Cowboy Who?

Good morning. We are into the final week of August, and this brings both good and bad news. The good news is that we’re much closer to the end of summer than the beginning. Based upon our climate normals, the warmest stretch of summer in Houston lasts from July 31 through August 8, when the average temperature is 85.8 degrees. (That’s simply an average of the daily high and low temperature). We are, reasonably, about one month from when we can expect fall’s first significant cool front.

The bad news is that we still have about a full month of summer left, and it coincides with the absolute peak of hurricane season for Texas. Although we see no immediate threats to the greater Houston region (read more below), the next few weeks do look active for the Gulf of Mexico. So we’re asking you to hang on for one more month, after which we’ll escape the heat of summer and the main threat of tropical activity.

Monday

Monday will see a continuation of conditions the region experienced over the weekend, which is to say hot and sunny. High temperatures for inland areas could well flirt with 100 degrees, and even coastal areas should be solidly in the low- to mid-90s. Skies will be mostly sunny, with only light southerly winds. This will be a day for care during the hottest, afternoon hours. Overnight lows should be in the upper 70s.

Tuesday

Another hot and sunny day, with high temperatures in the upper 90s. Winds will again be calm.

Wednesday and Thursday

Our overall pattern should begin to change by the middle of the week, as high pressure lifts away from the area. This should bring a few clouds to our skies, and introduce rain chances of perhaps 30 to 40 percent each day during the afternoon hours. This may also help to moderate temperatures slightly, from the upper 90s to mid-90s.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday

The weekend forecast is far from settled, but for now it appears as though the combination of low pressure and increasing levels of tropical moisture should combine for healthy rain chances, especially by Sunday. For now I’d guess we’ll see highs in the low 90s, with partly sunny skies, and at least a 50 percent chance of rain showers each day. Under some scenarios, heavy rain is possible by Sunday, but that will depend to some extent on tropical development, discussed below.

Tropics

After Tropical Storm Henri moved into the northeastern United States this weekend, there are no active systems over water. However that could change later this week as a tropical wave moves into the Caribbean Sea. The National Hurricane Center gives this wave a 30 percent chance of developing into a tropical depression or storm within the next five days.

The global models are generally pretty bullish on this system eventually developing in the Southern Gulf of Mexico this weekend, and it’s something we’ll be watching closely as it will influence our rain chances this weekend. For now the bulk of these models suggest the storm will come ashore somewhere along the Mexican mainland, south of the Texas border. Although it is far too early to have much confidence in this, such a scenairo would also be unfortunate, give the recent landfall of Hurricane Grace near the resort town of Tecolutla.

After this system, there are hints of more potential activity in the Gulf of Mexico about two weeks from now, which would be consistent with early September. As we said above, the next month is the peak of hurricane season for Texas, so have a plan and be prepared.

This post, my employee lies to me about things he just said 30 seconds ago , was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

One of my employees, Paul, lies to me regularly about random things. When questioned, he immediately backtracks and acts like I misunderstood. For example, he will tell me that he completed X, Y, and Z reports, and I will say, “Oh, but I didn’t see your report on Z, will you please resend it?” and then he’ll say “I didn’t do the report on Z.” So I respond with, “But you just said you completed the Z report” and he will respond, “No, I didn’t say that.” Nowadays I usually end the interaction there, because I just don’t have the energy to go in circles arguing about what he did or did not say 30 seconds prior. I have done it on occasion and really pressed him on the things he has said, and it has gone absolutely nowhere. It really confuses me.

I should mention, maybe, that he is almost twice my age. I typically have no issue managing people older than I am, but the way he responds to me sometimes feels patronizing. For example, if I outline a project for him and explain what I would like him to do, he will say, “Oh, very good! Good for you for thinking of that.” So when I question him on things, a lot of the time he’ll answer with “Great question!” and then proceed to lie to me.

He just submitted a major report to me that is riddled with errors. I explained some of the mistakes, and he just gave me a blank look. I told him I would go through it thoroughly and we could discuss each item in detail next week, and he just smiled and said that was fine and he commended me for being thorough.

I have tried also to document some conversations via email, and he will always respond with his rebuttal, which includes things like “there are three sides to every story, and the truth is one.”

It feels like none of this is serious enough to start escalating to written warnings, etc. but I’m getting really frustrated because of the extra amount of time I spend every day coaxing the truth out of him. It is super weird. I don’t know how to handle it.

I wrote back and asked, “When you have pressed him on the lies in the past and it’s gone nowhere, what does that mean exactly? What happens when you’ve pressed him?”

What has happened in the past is he never answers the question, even when it is asked very directly (I think), and I know this is my failure, but I’ve just given up. Here’s an example conversation.

Me: “Hi Paul, did you complete Project X?”
Paul: “Yes.”
Me: “Will you send it to me via email please?”
Paul: “I already did.”
Me: “I don’t see it. Will you send it again?”
Paul: “Well, I’m not done with it yet.”
Me: “Didn’t you just say you completed it?”
Paul: “It is complete but there are a couple of other things I need to do.”
Me: “Okay, so it isn’t complete. Why did you say it was complete when it’s not?”
Paul: “I didn’t say it was, I just said there are three more things I need to do.”
Me: “But when I first asked you, you said it was complete and that you emailed it to me.”
Paul: “I didn’t email it to you because it’s not complete.”
Me: “But why did you say it was complete?”
Paul: “Because it is, I just need to do some additional things.”
Me: “If you still need to do some additional work, it isn’t complete. Why are you saying it is?”
Paul: “I always do my job on time. I am a dependable employee.”
Me: “I didn’t say you weren’t dependable. I am confused about why you said you completed something when you didn’t.”
Paul: “Well, it’s almost complete.”
Me: “Okay. Can you please send it to me before the end of the day?” <<<<< This is where I give up.
Paul: “You know I will, I have great integrity.”
Me: “Okay, thanks. We’ll regroup after you send it to me.”

Maybe this is not “really pressing” the issue but I feel frustrated asking the same thing over and over. I can sense that he is getting frustrated too and I realize he is just not going to give me straight answers (and eventually the conversation turns into how much integrity he says he has and how experienced he is and sometimes it devolves into how he thinks I’m such a great boss and so thorough and he really likes working with me, which I think is his way of attempting to change the subject via flattery). So I end the conversation because it’s not productive. But then the same situation happens again.

Recently he had an issue with a client and the long and short of it is he told this client that he was in a bad mood because the client was asking too much of him. We had this whole conversation with me explaining that this was an inappropriate and unacceptable thing to say to a client, and he still somehow never admitted to saying it and kept blaming the client. E.g.:

Me: “Paul, this was an unacceptable thing to say to a client. Please don’t say it again.”
Paul: “Well, I would never be inappropriate but he was just out of line.”
Me: “Why was he out of line?”
Paul: “He was asking me questions he knew the answer to. I already told him this information.”
Me: “It’s not wrong for a client to ask you questions. Why do you think that’s out of line?”
Paul: “It’s disrespectful. I have a lot of integrity. I am always professional. He was being very unprofessional asking me a question he knew the answer to.”
Me: “It is not unprofessional. Please do not speak to a client this way again.”
Paul: “I never would be unprofessional.”
Me: “Can we agree that you will not say things like this to clients in the future?”
Paul: “I don’t say things like this to clients.”
Me: “Ok. But you did this time, and we agree that it was unprofessional and that you will not do it again. Right?”
Paul: “I will work on my customer service training as you asked.”
Me: “Ok. Thank you.”

Whoa. This is serious enough to start escalating. In fact, it’s far past that point. This guy is flagrantly lying to you! Or if he doesn’t intend to, he’s such a bad communicator that you can’t take anything he says at face value. Either way, that’s a serious problem — so serious that I don’t see how you can keep him in the role if he doesn’t fix it immediately and permanently.

On top of that, he’s also submitting major reports riddled with errors, saying unacceptable things to clients, causing you to spend time every day pulling the truth out of him, and stonewalling you when you try to address any of this. (He’s also being a patronizing ass, but that’s not the biggest issue here.)

I am curious about why none of this feels big enough to you to act on! From the sounds of it, you should be thinking about firing him.

As for how to handle it in the moment, though, you’ve got to stop letting him draw you into whatever game he’s playing. You’re trying to reason him into acknowledging and respecting the truth, and then giving up in bafflement when he doesn’t. When you do that, he’s getting what he wants — he’s getting to rewrite reality. You can’t let that happen.

Ideally the conversations would go more like this:

You: “Hi Paul, did you complete Project X?”
Paul: “Yes.”
You: “Will you send it to me via email please?”
Paul: “I already did.”
You: “I don’t see it. Will you send it again?”
Paul: “Well, I’m not done with it yet.”
You: “Didn’t you just say you completed it?”
Paul: “It is complete but there are a couple of other things I need to do.”
You: “You just told me it was complete when it isn’t. I need to be able to rely on the info you give me to be accurate. Going forward, I need to know you won’t tell me something is complete if you have more to do on it, or say you sent it if you haven’t.”
Paul: “I always do my job on time. I am a dependable employee.”
You: “Right now you’re not being dependable because I can’t depend on what you tell me to be accurate. That’s very serious and I need it to change.”
Paul: “You know, I have great integrity.”
You: “What I need to hear is that you understand and this won’t happen again.”
Paul: (Who knows what he’ll say! Something about integrity, probably.)
You: “Let me know once you’ve emailed the report to me and we’ll take it from there.”

In other words, don’t let him control where the conversation goes. You need to control the agenda, and your agenda is to clearly state when something isn’t acceptable. Definitely don’t agree with him that he’s dependable when he’s not! In fact, it almost doesn’t matter what he says, given how bizarre his responses are; just stick to telling him what you need and how that’s different from what you’re getting.

However, you shouldn’t have more than a couple of conversations like that. If it keeps happening (and frankly, I’d argue you’re already there and you should skip straight to this step), you need to quickly move to a more serious response, whatever that looks like in your organization.  In a lot of organizations that would be a formal improvement plan where you lay out what needs to change and by when, with a clear statement that you will need to let him go at the end of that time if the improvements aren’t made. Include a clear requirement that his answers about projects must be accurate and reliable. If your organization allows you to keep the timeline for seeing improvement short, do — a month, two at most. You’re going to know pretty quickly if he can change this or not. (Prediction: not.)

But also … what is going on with him? Is he deliberating manipulating you to avoid accountability? Is it not deliberate and he’s just an incredibly weird communicator with no regard for the truth? Do his conversations with other people look like this? There’s something creepy about his entire approach — the flagrant lies while smiling at you, the patronizing compliments, the misplaced self-reverence and claims that he has the very traits he just displayed an absence of. I’m getting serious “watch your back in the parking lot after you lay down the law with him” vibes, and I’d want HR and your boss in the loop very early on in this process.

Invest now for a huge ROI! Plus they're a lovely shade of green.

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#ep5 #MarioRPG #crypto

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

One of my colleagues who pays attention to this sort of thing pointed out that Season 3 Episode 5 of the television documentary Humans demonstrates how you can take over an unattended laptop:

Apparently hackers have graduated from Notepad and are now using PowerShell.

My colleague was pleasantly surprised that this screen shot is reasonably accurate! The first line allows all scripts to run, and the second line runs a script that from the output appears to be updating firewall rules.

The “Exploit installed” is just showing off.

Previously: There’s this documentary which showed how to trace email via inspection of headers.

The post How to pwn an unattended laptop, according to Humans appeared first on The Old New Thing.

You should already know how to care for yourself by the time you start wielding magical powers.

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#ep4 #MarioRPG #SelfReliance

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for their daily newsletter, The Beacon.

Billions of cubic feet of natural gas are burned off in U.S. oil and gas fields every year, wasting the fossil fuel and emitting greenhouse gases without actually generating energy. In Texas alone, state regulators have permitted companies to burn more than a million cubic feet of gas every day since 2019. Combined, that would be enough natural gas to supply 15 million homes’ annual gas needs.

Fossil fuel companies choose to burn natural gas instead of capturing and selling it for a variety of safety and economic reasons. Most commonly, oil fields have a gas glut and insufficient pipeline capacity to move it to refineries and markets. The solution to the logjam is to burn excess natural gas—which is primarily composed of methane, a potent planet-warming pollutant—with the permission of state regulators. 

The Texas Railroad Commission, or RRC, is the state agency tasked with regulating the oil and gas industry and overseeing companies’ flaring practices. When fossil fuel companies want to flare, they’re required to request a permit from the agency. But a new analysis by Earthworks, an environmental nonprofit, has found compelling evidence that they often don’t bother to. In fact, more than two-thirds of the 227 flares observed during three months in 2020 were not permitted by the state, according to the group, potentially leaving the RRC in the dark.

“They don’t know about the majority of flaring that goes on in Texas,” said Alan Septoff, a spokesperson for the nonprofit. “All of the state data that they’re basing their policy decisions on is bunk.”

When natural gas is burned during flaring, methane is converted to carbon dioxide that’s released into the atmosphere. But flares often don’t fully combust or are left unlit, which results in methane being vented directly into the air—an even more potent contribution to climate change. The Earthworks report counts both lit and unlit flares and adds to a growing body of evidence that methane emissions from oil and gas fields are vastly undercounted. It’s also the first analysis to identify what could constitute widespread illegal flaring in Texas oil fields. 

Tim Doty, a former employee with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, or TCEQ, reviewed Earthworks’ analysis and told Grist that he “wasn’t particularly surprised” by the findings. As an investigator for the regulatory agency’s enforcement division until his retirement in 2018, he said it was common knowledge that there were a “lot of unregulated emissions” in oil fields. (While flaring permits are granted by the RRC, the TCEQ is responsible for overseeing air quality in the state and has jurisdiction over emissions from flares.) 

“The system is really built on an honor system,” he said. “You hope the actual field activities are reflective of the paperwork.”

Methane is a uniquely strong contributor to climate change. Last week’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report identified methane as the second largest contributor to global warming after carbon dioxide. The gas is more potent than carbon dioxide, and the oil and gas industry is a significant source of the substance. Since methane emissions from flares are accompanied by black carbon when flares improperly combust gas, as well as toxic volatile organic compounds such as benzene, which is carcinogenic, flares are a more immediate public health concern in addition to a long-term climate menace. 

Jack McDonald, a field analyst for Earthworks, primarily relied on two datasets to identify unpermitted flares in Texas. The first was provided by the Environmental Defense Fund, an environmental nonprofit that has been researching methane emissions from oil fields and finding that companies often underestimate how much gas they release into the atmosphere. This dataset documented flares observed by helicopter flyovers conducted by the Environmental Defense Fund in January, March, and June 2020. McDonald then obtained a second dataset of permitted flares from the RRC through a public records request. He compared the flares observed during the flyovers to the list of flares that were actually permitted by the state.

The findings were stark. In at least 69 percent of the cases, McDonald was unable to locate any permits for the observed flares. Almost 80 percent of flares that were surveyed twice by Environmental Defense Fund helicopters were found to be unpermitted on both occasions. In 36 cases where flares were surveyed three times, more than half were unpermitted on all three occasions. Among the worst offenders, according to the report, are Shell and ExxonMobil—companies that have made public commitments to reducing their methane emissions. None of the seven observed flares tied to Shell’s operations were permitted, according to McDonald. In Exxon’s case, just two of eight flares observed were permitted. 

The agency’s emissions and flaring data “is likely inaccurate because the operators are not approaching them with permitting information,” said McDonald.

Andrew Keese, a spokesperson for the RRC, said that the flares identified by Earthworks may be exempt from regulation. State rules allow for emergency flaring for up to 24 hours and during the first 10 days after a well has been drilled, with no requirement to obtain permits or notify the state.

“A short-term observation of a flare from a flyover and absence of an explicit exception does not necessarily mean the observed flaring is illegal,” he said.

McDonald, the field analyst for Earthworks, said none of the observed flares were tied to wells that had been recently completed and also questioned whether operators were abusing the exemption for emergencies, rather than simply engaging in prolonged unpermitted flaring.

Spokespeople for both ExxonMobil and Shell denied that they flare without permits. Julie King, an ExxonMobil spokesperson, said the report is “inaccurate and deliberately misleading,” while  Natalie Gunnell, a spokesperson for Shell, said that the company does not flare or vent natural gas without permits and that it is committed to reducing its methane intensity—a measure of emissions per unit of energy produced—to below 0.2 percent by 2025. Both King and Gunnell pointed out that not all flaring activities require permits. “Flyover operations are not able to differentiate between flaring or venting events that do or do not require [permits],” Gunnell said. 

The Earthworks report calls on the RRC to better enforce flaring rules by hiring additional inspectors, increasing the number of inspections, raising penalties for violations, and prohibiting flaring permits for repeat offenders. If the agency fails to uphold state rules, the Texas Legislature must step in, McDonald said. 

“If the Commission’s not going to fix it, then the Legislature could step in and fix it,” he said.

“I don’t think anyone believes the Railroad Commission is a good faith actor who is going to increase regulation on oil and gas companies without some outside fix.”

Update: This story originally contained a quotation from an Earthworks staffer who suggested that all flares without permits are illegal. The quotation has been removed for clarity.

The post Report: Oil Companies Are Burning Off Natural Gas—and Leaving Regulators in the Dark appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Content-creation platform OnlyFans’ decision to ban “sexually explicit” content from the site sparked backlash from creators and audiences this week with many pointing to the move as further endangering sex workers, including many in the LGBTQ community.

OnlyFans Bans Pornography

OnlyFans announced the move Thursday, saying it would phase out pornographic and “sexually explicit” material that doesn’t adhere to its Acceptable Use policy starting on October 1. The policy prohibits users from posting content it deems defamatory, discriminatory, threatening or promotes violence. It also forbids the exploitation of minors through use of the platform.

Its revised policy released Friday effectively bans depictions of sex and masturbation, both actual and simulated, depictions of “bodily fluids commonly secreted during sexual conduct” and any imagery of genitalia it deems “extreme or offensive.”The new policy also sets a Dec. 1 deadline for creators to remove any content containing or advertising “sexually explicit conduct” per the new definitions.

The move could potentially deplatform a large amount of sex workers and others that utilized the platform to earn a living in relative safety. The site’s popularity grew substantially over the last 18 months due to its benefits to sex workers as the Covid-19 pandemic forced citizens into lockdowns.

Financial Gain

The site rode that wave of popularity, heavily fueled by sexual content, to billion-dollar revenues in 2020. The company is expected to exceed $4 billion in revenue in 2021 according to Bloomberg. Despite the financial boom, OnlyFans chose to pivot away from what built it after banks and financial transaction services pushed it to eliminate sexual content from the platform.

“The adult industry is sadly used to companies cutting their teeth on the adult market and then abandoning them once they reach critical mass,” said Dominic Ford, founder of OnlyFans rival JustFor.fans. Senator Scott Wiener decried the decision as “terrible and puritanical,” saying, “Forcing sex work off of the internet doesn’t make it go away. But it does make it less safe, as sex workers have no choice but to work on the streets, where they face increased risk of violence.”

Others have pointed criticisms specifically toward how the news affects queer and trans creators currently utilizing OnlyFans for income. “OnlyFans banning sex is the tired pattern of social media platforms using sex and queer content to build their user base and make billions, then bailing when it takes too much thought, effort and courage to support us, ” said queer artist Leo Herrera.

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“Reading the tea leaves on the OnlyFans thing, I think it’s a good time to remind the LGBTQ community that as sex work goes, so go us. They are the canaries, but our *existence* is seen as sexual and therefore obscene,” tweeted queer writer Mari Brighe.

Free Speech Coalition spokesperson Mike Stabile highlighted similar concerns while calling out the financial institutions that seemingly spurred OnlyFans’ decision. “While many will blame OnlyFans for sacrificing sex workers in pursuit of investment capital and mainstream recognition, we need to be frank about where the true fault lies: with the banks and credit card companies like Mastercard, who have refused to stand up to a misguided and ill-intentioned evangelical War on Porn,” Stabile said in a statement.

“Banks and credit card companies are risk-averse institutions, easily scared by potential bad publicity. Religious groups know this, and have made no secret of targeting them in their quest to eliminate sex workers altogether. In doing so, companies like Mastercard have become enablers of these anti-porn, anti-LGBTQ, misogynist groups,” Stabile added.

‘Money Is The Priority’

But the impetus for the pornography ban could also be a BBC investigation into OnlyFans that alleged the company knowingly allowed creators that published illegal content on the site to continue operating without strong response. According to the BBC report, OnlyFans moderators referred to a “compliance manual” that dictated moderators to issue three warnings to creators found in violation of the Accepted Use Policy rather than banning accounts outright. The manual also advised moderators to issue additional warnings to “accounts with higher numbers of subscribers” rather than taking stronger action.

The report also claims that creators with higher subscriber counts are handled by an entirely different moderation team than others with smaller customer bases. The company said the “compliance manual” wasn’t “official guidance,” but OnlyFans COO Tom Stokely is listed as an editor of the manual in question. “It shows money is the priority,” an OnlyFans moderator told the BBC.

A previous BBC report highlighted multiple instances of minors being able to post sexually explicit content on the platform, subverting OnlyFans’ monitoring structures in various ways to do so.

Whether the catalyst is OnlyFans’ alleged practices in moderating its platform or pressure from financial institutions as its statement claims, the end product of the ban threatens the safety of many sex workers, LGBTQ or otherwise. “For people who made a living off studio porn previously, the move to OnlyFans has meant significantly more control over safety, partner choice and representation – particularly important for performers of color and trans people,” Heather Berg, assistant professor of women, gender and sexuality studies at Washington University in St Louis, told The Guardian.

“Whenever de-banking or deplatforming occurs, the workers who are most vulnerable are the ones to bear the brunt of the harm,” added online sex worker and Adult Industry Laborers and Artists Association co-chair Mary Moody. “Make no mistake, this change will kill sex workers.”

OnlyFans: Previously on Towleroad

Preparations grew more urgent as the newly upgraded Hurricane Henri closed in on the Northeast. Intense winds and potentially dangerous tidal surges were expected from Cape Cod to the Jersey shore.

(Image credit: Stew Milne/AP)

The civil rights leader, who is vaccinated against the virus, has advocated for COVID-19 vaccines for Black people. Despite having been diagnosed for Parkinson's disease, Jackson has remained active.

(Image credit: Charles Rex Arbogast/AP)

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Offspring #1 loves to do crafts. These are her crafty supplies. Do you see a problem? As we were cleaning up her room today, I noticed that the shelves were swaying. Her first solution was to go out and buy new shelves. “Sure,” I said, “with your own money.” This, of course, was not an option for Offspring #1. Were there any other solutions?

We talked about zip-tying the shelves to her bed to keep them upright. Perhaps adding some poles for support and rebalancing the contents will work. That’s what we’re working on now. But, there’s a genuine possibility that she will have to clean out some of her things. It’s too much stuff and too much weight.

No matter how much we rebalance, sometimes the weight is too much.

HR has been like that in the pandemic. Granted, HR is always about balancing things and too much to do, but the pandemic has made experienced HR leaders start to lean under the weight. We try to throw things off, but they keep coming back.

Some from the Evil HR Lady Facebook Group shared this CNBC article called, “After 18 months of unrelenting change, HR is burned out, too.” This paragraph stands out:

Since March 2020, armies of HR workers have been key to helping companies shift to remote work. They’ve been tasked with laying off tens of millions of workers, then trying to hire them back during a global health crisis. They’ve conducted survey after survey, drafted every type of business update and filtered down messages from the top, oftentimes bearing the brunt of negative feedback from employees.

This is us. And it’s too much sometimes. And it can feel like managing Covid policy is a full-time job on top of our regular jobs. We’re sick (no pun intended) and tired of it.

I got this comment from a reader:

Can we please get back to HR related topics, the posts and emails seem to be very one sided and political lately. I am honestly sick of it being a constant feed.

I would be happy never to mention the words vaccine, mask, mandate, direct threat exception, and quarantine ever again. It would bring me great joy. But, my job is to help HR be the best that we can be, and that means keeping up to date on all things Covid.

It also means some rebalancing and removing some weight. (Figuratively, although heaven knows the Covid-15 plus a month in the US did not help my actual weight.)

You have to let some things go, or you will fall over–just like those shelves. You can rebalance and shore up only so many times before the weight of everything comes crashing down.

What needs to go?

I don’t know.

It depends on your company, your job, and your personal situation. One thing I did was hire a virtual assistant to help me manage my emails. That’s throwing money at a problem, though, and that’s not always a viable solution.

Sit down and go through a list of all the things you deal with and decide which ones are critical and which ones are nice to have. Unfortunately, your masking and vaccine policies are on the critical list, while the “fun” things may be on the nice-to-haves right now. Ask your bosses for the ability to outsource some things, if possible.

You can come back to some things later, but only if you don’t fall over completely. It’s time to take some of the weight off and rebalance.

The post HR Under Pressure appeared first on Evil HR Lady.

What do we have here? I’ll tell you what: approximately 70 years of bound American Heritage magazines. Each book is one year of issues. The last 20-ish years were individual monthly issues.

These have been living in the reference collection at my library, gathering dust since who knows when. I’ve worked there for 12 years and they were already dusty then.

I finally bit the bullet (because pandemic library closure = time for collection projects like this) and weeded the whole collection. I didn’t really need the space for anything else, but the layer of dust confirmed that they hadn’t been touched by human hands in a looooong time.

It felt exhilarating! It felt freeing! It felt…wrong. What should I do with them? Surely some library, somewhere, could use them – even if just filling in missing issues in their own archive of American Heritage magazines. It’s a quality publication. It has value. It should be preserved!

Just not at my public library in our general interest/popular materials collection.

Rather than going straight to the recycle bin with it, I poked around to see what kind of holdings were listed in WorldCat. I thought maybe if I could identify a big missing chunk somewhere, I’d offer it up to fill in their collection. I also thought it would give me an idea of what libraries still have collections like this.

If I’ve learned one thing from 12 years with awful library books (!!) it’s that holdings at a library does not equal need. Lots of libraries have lots of stuff on their shelves that they don’t even want. They’re just too understaffed/sentimental/lazy to actually get rid of stuff. So, just because a library is listed in WorldCat as owning a complete set of American Heritage magazines does not mean it’s a good choice for their collection, or that they have any intent of keeping it, or that they even know they have it. 

I didn’t find any obvious places to send it.

Just for my own peace of mind, I also checked Better World Books to see if they’d take any of it. I didn’t expect them to. And they didn’t.

I asked the local historical archive – again, just to be sure they couldn’t use it – and they were not interested.

I emailed a nearby archive collection that did not list holdings of this collection, but which collects all kinds of Americana. I got no response.

So, I put the individual issues in the recycle bin. The bound issues got boxed up for city pickup. (THANK YOU to our city for helping us discard hardcovers appropriately!)

The moral of the story is that Mary and I love a clean collection. We love to weed. We also appreciate complete collections like this that were curated over decades and are not straight-to-the-bin items. Everything deserves due diligence. Don’t weed too casually, but be realistic about what’s truly useful in your library. Also, be realistic about where it ultimately belongs. If that’s the recycle bin, so be it. At least you tried.

-Holly

The post American Heritage appeared first on Awful Library Books.

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ScienceDaily: Eating fructose appears to alter cells in the digestive tract in a way that enables it to take in more nutrients, according to a preclinical study from investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian. These changes could help to explain the well-known link between rising fructose consumption around the world and increased rates of obesity and certain cancers. The research, published August 18 in Nature, focused on the effect of a high-fructose diet on villi, the thin, hairlike structures that line the inside of the small intestine. Villi expand the surface area of the gut and help the body to absorb nutrients, including dietary fats, from food as it passes through the digestive tract. The study found that mice that were fed diets that included fructose had villi that were 25 percent to 40 percent longer than those of mice that were not fed fructose. Additionally, the increase in villus length was associated with increased nutrient absorption, weight gain and fat accumulation in the animals. After observing that the villi were longer, the team wanted to determine whether those villi were functioning differently. So they put mice into three groups: a normal low-fat diet, a high-fat diet, and a high-fat diet with added fructose. Not only did the mice in the third group develop longer villi, but they became more obese than the mice receiving the high-fat diet without fructose. The researchers took a closer look at the changes in metabolism and found that a specific metabolite of fructose, called fructose-1-phosphate, was accumulating at high levels. This metabolite interacted with a glucose-metabolizing enzyme called pyruvate kinase, to alter cell metabolism and promote villus survival and elongation. When pyruvate kinase or the enzyme that makes fructose-1-phospate were removed, fructose had no effect on villus length. Previous animal studies have suggested that this metabolite of fructose also aids in tumor growth. From an evolutionary standpoint, the findings make sense. "In mammals, especially hibernating mammals in temperate climates, you have fructose being very available in the fall months when the fruit is ripe," said one of the researchers. "Eating a lot of fructose may help these animals to absorb and convert more nutrients to fat, which they need to get through the winter." Humans, on the other hand, did not evolve to eat the amount of fructose they consume now.

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The Cinemassacre Podcast is every Tuesday around 3pm ET... with the audio-only version launching afterwards. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbQ-gSLYQEc6DHztl7X1DvMoXJnOuD9JE

The Rocketeer is a 1991 film from Walt Disney Pictures, based upon the comic book character of the same name Set in 1938 Los Angeles, California, The Rocketeer tells the story of stunt pilot Cliff Secord who stumbles upon a hidden rocket-powered jet pack that he thereafter uses to fly without the need of an aircraft. His heroic deeds soon attract the attention of Howard Hughes and the FBI, who are hunting for the missing jet pack, as well as the Axis operatives that stole it from Hughes. Also in 1991, a game published by Bandai came out for the Nintendo Entertainment System. A year later the Super Nintendo game also came out. In this review the Nerd covers both games, dons his old Nerd Shirt, and builds the ultimate transportation device: the RocketBeer.

Background Music by Sam Beddoes, from the AVGN Game:
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#AngryVideoGameNerd #Rocketeer #AVGN196 #Cinemassacre

Use your blinkers.

Links 'n Stuff
Aging Wheels' video on my Figaro:
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00:00 Intro
01:15 History of turn signals
02:35 Basic controls overview
04:44 Turn signal switch
05:30 The Thermal Flasher
07:13 Mechanism and operation
09:24 Why synchronization isn't possible
11:41 Modern flasher design (capacitor)
15:47 LEDs and a public service announcement
20:12 Electronic flasher (aftermarket)
21:21 OEM electronic flashers
22:53 Hyperflashing
24:55 Modern cars and what changed
29:29 Computerization and CAN bus
31:45 The Answer - What that means for turn signals
33:10 Fun Facts and closing thoughts
35:25 Bloopers

Epic Games has been trying to force Apple and Google into loosening their grips on their respective app stores. We’ve seen Epic Games join the Coalition for App Fairness non-profit, and we’ve seen them lobby for a North Dakotan bill that tried to dismantle Apple and Google’s app store and payment monopolies. That bill failed, but the battle between Epic Games and Google has been ongoing. This all started when Fortnite bypassed the Google Play and the Apple App Store’s fees by allowing direct payments for in-game purchases.

Throughout the course of the legal battle, court documents have been released revealing some pretty interesting secrets from both Google and Apple, even things that might have seemed irrelevant like the planned release of an iPhone nano in 2010. The most recent set of unredacted court documents released have revealed just how far Google was willing to go to maintain its dominance over the Play Store. Google allegedly undertook a number of actions, including spending millions of dollars to keep game developers on the Play Store, talked about teaming up with Tencent to take over Epic, and even floated the idea of disabling sideloading on Android entirely.

These court documents were available as part of the initial filing but were partially redacted by Google. The company’s lawyer said to Reuters that Epic’s attempt to remove the redactions on the documents was “improper,” adding that “Google objects to Epic’s disregard for the court’s protective order and the improper disclosure of its confidential information.” However, the redactions were removed by Judge James Donato who is presiding over the case.

Project Hug — Paying top developers to stay on Google Play

Project Hug (via The Verge) is alleged to be a program Google founded to quietly pay off game developers in the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in incentives to keep their games on the Play Store, according to the unredacted documents. The program was later renamed to the “Apps and Games Velocity Program.” According to Epic Games, a 2019 report compiled by the Google Play finance team raised concerns that Epic may attempt to arrange deals with OEMs like Samsung to pre-install its competing games store. Epic Games takes a lower revenue sharing fee than Google, and Google worried that this may be enough to win over developers.

The Google Play finance team estimated that the Epic Games Store on Android could have resulted in a loss of at least $350 million for Google, potentially topping out at $1.4 billion lost revenue by 2022. Worse still for Google, this could have grown to losses starting at $1.1 billion and potentially reaching as high as $6 billion should other stores distributed from Samsung and Amazon “gain full traction.” Epic Games says that Project Hug was developed alongside Project Banyan, Google’s first attempt to buy out Samsung’s app store. Google’s emails show that going as far back as 2011, senior Android executives were “having discussions with Samsung to get them to stop distributing apps through Samsung App store.”

Project Hug was created and developed alongside Project Banyan, and is described in internal documents from Android executives as “a hug developers close and show love plan”, or “a surge plan to throw extra love/promotion to top developers and games (including Tencent portfolio companies).” Google’s plan, the company alleges, was to spend “hundreds of millions of dollars on secret deals” with over 20 of the top developers that were “most at risk […] of attrition from Play.” Google’s documents note that Project Hug was largely a success, and by the end of 2020, Google had signed deals with most of its targets. The most notable deal was with Activision Blizzard, which kept them on the Google Play Store.

In a statement given to The Verge, Google spokesperson Peter Schottenfels commented that “Google Play competes with other app stores on Android devices and on rival operating systems for developer attention and business. We’ve long had programs in place that support best-in-class developers with enhanced resources and investments to help them reach more customers across Google Play. These programs are a sign of healthy competition between operating systems and app stores and benefit developers tremendously.”

The introduction of the Premier Device Program

More newly released information (via The Verge) shows that Google ran a “Premier Device Program” that started in 2019. It gave Android phone makers a greater share of search revenue than would normally be received, and in exchange, OEMs agreed not to ship devices with third-party app stores preinstalled. The rule specifically prohibited “apps with APK install privileges” without Google’s approval, meaning that the only place a user could install apps from without sideloading was the Google Play Store.

Products that qualified as “premier devices” yielded a 12-percent share of Google’s search revenue for the OEM, compared to the standard 8-percent that they would normally earn. LG and Motorola got an even better deal; each company was offered a share of between 3 and 6 percent of what customers spent in the Google Play Store.

“Google’s Premier Device Program was not publicly known, and was not known to Epic, before Google recently began producing relevant documents in this litigation,” Epic’s lawyers wrote in the complaint. “Google has sought to conceal its most restrictive anticompetitive conduct by, among other things, including in the agreements themselves a provision restricting signatories from making ‘any public statement regarding [the] Agreement without the other party’s prior written approval.’”

The complaint also mentions that by May of 2020, many of the world’s largest and most popular Android OEMs agreed to exclusivity for most new Android devices. Motorola and LG committed nearly all of their devices to the Premier program, while the companies that are part of the BBK conglomerate (OPPO, Vivo, and OnePlus, among others) committed around 70-percent of their devices to the Premier program. Epic Games also stated that they had struck a deal with OnePlus to distribute games through the Epic Games app for a seamless installation of games like Fortnite. However, Google allegedly forced OnePlus to cancel the deal, citing Google’s “particular[] concern” about Epic having the ability to install and update mobile games while “bypassing the Google Play Store.” LG was also prevented from preinstalling the Epic Games app on LG smartphones.

Google considered teaming up with Tencent to purchase Epic Games

Google’s executives apparently considered approaching Tencent about purchasing shares in Epic Games, rather than approaching Epic directly (via Protocol). According to the court documents, “Google recognized that Epic might not accept its offer. ‘As a potential alternative’, a senior Google executive proposed that Google ‘consider approaching Tencent,’ a company that owns a minority stake in Epic, ‘to either (a) buy Epic shares from Tencent to get more control over Epic’, or ‘(b) join up with Tencent to buy 100% of Epic.” Tencent has owned a 40-percent stake in Epic since 2012, but Epic CEO Tim Sweeney maintains control of the company with over 50-percent of shares being in his name.

In a statement, a Google spokesperson said, “As we have stated previously, Epic’s lawsuit is baseless and mischaracterizes our business conversations. Android provides more choices in mobile devices for developers and consumers.”

Google even considered preventing sideloading

Perhaps one of the most shocking considerations by Google for the end-user, the company considered preventing sideloading on Android smartphones in general (via 9to5Google). A senior executive suggested that Google could “lock down Play/Android and not allow sideloading,” though it appears that this idea was not pursued. It was noted by Epic Games that Google believed it had “good privacy/security arguments” as to why sideloading may have been “dangerous” to Android users, even despite the European Commission’s investigations into Google at the time.

In fact, it seems that Google may have gone the other way on this consideration. Android 12 will finally let alternative app stores update apps without bothering the user, meaning that it will be easier than ever to install and use third-party application stores. Still, locking down the ability to sideload was in consideration by some at Google, and the very thought goes against one of the core values of Android — that being openness.

The post Epic Games lawsuit shows how far Google will go to maintain its Play Store dominance appeared first on xda-developers.

To be clear, wireless carrier app stores have always kind of sucked. Verizon's efforts to create its own app store were shut down in 2012, after underwhelming consumers for years. At the time, the narrative was that Verizon just didn't find it worth the trouble in the face of Google domination and innovation. And while that's still largely true (wireless carriers are utterly unfamiliar with competition and therefore historically suck at innovation and adaptation), it turns out there was another reason.

Namely, that Google was paying Verizon and other major wireless companies a big chunk of money to not compete with the Android marketplace. And they were paying smartphone manufacturers to ship devices without competing app stores installed. Both nuggets were buried in a freshly unredacted copy of Epic's antitrust complaint (pdf) against Google, first spotted by Jeremy Owens:

This agreement to start paying wireless carriers 20-25% of app sales was occurring right around the time that Google brass was visibly starting to wimp out on consumer-centric issues like net neutrality. That involved working closely with Verizon to push the FCC toward flimsy, loophole-filled, "compromise" 2010 net neutrality rules that excluded wireless entirely. Verizon proceeded to then successfully sue the FCC to have those repealed anyway, leading to better rules in 2015 that were also dismantled a few years, later, albeit thanks to lobbying, not the courtroom.

Google's shift from hugely innovative disruptor to entrenched, elbow-swinging turf protector has been a fairly ugly and historically unsurprising transition. You can clearly see the line in the sand somewhere around 2010 to throw away many of the guiding principles that made them successful and popular. There was another executive leadership pivot sometime around 2016 that brought with it increased timidity at the company (see: the company's abrupt decision to largely give up on expanding Google Fiber and many other exciting moonshot projects). Then, more recently there's the whole AI ethics scandals, which speaks for itself.

To be clear Google still does a lot of interesting and popular stuff, but it's pretty damn clear that the ethics and bravery that guided the company originally were obliterated some time back.

I have to think that revelations Google was paying wireless carriers and smartphone manufacturers to not compete with it will likely fuel several different antitrust inquiries and court cases. Maybe wireless carriers would have always failed to develop compelling app stores of their own thanks to innate incompetence, but it's harder than ever for that to happen when Google is paying you billions of dollars to not even try. And then, should those competing app stores succeed, paying handset makers not to carry them anyway, even if they happen to become popular.

As a little side note, the fact Google has been paying wireless carriers billions of dollars to do nothing kind of puts an additional dent in FCC Commissioner's ongoing, dumb claim that "big tech" gets a "free ride" on telecom networks. Getting paid to do nothing is the exact kind of thing AT&T has been pushing for since 2003 or so. It's the kind of stupid demand that started the net neutrality debate. Whether the payoffs violated the law is for antitrust lawyers to decide, but the fact Google repeatedly thought nothing about ignoring its original founding principles continues to speak pretty loudly either way.

This post, the sick call with sound effects, the cheesecake, and other stories of triumphs over jerks at work , was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

Last week we had the agony of mortification, and this week we have the ecstasy of triumph!

I asked you to share stories of times when you triumphed over a jerk at work, and here are 11 of my favorites. There were so many good stories that a part 2 is coming next week!

1. The sick call

“This happened when I was 24, and it’s probably the pettiest thing I’ve ever done.

I worked in a department where all the regular employees were micro-scheduled (to the minute) for their whole day to make sure everything got done at the times it was supposed to per agreements with the clients. We had a 1-2 person buffer each day in case people got sick, but their rule was basically ‘don’t call in sick unless you’re dying or in the hospital’ so people wouldn’t call in for’“little things.’ The buffer people would check the messages in the morning to fix the schedules, and the lady in charge of call-ins would also check the messages because she couldn’t give up control of it. She was a jerk and severe micromanager, and made the call-in rule (we called and left a message to a voicemail since no one wanted to monitor that phone at 5am) that when we called in we had to say our name, the date, and the very specific reason we were calling in. She wouldn’t accept just ‘sick’ or ‘have a cold/flu.’ She wanted ‘I’ve been vomiting for X hours and had diarrhea’ or something similar. I hated this. I also almost never got sick. The first time I got sick, I only said ‘had the flu’ or whatever vague thing it was, and she gave me a written warning for that. She said that I needed to be as specific as possible when I called in sick. She wrote several other people up for this as well, so most people didn’t like her.

Many months later, I got my revenge. I got SICK. Vomiting every 15 minutes like clockwork. I couldn’t keep anything down. And I knew I’d have to call in. So I chugged a bunch of gatorade shortly before the end of that 15 minutes, and called the line as soon as I could feel it coming. I said, ‘I’m (name), it’s (date), and I’m calling in because I’m sick. As far as details go,’ then I vomited. Loudly. Horrifically. And I’d kept the phone close enough that it definitely picked up the sounds. When I finished I said, ‘Sorry about that, I’m basically stuck next to my toilet’ and then hung up. I had the presence of mind to text the person who was the buffer that day who would listen to the message and tell him not to listen unless he could handle the noises.

I didn’t hear about the fallout until the next day, when I went back into work. The buffer guy told all our coworkers about my message, because he thought it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. They were all waiting for her to listen to it. Turns out the micromanager had a very weak stomach (I didn’t know this). She listened to my message on speakerphone in her office with the door open (another issue, but it just makes this story funnier), and as soon as she got to the ‘good part,’ she turned a shade of green and sprinted out of her office to the bathroom. And then had to call in sick.

The call in rule was changed to just needing to say you were sick, no details necessary. I became department legend.”

2. The circle jerk

“I worked with a horrid VP of Sales – arrogant, obnoxious, just a nightmare. We were in an internal meeting and he used the phrase ‘get in a circle jerk’ with them (and even used the hand motion). Then smirked at me, the only woman in the room and the youngest by far.

I’d had enough so (fake) innocently asked, loudly, ‘What’s a circle jerk?’ He tried to move on but I asked again, ‘Sorry I don’t understand, what is a circle jerk – if I’m negotiating the contract I need to know the terms.’ Everyone froze. The CEO walked in and asked, ‘So where are we?’ I loudly said, ‘Well, we are waiting for ____ to explain what a circle jerk is as he’s really worried about it being part of the contract.’ It was absolute gold and a career highlight that sadly can’t go on a resume!”

3. The post-it

“I took a job that was part-time, 24 hours a week, but the job description was never updated when it went from a full-time to a part-time position. I constantly faced questions from a manager who couldn’t understand why I wasn’t doing 40 hours of work in 24.

After I took a few (unpaid) days off, when I came back we had a meeting in which he handed me the job description and asked me to highlight the parts I did well, then demanded to know why I wasn’t doing the other pieces. When I pointed out that it hadn’t been updated from the full-time job description, he told me it didn’t matter, I needed to start doing all of them. (Never mind that many of those things were included in his job description, I was expected to do it all.) He also mentioned that I didn’t do a good job of staying on top of my email inbox.

I heard that he had complained to someone else about me not asking about taking the time off. I found the email where I had asked him if those dates were ok for me to be off (he’d asked me to send that information by email but never responded and when I asked for verbal confirmation, he said it was fine), and printed it to include with my written two-week notice, along with a post-it note on the printed email saying that he needed to stay on top of his inbox.

After I’d been out of the job for a few weeks, I submitted a few anonymous tips to corporate about some of the things he was doing that were unethical at best, illegal at its worst. He suddenly ‘resigned’ a few months later.”

4. The work thief

“A colleague kept stealing my work – copy-pasting stuff from documents I’d written, and claiming PowerPoint decks as her own.

So I embedded my name in everything I made – in the footer or the slide master, in a tiny white font. Then when she claimed the work was hers in a meeting I asked for the mouse to ‘point to something’ and ‘accidentally’ highlighted where it said ‘documents created by (my name) on date.’

Petty? Hell yeah!”

5. The sabotage

“I had a really toxic coworker who left for another department within the same organization, but then was pushed out (he fully deserved it). Unfortunately, with some major changes in management who didn’t remember him, he reapplied back to my department about 3 years later. I warned my boss about how terrible he was, and … boss hired him. Dude was 15 minutes late his first day – no explanation, no apology, just slowly sauntered in. It only went downhill from there. We’re salaried, so no clocking in or out, and he would always come in late, leave early, and take a long lunch. The ‘work’ he did was organizing his kids’ sports team, planning vacations, and talking a lot of trash (including about me). I know it’s petty, but I started tracking this, as it was egregious. Boss was ‘talking’ with him all the time, but dude was not interesting in changing his behavior.

Finally we had a big, formal, scary team meeting with the grandboss (also the CFO), boss, and members of the team. Dude is correctly called out by management, loses his cool, and *very* passively-aggressively shouts out, ‘Well, SOMEONE has been trying to sabotage me since day 1!’ I knew he was talking about me though I never, ever have sabotaged anything – he did that all by himself. I realized he was counting on me to respond … and I didn’t. If he couldn’t be bothered to say my name nor look at me, I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of responding. So I just sat there, calm and cool. Oh, that moment was beautiful. No one responded at all, and this heavy, awkward silence just hung there for about 30 seconds. He then screams it again, ‘SOMEONE has been trying to sabotage me the whole time!’ Again, no one acknowledged it at all.

Grandboss found me afterwards and commended me for how I handled myself. Dude was forced to resign about 2 months later.”

6. The rule follower

“When I first started at my current job, we had one process that needed to be sent off to another department. About two weeks after I finished training, my boss had a sit-down meeting with me because the subject line in my emails to them was ‘not formatted correctly,’ and instead of telling me, the new employee, they asked my boss to discipline me.

Naturally I was NOT HAPPY since no one had even taught me that it mattered, and it’s not like the content of my emails was bad or even that there was missing information in the subject. Plus, they send emails to us that don’t follow those rules exactly! So, for the rest of the time I’ve worked here, whenever I respond to or forward emails involving that department I edit the subject line to make sure it fits their very important rules. It messes with the conversation views in Outlook when a subject line changes and I always cackle thinking about the mild annoyance I must be causing.

7. The victory

“I had a boss who was dynamic and incredibly forward-thinking. But she was also egomaniacal and completely intimidated by anyone else who was competent. So none of her ideas ever came to anything because she always sabotaged anyone who could actually get things done. Although I reported directly to her, everyone in the organization went to another of her direct reports for everything, thus isolating some of the true bananas.

Well, I was very competent in my job but because I was fat, she was not intimidated by me — she truly believed that I had no chance of a successful career because of my weight. So she decided she wanted to “develop” me so I would be more successful. She would say things like, ‘I know you can’t wear nice clothes because of your size but you have to wear X jewelry and Y shoes.’ She would assign me to a work trip and when I would arrive, it would be a makeover or a manicure. I checked with Other Direct Report, who said my appearance was fine — I was neat and professional and clean. Designer shoes were not in any way a job requirement.

Fast forward a few years to when she was fired by the board and replaced by Other Direct Report. She applied for a job at one of the top organizations in our industry (a BIG step up from our organization), confident that no one else in the world could possibly get the job. She left our organization bragging to everyone about how she was going to NewPlace and we were all stuck at Old Job. Well, I quietly applied for that job, used Other Direct Report as my reference, and have been successful and happy here at NewPlace for quite a few years while Old Boss is currently unemployed.”

8. The training

“I worked at a nonprofit org that primarily served a vulnerable community of color, and for some reason (pushover wimp of a CEO, mostly) we had a super racist and grouchy VP. He said derogatory things about other cultures, forbid his front-line employees from speaking their native language in the office (even though it was the primary language of our clients) and was a general horrible bully. I was one of the other VPs at the tabnle with this jerk, was the only white VP who was actively trying to learn our clients’ language, and tried really hard to be an ally for our marginalized staff – so we butted heads constantly, and he was incredible dismissive and demeaning of my efforts and me as a person.

A few years into the gig, the state decided they would make anti-racism training a priority for contracted agencies. I jumped at the opportunity and co-developed a day-long training with a colleague I adored – and we even offered the entire thing dual-language! I got amazing feedback from staff who attended and we were super proud of it, and folks from other agencies who came to hear it asked us to come to their agency to train. It was a big success! The racist VP, however, forbid any of his staff from attending, called me ‘a stupid bleeding heart liberal idiot’ in meetings in front of the CEO, and got extremely hostile with me.

So my colleague and I worked with our state regulatory agency, and eventually we got our curriculum certified to be the mandated anti-racism training for agencies like ours – which made us the statewide trainers. The state folks announced they would make the 8 hour training mandatory for 100% of staff in agencies like mine for the following year. When I hosted the next session that he was legally required to attend, I made a special seat just for him at the front of the room, with a little seating card and everything, and made him sit front and center for the whole 8 hours. Watching him chew his own face off during that training is one of my favorite memories of all time.”

9. “I know exactly who you are”

“This is a follow up to a question and update that has been previously been posted.

At my new job after toxic job, my boss was really wonderful and super supportive as I worked through the after-effects of my toxic job. About 3 or 4 months in, New Boss and I attended a local industry event, where we promptly ran into Old Toxic Boss. They’d never met, and Old Toxic Boss started introducing himself. New Boss just looked him straight in the eye and said in a knowing tone, ‘Oh, I know EXACTLY who you are’ and then walked away. Old Boss looked utterly stunned. It was so marvelous and petty and yet perfectly polite.”

10. The confused coworker

“I was working as a teacher at a public high school in a former life, mid-20s. It was in a major city in a pretty liberal and diverse area, but in a conservative state. At the time that this story occurred, my now wife and I (we’re both women) were newly engaged. I’m a pretty private person, but I wasn’t at all the only non-straight teacher on staff; our principal was not Out, but it was an open secret that she and her ‘roommate’ were not just roommates. Basically, it was a gay-friendly environment for the most part. Other teachers were open with their students, and I generally had a policy of not broadcasting my queerness, but if a student asked I would answer honestly. After I got engaged, most of my students and the rest of the staff knew I wasn’t straight. But there were a couple of older, traditional staff members who were not at all okay with the gay.

One such person was a support teacher I’ll call Dolores. She was older, from a very Christian and conservative country, and she was a talker; the sort of person who will not stop harping on negatively to anyone who will listen about EVERYTHING, and does not understand most social cues that the person is no longer interested. Most times, you have to just abruptly walk away and close the door to get her to stop talking. It was intense. And she was really homophobic. At one point, she started talking non-stop to another teacher about how 2 male students shouldn’t be seated next to each other in classes because they weren’t masculine enough and they would probably ‘spread their homosexual energy’ too much. The teacher she kept trying to convince of this was openly gay, and she would say homophobic things in front of him just to make him crazy.

One day, not long after my partner and I got engaged, she corners me in my classroom to talk about something else completely, and somehow ends up discussing the gender roles in my relationship. For context, my partner and I are both very feminine presenting; it is often surprising to people that we’re gay. It went something like this:

Dolores: In your picture, you both look like such nice girls. Who is the man and who is the woman?
Me: Ummm. Well there isn’t a man in our relationship, that’s kind of the point. Anyway, about this spreadsheet…
Dolores, refusing to drop it: No, but who wears pants?
Me, pretending to be clueless: I mean, I’m wearing pants today. I haven’t seen her outfit today, so I’m not sure what she’s wearing. Does this have something to do with the spreadsheet?
Dolores, more and more frustrated: But one of you must be the man. Who makes the decisions?
Me: We make decisions together, because we’re partners. What does a man have to do with that?
Dolores: YOU KNOW WHAT I’M TRYING TO SAY. WHICH OF YOU IS THE MAN?!
Me: Ummm do you understand the concept of homosexuality? I’m not sure work is the best place to get into this.
Dolores: YES I DO DO YOU THINK I’M STUPID?! I’m just trying to understand who the man is!
Me, giving up: JESUS IS THE MAN. JESUS IS THE ONLY MAN IN OUR RELATIONSHIP, OKAY?!

She was utterly offended and thought I was making fun of her (okay, I was). BUT. She never initiated contact with me ever again, which was the best revenge I could have asked for. For a couple of years after that, other staff members would ask me how I managed to keep from being cornered by her, and I would just say, ‘I told her about my personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and she was terribly offended.'”

11. The cheesecake

“So this is a story of both triumph and reconciliation. This was while I worked part-time as a server at a restaurant. A coworker of mine, Katie, lived in a fourfold with a really great apartment becoming available in the building. Another coworker, Vanessa, was first interested in the apartment as well as I. Vanessa spoke with the landlord about it. I spoke to him after and told him in the event Vanessa was not interested in the apartment, I would take it. Vanessa went MIA on him. I called her and left a voicemail that I needed to find a new place ASAP and if she still wanted the apartment I would back off and look for something else. I never heard from her and the landlord never heard from her, so he called me and told me it was mine if I wanted it. I met him, signed the lease, gave him the deposit, etc.

Once that happened, Vanessa was furious with both Katie and I and told another coworker she wouldn’t speak to either of us anymore. She was popular at work so a lot of people took her side and ostracized me over it. Work for a month or so was pretty miserable, so I decided to make Vanessa a cheesecake. I brought it in on a day I knew we’d both be there and asked if I could talk to her for a moment, and told her I made her a cheesecake and then left as that was the end of my shift. I found out later that Vanessa had cried over it and felt awful about what happened and that she was just embarrassed about it. She made things right at work and told people that it was a mistake on her part, and my work life got better instantly, and we’re still friends to this day. So moral of this story, if your coworker acts like a jerk to you, make them a cheesecake. Oh and that apartment was one of the BEST I’ve ever lived in.”

Which panel are you?

Wednesday’s high temperature across much of the metro area, beneath cloudy skies and on-and-off rain showers, peaked at about 90 to 93 degrees for most of us. Temperatures much of the day were in the 80s. While this was not “cool” by any stretch of the imagination, we are definitely bound for much hotter weather. The period from this coming Sunday through Tuesday should bring 100-degree heat for many inland locations.

Thursday

For those still seeking a bit of rainfall, today will be akin to drinking in the last chance saloon. Although atmospheric moisture levels remain fairly elevated, we’ll begin to feel the influence of high pressure expanding into the region. For this reason rain chances will likely be higher—maybe 40 or 50 percent—closer to the coast with lesser chances inland of Interstate 69 and Highway 59. These showers will be hit or miss, but a few isolated areas could pick up a quick inch of rain or so. Skies should otherwise be partly sunny, with highs in the mid-90s, and light southerly winds. Rain chances will drop as the Sun drops to the horizon.

Friday

As high pressure begins to fully assert itself, this should be a warm and sunny day with highs in the mid-90s. Rain chances will be on the order of 10 to 20 percent. Winds will be light, out of the south and southeast.

Saturday and Sunday

This will be a classic August weekend, with highs in the upper 90s to possibly 100 degrees by Sunday. Skies will be mostly sunny with generally light winds. Please take care outside during the hottest part of the day.

Next week

The heat remains turned up through Tuesday, with the potential for 100 degree days and lots of sunshine. A few more clouds return by Wednesday or Thursday, and as high pressure eases off we might even see some modest rain chances toward the end of next week. But it’s still going to be hot, y’all.

Tropics

The tropics remain more or less the same. Hurricane Grace has made landfall in the Yucatan Peninsula, will cross the Bay of Campeche on Friday, and make a final landfall along the Mexico mainland on Friday night, likely as a Category 1 hurricane. There is less certainty about Tropical Storm Henri. The forecast models are really struggling with this system, and there is still some question about whether it will affect the northeastern coast of the United States late this weekend. There are no immediate concerns beyond these two storms.

Vaccination – The Silent Killer: A Clear And Present Danger
McBean and Honorof
1977

Submitter: I am wondering if other libraries are receiving donations like this. We have seen an influx of anti-vax books either emailed or dumped into our dropbox. This one is pretty scary!

Holly: I mean, come on, it’s 44 years old! Even if balance of viewpoints is important in your library, this is not the one. It’s missing 44 years of data that anyone would need to make their argument, whatever that might be. And (looks pointedly over my bifocals) let’s stick to a collection development discussion in the comments, please…

We haven’t seen an abundance of anti-vax books, specifically, at our library, but wow the level of general donations we’ve been getting is bananas!

The post The Silent Killer? appeared first on Awful Library Books.

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

I have 39 moving boxes that I need gone.

• Take them all, and they’re FREE.

• Leave me with 5 or less and they’re $10.

• Leave me with 6–10 and they’re $15.

• Leave me with 11–15 and they’re $20.

• Leave me with 16–20 and they’re $25.

• Leave me with 21–25 and they’re $30.

• Leave me with 26–30 and they’re $35.

• Leave me with 31–35 and they’re $40.

• Leave me with 36 or more and they’re $50.

Here’s what’s included in the full lot:

• 2 x “Trenta” – 44×44×78 cm

• 13 x “Venti” – 44×42×62 cm

• 6 x “Grande” – 42×36×52 cm

• 18 x “Tall” – 41×31×44 cm

That’s 39 boxes in total—over three cubic meters of storage space—all FREE to the right lucky person. But—and here’s the catch—I don’t want any left over. Hence the complicated pricing structure.

Frequently asked questions

Q: Why the complicated pricing structure?

A: I don’t want any boxes left over, because they are cluttering up my modest living space.

Q: Are you happy to split? I don’t want all the boxes.

A: Yes, as per the pricing structure, I am happy to split the boxes, however, the less you take, the more you pay.

Q: Why is “Tall” the smallest sized box?

A: I don’t know. Ask Starbucks.

Q: What are the box dimensions in imperial units?

A: Although it may not seem obvious, I don’t really have time to convert all the dimensions into imperial units. However, for a ballpark figure, multiply the volume in cubic centimeters by 0.0000284 for US bushels.

Q: Are the boxes empty?

A: The short answer is “Yes.” The long answer is that it really comes down to scale. Even if you decide to take the boxes into outer space, at the quantum level, a total vacuum is still permeated by fields which only tend toward a zero energy value. Those fields are subject to excitations that essentially allow particles to pop into existence more or less randomly. But hey, if you’re planning on taking one of these boxes into outer space, then why not take them all?

Q: Will you mail the boxes?

A: Yes, I am happy to mail the boxes at the buyer’s expense. However, I can’t see that being economically viable unless you can organize to fill them with something valuable, like cocaine.

Q: Can you fill the boxes with cocaine and mail them to me?

A: DM me.

Q: Why don’t you just give all the boxes away free?

A: That’s exactly what I’m trying to do. I am truly committed to helping you realize (up to) $225 in savings.

Q: Why are you acting like a tyrant?

A: I’m only trying to offer you incredible savings!

Q: Why do you have so many boxes?

A: I had to temporarily move out of my apartment while Netflix filmed a series there.

Q: You must live in a fancy apartment. Why don’t you just give the boxes away for free?

A: I am trying to give the boxes away for free. Take them all and save (up to) $225.

Q: I just want one box? How much is that?

A: As per the pricing structure, the price of one box varies depending on how many you leave me with. If you’re the first box buyer, one box will cost you $50. However, if you’re the lucky last buyer, it will be FREE.

Q: I want only a few boxes, but I don’t want to pay any money. How often will you be updating the inventory of the remaining boxes?

A: Hopefully not at all. Good luck.