Cowboy Who?

Not sure how that happened. I did not think my personal stuff was connected to this. So strange. And just a note, this is not my main bank account. I know it probably looks like a scarily low amount to have in my savings.

Anyway. One second while I try to get this working. Sorry, I know this is super annoying. I can never find the button. Would love for one person to go off of mute and help.

Shit, all right. Sam? It looks like I just Venmo’d you $20. I do not know how that happened. I’m honestly going to need that back. It’s sort of a big deal for me to lose that this week.

Just let me know whenever you can undo or cancel that.

Again, if anybody could go off mute and help me with this, I would seriously appreciate it.

I’m going to close some of these tabs. Not even sure if you can see them. It’s just a lot to have up here and I don’t want you looking at them. They’re mostly food delivery sites. Not from just today. Like, over a few weeks. Which part of my screen are you seeing?

Oh. Okay, I somehow just made my parents call all of you. I’m really sorry. They take a long time on phone calls, so the odds are high that you’ll be stuck on that for a bit. I guess on the bright side, they’ll have something to do. I’m sure you can mute yourself for that, too. Joking.

In all seriousness, if they ask you for money, please do not send it to them.

Let me try to… hmm. Maybe I can do this.

Okay. No. Honest to God, I’m unsure how to work this. Anne, I don’t know how, but I think I actually just walked to USPS and overnighted some old McDonald’s toys to you. I know you don’t have kids and won’t have any use for those. I’m really sorry I did that. I thought I was trying to share my screen.

Yeah, just confirming I did ship that. It cost me $35 because I had a lot of them. Could you actually maybe Venmo me back for that? At this point, I’m hemorrhaging assets that I badly need.

Well, I am now somehow completely locked out of my computer. Assuming you can still hear me. I’m going to dial in with my phone.

Great. I’m back in, can you hear me? I just need one person to verbally acknowledge that this call is happening. Please.

Richard, looks like you sent “jt” in the chat. Not sure if that was an accident or if I should be decoding that. You can chime in anytime to help clear that up.

All right, I’m looking at the call on my other computer.

Weird. Does anybody know who “Yark’s Coffee WiFi” is? They keep leaving and rejoining the call over and over. Can we get that to stop happening? Also, can anyone hear me or see my screen.

Now I’m seeing “Yark’s Coffee Wifi Guest 5G” is also joining, leaving, and rejoining at double the rate. Not sure if I’m the only one seeing that.

Starting to feel like I have totally lost track of time. Does anybody have the time? I can’t see the time on my computer. It’s covered up and I can’t move anything on my screen. I’m going to take my computer with me and check the clock in my living room. Really sorry, ya’ll.

Shit. Absolutely shit. Anne, I’m in your house now. There is no way for me to justify this. I did not mean to interrupt your personal life and see your SpongeBob pajama bottoms. I feel so bad. I’m going to try to go back to my house through that room I was in. Thank you for letting me use your clock. This is embarrassing.

Huh. I’m locked out of that room.

Oh. Wow, I just turned around and it doesn’t even look like I’m in this dimension at all anymore. There is definitely a lot warped about my perception of the space I’m in and I have no concept of my reality whatsoever. Hoping some of you can still hear me.

I’m actually noticing now that my physical body isn’t really here. I feel sort of — floating. Are you guys seeing this? Or, I don’t know. Are you guys around? Not sure how to track down my “screen” or if that concept even flies at this point.

I think I muted myself. I’m trying to press the spacebar with my mind, if that makes sense. Let me know when my audio’s back.

Okay, now… I am feeling sort of one with the universe, if that tracks?

Like, one in the same. Indistinguishable from existence at large.

Whoa, some of those Venmo refunds just came through. Not sure how money works here but thank you so much for that.

Anyway. I’m getting a strong sense that I don’t need to communicate in my present form, so, going to sort of just “be” in an undefined pool of energy for eternity. Let me know if this makes sense.

That’s it for me, everyone.

Thanks for joining.

Bye-bye.

Really quick: how do I leave the meeting?

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

Houston is hard to escape. Development sprawls in every direction—“the blob that ate East Texas” is what the Economist once called the nation’s fourth-most-populous city. The never-ending urban landscape encompassed by the Grand Parkway is larger than the state of Rhode Island. Yet there is a spot in Memorial Park, just a couple of miles west of downtown, where the city disappears. Get out of your car at the Clay Family Eastern Glades, which opened in July 2020 after a major overhaul. This hundred-acre park-within-a-park is the first completed project in the city’s ten-year, $205 million plan for Memorial, the biggest green space in Houston, and it’s a true urban oasis.  Walk across the rain garden and head right. You’ll find a picnic pavilion on…View Original Post

The post Inside the Ambitious Plan to Redesign Houston’s Biggest Park appeared first on Texas Monthly.

This post, my employee refuses to use her coworker’s correct pronouns , was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I am a new manager at a medium sized public library. One of my employees came out as non-binary last summer and has started using a new name, “Alex,” and they/them pronouns. Their new name has been pretty easy for staff to pick up, but the pronouns have been challenging for all of us to varying degrees. I have another employee, “Jane,” who has become adamant that because she is Christian and her religion says there are only two genders, it is discriminatory for us to ask her to use they/them pronouns when referring to Alex. Library management has firmly taken the position that correct pronoun use is of vital importance to customer service and creating an inclusive workplace (and is not optional!) but it took us a while to get there and meanwhile our communications around this issue weren’t entirely clear.

There was an incident a few months ago when Jane cornered Alex and repeatedly demanded from them what “people of faith” are supposed to do because it’s against her religion to use they/them pronouns. During this conversation, Jane repeatedly misgendered Alex, refusing to be corrected to use they/them pronouns. Alex felt harassed, and several other staff members who witnessed the exchange reported concern for Alex’s well-being to management.

Jane was given a verbal warning by her previous supervisor about this behavior. I was coming on as her new supervisor and sat in on the meeting. During the meeting, when trying to explain the issue to Jane, I brought up the concept of intent vs. impact. Jane told me that “intent is reality” and that she felt like we were trying to brainwash her and that she is being discriminated against for being Christian. It was very clear from this conversation that we are living in different realities. Jane was upset by the implication that she hurt another person (because she’s “not a bad person”). We ended this conversation with the acknowledgement that everyone makes mistakes (that doesn’t make us “bad people” — just humans), we’re all learning, and we were hoping to see some improvement in Jane’s pronoun use, or at least an end to the misgendering.

The library has since had an all-staff training about gender identity which explained the differences between sex and gender and underscored the importance of respecting people of all genders, specifically transgender and non-binary people. In the training, the statistic was shared that other people using the correct pronouns can help to reduce depression, suicidal thoughts, and suicide attempts among transgender youth. We hoped that everyone would benefit from this training, but especially Jane.

Because of additional instances of misgendering, Jane has now been issued a written warning. I am at the point where I feel like I have given Jane ample opportunities to improve, and have shown her a lot of grace, trying to remember that everyone is on their own learning journey. I have also reached a wall in terms of the paradox of tolerance.

Is there anything you recommend for getting through to employees who just aren’t listening, or are so stuck in their own perspective they are unable to recognize others’ perspectives as valid? I want to address Jane’s behavior clearly and directly, but also demonstrate that I see her and respect where she is coming from. I recognize that I, too, am stuck in my own perspective to a certain degree, but I also have experience in recognizing and holding multiple people’s truths at once.

Jane’s truth is that she doesn’t respect her colleague’s identity, and she’s not willing to change her behavior to what the organization requires.

By all means, give people some grace and an opportunity to adjust to changes that may not be intuitive to them. But there’s a point where it stops being grace and starts being an acceptance of cruelty toward others. Jane may not see it as cruelty. But I assure you that Alex is experiencing it as cruelty, or worse. So are employees who are watching, some of whom may be concluding that it’s not safe for them at work either.

There are limits to what you should accept at work in the name of tolerance. If Jane told you her religion prevented her from being respectful to someone of another race or religion, I’m guessing you wouldn’t try to give her grace around that; you’d tell her treating colleagues respectfully was non-negotiable, and you’d fire her if she continued to refuse. In fact, the law would require you to do that. A religious accommodation can’t legally be “we will let you violate anti-discrimination laws.”

You sound very focused on wanting to get through to Jane and change her perspective. But it’s not really your role as an employer to change what’s in Jane’s heart. Your role is to clearly explain what behavior is required from her, and hold her accountable to that. She can believe whatever she wants, but she needs to treat everyone at work respectfully and follow your workplace policies.

You cannot give her endless grace, because it’s coming at Alex’s expense (and maybe the expense of others there too).

Your organization rightly decided that it’s committed to respecting people’s correct pronouns, and that it’s not optional. But right now, in practice, you’re letting it be optional for Jane. She either follows your employer’s policy and stops harassing Alex, or she needs to go.

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

When this is all over, I might keep wearing masks.

"Power of Love" coming this Friday!!

Check out http://rexviper.com to grab our songs!!

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/artist/0MkADoxTSnQkNeP02Cbhwx
Apple Music - https://music.apple.com/us/artist/rex-viper/1556322876
iHeartRadio - https://www.iheart.com/artist/rex-viper-35872846/
Bandcamp - https://rexviper.bandcamp.com/
Deezer - https://www.deezer.com/us/artist/125099522

Check out Rex Viper's first music video "Mighty Wings and Hadoukens":
https://youtu.be/QgksfOYP0SI

---
Check out the Band:

Vocals by James Harding from Villainest
http://villainest.bandcamp.com
https://twitter.com/villainest

Lead guitar and mixing by Epic Game Music
http://www.youtube.com/epicgamemusic
https://twitter.com/epicgamemusic

Bass by Squarepainter
https://www.youtube.com/user/squarepainter
https://twitter.com/Squarepainter

Rhythm guitar by James Rolfe
https://twitter.com/cinemassacre

Drums by Jeff Worton
https://www.instagram.com/duke_pukem

Keytar by Kieran Fallon
https://www.twitch.tv/kieeeeern
https://twitter.com/Kieeeeern

Backing vocals & management by Justin Silverman
https://twitter.com/JustySilverman

#PowerofLove #Cinemassacre #JamesRolfe #Backtothefuture

Happy first day of spring!

All of the administrators at Northvale County Public Schools are committed to work-life balance for all of our teachers and staff during these trying pandemic times. We have created a calendar of self-care ideas for you to complete — off the clock, of course. Please upload picture documentation of each day’s item into Teachpoint no later than 11:50 pm on 3/31. Happy relaxing!

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New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

The Power Macintosh 8100 of the mid-90’s has been my most sought-after Mac for many years, so I decided to do a video about it despite there not being any audience demand or interest in such a video.

Please enjoy this awesome content from outside the tube:

The Thing is (Apple Tech Podcast) https://thethingis.libsyn.com/kodi-and-the-ponybros

Cornica https://www.cornica.org

Mac-museum https://www.mac-museum.com

And don't forget to celebrate Retro Macintosh month with "MARCHintosh" this March and every March.

Try it out now! https://codeparade.itch.io/fractal-sound-explorer
Making music and sound effects directly from common fractals was an idea I though of one night, so I just had to try it out to see what it would be like. The results were really interesting and actually helped me understand even more about fractals and chaos.

Source Code:
https://github.com/HackerPoet/FractalSoundExplorer

If you like the things I do and want to support the channel:
https://www.patreon.com/codeparade
https://ko-fi.com/codeparade

If you're a fractal fan, you'll be interested in my other fractal videos too. The playlist is here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh9DXIT3m6N7n4R60eJGPPPnn5LvTXQLY

Music (CC BY 4.0):
Meydän - Underwater
https://meydan.bandcamp.com/album/underwater

Slashdot reader b-dayyy writes: CrowdSec is a massively multiplayer firewall designed to protect Linux servers, services, containers, or virtual machines exposed on the Internet with a server-side agent. It was inspired by Fail2Ban and aims to be a modernized, collaborative version of that intrusion-prevention tool. CrowdSec is free and open-source (under an MIT License), with the source code available on GitHub. It uses a behavior analysis system to qualify whether someone is trying to hack you, based on your logs. If your agent detects such aggression, the offending IP is then dealt with and sent for curation. If this signal passes the curation process, the IP is then redistributed to all users sharing a similar technological profile to 'immunize' them against this IP. The goal is to leverage the power of the crowd to create a real-time IP reputation database. As for the IP that aggressed your machine, you can choose to remedy the threat in any manner you feel appropriate. Ultimately, CrowdSec leverages the power of the community to create an extremely accurate IP reputation system that benefits all its users. It was clear to the founders that Open Source was going to be one of the main pillars of CrowdSec. The project's founders have been working on open-source projects for decades — they didn't just jump on the train. Rather, they are strong Open Source believers. They believe that the crowd is key to the mass hacking plague we are experiencing, and that Open Source is the best lever to create a community and have people contribute their knowledge to the project, ultimately make it better and more secure. The solution recently turned 1.x, introducing a major architectural change: the introduction of a local REST API.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hollywood has surely never seemed so far from Texans’ minds as in the last two weeks. Not only did the most brutal winter storm we’ve seen in generations sweep away any idle thoughts of movie stars sunning themselves along the Pacific coastline, it replaced them with curdled resentment as we warmed ourselves with propane grills and burning hatred toward our local utility companies. For the millions who lost power, it also completely shut off our screens, with movies, TV, and celebrity gossip becoming distant concerns as we spent our dwindling batteries on futilely refreshing outage maps. Painfully aware of this shift in priorities, several Texas celebrities set aside their own privileged lives and stepped up to help. For most of them, simply not being Ted…View Original Post

The post Matthew McConaughey and Beyoncé Did More for Texas Than Ted Cruz appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Q&A with Grey

‣ Deleted scenes on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/48076548 and youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STMX20aB4Wo

‣ Discuss this video: https://www.reddit.com/r/cgpgrey

## Related Videos

UK Explained: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNu8XDBSn10

Solution to Traffic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzzSao6ypE

Driving a Tesla: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_naDg-guomA

Project Liberty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgZ1f4ACZBQ

Tumbleweed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsWr_JWTZss

Talk Like a Pirate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YFeE1eDlD0

TEKOI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCeMCwxayp0

Bestagons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thOifuHs6eY

## Bonnie Bees

Tim Stumbaugh, Bob Kunz, Steven Snow, Ben Delo, John Buchan, Nevin Spoljaric, Donal Botkin, BN-12, Bobby, Chris Chapin, David F Watson, Richard Jenkins, Steven Grimm, سليمان العقل, Phil Gardner, Martin, Ben Schwab, Colin Millions, Saki Comandao, Jason Lewandowski, Marco Arment, emptymachine, Andrew Bereza, Rebecca Wortham, George Lin, rictic, Henry Ng, Awoo, Fuesu, Nick Fish, Nick Gibson, Tyler Bryant, Oliver Steele, David Tyler, iulus, Jordan Earls, Kermit Norlund, Bryan McLemore, Alex Simonides, Felix Weis, Christopher Mutchler, Ryan Tripicchio, Derek Bonner, Mikko, Orbit_Junkie, Paul Alom, Tómas Árni Jónasson, Julien Dubois, Derek Jackson, Ron Bowes, Nicholas Welna, Bear, David Palomares, Freddi Hørlyck, John Rogers, Peter Lomax, ShiroiYami, Tristan Watts-Willis, chrysilis, Drago175, Emil, Esteban Santana Santana, Rhys Parry, Veronica Peshterianu, John Lee, Maxime Zielony, Elizabeth Keathley, Birdstryke



## Music

David Rees: http://www.davidreesmusic.com

Advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted to endorse the emergency use of a single dose of a vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson. A study showed it was 66% effective in the U.S.

(Image credit: Phill Magakoe/AFP via Getty Images)

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

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Aristotle: Believes everyone else in his pod is either too cautious or too reckless.

Mill: Studiously reads economists’ SSRN preprints to form opinions on which businesses should and shouldn’t be reopened.

Pythagoras: Takes hydroxychloroquine.

Plato: Frequently observes that none of the models correspond to reality.

Augustine: Is extremely well-read on the official guidelines; ignores all of them.

Kant: Can follow CDC guidelines without having to change a single habit.

Arendt: Talks often about how banal life under shutdown orders is.

Maimonides: Keeps track of guidelines with an ever-growing list of things he isn’t supposed to do.

Barcan Marcus: Somehow comes to the conclusion that everyone who can get COVID will get COVID.

Leibniz: Is still skeptical of person-to-person transmission.

Parmenides: Is adamant that the virus will never mutate.

Heraclitus: Recovers from COVID but keeps getting reinfected with variants.

Zeno: Gets long COVID.

Socrates: Wanders around the city to find people to argue with about CDC guidelines. Stands way too close while talking and is charged with being a superspreader.

Kierkegaard: Is always already wearing a mask.

Hegel: Predicts glumly that the vaccine will only arrive just as herd immunity is naturally acquired.

Hume: Prefers that the whole world get COVID rather than miss his spin class.

Anscombe: Thinks a lot of activities are still permissible so long as you are not doing them with the aim of spreading COVID.

Schopenhauer: Despite taking all necessary precautions, gives COVID to a casual acquaintance, who experiences no major symptoms. Decides it would be better never to have been born.

Locke: Has literally nothing interesting to say.

Russell: Works at a COVID testing site administering nasal swabs to all and only people who can’t administer the swabs themselves.

Camus: Writes a novel.

Nietzsche: Would redo 2020 in a heartbeat.

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Alternatives include piece(shit), hell(a thing), mother(God) and possibly nested functions son(a piece(shit)).

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There are some very nice garnishes of course, but the plate is empty.

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The default settings on children strongly argue that the world made sense at some point in early human history.

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