In brief: In today’s post we discuss the region’s slide into summer starting this weekend. However, we are hopeful that Houston will spend an extended period in “early” summer rather than jumping directly into really hot conditions this year. Take the win, y’all!

Phases of summer

If we’re being real, all of summer in Houston is fairly hot and fairly humid. There is no escaping that in a city (located at 29.7 degrees north) that lies not all that far from the tropics and near a large body of warm water. But longtime residents will appreciate that there are different gradations of summer in Houston, which range from somewhat tolerable to utterly miserable. Understanding these different phases may help readers endure the long slog of summer in Houston, which typically runs from late May into mid-October, or nearly five months.

Here are the four phases:

• Early summer: When we first start to see 90-degree temperatures with some regularity, but some nights in the 60s are still possible, and there’s still the thinnest hope of a weak front.
• Mid summer: When highs run from 90 to 95 degrees, and nights are sultry, but you know it could still get worse.
• High summer: Somewhere between late July and early September there’s a period where temperatures reach the upper 90s to low 100s and you realize, “Ok, this really is the worst.”
• Late summer: This is the period in September and early October when days grow shorter and we usually see the first front or two of the season. But most of the time it’s still hot.

The longer Houston can remain in “Early summer” the better. For example, last year Houston hopped right into Mid-summer in the first week of June, with highs in the low- to mid-90s, and even one day with a high of 97 degrees. This year I’m happy to report that we appear likely to ease into summer with a sustained phase of “Early summer.” At this time year, friends, you have to take the small wins in Houston weather where you can. Because in June, July, and August there are very, very few big wins.

Thursday

Conditions are reasonably cool this morning for late May, with lows in the upper 60s across most of the region. We are now going to begin a warming trend, however. Highs today will climb into the upper 80s with mostly sunny skies. Winds, also, will be fairly light, from the northwest at about 5 mph. Lows tonight will be a few degrees warmer, likely in the lower 70s for most of the region.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday

The onshore flow will return with a little more oomph this weekend, and with Houston on the edge of a high pressure system we are likely to see mostly sunny skies. We can probably expect daily highs around 90 degrees, perhaps a shade warmer for inland areas, and a bit cooler near the coast. Dewpoints in the lower 70s are by no means ‘comfortable,’ but they’re still notably lower than we’re likely to see later this summer. This weekend really is the definition of “Early summer,” so as we slide into June take it for what it is. Rain chances are near zero this weekend—we could see a stray shower here or there, but probably not.

Next week

Our temperatures will remain in the vicinity of 90 degrees for most of next week. By Tuesday or Wednesday we start to see a few more clouds and there will be a daily chance for some showers. Said chances won’t be too high, nor do rain accumulations look too serious. But showers could take a degree or two off daily highs. Houston’s weather, dare we say it, looks mild as we get into the first week of June?

No, please! According to physicists, we can’t fly.

WASHINGTON—Mashing their faces together as he produced loud smooching sounds, President Donald Trump made figurines of himself and his daughter Ivanka Trump kiss in a model of his under-construction White House ballroom, reports confirmed Thursday. According to sources, Trump raised the pitch of his voice and said, “Such a splendid ballroom, Daddy! Let us dance!” as he pressed the figurines into each other at the waist and whirled them around the checkered marble floor. Continuing in his approximation of his daughter’s voice, Trump reportedly said, “You’re so manly and strong, Daddy! Don’t tell Jared, but I want you! I want to hump you now!” He was then seen flipping the figurines into a horizontal position and furiously rubbing them against each other. Sources said Trump began sobbing when Ivanka’s head popped off but recovered shortly thereafter and tossed her into the same shoebox as his Ivana Trump figurine.

The post Trump Makes Figurines Of Himself, Ivanka Kiss In Miniature Ballroom Model appeared first on The Onion.

LOS ANGELES—Letting out a deep sigh after reading another review of the HBO show’s third and final season, former NFL running back Marshawn Lynch reportedly expressed regret Thursday for having turned down a Chili’s ad for a role in Euphoria. “That’s it, I’m ruined,” said Lynch, who told reporters he was “kicking [himself]” over his decision to sign on to the Sam Levinson production rather than take a role in a 30-second commercial for the casual dining chain restaurant during which his only line would have been “I’m going beast mode on this Triple Dipper combo.” “Euphoria? What was I thinking? I’m never going to be able to show my face in this town again, let alone drive by a Chili’s without thinking about what could have been. God, I’m such an idiot.” Lynch added that he was also furious he had let Levinson talk him into taking his top off.

The post Marshawn Lynch Regrets Turning Down Chili’s Ad For ‘Euphoria’  appeared first on The Onion.

#RoninWarriors

#CowboyWho

Hey man, is that you putting on all that weird stuff? #CowboyWho

The inaugural Enhanced Games, consisting of weightlifting, swimming, and sprinting, were held, which allowed competitors to take performance-enhancing drugs in hopes of pushing the limits of human achievement. What do you think?

“Eat shit, indomitable human spirit—it’s drugs’ time to shine.”

Tony Skow, Recipe Auditor

---

“These are great role models for kids who don’t have time to work hard and apply themselves.”

Brenda Pool, Wire Spooler

---

“Let’s dispense with the human element and just see which drugs are strongest.”

Garrett Horvath, Unemployed

The post Enhanced Games Allows Competing Athletes To Use Steroids appeared first on The Onion.

BARRIE, ON – After decades of refusal to comply with his family’s requests, local dad, Chris White, 77, has finally lost his Asian restaurant privileges. The decision was finalized after an argument between White and his grandson, Thomas, 14, at the Mandarin last Saturday evening. The boy begged his grandfather not to bow at his […]

The post Boomer Dad loses Asian restaurant privileges appeared first on The Beaverton.

BOONE, NC—Noting that the troubling signs of a toxic dynamic had become too numerous to ignore, area woman Kara Vasques expressed concern Wednesday that she was in a codependent relationship with the rest of humanity. “Sometimes things will be great with me and the human race, but then I start to worry that I don’t really have an identity outside of how everyone on earth views me,” said Vasques, confirming that her taste in areas such as entertainment, sports, politics, food, and religion had been heavily influenced by the views of human civilization. “I can get really anxious and upset if I don’t accomplish my goals, but then I realize that I’m only doing a lot of this stuff for the benefit of society. I’m basically obsessed, and yet a lot of times I feel like the global population barely knows that I exist.” Vasques added that she might need to cut herself off from the rest of humanity for a while before eventually giving things a shot again with a different species.

The post Woman Worried She In Codependent Relationship With Rest Of Humanity  appeared first on The Onion.

WASHINGTON—Proudly declaring that the exam revealed what he had known all along, President Donald Trump boasted Wednesday that his annual physical turned up no signs of pedophilia. “The doctors gave me the most thorough pedophilia testing you can get, and I’m totally clean,” said Trump, who claimed he had not only tested negative on pedophilia blood and urine tests but had also consistently pointed to pictures of adults when asked which persons of various ages he was sexually attracted to. “The doctors said they’d never examined someone with so little pedophilia, and they know exactly what to look for. Of course, the fake news is going to believe whatever they want to about me, even though Obama never took this test. Gee, I wonder why!” At press time, doctors cautioned that the results cited by Trump dealt exclusively with prepubescent girls and that more testing was required to confirm the initially concerning findings regarding girls ages 12 to 17.

The post Trump Boasts Annual Physical Turned Up No Signs Of Pedophilia appeared first on The Onion.

STARBASE, TX—Firing off dozens of messages in less than a minute at 2:30 a.m., Elon Musk reportedly hit up a text thread Wednesday to see if any of his 13 kids had ketamine. “Hey kids, it’s Dad, I’ve just been crashing out hard and need a few bumps of K to get me to the end of the week if you have any hookups,” wrote Musk, who was said to be pale and shaking as he frantically typed out the requests to his children, aged 1 to 22 years, in a chat group he had labeled “Kids?” “Really need to take a trip to the vet if you know what I mean. That’s ketamine, I need ketamine. I’ll pay twice what you normally get if you can get here in a few hours, you know I’m good for it. I can meet you out front of the base by the Astropub. My normal guy disappeared in the Gulf over the weekend and none of your mommies are responding and I’ve been sweating like a factory drone and haven’t slept for three days. Strider? Y? I’ll settle for some coke if that’s all you got. I’ve got a bunch of numbers in here I assume are all of you. There are 11 of you right?” At press time, reports confirmed Musk had promised to “add a zero” to the trust fund of the first child who responded to his pleas.

The post Elon Musk Hits Up Text Thread To See If Any Of His 13 Kids Has Ketamine appeared first on The Onion.

A reader writes:

I don’t think there’s necessarily a solution to this, but I’m fascinated to hear other people’s experiences.

My boss is obsessed with AI. To the point where he’s adopted it as his entire personality.

It’s just me and him working in a very small nonprofit, although we have a large pool of volunteers and clients that use our services. If it helps, he’s new to the area (and the job) and we were already a close-knit team before he joined, so there’s an element of him being the newbie that I try to be sensitive to.

But OH MY GOD he uses AI to write EVERYTHING. And I mean simple text messages about booking a maintenance guy for our building. He seems totally incapable of just saying words in a comprehensible order without the use of ChatGPT. (I can’t help but wonder what he did three years ago, before it was invented.)

The overall effect is … odd. Any written communication from him has all the hallmarks of AI that you’d be familiar with — the weirdly symmetrical cadence, and a lot of “it’s not just X, it’s Y.” Six paragraphs when two would do. Random phrases highlighted in bold. That sort of thing.

A lot of our clients are vulnerable, and building close relationships with them is really important to the job. I can tell a lot of them have almost no clue what he’s saying to them, and he seems to be struggling to get to know people. I think his obviously-not-human writing style might be contributing to it.

The bigger problem is where it impacts me, which is that having a computer do the writing for him means he has free rein to create endless fiddly ways of accomplishing very simple tasks.

We were recently thinking about which volunteers would be a good fit for a new project. He sent me a six-point list outlining our “approach to decision making,” talking about how we will adopt “a team approach to delivering the ask” and “take responsibility for ensuring it happens and delivers the results we need.” Honestly, a five minute face-to-face chat would have sorted it. (Ironically, we haven’t managed to decide which volunteer to approach because, surprise surprise, we don’t have time to work through the six-point list!)

I’ve mentioned it to a couple of the board trustees, who have all expressed frustration. It seems that everyone is really struggling to understand his vision for the role, and think he’s alienating people he should be building relationships with.

I’ve casually mentioned it to him and he’s gotten very defensive – I think maybe AI has become a bit of a crutch, as opposed to a productivity tool (it’s not just X, it’s Y!). He really believes that anything written by AI is better, and he couldn’t possibly do his job without it.

I don’t know if there’s a solution — he loves AI, he isn’t open to my feedback, and it’s really for the board of trustees to deal with.

But I’d be fascinated to know if any other readers are dealing with this “invasion of the AI bodysnatchers” problem, and is it impacting things like client relationships and task efficiency? When so much of the working world is about building relationships, surely it has to be?

You’re absolutely right that it’s a problem for the board to deal with, and if they’re not working on doing that, they’re being negligent. This isn’t just a new leader obsessed with a new technology that they don’t know how to use correctly; it sounds like serious and fundamental communication and relationship-building issues that are affecting your clients, as well as the staff (you). (It’s not just X, it’s Y!) And it goes to issues of judgment and general competence.

It’s good that you’ve talked to some of the board trustees, and it’s good that they’re seeing it too. Now they need to do something about it.

That’s not within your control, of course. But if I were advising them, I’d tell them they need to have a very candid conversation with him about their concerns, the impact of what he’s doing, and what needs to change — but I’d also tell them they need to look seriously at whether he’s the right person to be leading the organization. It often takes boards way too long to get to that last question, and the organization suffers in the meantime. They should start asking themselves that now.

I’d also ask them about what he’s good at. Sometimes you get an executive director who’s great at fundraising (or strategy, but most often you see this with fundraising) and not so great at the other parts of the job, and the board makes the calculation that the person’s fundraising expertise outweighs their weaknesses. But based on the picture you’ve painted, I’m doubtful he’s good at fundraising either (unless it’s all face-to-face with major donors and so he’s forced to speak like a normal person and not use ChatGPT to script himself, and if he happens to actually be good at that).

Anyway, happy to toss this out to readers to weigh in on any “invasion of the AI bodysnatchers” situations they’ve seen and what the consequences have been in their own organizations.

The post my boss has been taken over by AI appeared first on Ask a Manager.

A reader asks:

I am an upper level manager in a mid-sized company. This past year, our CEO retired after decades in leadership. I used to report to him, but in the changeover it was decided that I would report to the second-in-command, Sally, who had wanted the top job but didn’t get it.

Sally is extremely toxic, but our former CEO had a soft spot for her and has painted her in a very positive light to the new CEO, Kate. While Kate gets acclimated, she has delegated much of the day-to-day work to Sally.

However, Sally is actively lying about a lot of things, to many different people, with the seeming intent to set up Kate to fail. For example, at a recent meeting Sally was leading, she gave us specific examples of ongoing work happening and encouraged us to conduct similar work in our own departments. But when I followed up with the people supposedly working on these very specific tasks, they had no idea what I was talking about. Another example: Kate believes Sally to be organizing and running a series of important meetings but Sally is not running those meetings, nor does she attend most of them, though Kate clearly thinks she has been. Sally also has a habit of scheduling meetings, then canceling them one minute before or just not showing up at all, with no explanation, but she reports back as if she has attended. She also presents herself as giving specific directives from Kate, but those instructions often contradict things Kate has said to directly us. Meanwhile, I’m getting a sense that some non-management staff, who aren’t as clued in to this dynamic, are starting to get disgruntled with Kate’s leadership.

We fear Kate will think we are all a bunch of disgruntled employees not being flexible if we try to clue her in. But we all really like Kate and want her to succeed!

I have some one-on-one contact with Kate but she is extremely busy so it’s been limited. There are others with more clout who are at the end of their tether with Sally but are reluctant to put themselves on the line. What on earth do we do?

I answer this question over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.

The post my office’s second-in-command is sabotaging the CEO appeared first on Ask a Manager.

Juggalos. And more Juggalos.

In brief: We have our first tropics themed forecast post of the season today, as heavy rainfall in the Southeast may also have some lower-end tropical entanglement to watch. We also discuss the coverage plan for the season and some other weatherly tidbits.

The Eyewall in 2026

Happy Wednesday. We’re getting closer to hurricane season, which is usually when the pace of our posts increases! My apologies to your inbox. Anyway, our plan for this coming season is much like it has been the last few seasons of The Eyewall: We will post every day or two and more frequently when storms are threatening. There may be times where we have to take a few extra days off, as we’re both navigating life! But as always, all of our posts will be public facing and freely available, and we will keep comments open to all this season. We will continue to post both on Substack and The Eyewall’s website, so readers can pick the source best for them. We certainly would love for you to subscribe to our Substack, as it is our way of being able to send out emailed posts en masse and also offers a way to support our work. Paying members support our work for all, but we will hopefully put at least something together unique for you as well at some point later this year, be it a live chat, AMA, or something else. Your support and generosity are greatly appreciated. With my eventual relocation from Houston to the Northeast, I will also probably be including a few more Northeast Corridor related nuggets in here too.

Severe Weather: Not entirely dormant

We’re actually likely heading into a period of somewhat calmer conditions over the coming days, as severe weather risks focus mostly on localized areas from time to time.

Again, that’s not to say severe weather won’t happen. It probably will. It’s May, and we’re heading into June. However, any sort of large scale, significant or long-duration events don’t seem likely to crop up anytime soon. It will be stormy in spots, however, including today in the Mid-Atlantic where a slight risk (level 2/5) is in place.

Flooding chances: Watching the Southeast

And that dovetails into our flooding conversation. It does look quite wet over the next 7 to 10 days or so in the South.

Texas has seen a good deal of rain over the last 7 to 10 days, and while storms will continue to pester the state at times, the better chances will probably shift into the Panhandle and New Mexico as we go into next week. We’ll probably have to start watching some of the burn scars in New Mexico for flash flooding potential.

However, the Southeast is where the focus will now be for the most heavy rain and flooding potential. Precip over the next 2 weeks is expected to average well above normal in Florida and along the eastern Gulf Coast.

While these areas have been dry, obviously when you start talking about isolated pockets of 4 to 8 inches of rain, even over a 10-to-14-day period, that’s a lot and can lead to flooding risk.

Tropics: Something weak in the Gulf stirring in early June? If you squint.

And that dovetails into our tropics conversation. Hurricane season begins on Monday, if you were not aware. We don’t currently see any real threats at this point. That said, within this funnel of moisture aimed at Florida and the Southeast and Gulf Coast, we may begin to see the risk of a disturbance forming by accident in the Gulf.

What does that mean? We’re heading into June, so we’re not talking about anything aesthetically pleasing or textbook here. Early season systems tend to be weak and sloppy but moisture laden. And they often form in the Gulf. With all this moisture being directed south to north across the Gulf, there will inevitably be a disturbance or two in the flow. When that happens, you may briefly open a window for tropical development. Right now, odds favor that *not* happening, but I just want to plant the seed, a.) because again, to emphasize, early season systems are not usually strong and b.) this is definitely a high moisture pattern capable of producing flooding.

When could this happen? Later next week or weekend. Based on the map from the European ensemble shown near the top of this section, that seems to be the timeframe we may be looking at. Notably, AI modeling, both from the European Centre and from Google show nothing really.

What should happen, regardless, is a pickup in early season activity in the Eastern Pacific, however. Models hint at some activity there.

So, do you need to worry about a Gulf system? No, but you should be monitoring rainfall forecasts over the next 10 days in Florida and along the eastern Gulf Coast. More to come!

This is the story of two libraries supporting one another to ensure physical preservation and broad access to great research collections. 

The first is the NOAA Library, an institution that was established in the early 1970s, building on the inheritance of previous US Federal agency libraries, including those of the National Weather Service, United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, and Bureau of Commercial Fisheries of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. The NOAA Library primarily serves the employees and affiliates that have full access to the library’s e-resources and physical holdings. Members of the public can access NOAA publications through the NOAA Institutional Repository or the NOAA Library’s digitized holdings.

The second is the Internet Archive. Having recently celebrated its 30th birthday, the Internet Archive has strong capabilities in digitizing materials at scale as well as safeguarding physical materials in physical archives.

Both libraries are part of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP). NOAA received the honor of being named the FDLP Library of the year in 1999, while the Internet Archive is the new to the network, having joined in 2025. NOAA’s current FDLP status as a digital access partner made connecting with the Internet Archive a natural decision.

The NOAA Library and the Internet Archive have been working together collaboratively since 2022 when NOAA first donated materials they no longer deemed to be in scope as per the Library’s collection development policy. This collection, however, fell into the Internet Archive’s mission to provide Universal Access to All Knowledge by acquiring, digitizing, and hosting materials just like this. Since that time, the two libraries have continued to collaborate, sharing a goal and vision of making these materials more available. NOAA collections fit nicely into the Internet Archive’s Democracy’s Library, which seeks to give broad access to government publications, including those from US Federal agencies and other parts of government.

Liz Rosenberg, who leads the physical donation program, describes the relationship this way. “A lot of folks do not know that we preserve physical materials. So when NOAA reached out to explore this kind of collaboration we were so grateful for the opportunity to help preserve valuable resources from their collections. Our partnership has blossomed over years of collaboration with wonderful NOAA librarians, and we are excited to be bringing broader digital access to their unique collections.”

Ben Hope, director of the NOAA Library also values the partnership. “Libraries are at their best when they combine stewardship with access,” says Hope. “Our partnership with the Internet Archive ensures that NOAA’s scientific and historical collections are not only preserved for future generations, but also made more discoverable and accessible to researchers, educators, and the public worldwide. Together, we are extending the reach and impact of NOAA’s knowledge far beyond the walls of any single library.”

Please check out the digital collections as we are collaboratively building. The NOAA collections contain a wealth of resources around weather, fisheries, deep sea exploration and more! https://archive.org/details/noaa 

If you are interested in donating materials or know of other potential collaborations, please contact us.

Hi. So I have this collection.

It is a significant collection. At its peak in February 2022, it was worth—conservatively—$2.3 million. Seriously. I have documentation. I will show you the documentation.

I am asking $400 for all 847 pieces. This is not a joke. The $400 is firm, but also, I want to be clear, extremely negotiable.

Included in the collection: monkeys (184), punks (37), one dragon, several generative art pieces which are colorful squiggles, a plot of virtual land in a world where no one goes anymore, and a JPEG of a rock. The rock was considered very funny at the time.

ALSO AVAILABLE:

• Microsoft Zune, 30GB, brown. Still works. Has 847 songs on it, all of which are also available on Spotify. Was going to “change” music. $6.
• Patrick Nagel print, framed, from 1987. Original. This is an investment piece—$400, firm. Do not lowball me on the Nagel. The Nagel is not part of the NFT deal. The Nagel is separate. I need you to understand that.
• Physical Bitcoin wallet, 2011, unknown balance. I cannot remember the password. I have tried everything. My dog’s name, my dog’s birthday, “password123” twice. It is possible there is $4 million on this. It is possible there is nothing. I am asking $50, and I will include my remaining attempts. The Nagel is still separate. Do not ask me to bundle the Nagel.

FREE WITH ANY PURCHASE:

• Apple Vision Pro, 256GB, silver, both prescription lens inserts, all original packaging, fourteen downloaded apps. Retailed for $3,500. Wore it twice. Once at home, once in a Whole Foods, from which I was asked to leave. Includes the case, the battery pack, the charging cable, and whatever dignity I had left when I bought it.

Free without any purchase also.

Please.

Cash, Venmo, PayPal. absolutely no crypto. I cannot stress this enough.

Serious inquiries only. All inquiries welcome.

Today's links

• AI and a world without migrants: It's solipsism all the way down.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Manuscript rabbits; "What Will Come After"; Pastejacking; Terrorism phrenology; Vaccine waivers were promised 20 years ago.
• Upcoming appearances: London, Kansas City, LA, Menlo Park, Toronto, NYC, Edinburgh.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

AI and a world without migrants (permalink)

I don't care who you are, there will always be times when hell is other people. Not because other people are horrible – quite the opposite! Other people are wonderful, but boy are they ever stubborn.

From boardgames to romance, team sports to movement politics, business ideas to construction projects, there's so much important, enjoyable and essential stuff you can't do alone. But other people insist on having their own priorities and goals, and they mulishly refuse to organize their lives to suit your priorities.

Our species has put a lot of work into resolving this conundrum. Not only did we evolve a whole brain structure – the neocortex – that helps us understand others' perspectives, but we also evolved many social structures (like laws and teams and governments and families and committees and bureaucracies) to help us coordinate with others to do superhuman things (that is, things that exceed the capacity of a single human).

These structures are imperfect, but they're better than the alternative: coercion. Persuading others is not without its pitfalls, but compared to forcing others to bend to your will, "persuasion" is the hands-down favorite.

Not for everyone, though. There has always been a group of people who refused to acknowledge that other people have perfectly valid reasons for wanting to pursue their own goals rather than yours. We call most of those people "toddlers" and devote sizable social effort to helping them outgrow this belief.

But there's another group of people who carry this belief into adulthood. If they're of regular means, we call those people "bullies." However, if they're sufficiently wealthy, we call them "billionaires" (this is the same force that allows money to transmute a "hoarder" into a "collector").

Just lately though, we've come up with a new solution to the problem of hell being other people. Rather than coercing other people into arranging their affairs to suit our needs, we've devoted trillions of dollars to replacing people with pliant chatbots, in the hopes that these chatbots can be made so effective that we can just dispense with other people altogether.

Many everyday people have replaced their romantic partners with chatbots ("AI boyfriends"/"AI girlfriends"), and they've formed active communities to revel in the delights of pursuing love with someone who demands no moral consideration or compromise, glorying in a world of love without lovers:

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/1353-the-naked-emperor/episode/16215328-e1-love-bots

There's a whole community of people who have stopped listening to music created by people in favor of made-to-order slop, exulting in a world of music without musicians:

https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/937059/nobody-wants-to-tell-me-why-they-only-listen-their-own-suno-slop

These are foundationally solipsistic exercises, fantasy worlds in which you are the only real person and everyone else is a bot, an NPC, a phantom. AI has democratized solipsism, a privilege that was once the exclusive purview of billionaires, whose belief that most other people weren't fully real let them inflict the kind of mass pain on millions that is a prerequisite for amassing a truly vast fortune:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/18/seeing-like-a-billionaire/#npcs

No surprise then that billionaires were easy marks for AI hustlers, who promised the possibility of a world without people, where an army of "agents" could do the jobs that presently demand the contributions of unreasonable human beings who refuse to acknowledge that your priorities trump theirs.

Jeff Bezos built the world's most advanced automated warehouses, and the workers in those warehouses are seriously injured at 300% of the national rate, and they are not allowed pee breaks (nevertheless, these workers unreasonably insist on metabolizing fluids and expelling the waste). The automation and the injuries aren't unrelated facts. The inhumane treatment is caused by the automation, because when you commit hundreds of billions to automation capex, you need to work those assets to recoup the investment. In a human/machine collaboration, humans will always be the bottlenecks. To maximize return on automation, you need to drive the human peripherals that serve the machines at the absolute limit of human endurance. Jeff Bezos's machines don't just use humans, they use them up:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/27/rancid-vibe-coding/#class-war

Billionaires poured trillions into AI because they are obsessed with the fantasy of a world without people. Mark Zuckerberg would like to replace your on-platform friends with chatbots. Sure, your friends are the reason you're stuck on his platforms, but your friends are stubborn and thus suboptimal. Remember: hell is other people, so while your friends unreasonably refuse to leave Facebook with you and follow you to another platform (this is bad for you, but good for Zuck), they also refuse to organize their social media lives to "maximize your engagement" and thus the number of ads you see (which is bad for Zuck). By replacing your friends with chatbots, Zuck hopes to reinvent social media without the socializing:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/17/for-youze/#forever

Billionaires are betting that bosses (and other would-be billionaires) will spend trillions buying AI products, captured by the fantasy of a workplace without workers. They think AI could be the remedy for the ancient, nameless dread that bosses experience every time they contemplate the fact that if they don't show up for work, everything hums along fine; whereas if the workers don't show up, the whole enterprise collapses. Secretly, bosses are haunted by the fear that they're not driving the car, they're strapped into the back seat, amusing themselves with a toy steering-wheel:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/05/fisher-price-steering-wheel/#billionaire-solipsism

That's what the Hollywood strikes were about: studio bosses' fantasy of movies without actors and screenplays without screenwriters. Since the invention of the studio system itself, studio bosses have wrestled with the fact that talented people who are beloved by audiences have bargaining leverage, which they use to demand better outputs and higher wages (this is the same conundrum faced by hospital administrators confronting nurses and doctors, college administrators confronting faculty, etc):

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/20/i-would-prefer-not-to/#i-cant-do-that-boss

This solipsistic drive is what powers investment in AI "persuasion" technologies, making billions for latter-day Cambridge Analyticas who peddle the outlandish tale of having built a mind-control ray. It's a winning sales-pitch because it plays into the fantasy of a world where customers do as they're told, organizing their lives according to your priorities, at the expense of their own wellbeing:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/07/rah-rah-rasputin/#credulous-dolts

It's not just captains of industry who are occupied with furious, all-consuming fantasies of a world without people. Dictators, autocrats and technocrats in the political world love AI because it dangles the possibility of a world without bureaucrats and public officials. If the civil service can be replaced with chatbots, then the will of the dictator can be translated directly into policy without any tedious negotiations with experts who understand how things work and have deep moral commitments to the public good:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/13/vibe-governance/#k-hole

A world without people is especially attractive to politicians presiding over aging, declining nations whose most ardent voters have been convinced that migrants are a threat to their nation (rather than its salvation).

Objectively speaking, the only way that a rich country with an aging workforce can remain wealthy and powerful is by wooing working-age people from elsewhere to migrate to that country. Even if every tradwife is kept in a state of continuous gestation courtesy of a fertility-obsessed natalist, there's still going to be decades during which your wealthy, aging population will need young, skilled people to do all the essential labor. From picking crops, to staffing hospitals, to building homes, to filing lawsuits, to preparing tax-returns, your quiverfull child army will be too young to take over for years to come.

Trapped in the political impossibility of a country whose productive activities are absolutely reliant on young, strong, resourceful, skilled migrants, and a xenophobic political movement that scapegoats these migrants and revels in the spectacle of ethnic cleansing, politicians see AI as a way out of their double-bind. If migrants can be replaced with AI, then you can satisfy the racist sadism of your most ardent voters without shutting down the country for lack of workers.

In other words: in feeding the fantasy of a world without people, AI serves the fantasy of a world without migrants. Unlike gastarbeiters, bracero fruit-pickers and Saudi quasi-slaves, AI makes no demands, requires no moral consideration, and does not attempt to germinate a culture, a cuisine, or a language in your sacred soil.

This grotesque fantasy has always lurked in the subtext of the automation story. The plot of Disney's Big Hero 6 boils down to: "In future-America/Japan, it will be more politically possible to have robots look after our aging parents than it will be to welcome the millions of skilled health-workers in the Pacific Rim who are eminently qualified to do the job." Big Hero 6 is the solution to the problem of building a nursing home without nurses.

The wealthy have always dreamed of transforming the proletariat into the precariat: desperate workers who do as they're told. But in the automation story of which AI is the latest chapter (and purportedly the climax), the precariat becomes the unnecessariat: workers who are surplus to requirements and can be vaporized or liquidated or warehoused or simply ignored.

In the fantasy world of total automation, the owners of AI can make the world go around without any of us, which means that we will exist solely at their sufferance, and will therefore have to act like the NPCs they half-believe we are already, organizing everything we do around their priorities.

This is the foundation of Sam Altman's obsession with a biometrically controlled universal basic income. Altman can't stop fantasizing about a world in which all the productive work is done by his software, and the state's sole purpose is to supply us – the unnecessariat – with vouchers we can only redeem for services provided by Altman's robot army. It's charter schools for everything, with Altman at the top, all wrapped up in a layer of dystopian retinal scanning:

https://www.wired.com/story/worldcoin-sam-altman-orb/

Billionaires and would-be billionaires are absolute suckers for this solipsistic bullshit, because they genuinely don't think other people are real. They love "effective altruism" because it counsels them to make as much money as possible, without regard to how many people they cheat, hurt, or kill…provided that they pledge to use these ill-gotten gains to improve the lives of 10^53 imaginary artificial people who will come into existence in 10,000 years. After all, the total benefit of even the most infinitesimal welfare gains experienced by 10^53 people vastly exceeds all the pleasures that all eight billion actual, living people are capable of experiencing:

https://www.semafor.com/article/11/21/2023/how-effective-altruism-led-to-a-crisis-at-openai

It all makes perfect sense – provided you don't believe that other people are really, truly real.

Hey look at this (permalink)

• EU's digital sovereignty boo-boo may be the best thing to ever happen to the project https://www.theregister.com/systems/2026/05/26/eus-digital-sovereignty-boo-boo-may-be-the-best-thing-to-ever-happen-to-the-project/5244715

• Revealed: Palantir’s NHS tech is ten times slower than current system https://democracyforsale.substack.com/p/revealed-palantirs-nhs-tech-is-ten-times-slower-than-nhs-thiel-trump

• The human cost of governing by spreadsheet https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/21-05-2026/the-human-cost-of-governing-by-spreadsheet

• Canadian prime minister Mark Carney is not the climate guy you thought
  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/21/mark-carney-climate-canada

• It's time to talk about my writerdeck https://veronicaexplains.net/my-first-writerdeck/

Object permanence (permalink)

#15yrsago California prison overcrowding, in photos https://web.archive.org/web/20110525171353/https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/05/california-prison-overcrowding-photos

#15yrsago What Will Come After: the sweet melancholy of the zombie apocalypse https://memex.craphound.com/2011/05/25/what-will-come-after-the-sweet-melancholy-of-the-zombie-apocalypse/

#10yrsago If Donald Trump ever talks to a real journalist, these are the questions he should answer https://www.nationalmemo.com/21-questions-for-donald-trump

#10yrsago Norwegian Consumer Council broadcasts live, marathon reading of app Terms of Service https://web.archive.org/web/20160526145553/https://www.forbrukerradet.no/vilkar-og-personvern-minutt-for-minutt/

#10yrsago Pastejacking: using malicious javascript to insert sneaky text into pasted terminal commands https://github.com/dxa4481/Pastejacking

#10yrsago Why medieval monks filled manuscript margins with murderous rabbits https://web.archive.org/web/20160614000551/https://jonkanekojames.com/2015/05/02/why-are-there-violent-rabbits-in-the-margins-of-medieval-manuscripts/

#10yrsago Students: court orders government agencies to offer educational discount on FOIA requests https://web.archive.org/web/20160525155102/https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160521/16031934508/appeals-court-tells-government-it-must-extend-educational-institution-foia-fee-price-break-to-students.shtml

#10yrsago The euphemisms news reporters use when a sports figure injures his penis and testicles https://web.archive.org/web/20160525125452/https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/media-groin-draymond-green-steven-adams/

#10yrsago Company says facial features reveal terrorists and pedophiles 80% of the time https://web.archive.org/web/20160525130941/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/05/24/terrorist-or-pedophile-this-start-up-says-it-can-out-secrets-by-analyzing-faces/

#5yrsago We promised this vaccine waiver 20 years ago https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/25/the-other-shoe-drops/#quid-pro-quo

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• SXSW London, Jun 2
  https://www.sxswlondon.com/session/how-big-tech-broke-the-internet-b3c4a901

• Kansas City: Facing the Future (Woodneath Library Center), Jun 10
  https://www.mymcpl.org/events/119655/facing-future-cory-doctorow

• LA: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Brian Merchant (Skylight Books), Jun 19
  https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-cory-doctorow-presents-reverse-centaurs-guide-life-after-ai-w-brian-merchant

• Menlo Park: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Angie Coiro (Kepler's), Jun 21
  https://www.keplers.org/upcoming-events-internal/cory-doctorow-2026

• Toronto: TBA, Jun 23

• NYC: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Jonathan Coulton (The Strand), Jun 24
  https://www.strandbooks.com/cory-doctorow-the-reverse-centaur-s-guide-to-life-after-ai.html

• Philadelphia: TBA, Jun 25

• Chicago: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Rick Perlstein (Exile in Bookville), Jun 26
  https://exileinbookville.com/events/50628

• Edinburgh International Book Festival with Jimmy Wales, Aug 17
  https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/events/the-front-list-cory-doctorow-and-jimmy-wales

Recent appearances (permalink)

• On Enshittification – and what can be done about it (Re:publica)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhINQgPMVSI

• EFFecting Change: How to Disenshittify the Internet (EFF, with Wendy Liu)
  https://archive.org/details/effecting-change-enshittification

• The “Enshittification” of Everything (Bioneers)
  https://bioneers.org/cory-doctorow-enshittification-of-everything-zstf2605/

• Enshittification (99% Invisible)
  https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/666-enshittification/

• Artificial Intelligence: The Ultimate Disruptor, with Astra Taylor and Yoshua Bengio (CBC Ideas)
  https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-23-ideas/clip/16210039-artificial-intelligence-the-ultimate-disruptor

Latest books (permalink)

• "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce

• "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).

• "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.

• "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

Upcoming books (permalink)

• "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/)

• "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

• "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

• "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027

• "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Third draft completed. Submitted to editor.

• "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.

• "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

How to get Pluralistic:

Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

Pluralistic.net

Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://pluralistic.net/plura-list

Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic

Bluesky (no ads, possible tracking and data-collection):

https://bsky.app/profile/doctorow.pluralistic.net

Medium (no ads, paywalled):

https://doctorow.medium.com/

Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic

"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

ISSN: 3066-764X

In brief: A bowing line of thunderstorms moved through the Houston region early on Wednesday, but we think this is our final serious disturbance for awhile. Roads should be fine for the morning commute. Our weather turns warmer, and sunnier to start the weekend.

Wednesday morning wombo combo

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been awake since the wee hours of this morning thanks to a line of strong thunderstorms, some of which were severe. I’m not sure if it was the wind, the thunder and lightning, or the heavy rainfall, but following yet another round of storms this morning I found it difficult to fall back asleep. Most of the region picked up between 1 and 2 inches overnight, with additional light to moderate rain expected to keep falling for a few more hours this morning.

If you’re like me and you’re tired of being woken up by bowing lines of storms making a lot of noise, you’re in luck. After this morning our overall pattern should turn fairly calm. That’s not to say we may not see some additional showers in the coming days, but we’re very unlikely to see these kinds of storms for at least the next week, if not longer. In fact our pattern is starting to look very much like summer lite in Houston, which makes sense as June starts in a few days.

Wednesday

We are seeing light showers across much of Houston this morning, but the main line of storms has already progressed into Louisiana. To our south there is another complex of storms advancing to the northeast. My best guess is that this will weaken over the next few hours, but we could see some additional rain into the early afternoon hours, and I suppose a few additional thunderstorms are possible. We should start to see some clearing skies later this afternoon, but high temperatures will probably hold in the lower 80s. Today’s forecast high may be our “coolest” daytime temperature until October, even if it is rather humid. A few scattered showers are possible tonight, with lows dropping to around 70 degrees.

Thursday

This has the look of a partly to mostly sunny day, with high temperatures in the mid- to upper 80s. There is perhaps a 20 or 30 percent chance of showers. Winds appear to be light, from the east. Lows on Thursday night will be a few degrees warmer, in the mid-70s.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday

We will enter a warmer pattern over the weekend, with daytime highs in the vicinity of 90 degrees, and overnight lows in the mid-70s. Skies on Friday will be mostly sunny, but by Saturday and Sunday there could be a few more clouds in the mix. Winds will generally be the from the south, and not too active, likely peaking at 10 mph during the afternoon hours. A chance of rain returns on Sunday afternoon or evening, but from this vantage point the overall likelihood of precipitation appears fairly low.

Next week

Better rain chances return Monday and Tuesday, but I’m not anticipating anything serious. Temperatures remain around 90 degrees, although there’s a chance we see some slightly drier air move in during the middle of the week. Could we squeeze out one or two nights in the 60s? Probably not, given the time of year, but there’s at least a puncher’s chance.

The highly dramatic—if not as thoroughly entertaining as advertised—U.S. Senate Republican runoff between Ken Paxton and John Cornyn ended about as soon as counties started reporting their early vote totals Tuesday night, with the attorney general challenger leading by around 20 points (a lead that would grow as the evening went on)—effectively skunking the incumbent. 

This, of course, was little surprise by the time it came to pass—after President Donald Trump made a late endorsement for Paxton in the race last week. The political winds were always at Paxton’s back, while running headlong against Cornyn, who was irreparably tagged as an anti-Trump RINO, a squishy moderate in an era that demands battle-hardened “warriors”—those whose total fealthy to Trump is unquestioned. 

Cornyn had hoped to pull off a rare incumbent runoff victory as Trump stayed on the sidelines through much of the race. But the well-over-$100 million that he and his allied GOP groups pumped into ads blasting out Paxton’s numerous and varied scandals—from letting a charged child sex offender off with a sweetheart deal to his alleged self-dealing while in office, to his sordid extramarital affairs and on and on—did nothing but line the pockets of local Texas TV affiliates. 

Cornyn had repeatedly stated that Judgment Day would come for Paxton on runoff night. And the judgment that came was that the base of the party wants: more Ken Paxton. 

So down goes Cornyn, the silver-haired senior senator from Texas who spent nearly 40 years in elected office in the Lone Star State, riding into power as a district court judge, Supreme Court justice, and state attorney general—as the GOP built up its majorities and disassembled the Democratic Party—and meticulously building upon that power. 

He got to the U.S. Senate almost 25 years ago, serving through five presidencies and four presidents. He was an emblem for the sort of country club, Chamber of Commerce conservatism that helped Republicans win power in Texas and nationwide, then waned as Trumpism and right-wing hardliners ascended. 

Paxton, meanwhile, has been a key tribune of that hardline ascendancy in Texas. His political career has been prematurely eulogized with some frequency over the course of his 11 years as state AG: when he was first indicted on state securities fraud charges; when his top aides blew the whistle to the FBI accusing him of official corruption; when he was primaried by well-heeled challengers in 2022; when he was impeached by Republicans in the Texas House; when he was put on trial in the Texas Senate; when rumors of coming federal indictments swirled and swirled; when his wife and state Senator Angela Paxton publicly divorced him on “biblical grounds,” citing his repeated infidelity just as he began to launch his Senate bid; when his right-wing big donors in Texas declined to finance his Senate run; when Cornyn performed strongly in the March primary and Trump was rumored to be throwing his endorsement behind the incumbent. And on and on. 

Ken Paxton has repeatedly proven himself to have the politician’s equivalent of nine lives; he’s the Kevlar Ken to Teflon Don. 

Now, he will face off in what will be a very high-profile, very expensive general election contest against Democratic nominee and Austin state Representative James Talarico. National politics observers are already handicapping the race to benefit Democrats because of Paxton’s unique weaknesses as a candidate. And there may be some truth to that. Surely Talarico has a much better chance of pulling off a generational upset in Texas against Paxton rather than the staid Cornyn. 

But those who bet against Paxton do so at their own peril. As he’s proven time and time again, his perceived weaknesses have repeatedly morphed into political strengths. 

His victory Tuesday marks the final, if somewhat superfluous, nail in the coffin of the so-called Bush era of Republican politics in Texas.

Republican state Representative Mitch Little, who ascended to office after serving as one of Paxton’s defense attorneys in the AG’s impeachment trial, tweeted Tuesday evening the poem “Ozymandias”, which muses on the grandiose hubris of rulers and the fleeting nature of their power. 

Paxton’s celebratory watch party up in Plano was attended by troves of enthusiastic supporters. The only ones who showed  up for Cornyn’s impending political funeral were, apparently, members of the media. 

In his somber farewell address in downtown Austin, Cornyn mentioned Paxton not once, saying only that he’d support the Republican ticket writ-large. Bidding adieu, Cornyn went with a quote from Teddy Roosevelt’s “Man in the Arena” speech. 

Prior to that, however, the senator did get in some final ribbing shortly before the polls closed. Asked about his decision not to pull his negative ads against Paxton, he told CNN: “He’s gotten away with so much for so long and not been held accountable for it, but I think he is an embarrassment … and he’s completely unrepentant.” 

The post Judgment Day Comes for John Cornyn appeared first on The Texas Observer.

And so Colin Allred’s three-year journey through the wilderness of ambition ends more or less where it began.

In May 2023, the NFL player-turned-civil rights attorney announced he was leaving behind a deep-blue U.S. House district composed largely of Dallas County residents. On Tuesday night, he effectively won a deep-blue U.S. House district composed entirely of Dallas County residents. In ordinal terms, he budged an integer: from the 32nd to the 33rd. 

In between, he established himself as a politically mercurial, occasionally perplexing figure in Texas Democratic politics—the final avatar of statewide liberal hopes in those murky middle ages between Beto O’Rourke’s 2018 near-win and this year’s (projected) blue wave of possibility. 

His 2024 campaign for U.S. Senate is generally discussed as a cautionary tale, his overreliance on TV ads and weak reach among even the Dem base treated as missteps to be avoided this time around. This is what today’s Democratic Senate hopeful, James Talarico, referred to earlier this year as “mediocre” (more on that in a moment). 

One could see this narrative as unfair; after all, Allred did run 5 points ahead of Kamala Harris by margin of defeat. But, when your opponent is Ted Cruz, you’ll simply always be held to a higher standard, and a 9-point loss just can’t be spun into a moral victory. That, and, well, the vibes were what they were.

In his fruitless bid, the flat-affected Allred dutifully moved to the right where the consultant class had deemed it necessary. He came out against trans youth participation in athletics, in a confusing and bloodless way; he voted for a mendacious GOP resolution against “open borders” and even praised the announcement of new border wall under President Joe Biden—something the president himself had described as an unfortunate legal inevitability. Some five years prior, when first campaigning for the House, Allred had called the border wall “racist” and said his generation would “tear it down.” 

It all amounted to little at the polls, even after he raked in a record-breaking fundraising haul. The following year, when he announced he was trying again for the Senate, the reception was sufficiently lukewarm that Talarico, an unseasoned state House representative from Austin, was undeterred from jumping in—as was Dallas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, who stepped over Allred and into the race herself on the last possible day, a move that caused Allred to begrudgingly lower his sights and aim to recover a spot in the House.

He took with him the money from his Senate bid, which helped give him a significant cash advantage over Congresswoman Julie Johnson—who had succeeded Allred in his old district before last year’s Trump-mandated gerrymandering yanked the seat from under her. Johnson was less than pleased with Allred’s last-minute entry, and she tried to paint him as a parachute candidate, but she was defeated by about 8 points in the runoff nomination contest Tuesday. The general election will be a formality.

The stakes and meaning of the Allred-Johnson runoff were exquisitely murky. “This is not a classic progressive versus moderate war the way that it used to be in the Democratic Party, but there are definitely shades of a more centrist coalition-focused Democrat like Allred, who is challenging a more progressive activist-oriented Johnson,” an oft-cited political science professor told an Observer reporter last month. 

Indeed, these “shades” bordered on invisible. If Johnson was the progressive—and she did rightfully hit Allred for his reactionary posturing on immigration—she was a progressive amply supported by AIPAC who’d trade shares in Palantir. And if Allred was the moderate, he was a moderate who now said things like: “ICE has to go. I think we should get rid of ICE, abolish ICE, whatever you want to call it”—while being backed by the Texas AFL-CIO and by Crockett, who in her own convoluted primary, which ended cleanly in March, found herself painted as the progressive.

Somewhere back in the haze of all this, after Allred switched races but before Talarico won his Senate nomination, Allred also engaged in perhaps the most interesting and pointless of his political interventions over the past few years. Clearly aggrieved at the party’s passing him over, he latched in early February onto comments made by an influencer, who had relayed that Talarico had privately called Allred a “mediocre Black man” (to which Talarico has responded that he simply referred to Allred’s campaign as mediocre). 

In a straight-to-camera broadside, Allred told Talarico, referencing the latter’s frequent deployment of liberal Christianity: “You are not saving religion for the Democratic Party or the left. We already have Senator Reverend Dr. Raphael Warnock for that. We don’t need you.”

He endorsed Crockett, called Talarico a “hater,” and advised: “Don’t come for me unless I send for you.”

Recall: This was a candidate who seemed to be studiously unstimulating, to the dismay of many Democrats, throughout the ’24 cycle. It was an (admittedly entertaining) outburst almost impossible to fit with what came before, and it amounted to little—as Talarico prevailed by a solid margin a month later. Allred has since, though without much enthusiasm, said that he will back the Democrat for Senate after all.

So it is that the pursuit of power can make any of us seem a bit silly, and yet victory releases us from the past. Now is not the time for relitigation; it is the moment for shielding one’s eyes from the blazing dumpster fire that is the Republican side of these runoffs, and for acknowledging a man who left his haters, whoever they may be, behind. 

You can’t go home again, but Colin Allred came close Tuesday night.

The post The Eternal Recurrence of Colin Allred appeared first on The Texas Observer.

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

1. I cry when people give me compliments

So … the subject line kind of says it all. I cry when people give me compliments. Not a “you look nice today” kind of compliment, but the sincere, drawn-out, vulnerable kind. I always have and I’m not sure why, other than maybe I’m just a Very Emotional Person, although I’m generally even-keeled and not prone to emotional outbursts.

I am a manager whose department is going through a reorganization, so I am switching teams and direct reports. I’ve worked with my current team for about three years and they are a wonderful group. I think I have very healthy boundaries, but also when you’ve been someone’s manager for three years, it’s hard not to develop some kind of attachment to them. People have shared very private and personal things with me, I’ve done what I can to support them through intensely difficult times, etc.

The transition phase for this reorg was deliberately a bit lengthy, so it’s been a very drawn-out goodbye. At the last couple of team retros, some of the team members have talked about what I’ve meant to the team, how much they’ll miss me, the impact I’ve had, etc. I cried both times. Then I’ve been doing a round of last 1:1s and one of my employees really opened their heart up about how much they’ve enjoyed working with me. And I cried then too.

I am glad to hear the feedback and happy to know that our working relationship was positive for them too. But I’m so mortified that I cry! And trust me, I do not have a pretty cry face (does anybody?). I wish I could just say, “Thank you, that means a lot” and get on with my life the way everyone else seems to. I’ve apologized for crying and told them I’m embarrassed, but they just say things like, “Don’t be embarrassed! It’s because you care so much that it’s emotional for you, and that level of care is what makes you such a great manager!” which has triggered more crying.

I don’t want to tell them to not express their appreciation. So maybe I should talk to a therapist about why I cry at compliments? Or just embrace the sensitive and sentimental side of myself? Or try really hard to disassociate when people give me compliments?

Aw, I think it’s okay that you’re crying in these situations. But you’re probably making it more awkward than it needs to be when you tell people you’re embarrassed by it, so I’d stop doing that. You can just say, “Thank you, that means a lot to me — as you can see!”

I’d be more concerned if you were crying in other situations, like when someone disagrees with you or you get difficult feedback, because that can make people reluctant to have those conversations with you in the future and can make it seem like you can’t handle pretty routine parts of professional life. But crying because someone has moved you with an expression of appreciation is a different thing.

I’m assuming you’re not, like, sobbing when this happens — if you are, then yes, that’s something worth talking with a therapist about. But getting a little teary? Totally fine in this context, and you might find it less embarrassing if you decide to just be matter-of-fact about it!

2. Was I wrong to say I’d miss a deadline if I was assigned more work?

I work at a small web development company with about 20 employees. I’m a regular employee, not a manager or even a senior employee. We work 32 hours a week but are paid for 35. We’re supposed to have Fridays off, but we need to remain available for “emergencies.” I have mixed feelings about this: since we’re paid for 35 hours, it’s hard to complain if we end up working three hours on a Friday, but it also means we can’t plan anything for that day.

From March through April, I was assigned to a stressful project with unrealistic deadlines. During those eight weeks, I worked at least 35 hours every week, and on two consecutive weeks I worked 40 hours. Any hours above 35 went into a time bank to be used later for appointments and such. I was doing my part to get the project delivered.

During the final week of the project, my project manager asked during a daily stand-up how she could support me through the end of the project. I replied, “Everything is on track. The only thing I need is not to be assigned additional tasks or projects until the go-live.” I probably added a nervous laugh too.

Two weeks after the project ended, I had my annual review with my manager, Fergus, who is also a developer. Fergus told me I shouldn’t have said that in the stand-up meeting. He said it was insensitive to say I didn’t want more tasks without knowing whether other employees were also working Fridays and overtime. I replied that I had answered honestly because that was genuinely what I needed, and that delivering the project successfully was my priority. He didn’t push the point further, and we moved on with the review.

This has stuck with me. Should I not say what kind of support I need when my project manager asks directly? That feels completely backwards to me. I don’t really know whether my coworkers were also struggling with their workload, but it’s not my responsibility to monitor that. I help when asked and I step in during stand-ups when I can contribute. Was this just Fergus, tired of working Fridays himself, projecting on me because I tried to assert myself?

Your wording seems fine to me. You weren’t saying, “You can’t under any circumstances assign me anything else.” You were saying, “Everything is on track as long as nothing additional gets added on to my plate; if it is, that would change my ability to make the go-live date.”

Is Fergus generally someone who nitpicks wording or has rigid expectations about how people should communicate? If not, I’d chalk this up to him being stressed during a period of high workload, or just a miscommunication where he thought you were refusing to take on anything else, not just explaining how it would affect the first project.

(Also, if you’re exempt, this pay set-up is legal, but if you’re non-exempt, they’re legally required to pay you for all the hours you work — so if you’re paid for 35 hours but work 40 hours, those hours need to be added to your paycheck, not banked for use later.)

3. A terrible singer in a volunteer choir

I’m part of a volunteer choir. While we perform, it’s non-audition so there’s a real focus on having fun. It’s a lovely, fun experience with one exception: one singer in the tenor section sings very loudly and very off-key (in the “peel the enamel from your teeth” fashion), to the point where when he sings I’ve genuinely seen people wince or jump at the sound. It’s like being ambushed by a turkey bashing at a xylophone.

He clearly knows that he sings loudly enough to bother other people but doesn’t particularly care about amending his behavior: he’s made jokes a few times to other people that he’s surprised he hasn’t driven them off with his volume. He also makes a point of coming to stand at the front of his section which – because of the layout in which we stand – means everyone is impacted; some of the alto/soprano parts have tactfully asked other tenors to try and get that seat so we’re not so impacted, but so far there have been no takers! (The impact of the sound is also enhanced by the fact that no one else in his voice part sings particularly loudly, so you only ever hear him.)

I’m sure he’s a perfectly pleasant guy and it’s not his fault if he’s tone-deaf, but the effect this is starting to have on the rest of us (plus the fact that he’s clearly aware there is at least some issue but doesn’t try to correct it) is really having a negative impact. It’s incredibly distracting when we sing together and is starting to affect people’s enjoyment of the choir. Multiple people have said it bothers them, and some even some said they don’t want to come anymore because of it. We suspect that our choir leaders over the years have been aware of this problem, because the tenors have been having far more generic, “let’s try singing that part again” coaching since Turkey Guy joined our ranks. However no leader has seemed to pull him up on this directly, most likely because we’re non-audition and people are never pulled up on “errors” for that reason.

Plenty of people sing rather imperfectly in our choir, but the off-key plus incredibly shrill volume is making this a double whammy. It’s impacting my enjoyment of the choir so much that I’m tempted to lay this out to our choir leader, say how much it bothers multiple people’s enjoyment of the group, and ask if it would be possible to suggest he tone the volume down. As this is a voluntary group though, I don’t know if there’s anything else I should take into account. Any advice?

Yes, you can do that! If it’s driving you and others to consider leaving the group, the leader should know that. You’re not making a demand; you’re saying, “This is affecting the enjoyment I get from participating, and since I’m at the point of considering leaving over it, I wanted to bring it to you and see if anything can be done.”

In general I’d try to avoid speaking for others — but if other people are telling you unprompted that they might leave over it, you’re allowed to reference that too, so the leader is aware it’s not just one excessively sensitive person.

The leader might choose not to do anything about it, but it’s information they should have. And really, dealing with this kind of thing is their responsibility; if it’s the first time a potentially awkward conversation has come up, they’ve been lucky.

4. Should I tell my boss to fire our new hire?

We just hired someone for my team who is, to put it lightly, not doing well. I work on a team of analysts who do a lot of technical writing for a niche industry. There are four levels, and he got hired at level three (so fairly advanced). But so far, he has:
1) failed to complete basic tasks on a reasonable timeline despite handholding from me, my boss, and another coworker,
2) provided work that is riddled with spelling and grammar errors and a lack of basic grasp of the technical concepts, and
3) often been unavailable during standard work hours and non-responsive to time-sensitive requests,
4) while exhibiting a real “I’ve got it, no worries” attitude.

I’ve given him kind but firm feedback when he messes up things that we work on together, and I’ve also been making pretty pointed comments to my boss about my concerns about his performance. My coworkers have expressed similar frustrations/concerns.

Should I straight up suggest to my boss that she should fire him? I’m worried about stepping over the line, but I’m also worried she won’t take action before his probationary period is over, and then we will be stuck with him (it’s very hard to fire people here once they’ve passed that mark).

It’s not overstepping to tell your boss that, having worked with the new hire closely, you don’t think he’s able to do the job that your team needs done. For example, you could say: “I’m concerned that Bob isn’t able to do the work we need from his position, even with feedback, and that if he stays past his probationary period, it will cause real problems for the team.” You could add, “I’d love to say I’ve seen improvement or the potential to improve, but everything I’ve seen so far makes me think that’s unlikely.”

5. Do I need to apologize for my email address?

I am an elder millennial born in 1988. I still use the email address I made up when I was 12 or 13. I have my birth year in my email. Let’s say it’s MyName88@fakename.com.

Recently I found out that the number 88 has an anti-semitic meaning. Had I known or ever heard of this, I would never have put it in my email. My fear was that the “88” in my email will be seen as a dog whistle to certain people. To rectify this, I have made a new email address and am slowly transitioning over to it. But sometimes I forget to use my new one.

I recently applied for a job using the old email address. Total accident — just an error in the slow email transition process. I made it through the first virtual interview and my next step is an in-person interview.

Should I bring up the 88 in my email address during the in person interview? I’d prefer not to dwell on this, but I value integrity too much to let a suspicion like that go uncorrected. I’d rather squash it now so we can move past it.

It’s extremely unlikely that anyone will think that; they’ll assume it’s your birth year or your graduation year or something like that (and I say this as a Jewish person). If you were giving off other signs that you were a giant asshole, then the “88” might be interpreted through that lens, but otherwise you’re fine and no one is likely to suspect you put the number there to let everyone know you hate Jews. You don’t need to bring it up (and shouldn’t).

The post I cry when people give me compliments, a terrible singer in a volunteer choir, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

It’s been a long time since Lottie and Jack shared a smoke.

Jack has clearly been through the wringer! But at least he’s not stuck in the 90s any more. Or is he? That question is probably too complicated to ever answer in comic form, sorry. Some pilots are always just going to be pilots.

BETHESDA, MD—Complaining during his annual physical Tuesday that the narrow tubelike structure offered next to no room for socializing, President Donald Trump decried the lack of space to host parties inside an MRI machine. “It’s so cramped that maybe you can fit one or two foreign dignitaries or CEOs in there at most,” said the president, who upon receiving an MRI scan at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center lamented that the restrictive opening made dancing completely impossible and that a simple conversation was out of the question thanks to the the high-decibel clanging and beeping. “What would the Saudi crown prince or Putin think if I made them squeeze in there and had to explain that I’m not allowed to hang beautiful gold fixtures because metal’s not allowed? Such a disgrace. Seriously, how do you build an MRI without room for a single chandelier?” At press time, Trump had reportedly ordered the MRI machine widened to accommodate 500 guests and had all the annoying magnets removed.

The post Trump Decries Lack Of Space To Host Parties Inside MRI Machine appeared first on The Onion.