Cowboy Who?

The Bulgarian-born artist, known for his monumental projects, dies at his home in New York.

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The local police department says it does not have the man in custody, but intends to lay charges against him after he was filmed pointing a bow at protesters in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The docking came above China and Mongolia as the ISS was traveling at 17,000 mph. It docked 19 hours after the historic launch with NASA astronauts from the Kennedy Space Center.

(Image credit: NASA / NASA TV)

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the White House in one of the worst nights of civil unrest the US has seen in decades.

SpaceX just completed another milestone in Crew Dragon’s historic journey. Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley have successfully docked the capsule with the International Space Station just under 19 hours after launch from Cape Canaveral. The largely automated process was uneventful. The crew tested manual operation at one point, which they said behaved much like the simulator.

Don’t expect a hasty return after this. Behnken and Hurley are expected to spend weeks aboard the ISS before returning to Earth. The capsule’s solar arrays are only rated for 119 days in space, so it will have to return by the fall no matter how eager the astronauts might be to stay. However long they stay, it’s a historic moment — this is the first time a crewed private spacecraft has docked in orbit. If all goes well, this is an important step toward making space more accessible.

Docking confirmed – Crew Dragon has arrived at the @space_station! pic.twitter.com/KiKBpZ8R2H

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 31, 2020

My daily drive home from the museum zig zags through the quiet, leafy neighborhood wedged between Montrose and Main south of I-59, taking me past a long-abandoned brick dwelling on an overgrown lot at the northeast corner of Portland and Milam. For years, I’d noticed the building’s subtle architectural flourishes and its sense of faded grandeur. Only later did I learn of its historical significance.

A few years ago, my research into the history of Houston’s alternative art community brought me to lunch with veteran arts administrator Michael Peranteau at Chapultepec Lupita. I’d come to lunch that day to learn more about his early efforts to launch DiverseWorks with Charlie Gallagher and Caroline Huber in the mid 1980s, but we talked also about the Center for Art and Performance, the space he’d directed previously in a converted pool hall at 5613 Almeda, and even before that, his true beginnings as a Houston art person as the manager of an upscale museum district restaurant named after its street address: 120 Portland.

He told me that on weekends, after the late Saturday night dinner crowd had gone home, he and his partner Maximiliano Pruneda  — an artist who also happened to be 120’s chef — would push aside the tables, stack the chairs, and hang art for Sunday afternoon exhibitions when the restaurant would otherwise be closed. A capsule description published in Texas Monthly in November 1979 describes the restaurant this way: “An intimate, balmy setting for some interesting people-watching. The atmosphere reminds one of the halcyon days before the term Sun Belt was invented, when Houston’s pace was slightly sleepier than it is now. Elegant, in a tropical sort of way.”

“We had heard that 120 Portland was a favorite haunt of Houston’s art community but we didn’t know anyone [yet],” says Lelia Rodgers, today the owner of Rudyard’s British Pub, but in the fall of 1979 still a new arrival from Tennessee. “They had a nice selection of cognacs and scotches. The food was a hybrid of bistro offerings and new American cuisine creations. Natural light infused the space for lunch so that everything seemed fresh. The art was intriguing and by unknown artists, recognized and displayed by talented people with discriminating taste. When I was there, I felt uplifted by possibility.”

120 Portland was established on April Fool’s Day, 1977 by Nanette Taylor and Pauline Steinberger (now Solnik). Taylor, the daughter of prominent Houston architect Harwood Taylor, had worked in the graphics department of an architectural firm. Solnik had managed Marjorie Kauffman Graphics, chaired the University of Texas Student Union Fine Arts Committee, and worked for Art Resources, an art consulting firm for large corporations. According to a 1979 article in the Houston Chronicle, the two acquaintances ran into each other in the parking lot of Tootsie’s in the fall of 1976. When they found they had both been dreaming of opening a casual-yet-elegant late-night spot for post-gallery gatherings, they decided to team up for a joint venture. (Both are still around, Taylor in San Miguel de Allende and Solnik here in Houston, but neither were willing to be interviewed for this piece.)

They were charmed by the historic building on a quiet, out-of-the-way corner, and with a $20,000 investment, hired contractors to make what had previously been a private dwelling restaurant-ready. “People admired our enthusiasm,” Solnik told the Chronicle. “It wasn’t our looks or our money or our knowledge or anything else. Everybody we talked to, the plumbers, electricians, the people with the city, the chefs, were turned on to our incredible desire to do something above and beyond all difficulties.”

In the earliest days, 120 was catered by an array of area restaurants who brought trays of signature dishes — for example, Mrs. Me’s eggrolls, and Jean Pierre’s cheesecake. Before long, Taylor and Solnik developed a limited but exclusive menu. Max Pruneda, Ken French, Malcolm McDonald, Janice Schindeler, and Belita Leal all contributed their expertise in the kitchen over the years. Specialties included Chicken Dijon and a dessert called Paris-Brest, a circular puff pastry filled with praline-flavored cream.

Houston artist Susan Hanft was hired to wait tables shortly after the restaurant’s opening; soon she was tending bar. With just a couple of interruptions, she remained at 120 Portland for the duration. “The clientele was a broad mix,” she recalls. “Since food was served until the wee hours, many patrons came after theater, opera, ballet or symphony performances, and after art openings or movies. There were River Oaks types, artists, musicians, actors, foodies, students and staff from other restaurants just knocking off work. Over the years, my bar regulars included a pack of criminal defense attorneys, some Houston Chronicle writers, a couple of Rice professors, the Japanese sculptor Masaru Takiguchi, film director Eagle Pennell, and a bit less regular, the soon-to-be restaurateur Bill Sadler.”

Hanft describes the interior: “The restaurant was up a wide flight of wooden stairs. There was a row of tall arched windows at the top. Underneath them was a low equipale loveseat. The restaurant’s barrel chairs and tables were the same style of rustic Mexican furniture, tanned pigskin stretched over a framework of cedar branches and strips lashed together with rope.  There were three ‘dining rooms’ — a large one inside the front entry and two smaller ones down a narrow hall. One was on the right-hand side, the smallest at the hallway’s end. After all, the place had been a house. Nanette and Pauline had turned the tub in one of the two bathrooms into a sort of couch with the addition of an upholstered floral cushion. The floors were all wood. The ceiling fans were a big part of 120’s ambience. Rustic and handcrafted like the furniture, they spun gently in every dining room. Each room featured a number of large windows. The interior had the most incredible light. The small bar (fewer than ten stools, though usually packed with people standing) was accessible from the front room. The almost equally-tiny kitchen was through a set of saloon-style swinging doors at the rear of the bar. When I think back, there wasn’t too much room to showcase art. I know it was displayed in the hall, the bar and sometimes hung over the windows.”

The Mediterranean-style, two-story building at 120 Portland was constructed in 1928 on a virgin lot for the family of the Austrian-born architect Joseph Finger. It was based, of course, on his own design, featuring sandy brown brick, terra cotta mission roof tiles, and ornamental iron columns and railings alongside the south-facing front elevation. It harmonized with the neighborhood. William Ward Watkin’s original neoclassical Museum of Fine Arts, Houston building had opened just to the south only four years earlier. Slightly beyond, the Rice Institute was 16 years old. The surrounding blocks were largely empty. 120 Portland then was out on the southern edge of town. 

Finger arrived in Houston in 1912 after several years in New Orleans and became junior partner in the firm Lewis, Sterling, and Green. Two years later, he struck out on his own, designing hotels, homes, and public buildings for the developing city. How important of an architect was Finger in the early part of the century in Houston? Here’s a short list of some of his most significant works: Citizens State Bank (now Rockefeller’s, 1925); Temple Beth Israel (1925); Auditorium Hotel (now the Lancaster Hotel, 1926); Texas State Hotel (now Club Quarters, 1929); The Plaza Hotel (1929); 4912 Main (now Lawndale Art Center, 1931); The Houston Municipal Airport Terminal (1939); Houston City Hall (1939); and the Harris County Courthouse (1953), one of his final commissions. You might have heard of a few of these places. 

After a long illness, Finger died at 120 Portland at the age of 65 on the morning of February 6, 1953. The building remained a private duplex residence for various tenants for another 25 years, including Houston artist and preservationist Kirk Farris, who in the mid-1970s built out the detached garage into livable space. 

Jerry Simon’s father Jerome grew up at 120 Portland during the 1930s, living with his family in the upstairs unit, with the Finger family downstairs. One night in the early ‘80s, a friend invited the younger Simon to join a group for dinner at an unfamiliar restaurant near the museum. She even coaxed him into playing the little spinet piano in the corner. “I play by ear and am not a professional player,” Simon relates, “however Audrey put a tip jar on the piano, which filled up, and everyone took turns buying me drinks and dinner. For a young guy in my twenties, a fun time and a pretty good gig.” 

He talked about it at a family dinner and told everyone the place was called 120 Portland. “[My father] literally dropped his fork and asked me if it that was also the address,” says Simon, who returned to the restaurant with his father and his uncle Lewis soon after. “The first thing my dad and uncle commented on were the two grown trees on either side of the sidewalk at the front of the house; apparently, they planted them by hand when they lived there. We walked upstairs and as we entered the restaurant on the second floor, my dad put his hand on the wall just inside the door and asked me to put my hand where his was. He asked me, ‘Do you feel the indention in the wall?’  There absolutely was a two-to-three-inch place that had been painted over and was not even [visually] noticeable. My dad said that is where the ashtray hit the wall that had bounced off his brother’s head! Clearly they had many memories and knew the house very well.”

Susan Hanft suspects Taylor’s brief, ill-fated marriage to filmmaker Eagle Pennell had something to do with the restaurant’s closure in the summer of 1983. A 1999 article in the Houston Press, “Fade to Black,” describes Pennell’s drunkenly assaultive behavior at his own wedding reception. A few nights later he threw several of Max Pruneda’s paintings out of one of 120’s second-floor windows. “Nanette’s sister, an attorney, offered her services as a divorce lawyer as a wedding gift,” says Hanft. For a while, Pennell lived with Taylor in the garage apartment out back, where he completed the final edits for Last Night at the Alamo, a film about the patrons of a beloved watering hole about to meet the wrecking ball. 

In the years immediately following, Taylor managed Bell Park (now the site of Grand Prize Bar) and then Café Annie on Westheimer. Solnik opened a new restaurant, Pistachio’s, in Rice Village (an advert announcing its debut referred to Solnik as “Houston’s Petite Dame of Eclectic Dining”), then a Mexican restaurant, also in the Village, called Senor Platos. As mentioned earlier, Michael Peranteau established the Center for Art and Performance in May 1982 and a couple years later joined the nascent DiverseWorks organization where he’d remain until 1994. Later, he’d serve as director of Project Row Houses and the Art League Houston, as well as Non-Profit Projects, Inc., where he’s mentored smaller art organizations including Nameless Sound, Aurora Picture Show, and Voices Breaking Boundaries.

At the end of 1983, 120 Portland saw new life as a subdivided commercial space with a jeweler’s workshop, a boutique offering crafts and fine Mexican furniture, and in between, Vivian Leitner’s Walter Gallery, which handled prints by Mexican artists. None of these enterprises lasted for more than a year or two.

Throughout the ‘90s, the Texas Key Program rented the space as a shelter and counseling center for delinquent youth, and by the new century, following an arson fire, 120 lay vacant. “Our neighborhood association tried for a long time to get this vintage house repaired,” laments Ginny Camfield, “squatters evicted, secured, even purchased, and the owner wouldn’t do anything except board up the windows again.”

The city condemned the property in 2010. It’s kind of a miracle that the building remained standing for another ten years, but in that time, it has continued to fall more deeply into ruin, its brick cracking, who knows what going on inside, the bent metal frame of its former awning collapsing, crushed under the weight of the now nearly 90-year-old tree planted by Jerry Simon’s father and uncle in the 1930s. New townhome construction looms all around. Driving past once more last week, I noticed the addition of a chain link fence and a bulldozer sitting silently on its back lot. Half of the building’s rear was already torn away. The sidewalk was littered with broken pieces of original Monk and Nun terra cotta roof tile. One can only presume the next time we pass, the lot will be scraped completely clean for townhomes yet to be built. 

The post An Obituary for 120 Portland appeared first on Glasstire.

Last week, we briefly mentioned the possibility of a disturbance forming in the Gulf of Mexico in early June, and that now appears more likely to happen. We have plenty of more questions than answers, and the most important message we can offer right now is to not be overly concerned with this. Watch it, yes, and we will. But we don’t know whether a tropical storm will even form, whether it will strengthen, or where it will ultimately go. So let’s talk about what we do know.

Tropical Storm Amanda formed in the Pacific Ocean early this morning south of Guatemala, and it will bring very heavy rainfall to Central America over the next couple of days as it moves generally northward. Its center, likely to weaken into a depression or weak low-pressure system, will then probably move into the southern Gulf of Mexico by Monday or Tuesday. At that point it should find favorable conditions to potentially strengthen some time next week. The National Hurricane Center now rates it as having a 50 percent chance of development over the next five days. If it does so, it probably would be renamed Cristobal.

Most of our best model guidance suggests that steering currents will be relatively weak for a couple of days, perhaps into Thursday. And as the tropical system cools its heels this will make for very wet conditions in Mexico, likely most acutely in the states of Veracruz, Tabasco, and Campeche. Perhaps by later Thursday or Friday this low pressure system—which could be a tropical depression or storm by then—will begin to lift north.

After that it is difficult to say much intelligible. There are several factors at play, including a ridge of high pressure over the southeastern United States. Depending on the strength of this ridge, it could push a tropical system near Texas or Louisiana about one week from today. Most likely, this system will be of the tropical storm variety, given that it is only early June. However, the Gulf of Mexico waters are warmer than normal, so there is at least a chance (20 percent, perhaps?) that the storm strengthens into a hurricane. In any case, the biggest threat is probably rainfall, and toward the end of next week it’s possible that some location along the Gulf Coast picks up a healthy amount of precipitation. While this could occur anywhere from northern Mexico to Florida, Texas is very much in play based on the latest model guidance.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner urged the protesters filling downtown streets Friday evening to remain peaceful as they demonstrated their anger about the death of George Floyd, a black man killed in Minneapolis police custody Monday after a white officer kneeled on his neck.

Turner said he understood the pain his constituents were feeling, after watching a video showing a police officer kneeling on Floyd's neck while the longtime Houston resident begged for help in handcuffs. And Turner criticized the three officers present at the scene who failed to intervene.

But the day after Minneapolis protesters set fire to a police building, Turner asked Houstonians not to escalate to violence.

"I understand when people believe that the system is not moving fast enough or the system is not being responsive," he said. "What I would ask of people in our city ... that as you demonstrate or protest, if that is your choice, please do so peacefully and respectfully within our city."

Similar protests took place in downtown Dallas and Fort Worth on Friday, and one is expected in Austin on Saturday.

According to the Houston Chronicle, Friday's protest, organized by Black Lives Matter, drew several hundred people holding signs demanding justice for Floyd and other black victims of police use of force, such as "Call It What It Is Black Genocide" and "Klan in Blue." The paper also reported that protestors clashed with police, who at one point used tear gas to disperse people. Some demonstrators smashed the windshield and windows of a police cruiser, the Chronicle reported.

A handful of Houstonians were arrested, according to Turner, when they attempted to walk onto highways or block the roads leading to them. Some, according to local news reports, threw bottles and rocks at police officers.

Floyd, who was 46, graduated from Houston Independent School District's Yates High School in the 1990s, according to a Houston Chronicle profile, and was a familiar face in the historically black Third Ward neighborhood south of downtown. He left for Minneapolis a few years ago after struggling to find work in Houston.

Close friends and neighbors in Houston described him as a talented basketball and football player and a "gentle giant" who gained the nickname "Big Floyd" for his tall stature. He left behind two children, including a 6-year-old daughter in Houston.

Police officer Derek Chauvin, seen with his knee on Floyd's neck, has been arrested and faces charges of third-degree murder and manslaughter.

Texas elected officials from both parties, including Gov. Greg Abbott, have condemned Floyd's death. In a television interview Friday, Abbott called the death "horrific" and a "consequence of poor police work," though he said it should not reflect on law enforcement officers as a body.

The successful SpaceX launch has its roots in two previous administrations, but President Trump credited his own leadership.

(Image credit: Alex Brandon/AP)

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A new era of American spaceflight began Saturday as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket broke through Earth’s upper atmosphere carrying veteran astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley atop a pillar of flame. This marks both the first time that a commercial aerospace company has transported astronauts off-world and the first time since the cancellation of the Space Shuttle program in 2011 that astronauts have lifted off from US soil.

The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from historic Launch Complex 39A, the same one used during the Apollo moon landing mission in 1969, at just after 3:22 pm ET on Saturday. Wet weather had been a factor leading up to today. NASA had estimated just a 60 percent chance to launch on Monday and got NASA within 17 minutes of launch on Wednesday before forcing the space agency to wave off that attempt. However, the skies above Cape Canaveral have cleared sufficiently to allow for the Falcon 9’s "instantaneous" launch window, which is in place due to the relative alignment of the ISS to the planet.

“Today a new era in human spaceflight begins as we once again launched American astronauts on American rockets from American soil on their way to the International Space Station, our national lab orbiting Earth,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a press release. “I thank and congratulate Bob Behnken, Doug Hurley, and the SpaceX and NASA teams for this significant achievement for the United States. The launch of this commercial space system designed for humans is a phenomenal demonstration of American excellence and is an important step on our path to expand human exploration to the Moon and Mars.”

Officially designated Demonstration-2, or Demo-2, this mission is the final test before NASA certifies the Dragon system for regular use in shuttling astronauts to and from the ISS.

Engadget

Roughly nine minutes after the Falcon 9 took off, the first stage rocket successfully set down on its autonomous sea barge, “Of Course I Love You” and, at T+12:30, the Crew Dragon capsule (nicknamed Endeavor) successfully separated from its second stage. Behnken and Hurley will now spend the next 19 hours en route to the ISS and are expected to reach the station at roughly 10:30 am ET on Sunday, May 31st.

If you’d like to try your hand at steering the Crew Dragon capsule yourself, SpaceX has recently released a docking sim but be warned, it makes Top Gun’s carrier landing level seem like a cake walk.

After an aborted launch attempt to the International Space Station on Wednesday, the weather cleared and the launch went ahead on Saturday.

Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said the entire police force would work rotating 12-hour shifts, after a day of protests turned tense and sometimes violent between demonstrators and police Friday.

The president was responding to violent protests days after the killing of a black man. He said he will send in the National Guard, adding: "When the looting starts, the shooting starts."

(Image credit: Evan Vucci/AP)

Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the court's liberal bloc in a 5-4 decision issued late Friday. The lawsuit had argued that the state's limits on attendance discriminated against religion.

(Image credit: Damian Dovarganes/AP)

Consensus is growing in Washington to repeal the decades-old law that protects tech platforms from lawsuits. Experts fear unintended consequences.

(Image credit: Matt Rourke/AP)

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When President Trump delivered his inaugural address in 2017, it was in an unfamiliar style. Gone was the jokey off-handedness of Trump-on-the-trail. In a stilted, elegiac tone the freshly-minted president spoke of “rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones” and “young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge.” The content of the speech was familiar, though: Trump would bring America back from the brink. “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.” President George W. Bush called it “some weird shit.”

Trump ran on law and order — “I am the law and order candidate” he helpfully explained — even if empirical evidence suggested nothing was wrong with the law and order Americans were already living under. The country’s rates of violent crime were trending downward when he ran — falling 51 percent between 1993 and 2018 — and the economy was churning along, but Trump tapped into some Americans’ dissatisfaction with the status quo. Law and order was about the restoration of a certain social configuration favorable to white Americans as much as it was a concern with crime.

As the strange election year that is 2020 marches on, Trump has returned to his 2016 rhetoric, but it may register differently. Late Thursday night, Minneapolis residents burned down a police station after the death of George Floyd, a black man in police custody. The president tweeted in response that, “These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!”

It was a familiar law and order message from Trump. But he tweeted it into an unfamiliar America: Over 100,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 in the past few months. One out of every four workers has filed for unemployment. As the country lives through actual American carnage, will Trump’s law and order message resonate as it once did? Or will the bleak realities of 2020 prove inhospitable to the man who once proclaimed, “I alone can fix it”?

In 2016, voters seemed excited by Trump’s verbal promiscuity, the lurid way that he painted the state of the nation. In his telling, America had descended into disarray thanks to porous borders that allowed in terrorists and job-stealing immigrants. He was engaging, if not accurate (the economy was doing well in many parts of the country and President Obama had actually deported more immigrants who were living in the country illegally than previous administrations). Pew Research surveys show that 2016 Trump supporters ranked the economy, terrorism, and immigration, along with foreign policy, as the most pressing issues of the election. And according to another Pew survey, 78 percent of voters who supported Trump in 2016 felt crime had gotten worse since 2008.

Trump’s law and order framework was a sturdy way for him to talk about a more elusive idea — nostalgia for a mid century America with robust domestic manufacturing and a clearly-defined, if racist, social order. While Trump is no wonk and couldn’t talk particularly compellingly about globalization, the consolidation of industry and the widening gap between CEO and worker pay, he could talk about “the good old days” when you could smack someone around. It evoked something deep, that call for everything and everyone in their proper place.

The law and order message might not sit so well in 2020. The country has now lived through years of controversies over video-taped killings by police, and the pandemic makes the world feel more chaotic day by day. We’ll have to wait to see the social and political reaction to the demonstrations in Minnesota, but there might be more sympathy for the turbulent feelings that make people riot or protest. While many will still roundly condemn looting, it’s perhaps easier for a greater number of us to imagine the kind of jagged anger — grief, if we’re being concise about it — that causes it than it was four years ago.

Understanding the catharsis of looting — if not approving of the act — is something that has long eluded the understanding of white America, including liberal white America. “Shoot to kill arsonists and shoot to maim looters” was the order from Chicago’s white, Democratic Mayor Richard Daley during the 1968 riots following Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination. King, for his part, called riots, “the language of the unheard.” Even Obama struggled with his reaction to the Ferguson, Missouri riots of 2014, receiving criticism from voices on the black left when he said he had “no sympathy at all for destroying your own communities.” He later said he would have done some things differently in his response to the Ferguson crisis, writ large.

Minnesota has also proven a difficult testing ground for Trump’s return to law and order rhetoric. Reaction to the violence in the state — and the killing of Floyd — has unfolded somewhat differently than past violent deaths in police custody. Police chiefs from around the country swiftly condemned the officer who killed Floyd. Even as police on the ground in Minneapolis arrested a black journalist on live TV, the mayor and governor — both Democrats — called for calm while saying they understood and were sympathetic to the anger behind the rioting. Fox News guests and analysts condemned the officer’s actions, though it remains to be seen how conservative media and the right will react to the ongoing protests and violence. In a YouGov poll, 78 percent of surveyed adults thought the officer in the Floyd case should be arrested (he was on Friday afternoon).

It seems unlikely, though, that Trump will easily give up the race-baiting language of “thugs” and the like. For Trump, who is famously ideologically flexible, the idea of law and order is perhaps his deepest-held, most sincere political belief. In 1989, in the midst of the Central Park Five controversy, when five black and Latino men were accused of the brutal rape of a white jogger, he took out full-page advertisements in New York City newspapers to decry waffling over the punishment of the men. (Later, they were famously found to have been wrongly convicted). “What has happened to law and order, to the neighborhood cop we all trusted to safeguard our homes and families?” Trump wrote. “I am not looking to psychoanalyze them or understand them, I am looking to punish them,” he said of the alleged criminals. “I no longer want to understand their anger. I want them to understand our anger. I want them to be afraid.”

In 2016, Trump was able to echo these sentiments from 1989 easily — he was on the outside looking in. But in 2020 it will take more dexterity to run a campaign angry at authority when he is the authority. Once you have promised to end an imagined carnage, only to encounter actual death and societal destruction, the misdirection of your talking points risks exposure. But on this point, Trump has always been true to himself: He is the law and order candidate once again.

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New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

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“FIRE!”

“There’s a fire and it could hurt someone other than me, a woman!”

“A man is on fire!”

“A judge with a penis is on fire!”

“A professional athlete with a penis is on fire!”

“A sports trophy that was awarded to a man is on fire!”

“A box of donuts is on fire!”

“Someone’s throwing out donuts!”

“I’m a woman and I’m thinking of cutting my hair short!”

“I’m pregnant and I’m not sure if I’m going to keep it!”

“I’m pregnant and the fetus is on fire! (You can let me burn, though.)”

“My baby’s car seat clip is positioned incorrectly!”

“Jet fuel can melt steel beams!”

“These steel beams are on fire, but really, they were just asking for it!”

“This rapist just put a cast-iron skillet in the dishwasher!”

“This rapist loaded his dishwasher incorrectly!”

“I can’t finish this beer!”

“I’m dumping out this beer! (It’s a microbrew!)”

“You can’t ‘seal in a meat’s juices’ — meat is porous!”

“I’m unconfident over how I’m using this weight machine!”

“They’re trying to limit the number of assault rifles you can own at one time!”

“What does the AR in AR15 actually stand for? I think I know the answer, but really I don’t!”

“A trans person is drying their hands in a public bathroom!”

“The National Anthem is playing before sports and someone’s kneeling, which is upsetting, even though, like most Americans, I don’t even know all the words to the National Anthem!”

“I’ve never seen The Godfather!”

“Frankenstein is the name of the monster!”

“Van Halen is not very musically significant in the rock and roll landscape!”

“Are whales fish!”

“Are tomatoes a vegetable!”

“Is a hotdog a sandwich!”

For months, we’ve been following the bizarre saga of Roberto Escobar (Pablo Escobar’s brother) trying to peddle Escobar-branded folding smartphones. At first, tech reviewers like Marques Brownlee pointed out that Escobar Inc was actually just repackaging the Samsung Galaxy Fold and that most orders were never delivered. Now Escobar Inc has a new offering -- refurbished iPhone 11 Pros for $499. The company is also coming clean about its intentions to make Robert Escobar “the overstock king-pin.”

In an announcement today, the company said it is selling a limited-run of “formerly damaged” iPhone 11 Pros with 256 GB. The phones have been repaired and “gold-plated.” Though if they’re anything like the Escobar Fold 2 (aka Galaxy Fold) that Brownlee got a hold of, that gold-plating is more like an aluminum foil sticker. Allegedly, the phones will ship with original Apple accessories, “such as the cable, charger and headphones.” Escobar Inc has engraved its logo on the back, and if the phone actually arrives, it will come in a “luxury wooden box.”

"This is my way of fighting Apple, I sell their phones at a lower price and mine are gold-plated with nice girls showing them off. Apple can never do that," Roberto Escobar said in a (lewd) statement — the company’s YouTube channel is full of women in lingerie holding and smashing smartphones. Apparently Escobar has also filed a lawsuit against Apple seeking $2.6 billion.

What it all really comes down to is this: “Our goal is to uphold Mr. Escobar's dreams of becoming the overstock king-pin and this is one step towards that direction," said Escobar Inc. CEO Olof Gustafsson.

Personally, that’s not a cause I want to donate $499 to -- and I do consider it a donation because it’s likely that only tech reviewers and influencers will ever receive the device. Though, some people may gamble for the chance to get the iPhone 11 Pro for $499 instead of its current retail price of $999.

We came this close to ushering in a new era of American spaceflight, one that combines the experience and capabilities of both private and public aerospace programs. But the weather simply wouldn’t cooperate. At roughly T-16 minutes, NASA scrubbed Wednesday’s SpaceX Falcon 9 launch that would have carried veteran astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley on a 19-hour trip to the International Space Station. NASA has already identified May 30th and 31st as potential backup days to retry for lift-off. Stay tuned on Saturday for the second attempt which is happening at 3:22pm ET.

This would have been the first US-based launch since the shuttering of the space shuttle program, which dealt a savage blow to America’s space faring capabilities. Since the government decided against building a replacement crewed vehicle, NASA has had to rely on Russia’s Roscosmos to get its astronauts out to the International Space Station for nearly a decade -- at a price of up to $86 million per launch. 

In recent years, a number of private aerospace firms have designed and tested crew capsules of their own including Blue Origin’s New Shepard, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceshipTwo, Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner, and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon. While the New Shepard and SpaceShipTwo are built for suborbital flights, NASA awarded Boeing and SpaceX multi-billion dollar contracts in 2014, as part of its newly-formed Commercial Crew Program, to shuttle astronauts to the ISS and back. SpaceX is expected to get $2.6 billion for six trips, while Boeing received $4.2 billion for a similar number of flights. 

SpaceX

However, only SpaceX has so far managed to achieve flight certification from NASA. During an uncrewed test flight in December of 2019, Boeing’s spacecraft suffered a timing system malfunction which prevented it from reaching a high enough orbit to reach the ISS and returned to Earth after just two days, rather than the expected eight. 

The Crew Dragon capsule is just the fifth crew transport vehicle ever deemed worthy by NASA, following the Gemini, Apollo, Mercury, and Space Shuttle. The Dragon capsule measures 13 feet in diameter and has seating for seven. It’s even got a toilet that Behnken and Hurley can use on their 19-hour journey to the ISS, though both SpaceX and NASA have remained mum on the details of where all those knobs and hoses go.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Behnken and Hurley are both accomplished test pilots and have been training for this mission since their selection in 2018. Once they do eventually get up on the ISS, NASA plans for them to remain aboard for anywhere from one to three months, up to 120 days, until another SpaceX mission ferries more astronauts up to relieve them. Their return trip is expected to be even more harrowing as the Crew Dragon will reenter the atmosphere above the Atlantic Ocean before deploying its parachutes for a water landing.

The Crew Dragon capsule isn’t the only new equipment SpaceX will be testing on this mission. The company has designed and fabricated a new generation of spacesuits to go along with it. Gone are the old-school Advanced Crew Escape System (ACES) suits (aka the “pumpkin suits”), replaced with a sleek design that was initially dreamt up by Hollywood costume designer Jose Fernandez. How this design was transformed into a functional spacesuit -- even the capabilities of the suits themselves -- remain closely guarded SpaceX secrets.

The COVID-19 outbreak has put a couple additional wrinkles in NASA’s preparations for this mission. "The health and welfare of the crew is always paramount," Courtney Beasley, communications specialist at NASA's Johnson Space Center, told CNN in March. "All of our crew must stay in quarantine for two weeks before they launch. This ensures that they aren't sick or incubating an illness when they get to the space station and is called 'health stabilization.'"

"During quarantine, the astronauts live in their crew quarters -- NASA has crew quarters for this purpose at Kennedy and Johnson Space Centers, and Roscosmos has them in Baikonur," she continued. "They don't have direct contact with anyone who has not been pre-cleared by NASA flight surgeons. The time is spent preparing for flight, studying and resting, as well as working out and making video calls to friends and family members."

NASA has implemented additional precautions for ground control as well. Facial coverings and physical distancing are mandatory, every new shift reports to a different control room so that the previous shift’s can be deeply cleaned. Civilian visitors were not allowed at Kennedy Space Center to view the launch and only a couple dozen reporters were invited to cover it in person.

A reader writes:

Last fall, I left a beloved job with a nonprofit and assisted them in hiring a new “me” — or, rather, two people to take my place with two different aspects of the job. One was an internal hire, the other required an outside interview process. We received over 50 applications, narrowed it down to 13 phone interviews, then seven in-person interviews, and finally made a very satisfying hiring decision.

At each step along the way, I sent out very polite rejection emails to those who didn’t make the next level. It was very professional, and all candidates but one reacted very well. However, one gentleman who was not granted an interview wrote back saying that “since he was clearly overqualified for such a position, he would have at least appreciated an interview.” In fact, he had no qualifications for the position: he’d never done administrative/fundraising tasks, worked for a nonprofit, nor had any background in our mission field. In addition, he used what I considered to be a dated, problematic term for transgender persons on his resume. (That seems random, but he’d done social work, which incidentally, was not our field.) I never responded, but he tracked me down and has asked me several times why he wasn’t interviewed. He is clearly well educated and has an interesting work history, but nothing on his resume was even remotely connected to our field, and frankly, he came across as condescending. That said, we are community-based and try to be friendly, kind, and helpful to all.

I’m still peripherally involved in the organization, but no longer an employee. In fact, I moved across the country and took another job. Do I have any obligation to write him back? And, if so, how honest should I be? Apparently, he’s written to the organization, too, and my former boss refuses to deal with him. If I write him back, might he leave them alone? A small part of me feels as if he’d benefit from knowing the truth, but I also feel like maybe it’s none of my business. I recognize that if I respond to him, it would not be in any way official. What should I do?

Block and ignore.

You don’t work there anymore; there’s absolutely no reason you should have to engage with this guy and risk him getting more aggressive or angry.

You didn’t do anything wrong here. In fact, you did everything right! You sent out polite, timely rejection emails. You made hiring decisions that you feel good about. You don’t have anything to explain or defend or justify. You don’t even have to explain (here or to this guy) why he wasn’t invited to interview. Employers regularly have more qualified candidates than they can interview and there doesn’t need to be anything wrong with someone for them to be rejected; it can just be that others were stronger.

There are always candidates who can’t believe they didn’t get an interview and think employers should have to justify that to them. (Years ago, I compiled some of the most ridiculous responses I’d received to rejections.) You aren’t obligated to respond to them — at all, but especially after they become rude or pushy.

But if you still worked there, I’d tell you to respond to him one time and say something like, “We received a tremendous amount of interest in the position, and the hiring process was very competitive. We weren’t able to offer interviews to many people with strong qualifications for the role.” Or, if you prefer, “We received a tremendous amount of interest in the position and we focused on candidates with experience in administrative and fundraising work in a nonprofit setting.”

But you don’t even work there anymore! Not only do you not need to respond to this guy, but you probably shouldn’t — the organization needs to be in charge of its communications with candidates (particularly since there can be legal ramifications if you word something wrong). If they’re not responding, that’s their call.

I’m not clear on whether he somehow tracked down your personal email account and is messaging you there. If he’s emailing you at your personal account, that’s a real overstep (and a sign of some seriously inappropriate investment) and you absolutely should block him. If you want, you can email back once to say, “I no longer work for (Org Name) and cannot answer any questions about their hiring processes. Please do not contact me at my personal account again” and then block him — but feel free to skip that and just block him.

I do get that the organization is community-based and wants people to have warm, fuzzy feelings toward it. That’s an argument for them (not you) responding — once, and with the kind of language above. But after that, candidates who are rude or hostile don’t need to be indulged. It’s okay to decline to engage.

a rejected candidate keeps demanding to know why we didn’t hire him was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

You thought the end of your child’s school year was going to be easy: one last Zoom conference to sing songs and show-and-tell. But this hellscape isn’t done with you yet, because you forgot about the final parent-teacher conference.

That’s where this guide comes in. You already know the answers to most of the questions. You know what your kid needs to work on for fall (everything) and where you think they’re succeeding (you can lie about this successfully). That first question is going to be the real kicker, though, and that’s where this guide comes in. Just choose the scenario that best reflects your life right now and memorize the corresponding answer. If multiple scenarios apply to you, congratulations: you are everybody. Just pick one. Nothing matters.

Your kid’s pre-K teacher asks:
“How are you guys doing?”

Scenario A: I am 317 emails behind on work. I told my spouse that I’d order groceries on Tuesday, but Tuesday was yesterday, and now it is Friday? My child interrupted me sixteen times in the last thirty minutes to show me each minute progression in his drawing of Wolverine. I let him watch all three Lord of the Rings movies in one day so I could write up a proposal for an event my boss has scheduled for June, which will be canceled in seven days. The backup plan (in case of cancellation) is due in three hours.

You lie, and say: “This has been quite an adjustment, but I think we’re finally getting the hang of things!”

Scenario B: I don’t know how to cut my own hair or anybody else’s and things have gotten critical. Every time you have an online class I creep around in the background like the Babadook so I can reach up and mute my kid’s mic for 28 of the meeting’s 30 minutes. I wore jeans today during a staff Google hangouts meeting, and I now understand that I have been eating not only my feelings but all of the feelings existent at any one time in the universe.

You lie, and say: “Haha, we are all a little shaggy around here! Hahaha!” Finish by laughing like a human being would. You need to practice this.

Scenario C: The art teacher gave less than 24 hours to finish an assignment about Van Gogh and self-representation, including a self-portrait made out of dried beans. The core assignments in Google Classroom are bitmap files, which cannot be resized, and my pre-k child doesn’t recognize the entire alphabet or the word “cat,” let alone know how to type in text boxes. We ran out of printer ink three weeks ago. If I get one more “how to make a drum out of household objects” email from the music teacher, I will begin looking for glitches in the matrix to confirm that I’m actually dead and living my afterlife in a simulation.

You say: “I know this is hard on you, too. Can I help you at all?”

Scenario D: I asked my daughter to draw a cat and she started crying. Last night she lost a tooth but I didn’t have any cash, so this morning I told her the tooth fairy is in quarantine. I have eaten all of the kids’ leftover Easter, Christmas, and Halloween candy. I made tacos on toast for dinner last night. When my kids won’t stop fighting I make them go in the backyard to look for acorns. (We do not have any trees.)

You lie, and say: “We have been doing so many activities outside. Vitamin D is just great. You can just have so much fun with kids. We are cherishing these days, haha!”

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

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The good news is the media will just report it as The God Field.

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