing to share about each of my ~30 residents.

On top of everything, I was incredibly busy. It was my junior year and my coursework had intensified, I was on two sports teams, I was involved in several clubs, and I also occasionally liked to eat, sleep, and spend time with friends. When I was hired, CC specifically said she liked how I was involved in so many things, and she admired my commitment and dedication. I even gave her my schedule for the year (including exact times and dates of practices and tournaments, when clubs met, etc), so she knew exactly when and for how long I would absolutely have be out of the dorm for my other commitments. It was all cleared with her ahead of time. And despite all of this, she started hinting that she didn’t like me leaving the dorm, that I should always be around in case my residents needed me, I shouldn’t ever close my door unless I was sleeping, did I have to go to the library to study couldn’t I just stay in my room and study with the door open so my residents could access me, and then outright told me I should quit my teams midseason so I could spend more time at the dorm. It was nuts, and I’m glad that I refused her insane requests. But she certainly let me know at every possible turn that she was not happy with my “lack of commitment to the dorm”. Overall she made me miserable and contributed to a lot of stress. I thought I was a failure, but I really just had an insane CC – no other CC on campus was this involved in the day to day life of their residents. I’m even still friends with a bunch of my former residents, so I wasn’t even that bad of an RA! She just made me think I was because her standards lived on the moon.

8. The ghost cat

The Ghost Cat: a bunch of students were adamant a student in a single room had an illicit cat that they could smell/hear/etc. But no one had seen it. I tried to have a somewhat vague conversation with the student to see if they would admit to it, then finally just asked outright and they said it was absurd. But then! They moved out over winter break and maintenance found a cat litter box in the room.

9. The quiet floor

Every building I was in had a “quiet floor” and every year, my colleague who was the quiet floor RA was HAGGARD by the end of it. We only ever saw evictions from the quiet floors, and not for noise – one was drug dealing, one was the hallway slip and slide, one was HUMAN TRAFFICKING. I am convinced it is 80% students whose parents complete the forms, 15% students who think they want a quiet floor and then get drunk with independence, and 5% the poor, tragic few who actually want some quiet.

10. The gorilla

I was a residence hall director. One night the fire alarm went off, as one floor filled with smoke. The fire fighters found that a halogen torchiere lamp had melted the head of a gigantic stuffed animal, which they were calling a teddy bear. The owner of said animal kept trying to run back into the smoke-filled building to correct the fire fighters. It was NOT a teddy bear, it was a GORILLA.

11. The pudding wrestling

I was an RA for two years, and this happened during my tenure (thankfully this incident was not in my dorm — but it did involve friends of mine).

Most of my college’s dorms were apartment style, with 4-6 students living there. So this one apartment of 4 guys decides they want to throw a pudding wrestling party. They set up a baby pool and line the entire apartment with garbage bags: floor, furniture, about 5-6 feet up the walls. They invite folks (there may have been fliers), encourage girls and guys alike to wear bathing suits, fill the pool with industrial quantities of pudding, and throw the party.

Of course, it’s loud, and of course they get caught by the RAs on rounds. They’re written up and go before the disciplinary board. The day of the disciplinary board they arrive in full suits, with photos of the immaculately cleaned and undamaged apartment, and with a document signed by every student on their floor and the floors above and below asserting that they were not disturbed by the noise.

Reader, they emerged without any repercussions.

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Today's News:

“Association Between Consumption of Vegetables and COVID-19 Mortality at a Country Level in Europe” [by Susana C. Fonseca, Ioar Rivas, Dora Romaguera (pictured here), Marcos Quijal-Zamorano, Wienczyslawa Czarlewski, Alain Vidal, Joao A. Fonseca, Joan Ballester, Josep M. Anto, Xavier Basagana, Luis M. Cunha, and Jean Bousquet, MedRxiv, 2020] is a featured study in “Pandemic Dining: Gelato, Candy, Lettuce, Frozen Meat“, which is a featured article in the special Viruses and Pandemics issue of the magazine—Annals of Improbable Research.

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“[Judge Jackson] did improv at Harvard.”
— New York Magazine

Inside the Senate Judiciary Committee. Chairman Dick Durbin bangs his gavel.

DICK DURBIN (D-IL): We now begin the confirmation hearing of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Judge Jackson, your opening statement.

KETANJI BROWN JACKSON: I am Ketanji Brown Jackson. I have two Harvard degrees, nine years’ experience on the federal bench, and I am the first Black woman nominated to the Supreme Court. Also, I did improv in college.

DICK DURBIN (D-IL): Thank you. Senator Graham, you are recognized.

LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Judge Jackson, you are seeking a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States, where your opinions will affect the life of every American—and the fabric of America itself. So on behalf of the American people, I ask: What is your opinion on short-form versus long-form improv?"

KETANJI BROWN JACKSON: I adore both. Doesn’t everyone?

The Senate Judiciary Committee murmurs approval.

LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Indeed we do, Judge Jackson. Indeed we do. And in your opinion, which is the best Harold opening: pattern game or organic?

KETANJI BROWN JACKSON: Organic.

Disapproving mutters from Republicans.

LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Now, as we are all aware, organic openings are mostly just saying “woo-OO-osh” while running around stage waving your arms. As a future Supreme Court Justice, did you say “woo-OO-osh” while running around stage waving your arms?

KETANJI BROWN JACKSON: I did.

The Republicans explode.

LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Heresy!

TED CRUZ (R-TX): You philistine!

CHUCK GRASSLEY (R-IA): Organic openings are weird!

DICK DURBIN (D-IL): Order! Senators, please! This is the world’s greatest deliberative body. Naturally, we are all desperate to hear the Supreme Court nominee’s opinions on improv comedy. But we must maintain decorum. Senator Grassley, you have the floor.

CHUCK GRASSLEY (R-IA): Thank you. Judge Jackson, I’d like to address the matter of warm-ups. Have you ever played “Big Booty”?

KETANJI BROWN JACKSON: Senator, I do not recall “Big Booty.”

CHUCK GRASSLEY (R-IA): Then let me jog your memory. “Big Booty” is the game where you sit in a circle and chant, “Big booty, big booty, big booty.”

KETANJI BROWN JACKSON: Then I am not familiar with “Big Booty.”

The Republicans gasp.

CHUCK GRASSLEY (R-IA): Your Honor, am I to understand you have never sat in a circle chanting, “Big booty, big booty, big booty”?

KETANJI BROWN JACKSON: I have never sat in a circle chanting, “Big booty, big booty, big booty.”

The Republicans erupt in outrage.

LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): This hearing is a sham!

DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D-CA): Objection! Yet again, my Republican colleagues are obstructing proceedings with inane questions about “Big Booty”—when we all know the best warm-up is “Zip Zap Zop”!

Cheers from Democrats.

CHUCK GRASSLEY (R-IA): The Senator from California has woefully underestimated the greatness of “Big Booty”!

DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D-CA): The senior Senator from Iowa needs to respect “Zip Zap Zop”!

CHUCK GRASSLEY (R-IA): “Big Booty” forever!

DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D-CA): “Big Booty” is trash!

CHUCK GRASSLEY (R-IA): YOU LIE!

The chamber descends into chaos. Dianne Feinstein tries to slap Chuck Grassley, but Amy Klobuchar restrains her.

DICK DURBIN (D-IL): Order! ORDER!

CHUCK GRASSLEY (R-IA): This nominee is dangerously unqualified. If she hopes ever to ascend to the Supreme Court, she has but one option: to perform a hilarious scene.

DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D-CA): Preposterous! The Judge has a proven record of hilarious scenes!

LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): We demand more hilarious scenes!

KETANJI BROWN JACKSON: I could offer my opinion on abortion—

ALL REPUBLICANS: (chanting) Scene work! Scene work! Scene work!

DICK DURBIN (D-IL): ORDER! ORDER! Judge Jackson, how do you answer?

Judge Jackson rises. A hush falls over the committee.

KETANJI BROWN JACKSON: Fine. I’ll do a scene.

DICK DURBIN (D-IL): Excellent. The floor is open for scene work. Can I get a volunteer?

Everyone’s hands shoot up.

CORY BOOKER (D-NJ): Oh, oh, oh! Pick me! Pick me!

DICK DURBIN (D-IL): Senator Leahy.

CORY BOOKER (D-NJ): Dammit.

Patrick Leahy rises. His whole life has led to this moment.

PATRICK LEAHY (D-VT): By day, I am Senate president pro tempore. By night I “yes, and.”

CHUCK GRASSLEY (R-IA): A Democrat?? This scene is rigged!

DICK DURBIN (D-IL): All right! We will add a Republican. Senator Blackburn.

Marsha Blackburn rises.

MARSHA BLACKBURN (R-TN): I will seize this opportunity to focus on “game.”

DICK DURBIN (D-IL): Great. Now, can I get a suggestion of a relationship?

LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Husband-wife!

CHRIS COONS (D-DE): Mother-daughter!

CORY BOOKER (D-NJ): Rosario Dawson-Senator!

DICK DURBIN (D-IL): I heard “mother-daughter.”

CORY BOOKER (D-NJ): Dammit.

Judge Jackson pulls out two chairs. She and Marsha Blackburn sit.

KETANJI BROWN JACKSON: Mother, I’m so glad you took me to this restaurant.

The Democrats chuckle. The Republicans sit stone-faced.

MARSHA BLACKBURN (R-TN): Yes, and… it is your sixth birthday.

KETANJI BROWN JACKSON: Yes, and… I’m wondering where the waiter is.

Patrick Leahy enters.

PATRICK LEAHY (D-VT): Hello. It is me, the waiter. Tonight we have spaghetti and corn.

MARSHA BLACKBURN (R-TN): Yum! Waiter, I’ll have the corn.

KETANJI BROWN JACKSON: And waiter… I’ll have what she’s having.

The whole committee bursts into wild laughter, then thunderous applause.

DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D-CA): Stunning character work, Madam Justice. Just stunning.

LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): (wiping a tear) Oh my stars, that tickled me!

CHUCK GRASSLEY (R-IA): Judge Jackson, we do not agree on the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, or democracy. But by God, we agree on improv.

LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): You are the most qualified nominee this committee has ever seen.

CHUCK GRASSLEY (R-IA): We confirm you unanimously.

Ted Cruz nods. We see his haircut is normal and in no way resembles a mullet.

TED CRUZ (R-TX): I am inspired. Effective immediately, I resign from the Senate to pursue my true passion: improv comedy.

The rest of the Senate appears.

JOE MANCHIN (D-WV): Me too.

MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): Me three.

The chamber erupts in cheers. Dick Durbin throws his gavel in the air. Chuck Grassley and Dianne Feinstein kiss passionately.

The Washington Post looks at what happened after Starlink activated its satellite-based internet service to help Ukraine: Ukraine has already received thousands of antennas from Musk's companies and European allies, which has proved "very effective," Ukraine's minister of digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov said in an interview with The Washington Post Friday. "The quality of the link is excellent," Fedorov said through a translator, using a Starlink connection from an undisclosed location. "We are using thousands, in the area of thousands, of terminals with new shipments arriving every other day...." A person familiar with Starlink's effort in Ukraine, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said there are more than 5,000 terminals in the country.... Internet flows deteriorated on the first day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 and have not fully recovered, according to data-monitoring services. But since that initial dip, connectivity has remained fairly stable, with mainly temporary, isolated outages even during heavy Russian shelling. "Every day there are outages, but generally service comes back," said Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis for Kentik, which monitors global data flows. Even before Fedorov tweeted at Musk for help, SpaceX was working on a way to get Starlink to Ukraine. President and COO Gwynne Shotwell said in a talk at California Institute of Technology this month that the company had been working for several weeks to get regulatory approval to allow the satellites to communicate in Ukraine. In addition, the Washington Post reports, this week on Twitter Elon Musk also "challenged Putin to a fight and followed up by pledging he would use just one hand if Putin was scared. And he told Putin he could bring a bear." Reached for comment by the Post's reporters, Elon Musk responded by telling The Post to give his regards "to your puppet master Besos," following it with two emojis. But the Post's article also argues Starlink's technology "could have widespread implications for the future of war. Internet has become an essential tool for communication, staying informed and even powering weapons." And The Telegraph reports that Starlink "is helping Ukrainian forces win the drone war as they use the technology in their effort to track and kill invading Russians." In the vanguard of Ukraine's astonishingly effective military effort against Vladimir Putin's forces is a unit called Aerorozvidka (Aerial Reconnaissance) which is using surveillance and attack drones to target Russian tanks and positions. Amid internet and power outages, which are expected to get worse, Ukraine is turning to the newly available Starlink system for some of its communications. Drone teams in the field, sometimes in badly connected rural areas, are able to use Starlink to connect them to targeters and intelligence on their battlefield database. They can direct the drones to drop anti-tank munitions, sometimes flying up silently to Russian forces at night as they sleep in their vehicles... Should Ukraine's internet largely collapse, the "drone warriors" of Aerorozvidka would still be able to communicate with their bases by sending signals from mobile Starlink terminals, and using ground stations in neighbouring countries including Poland.... As Ukraine's internet is inevitably degraded, Starlink will be an alternative. General James Dickinson, commander of US Space Command, told the Senate armed services committee: "What we're seeing with Elon Musk and the Starlink capabilities is really showing us what a megaconstellation, or a proliferated architecture, can provide in terms of redundancy and capability." It's not all Starlink. The Telegraph points out that "The Ukrainian system benefitted from equipment given by Western countries, including radio communications which superceded Soviet-era technology, and the US has also poured in millions of dollars to protect against Russian hacking, jamming of signals and attempts to 'spoof' GPS technology." And meanwhile, weakness in Russia's own communications infrastructure may have played a role in the killing of five senior Russian generals in the last three weeks, according to a recent CNN interview with retired U.S. army general and former CIA director David Petraeus: "The bottom line is that [Russia's] command-and-control has broken down. Their communications have been jammed by the Ukranians. Their secure comms didn't work. They had to go single-channel. That's jammable, and that's exactly what the Ukranians have been doing to that. They used cellphones. The Ukranians blocked the prefix for Russia, so that didn't work. Then they took down 3G. [The Russians] are literally stealing cellphones from Ukranian civilians to communicate among each other. So what happens? The column gets stopped. An impatient general is sitting back there in his armored or whatever vehicle. He goes forward to find out what's going on... And the Ukranians have very, very good snipers, and they've just been picking them off left and right. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for submitting the story.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Get over it Akane, it's been minutes!

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#ep49 #18NakedStairs #Danganronpa2

For decades, audiences have loved the chair-throwing, bleeped out antics of Maury Povich's guests. But at the end of this season, viewers will have to be satisfied with reruns.

(Image credit: Alex Brandon/AP)

Justice Thomas' condition is improving and he will likely be released within two days, the court said. He'll stay involved in the consideration of any cases the court hears this week.

(Image credit: Erin Schaff/The New York Times via AP)