OTTAWA – With millions returning to work after the holidays, Kentucky bourbon is out and Canadian spirits are in as the choice for Canada’s alcoholics who cannot help but drink on the job. Since U.S. President Donald Trump launched his tariff war in 2025, openly musing about making Canada “the 51st state”, Canada’s problem drinkers […]
The post Canadian alcoholics reject Kentucky bourbon for getting drunk at work appeared first on The Beaverton.
A reader writes:
A few weeks ago, our HR manager, Cara, brought in a photo of her dog’s adorable litter of puppies and everybody appropriately ooh’d and ahh’d all over them. Now that the puppies are old enough to be adopted, she’s started to put the bite on everybody in the office, and after a few other employees were winnowed away for various reasons (apartment building doesn’t allow pets, just had a new baby, etc.), she seems to have focused her attention on me.
Backstory time, I grew up in a house with a mother who … it’s probably most accurate to say she compulsively hoarded pets … and growing up having to take care of up to 10 dogs at one time has thrown cold water on my desire to have another dog for the foreseeable future, especially an hyperactive, high-maintenance puppy.
I’ve politely declined up until now, but Cara persists, dismissing my refusals by using most of the same lines I’ve heard from my mom about having kids: “Oh, you get used to that,” “You’ll change your mind,” “It’s different when it’s your own,” and of course, “But look how cute!” It’s getting to the point it’s how she opens every single conversation we have: “Hey! I’ve got three left. Have you changed your mind yet or do you still not want one?”
I’ve stood firm, but things are happening that are making me start to get a little tin-foil-hatty. A while back, I commented on the cute puppy on a coworker’s birthday card and she looked all confused and said, “Wait, I thought you were the one who didn’t like dogs.” I casually asked around a little, and while I can’t be positive, I’m getting the impression Cara has started telling people that my not wanting to adopt one of her puppies right now is because I hate dogs and having me adopt one to guilt-trip me into proving I don’t.
I don’t know exactly what to do here since, being head of HR, she’s normally who I’d go to for something like this, and I’m really starting to feel like I’m being bullied into adopting a puppy I do not want. Is there some way to remedy this?
The good news is that Cara cannot in fact bully you into adopting a puppy. You can simply continue to say no, and you will not find yourself living with a puppy.
But what she’s doing is obnoxious! It would be obnoxious from any colleague, but it’s particularly obnoxious from the head of HR, who ideally would have enough awareness of power dynamics and internal relationships that it would stop her from haranguing employees to take puppies off her hands.
You could continue doing what you’ve been doing — politely reiterating your refusal when Cara raises the topic — but frankly, it sounds incredibly annoying that she continues to bring it up over and over.
So a different option would be to say, the next time she raises it, “Can I ask you a favor? Please take me at my word — I am not available to adopt a puppy, and that’s not going to change. I’d really appreciate it if you’d stop asking.” If she continues after a clear “you need to stop,” she’s just making herself look weird, not you. And in fact, if she does continue after that, feel free to say, “It’s making me really uncomfortable that you aren’t respecting my answer on this” (or “it’s really weird that you keep pressuring me about this after I asked you to stop” or whatever formulation feels natural to you).
It’s okay to call it out! She is being weird. It’s okay for your reaction to make that clear.
And if Cara is telling people you don’t like dogs … I’m not sure it really matters. Plenty of people don’t like dogs, at least not enough to adopt one. If the topic comes up with a coworker, feel free to set the record straight — “I like dogs but I don’t want to adopt one and she’s being really weird about continually pushing me to take one of her puppies anyway” — but unless she’s going around telling people that she spotted you kicking puppies in the park, it’s not a big deal if people think you’re not a dog lover.
If it’s really bothering you, though, feel free to strategically complain about it to a couple of coworkers who you have good rapport with — “Is Cara giving you a hard sell on taking one of her puppies? I’ve told her a bunch of times that I like dogs but I’m not interested in adopting one, and she’s being really weird about pressuring me anyway.” This is a normal thing to share with coworkers because what Cara is doing is so odd and annoying; it’s a perfectly reasonable topic that you might vent about, and sharing that a few times might make you feel better as far as correcting the record goes.
But there’s no world where this needs to end with you adopting a puppy to prove anything to your office.
The post head of HR is waging a pressure campaign to make me adopt a puppy appeared first on Ask a Manager.
To be a billionaire is to be a solipsist – to secretly believe that (most) other people don't really exist – otherwise, how could you live with the knowledge that your farcical wealth and power springs from the agony you have inflicted on whole populations?
https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/18/seeing-like-a-billionaire/#npcs
This is what it means for Elon Musk to dismiss the people who disagree with him as "NPCs"; in some important sense, he doesn't think other people exist. It's a very ketamine-coded way to move through the world:
https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/on-elon-musk-and-npcs
Solipsism is a very difficult belief to maintain. No matter how sociopathic you are, there's always going to be a part of you that craves the approval, love and attention of others. That craving is a nagging reminder that other people do, in fact, exist. This creates the very weird insistence on the part of the ultra-rich that they are actually philanthropists. Thus, the very weird spectacle of corporate raiders – responsible for tens of thousands of job losses – describing themselves as "job creators," and funding whole economic subdisciplines dedicated to shoring up this absurd claim ("The search for a superior moral justification for selfishness" -JK Galbraith):
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/05/us/koch-donors-george-mason.html
Trying to squeeze this claim through an ever-narrowing credibility aperture forces it into some extremely weird shapes. Take "Effective Altruism," the belief that you should make as much money as possible by working in the most exploitative and destructive fields you can find, in order to fund a program to improve the lives of 53 trillion hypothetical artificial people who will come into existence in 10,000 years:
https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/cause-profile-long-run-future
Effective Altruism, "job creators" (and other claims to billionaireism as a force for good in the world) show just how much work it takes to maintain the belief that other people don't exist. The ruling classes are haunted by this knowledge, and as more and more wealth accumulates in the hands of fewer and fewer people, those eminently guillotineable plutes need to perform increasingly complex mental gymnastics to keep from confronting the reality of other people.
Corporate bosses have near-total control over the lives of their workers, who might number in the hundreds of thousands. But they also know, in their secret hearts, that they don't really control their businesses. If Amazon CEO Andy Jassy stops showing up for work, the company will continue to hum along, not missing a beat. But if all of Amazon's drivers or warehouse workers walk off the job, the company will grind to a halt. If they never come back, the company might never be able to restart, unable to recover the process knowledge that walks out the door with them:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/08/process-knowledge/#dance-monkey-dance
Andy Jassy wants to think that he's in Amazon's driver's seat, but is haunted by the undeniable reality that Amazon is really in the hands of its lowest-paid, most abused workers. Andy Jassy isn't driving Amazon – he's stuck in the back seat, playing with a Fisher Price steering-wheel toy.
Enter AI.
AI can't do your job, but an AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/18/asbestos-in-the-walls/#government-by-spicy-autocomplete
Your boss is an easy mark for these AI swindlers, because your boss dreams of a world without workers, because that's a world where bosses are driving the bus.
The Hollywood writers' strike was precipitated by studio bosses' fantasy of a world without writers – a world where studio bosses don't have to be satisfied with giving harebrained notes to writers who don't bother to disguise their contempt for their bosses' shitty ideas. In a world of AI scripts, the boss decides what kind of movie to make, and a chatbot shits out a script to order, without ever telling the boss that the idea stinks.
The fact that this is an unshootable turkey of a script is of secondary importance. The most important thing is the boss's all-consuming need to avoid ego-shattering conflicts with people who actually know how to do things, who gain power thanks to that knowledge, and who use that power to imply (or state outright) that you're a fucking dunce.
Same goes for the Hollywood actors' strike, and the continued project of cloning actors in software and puppeteering them via chatbot: it's the fantasy of a movie without actors, actors who tell you that the scenario you've spun is an incoherent mess, who insist that their expertise in an art you don't understand and can't perform yourself entitles them to challenge your ideas.
AI is solipsism, the fantasy of a world without people.
Bosses keep pushing the idea that AI can replace doctors and (especially) nurses. Health bosses – increasingly likely to be a giant private equity fund – want to cut care in order to direct more money to the hospital's shareholders. They want to stop paying exterminators and allow their hospitals to fill up with thousands of bats:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/28/5000-bats/#charnel-house
They want to stop paying for clean needles at dialysis clinics and transmit blood-borne chronic illnesses to immunocompromised, sick patients:
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-dirty-business-of-clean-blood
They want to use algorithmic death panels to eject sick patients from their beds before they can sit up, walk or, you know, survive:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/05/any-metric-becomes-a-target/#hca
The problem is that nurses and doctors are professionals, and that means – by definition – that they follow a professional code of ethics that requires them to refuse their bosses' orders when those orders are bad for patients.
The same goes for shrinks of all kinds – psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and counselors. They are legally and professionally required to put patients' mental health ahead of commercial imperatives. That's a big problem for any boss who wants to swap out in-person counseling for dial-a-doc shrink-on-demand services delivered via videoconference that serve up a new therapist every time the patient dials in, chasing the lowest wages around the country or the globe. The mania for "AI therapists" isn't driven by efficiency or by our societal mental health crisis – it's driven by the fantasy of mental health counseling without counselors (who insist on minimum standards for patient care):
https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/01/doctor-robo-blabbermouth/#fool-me-once-etc-etc
Capitalism is a single-criterion optimization: it organizes itself around the accumulation of capital, to the exclusion of all other criteria:
This means that capitalism is forever locked in a conflict with professionalism, since professionalism is a system that upholds a code of conduct before all other priorities, including capital accumulation. Professional ethics are, quite simply, bad for business.
That's why bosses fantasize so furiously about pushing AI into professional situations – it's the fantasy of a profession without professionals. AI schoolteachers mean "education without educators," which means that there's no organized group of trained and trusted professionals telling you that chatbot slop, high-stakes testing, and standardized curriculum will fail students. This is true no matter how much money you stand to make by replacing the skilled craft process of teaching with automation.
Professions are infamously resistant to automation, unlike, say, manufacturing. This means that the cost of professional services steadily increases, relative to the cost of manufactured goods.
The labor, energy, materials and time it took to travel from New York to Vienna have plummeted since the 18th century – but the number of hours it takes a Viennese string quartet to perform Mozart's String Quartet No 1 is the same today as it was in 1773 – about half an hour.
The cost of producing a chalkboard has crashed over the past two centuries – but the number of hours it takes a math teacher to show a classroom full of ten year olds how to do long division has hardly budged.
The cost of producing a scalpel is lower today than at any time in history, but the duration of an appendectomy has only decreased a little over the past century.
Economists have a name for this: they call it "cost disease." The fact that automation makes professional services (proportionally) more expensive over time isn't an indictment of professionalism, it's a testament to the power of automation for manufacturing. Bosses (should) know this, but they constantly bemoan the cost of professional services, as though the numerator (teaching, healthcare, screenwriting) is going up, when it's actually a shrinking denominator (automated manufacturing processes) that's increasing the relative price.
The AI fantasy is a fantasy of dismantling the professions and replacing them with pliable chatbots who can be optimized for profits and thus cure cost disease for once and for all, and if that comes at the expense of the value that society derives from professional activities, that's a small price to pay for finally clearing the most stubborn barrier to capital accumulation.
Last year, Trump, Elon Musk and DOGE fired or forced out a critical mass of government scientists, even as they gutted funding to research programs at the country's universities. You'd think that this would be a barrier to making scientific breakthroughs in America, but not according to Trump. He's promised that America will produce annual "moonshot"-scale breakthroughs, without scientists, by asking a chatbot to shit out paradigm-shattering scientific leaps on demand:
The problem is that while AIs can shit out sentences that seem to qualify as scientific breakthroughs, they can't actually do science. Take Google's claim that its Deepmind product had advanced material science by 800 years, "discovering 2.2 million structures." It turns out that these "discoveries" are useless – in that they constitute trivial variations on known materials, and/or have no uses, and/or can only exist at absolute zero:
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemmater.4c00643
But the fact that a chatbot can't do science isn't important to Trump – or at least, not as important as all the other things a chatbot won't do. A chatbot won't tell Trump not to stare at an eclipse. A chatbot won't tell Trump not to inject bleach. A chatbot won't tell Trump that trans people exist. A chatbot won't tell Trump that the climate emergency is real. A chatbot will agree with Trump when he says that offshore wind kills whales and that Tylenol causes autism.
For Trump, the fantasy of science without scientists is more important than whether any science happens.
America needs science, but for Trump – a billionaire solipsist – America is a country populated by people who mostly don't really exist.
That's true of tech bosses, too. After all, they were the original suckers for Effective Altruism and the fantasy of a world without people. Remember when Mark Zuckerberg announced that the average person has three friends, but wants 15 friends, and that he would solve this with chatbots?
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/mark-zuckerberg-on-ai-friendships_l_681a4bf3e4b0c2b15d96851d
Sure, we all dunked on him for being such an unlikable fucking Martian that he doesn't understand what a "friend" is. But I don't think that's what's actually going on there: it's not that Zuck doesn't understand what friends are; it's that he treats your friendships as problems to be solved.
Your friends' behavior determines how much money Zuck can make. When your friends arrange their interactions with you in a way that increases how much time you spend on his platforms, Zuckerberg maximizes the number of ads he gets to show you and thus how much money he can make. The fact that your friends stubbornly refuse to help him maximize his capital accumulation is a problem, and the solution to that problem is chatbots, which can be instructed to relate to you in ways that are optimized for increasing Zuck's wealth.
For Zuck, chatbots are a fantasy of a social network without socializing.
It's not just users that tech bosses fantasize about replacing with AI, though – they really want to get rid of coders. Computer programmers aren't (formally) a profession, but they are quite powerful, and have a cultural norm of criticizing their bosses' stupid ideas:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/10/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers/
Tech bosses are completely dependent on coders, who know how to do things they don't know how to do, and aren't shy about letting them know it. That's why tech bosses are so quick to equate "writing code" with "software engineering" (the latter being a discipline that requires consideration of upstream, downstream and adjacent processes while prioritizing legibility and maintainability by future generations of engineers). A chatbot can produce software routines that perform some well-scoped task, but one thing they can't do is maintain the wide, deep "context window" at the heart of software engineering – a linear increase in a chatbot's context window results in a geometric increase in the amount of computation the chatbot has to perform:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/29/worker-frightening-machines/#robots-stole-your-jerb-kinda
But the fact that chatbots will produce technical debt at scale is less important to tech bosses than the fact that a chatbot will do what you tell it without giving the boss any lip. For tech bosses, chatbots are the fantasy of a coding shop without any coders.
This is a bad joke, literally. When I worked in a shop, we used to sarcastically say, "Retail would be great if it wasn't for the fucking customers." We were unknowingly reprising Brecht, whose "Die Lösung" contains the immortal line, "Would it not be simpler if the government simply dissolved the people and elected another?"
Billionaires don't see the humor. For them, AI is a chance to wire the toy steering wheel directly into the firm's drive-train, and make movies without writers or actors, factories without workers, hospitals without nurses, schools without teachers, science without scientists, code shops without coders, social media without socializing, and yes, even retail without the fucking customers.
Billionaires love the idea of "Universal Basic Income." For them, this is the apotheosis of the AI fantasy of a world without people. In this fantasy, the boss's toy steering wheel is steering the firm. Business consists of a boss and a computer that turns the boss's ideas into products. Who will consume these products? You will, thanks to UBI – the government will continue to exist in this fantasy, but for the sole purpose of creating new money and dispersing it to you, so that you can turn it over to billionaires who singlehandedly direct all of society's functions.
Billionaires love UBI for the same reason they love charter schools. In the AI UBI fantasy, everyone who's not a billionaire has been replaced with a chatbot, and our only job is to receive government vouchers that we hand over to billionaire grifters who run the institutions that used to be under democratic control. We no longer vote with our ballots – only with our wallets, and in the wallet election, we only get the ballots that billionaires decide we deserve, and can only direct them between choices that are as meaningless as "Mac vs Windows" or "Coke vs Pepsi."
A world optimized for capital accumulation.
It's a world without people.
(Image: Matti Blume, CC BY-SA 4.0; Cryteria, CC BY 3.0; modified)
'Tis the Season to Ensh*ttify the ACM Digital Library https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~tpkelly/grinch.html
US Trade Dominance Will Soon Begin to Crack https://www.wired.com/story/us-trade-dominance-will-begin-to-crack/
How Screen-Time Limits Fail and What Matters More https://www.owenkellogg.com/p/how-screen-time-limits-fail-and-what?hide_intro_popup=true
KdK (Kinetik der Kontinua) part 1: Introduction https://nealstephenson.substack.com/p/kdk-kinetik-der-kontinua-part-1-introduction
#20yrsago Hollywood’s Canadian Member of Parliament https://web.archive.org/web/20060217022615/http://www.michaelgeist.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1060
#20yrsago IKEA stores make great babysitters, soup-kitchens https://web.archive.org/web/20061107014101/http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,392850,00.html
#20yrsago Deaf geek mods implant-firmware so he can enjoy music again https://web.archive.org/web/20060110053839/https://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.11/bolero_pr.html
#20yrsago Study: Best place to advertise to teens is in-game https://memex.craphound.com/2006/01/04/study-best-place-to-advertise-to-teens-is-in-game/
#20yrsago Misbehavior in Second Life game punished by exile to “the corn field” https://web.archive.org/web/20060209002925/http://www.secretlair.com/index.php?/clickableculture/entry/hidden_virtual_world_prison_revealed/
#20yrsago Florida may sue Sony, too https://web.archive.org/web/20060109130626/https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004292.php
#20yrsago CEO of Neuros to Congress: If you plug the A-Hole, we’re out of biz https://web.archive.org/web/20060106045933/https://open.neurostechnology.com/files/dtcsa.html
#20yrsago Click-fraud explained https://web.archive.org/web/20060103050629/https://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.01/fraud_pr.html
#20yrsago Canadian MP imports US’s worst copyright AND dirty campaign financing https://web.archive.org/web/20060624204919/http://www.michaelgeist.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1058&Itemid=89&nsub=
#20yrsago EU study: more exclusive rights = worse economy https://www.ft.com/content/99610a50-7bb2-11da-ab8e-0000779e2340
#20yrsago Online fundraiser for mom being sued by the RIAA https://web.archive.org/web/20060604021749/http://www.p2pnet.net/goliath/
#20yrsago Sf story: Internet collapses, bloggers become homeless https://web.archive.org/web/20060105051729/https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/2006/pdf0602.htm
#20yrsago Weinberger: Why the media can’t get Wikipedia right https://web.archive.org/web/20060104032042/https://hyperorg.com/backissues/joho-dec29-05.html#wikipedia
#10yrsago Switching to Linux, saying goodbye to Apple and Microsoft https://medium.com/backchannel/i-moved-to-linux-and-it-s-even-better-than-i-expected-9f2dcac3f8fb#.3vhxku71i
#10yrsago Understand: The esoteric criminal sentencing that mobilized Oregon’s Cowliphate https://web.archive.org/web/20220621233456/https://www.popehat.com/2016/01/04/what-happened-in-the-hammond-sentencing-in-oregon-a-lawsplainer/
#10yrsago Thomas Piketty on Thomas Piketty https://crookedtimber.org/2016/01/04/capital-predistribution-and-redistribution/
#10yrsago TPP vs Canada: a parade of horribles https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2016/01/the-trouble-with-the-tpp-day-1-u-s-blocks-balancing-objectives/
#10yrsago Vanilla ISIS needs snacks https://web.archive.org/web/20160222182431/https://indy100.independent.co.uk/article/oregon-terrorists-dont-plan-siege-very-well-put-out-plea-for-snacks-and-supplies–ZJglh9sRjx
#10yrsago T-Mobile’s “Binge On” is just throttling for all video https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/01/eff-confirms-t-mobiles-bingeon-optimization-just-throttling-applies
#10yrsago Help identify the science fiction legends in these thrift-scored pix of the 1956 Worldcon https://www.flickr.com/photos/slomuse/sets/72157662390340119
#10yrsago India’s telcoms regulator says it will ignore Facebook’s astroturf army https://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/Consultation-paper-is-not-an-opinion-poll-TRAI-chairman/article60523944.ece
#10yrsago Anne Frank’s diary is in the public domain; editors aren’t co-authors https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/1/10698254/anne-frank-diary-free-download-copyright-dispute
#10yrsago Armed domestic terrorists take over federal building, but it’s OK, they’re white https://web.archive.org/web/20060103094308/https://www.opb.org/
#10yrsago Paypal rolls out the welcome mat for hackers https://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/12/2016-reality-lazy-authentication-still-the-norm/
#10yrsago Hong Kong’s dissident publishing workers are disappearing, possibly kidnapped to mainland https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/01/03/hong-kong-unsettled-strange-case-missing-booksellers/78226448/
#10yrsago Breaking the DRM on the 1982 Apple ][+ port of Burger Time https://ia801207.us.archive.org/14/items/BurgerTime4amCrack/BurgerTime
#5yrsago The Data Detective https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how-to-truth/#harford
#5yrsago Google's unionizing https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how-to-truth/#awu
#5yrsago Ad-tech is a bezzle https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how-to-truth/#adfraud
Colorado Springs: Guest of Honor at COSine, Jan 23-25
https://www.firstfridayfandom.org/cosine/
Ottawa: Enshittification at Perfect Books, Jan 28
https://www.instagram.com/p/DS2nGiHiNUh/
Toronto: Enshittification and the Age of Extraction with Tim Wu, Jan 30
https://nowtoronto.com/event/cory-doctorow-and-tim-wu-enshittification-and-extraction/
Enshittification with Plutopia
https://plutopia.io/cory-doctorow-enshittification/
"can't make Big Tech better; make them less powerful" (Get Subversive)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1EzM9_6eLE
The Enshitification Life Cycle with David Dayen (Organized Money)
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2412334/episodes/18399894
Enshittificaition on The Last Show With David Cooper:
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/256-the-last-show-with-david-c-31145360/episode/cory-doctorow-enshttification-december-16-2025-313385767
"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
"Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026
"The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026
"The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026
Today's top sources:
Currently writing:
"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
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ISSN: 3066-764X
Twenty-five years ago, Glasstire went live on the World Wide Web. It was a different time: people weren’t chronically online (if they were even online at all), Enron was still a solvent company (allegedly), and Texas was flush with art writing. Publications across the state had full-time art critics; alt-weeklies still wrote art reviews; there was an unbridled sense of space, opportunity, and the ungratifying but simultaneously limitless potential of being located nowhere near “the center” of the art world.
Today, our world is different: we’ve realized that obsession and overengagement with the internet and with our devices is a serious concern, our economic environment is unmoored, and Glasstire is one of the last surviving bastions of criticism in Texas. Art writers no longer get into public (written) arguments, in part because there are so few critics left, and in part because media outlets are devoting increasingly small column space to visual art coverage. There is still, however, a permeating sense of possibility that emanates throughout Texas, even as our state has become better connected to major art cities.
When Rainey Knudson, our founding Publisher, launched our site 25 years ago, from the jump it was publishing serious criticism by Texas writers. The artist Bill Davenport, who would later design our art fair installations, become our Editor, and do myriad other odd jobs for Glasstire, was our first-ever writer. His column of 50+ reviews, Tire Iron, ran in Glasstire’s early years and prompted community letters to the editor, which we also ran as their own posts.
Glasstire started out serious, and at the same time had a slapdash quality to it that was fittingly appropriate for the days of the early internet and also for the young upstart role it was playing in Texas’ art community. Even though there were other newspapers and outlets covering local art scenes, Glasstire, by the virtue of being online and not in print (and therefore immediately responsive), was designed to connect Texas’ disparate artistic scenes with each other. Rainey’s vision was one of a network, of a web, of artists in Amarillo being aware of what artists in Brownsville were working on.
Over time, Glasstire’s structure shifted, in part because the internet changed. We eventually nixed the message boards, which were home in the early years to hot gossip and speculation, as well as genuine, earnest discussions about art. We beefed up our news reporting to more thoroughly cover what was happening across the state. We went from a more blog and author-driven format (anyone remember Betsy Lewis’ Don’t Look. Okay Look., Margaret Meehan’s Melba Toast, Lucia Simek’s Shelf Life, Ivan Lozano’s Capital A, etc.) to a more traditional publication structure, helmed by an Editor-in-Chief.
Changes to our publication also reflected Glasstire’s new roles and responsibilities in Texas’ art communities: alt-weeklies began to die out; newspapers axed full-time art critic jobs and slowed (or stopped) their publishing about visual art altogether; Art Lies, the longtime magazine based in Texas that I think of as Glasstire’s print foil, ceased publishing in 2011. As Glasstire grew up, it assumed more responsibility in a shrinking landscape of art writing. For those of us working for the publication, it has been a double-edged sword: we’re proud of the work we’ve been able to do and of how, over the past 25 years, Glasstire has grown into the publication covering art in Texas. At the same time, a shrunken art writing ecosystem isn’t the ideal place from which to operate, and it also isn’t what’s best for our state’s art and artists. But still, we soldier on.
Embedded into the bedrock of Glasstire is our belief that Texas deserves a publication that is producing serious, smart, considered, readable writing about the art happening here. We’re fortunate to employ some of the only full-time art critics in Texas, and we’re even luckier that we have a cadre of contributing writers who pitch stories to us. Driving our work daily is the idea that art writing and criticism is the foundation of a healthy, thriving visual art community.
I myself have been at Glasstire for ten-and-a-half years. My first day on the job, I was thrust in front of a camera to film man-on-the-street-style interviews at a Lawndale Art Center opening in Houston. I became our first-ever News Editor in 2018, and then I took over for Rainey when she stepped down in 2019. When I was reading Glasstire years ago as a student in college, using the publication to acquaint myself with Houston’s art history, I never imagined I would write for it, much less helm it.
Running a publication like this isn’t easy. I say this not to complain, but to be honest. We understand and take seriously the responsibility that we have to you, our readers, and to the myriad people, places, and institutions that appear on our digital pages. We’ve always felt it, and the reason we put in the work day in and day out, the reason Rainey kept this little engine of a website going for so long, is because we believe. In the artists, arts workers, and gallerists who chose to call Texas home; in the writers who publish apt and insightful takes on what’s happening here; and in the power and importance and the democratizing force of looking and considering and thinking. As Dave Hickey would say, we believe in being participants, not spectators.
I’m so excited to celebrate Glasstire’s 25th anniversary this year. Thanks for coming on this ride with us.
To learn more about Glasstire’s 25th anniversary programming, read Brandon Zech’s Letter from the Publisher.
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SANTA FE, NM—A set of billowing curtains signaling that they had arrived moments too late, staff from Penguin Random House reportedly broke down George R.R. Martin’s door Monday as the writer escaped through a bathroom window. “George, George, come back—we don’t want to hurt you! We just want to talk!” said executive editor Anne Groell, who ran to the shoe-print-marked windowsill where she caught a glimpse of the fleeing Game Of Thrones author’s flapping black button-up shirt just before he disappeared into the trees. “Editorial assistants, fan out! Don’t let him get away! He’s a fast one, but he won’t get far on foot. He’ll need to stop for comic books eventually.” At press time, sources confirmed Groell had grabbed a fisherman’s cap that fell near the window and given it to her German shepherd to sniff.
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DANBURY, CT—Emphasizing the local parish’s dedication to serving its most vulnerable community members, St. Mary’s Catholic Church announced Tuesday that it was opening its doors to any single mothers in need of judgment. “Times are tough right now, but we want divorcées and unwed moms to know they can rely on the church to cast doubt on their way of life,” said parish administrator Dianne Barry, explaining that priests and nuns would be available around the clock to provide a disapproving “hmmm,” a raised eyebrow, or a critical sneer to any single mothers struggling to get by. “Regardless of your background or whether you’re rich or poor, this is a safe space where you can come to find out everything that’s wrong with you. We have plenty of snide comments to hand out, and our staff is specially trained to disparage you for driving men away and raising your children in sin. Our goal is to judge thousands of unmarried mothers this season.” St. Mary’s also announced that the new program would not interfere with its regularly scheduled judgment of childless women.
The post Local Church Opens Doors To Any Single Mothers In Need Of Judgment appeared first on The Onion.
In brief: In this morning’s post we dig into our region’s very warm start to winter, which will continue this week. We probably will set more record highs. The post then explains why this is probably not the end of winter.
The month of December ended up 4.0 degrees above normal, and so far January is running much higher than what we typically experience at this time of year. We’ve already set one record high temperature this year (84 degrees, on Friday). This week will be no different, with record highs on Tuesday (80 degrees), Wednesday (81 degrees) and Thursday (79 degrees) all in play. Perhaps Friday as well, we will see.
By that point we will be nearly one half of the way into climatological winter, which spans from December through February. So is it just going to be super-warm weather all the way? I don’t think so. At the risk of being wrong (a hazard of the job!) I think that after a strong-ish front arrives late Friday or early Saturday of this week, we will fall into a cooler pattern for awhile. By this I mean days in the 60s and nights in the 40s. There are some hints of perhaps even colder weather toward the end of January, but who knows, really.
The bottom line is that we still have nearly eight weeks until March 1, and a lot can happen weather wise. So yes, this week is going to be unseasonably warm, just like a lot of December. But after that? We shall see.
Temperatures this morning have fallen to about 50 degrees across the metro area, which is the coldest we are going to get until at least next Saturday, but still warmer than is typical for January. Mostly cloudy skies this morning will give way to plenty of sunshine this afternoon, and this will allow high temperatures to push into the upper 70s for most locations. Winds will shift to come from the south over the course of the day. Lows tonight will drop into the low- to mid-60s.
These look to be the warmest days of the week, with mostly sunny skies and highs in the low- to mid-80s. One sobering note is that our all-time record high temperature for both the month of December and January is 85 degrees. That is potentially in play on Wednesday. With higher dewpoints (and humidity) we may also see some patchy fog on most mornings this week, including these days. Lows will again be in the 60s.
A disturbance will precede the passage of a cold front late this week, and this will lead to the potential for some light showers on Thursday and Friday. I know we need rain, but unfortunately this frontal passage is unlikely to deliver on that score. Both of these days will have about a 20 or 30 percent chance of rain, but accumulations look slight. Daily highs will probably be in the vicinity of 80 degrees, with increased cloud cover. There will be plenty of humidity. That should change some time on Friday night as a robust front sweeps through.
The weekend looks decidedly cooler. I think highs on both days will reach the lower 60s, but this will depend on the amount of sunshine after the front. I think Saturday will see a fair amount, but Sunday could be partly cloudy, at least. I did a deeper dive yesterday into conditions for the Houston Marathon on Sunday, January 11, and that forecast more or less holds. If anything we’ve trended a bit cooler, with start line temperatures edging toward the lower 40s. Rain chances are low to non-existent, and my expectation is for fairly light winds. So all in all, pretty ideal for a long run.
We may slowly warm up some later next week, but we are still likely to remain in the 60s on most days, with drier air and cool, if not cold nights. Unfortunately I don’t see any real rainmakers in the next 10 to 15 days.
A reader writes:
My department just called all us middle managers into a session to discuss our sickness “issue.” Some context: We live in a country where permanent employees of any level at any company all get unlimited sick days at full pay for a year (with a handful of caveats). Funnily enough, the sickness rate here isn’t particularly high: the average local worker takes three days off for sickness per year.
Our company has been through a painful year-long layoff process, which coincided with record-breaking profits, the launch of completely new product lines, and somewhat absurd expectations. Oh, and team celebration budgets were cut in the meantime. Our department frankly hit it out of the park: Our department alone is more profitable than our next two biggest competitors combined. We are about 15% above target, and have been for around three years. Yet this wasn’t enough to protect many of our strongest performers from layoffs because “their roles could be done from a cheaper country.”
Combined with fact that a huge number of us work way beyond the 40 hours a week in our job descriptions — and the fact that overtime is, very legally, unpaid — our sickness rates are way above the national average. (Fun fact: my VP was convinced that the reason we work so much overtime is because we can’t prioritize. When I went to him with a list of tasks we had to do, a recommendation on what order to do them in, and the corresponding minimal deadline extensions we’d need, he just said, “No, get it all done. You’re making me feel blocked.”) We’re currently at 26 sick days per employee per year!
So, most of us think the cause for this is pretty obvious. Our HR department and leadership see it a bit differently, though. And now to the meeting.
Alison, it was like they had read your blog for the past 10 years and done the exact opposite of what you advise when teams are burning out. Some of the highlights:
• They started the talk by saying, “Illness costs us too much money” and ended by saying, “Let’s bring the price down of sick leave together.” Incidentally, the price of sickness in our department is well below the amount by which we exceeded our targets this year.
• They said we should insist our employees phone us in the morning (on our personal cells; none of us have company phones or desk phones) and tell us when they can’t come in for the day instead of sending a Slack message (we’re very much Slack-first at my company so the request is really out of touch) and if they have a flu or migraine, we should recommend that they come back to work after lunch if they feel a bit better so they “don’t lose a day of productivity.” I pointed out the power differential between manager and worker that makes a “suggestion” feel like pressure even if not intended, and they said, “Well, they’re putting pressure on everyone else when they’re sick.”
• They told us we should be calling sick employees every two days to ask if they’re feeling better and what they plan to do to get better. When we pointed out how invasive that’s likely to feel, they said, “It’s completely normal. You’d do that with a family member, right? That’s what you should be doing here, too.”
• They said we should always ask them if they’ve seen a doctor for any ailment. When someone pointed out that not everyone has a family doctor, let alone goes to them for every migraine, they said, “See? To me, that’s a clear sign that they’re not even trying to take care of their own health.”
• They acknowledged that most illnesses in our department were related to burnout. Their solution is for us to “normalize talking about mental health” with our employees in our team meetings.
• When we pointed out that none of us thought this would actually make our employees less sick, they shared a “resource package” with us. This package was basically instructions on how to log sick days in our HR tool so HR can better track it, a link to a mental health app, and the phone number for our employee assistance program (current wait time: four to six months). We asked if they were planning on addressing the obvious root cause of our burnout problem, and they said, “That’s confidential.”
I already know that everything they’ve asked us to do is totally legal. And they’re not going to change their minds. And we have already pushed back. They’ve made clear they’re not budging, and that they’ll be checking much more closely to make sure we’re doing everything they’ve told us to do.
So … I guess my question is, knowing that this is just the way it’s going to be and that I won’t be able to recognize my employees with more money or less absurd deadlines, how do I enforce policies like “normalize talking about mental health” and “providing resource packages” and “asking them if they’ve gone to the doctor about every little ailment” and “caring for them like a family member” in a way that is minimally compliant, ideally actually helpful, and in a best case scenario makes clear without my needing to say it that I fundamentally disagree with HR’s master plan to reduce the time my people spend sick by making them feel like thieves for using sick leave?
Your company is run by loons.
I particularly like their assertion that you should be calling sick family members every two days to ask what they plan to do to get better. I intend to implement that in my own family right away, and I will update you later in the year to let you know whether it led to total or only partial estrangement.
Anyway, can you just … not comply? Would they know? Most of what they’re asking you to do would happen outside their view, and they wouldn’t really know whether you were harassing the crap out of sick employees by phone (especially since you don’t have company phones so they really have no way of tracking it!) or suggesting people come back in the afternoon after a morning out with the flu (!) or inquiring into their doctor visits. They said they’ll be checking but, practically speaking, how? Are they going to follow up with your employees to ask whether you suggested they see a doctor for every migraine? (And if so, okay, tell your employees that’s what’s going on and so their answer to that question should always be yes. When your management is this out of their gourd, you don’t have a duty of loyalty to hide it from your team. If anything, you have a duty of loyalty to tell your team.)
But I’m also curious what would happen if you just all stopped overworking yourselves so much. Yes, they’re pilling work on you and so you’re all working massive overtime to get it all done, but what would happen if you just … didn’t? What would happen if you held firm on saying things like, “We can do X and Y by next week, but that means Z won’t happen until the following week and W will have to be back-burnered indefinitely?” And if they respond by telling you no, it all has to happen faster, if you simply said, “Realistically, we don’t have the staffing to do that, so here’s how we’re prioritizing things and let me know if you want these ordered differently”? Because the thing is, you presumably are setting some boundaries already, whether you think about it that way or not — you’re presumably building people’s need to go home and sleep into your project timelines and would hold firm if they tried to get you to work 24/7 — so this is just a question of drawing the line in a different place.
Obviously there’s a danger that they’ll fire some or all of you if you do that, so you need to have a realistic sense of how much capital and leverage you have (as well as how willing you are to take that risk), but very, very, very often when people are being overworked to the point of needing 26 sick days a year, there’s actually more room than they realize for them to set different boundaries; they’ve just been assuming they can’t.
Also, though — and I know this easier said than done — you all should be working on leaving, because this company is wildly dysfunctional, it’s literally making your team members sick, and they sound very likely to lay any of you off tomorrow if they find a profitable way to do it.
The post my company wants us to harass overworked employees into taking less sick leave appeared first on Ask a Manager.
Here are four updates from past letter-writers.
1. An abusive volunteer is holding our website hostage
I am no longer a mere VP — I have been elected president! A short summary of my previous letters: I’m on the board of a small organization and we’re all volunteers. There were issues with our webmaster and our website, but the previous president wasn’t wanting to muck around with the site. I understand his reasons but I disagreed with him about it.
At our 2024 convention, the (now former) president announced that he was not running for reelection and that I was running for president. The webmaster pulled me aside after this and told me that he was planning to retire, that he’d identified someone to take over the role from him, and that he was anticipating being able to step down in December 2026. Yes, 2026. As in, 18 months from when we were having this conversation.
Flash forward to October. The webmaster sent me an email reiterating what he’d told me at our convention. I replied back agreeing with a lot of the points that he’d made and then continued on to say that having one webmaster was a single point of failure, we couldn’t rely on always having tech-savvy members with the desire and time to maintain the website, and my plans for how I wanted to change things. This … did not go down well. I think the summary of the months-long conversation is: while I definitely made some missteps, the only outcome he was willing to accept was what he’d already decided, and since that was never going to happen, we were pretty much doomed to be at loggerheads about it all.
I officially took office in January and as part of my president’s message included an acknowledgement of the work that he’d done over the years and then a description of what I wanted to make happen and a call for volunteers. And holy shit, did they deliver! I ended up with a fantastic group of volunteers, one of whom had retired recently and has a ton of project management experience. She took the reins and our first meeting was March 2025.
I am blown away by how talented and dedicated this group is and I am even more blown away by all the things that went into this site. We have an official privacy policy now! Legal disclaimers! Members can update their own privacy information! The site itself is GORGEOUS and we launched it right at the beginning of July, just before our yearly convention. I’m a little worried that we’re still borderline single point of failure on the technical side, but I’ve been assured that the team is good to go. When we launched, we did so with what we felt was the minimum viable product and we’ve been adding functionality, features, made some changes/improvements, all that good stuff, since July. Right now, we’re working on updating our directory in accordance with our new privacy policy. (Ooo, exciting!)
The former webmaster and the new web team, we’ve all reached a sort of détente with each other. And, ya know, given how everything went down, I’ll take it. Are we all going to be the best of friends? Probably not, but I think we all can either treat each other with respect or just nicely ignore the other person’s existence, and I’m good with that.
So all’s well that ends well! Now I just need to get started on my project for this year, but since it’s actually an idea from one of my VPs, I think I’ll just start poking at him to get it up and running.
2. Does board member’s comment mean I’m about to get a big raise? (#2 at the link)
To start, I think I need to be more transparent about what the original conversation was. The board member’s cryptic line about waiting for review season was, “You know I’m on the budget committee and we just approved raises for next year, so talk to me after your review. Don’t quote me on it, but I think there’s a new number in front of it if I remember correctly.” Which is why I spiraled about what that number could be and how much of the information was accurate.
Anyway, I ended up receiving a 10% raise, and due to some organizational restructuring since, I’m being fast-tracked to higher leadership soon too.
I don’t think I’ll be buying a house, but an apartment with in-unit laundry and off-street parking is in my near future!
Thanks to you and your readers for your thoughtful advice.
3. My employee is in remote limbo and it’s impacting her work
After reading through the feedback and comments I came to the realization that where Jane works was not the main issue. For those that are curious, she was able to work out a hybrid arrangement with HR.
The main issue is Jane’s work. The quality is inconsistent and I often have to hold her hand more than necessary for someone at her level. Over the summer another team member, Sam, who is two levels below Jane, shared his project work in a meeting. I was blown away by his thoroughness and analysis. That sealed the deal for me. I had an honest conversation with Jane about areas she needs to improve on and gave her an action plan to get on track. Our checkin on her progress is scheduled for after the holidays.
4. A group of coworkers are pushing for our in-office breakfasts to be vegan
The situation fizzled out eventually. People in charge of the breakfast responded that their priority is bringing people together, which means accomodating a wide variety of dietary needs, and the current lack of demand and overstock of the vegan breakfast options goes against the attempts to minimize food waste. The vegan group endorsing the request complained a bit but did not get a buy-in from the majority. The breakfast setup stays the same.
The post updates: the volunteer holding a website hostage, the vegan breakfasts, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.
It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Coworker was cheating in our virtual Jeopardy tournament
A couple years ago, just for fun, a coworker started a virtual Jeopardy tournament which anyone in the company could participate in. It was the usual setup: three contestants (with cameras on), the coworker hosting, and an audience tuned in once a week.
One contestant, “Kurt,” was the reigning champion. The man could not be beat. Until, after a few weeks, there was some speculation that Kurt was not abiding by the honor system and had Google up on his screen. The theory was finally confirmed when there was a question about an obscure national bird. After a pause with some suspicious arm movements and his eyes darting around the screen, Kurt answered just in time with obvious hesitation, and mispronounced the name of the bird to boot. The host called him out then and there. Kurt (unconvincingly) doubled down, but the jig was up.
I’m not in Kurt’s department, nor even in the same state, so I didn’t witness the personal/professional fallout from his duplicity (he’s still employed here), but I am curious: if you were his manager, would this incident compel you to take any action? This gameshow was held during office hours and attended by dozens of employees, but it wasn’t official company business. You’d assume, though, that if Kurt was willing to break his coworkers’ trust in this scenario, he couldn’t be trusted in general, right?
Yeah, it would make me look harder at his integrity. I wouldn’t take any official action since this was just a fun game, but would it make it question things he said that I otherwise might have trusted implicitly and do more checking to be sure I could rely on his honesty? Absolutely. And if I had a certain type of relationship with Kurt, I might have pointed out to him that that was a natural outcome (not just on my end, but presumably for other colleagues too).
2. Can I have a sumo wrestler calendar on my wall at work?
I’m a big fan of watching sumo wrestling! Can I put up a wall calendar of sumo wrestlers in my office at work? Sumo wrestlers don’t wear very much clothing…
I think a sumo wrestler calendar is fine. Sumo wrestling photos are very much not sexualized (I mean, I’m sure someone sexualizes them, but that’s not the cultural connotation around them), and the skimpy clothing is more athletic uniform than anything else.
3. Incompetent coworker asked me to be a reference
A coworker on my small tech team recently asked me to be a reference for him. I have worked closely with him and I have seen him firsthand be bad at our job. I’ve worked with him on projects and I have been left to do all of the work and then he feels guilty about that and says he doesn’t want it all to fall on me. I’ll say, “Oh, do you want to take this on then?” and then he gets super noncommittal and barely ever does anything. I dont think he understands what our role is and how to do a good job. He also loves talking endlessly about totally irrelevant things. Plus he’s somewhat often checking out women or just generally being weird (he once sent me a photo of animals having sex).
I was talking about this situation with my roommate and he suggested I give my coworker a glowing review so that he will leave our office.
On the one hand, I don’t want to lie if the job calls — for several reasons, such as my reputation and not wanting to screw them over and having a hard time lying. On the other, I also don’t want to be the one responsible for tanking his chances by stating what I think about the quality of his work, because I think he is infuriatingly bad at our job and should do something else.
When he asked me, I told him he could put me down but asked him to think about if there might be someone else who would be a better reference due to my short length of time on the job (I previously worked with him before I was promoted). He told me he’d get back to me but never has.
If I do get a call, my plan is to keep the convo short and state some positive things and some critical things to them but not go over the top either way. What do you think?
I think you should give an honest reference, or at a minimum a lukewarm one. Otherwise you’re actively misrepresenting his work to someone. If you’re not comfortable doing that, you should go back to him and tell him that you’ve thought it over and don’t think you can be a reference, in part because he hasn’t pulled his weight when he’s worked on projects with you and so you can’t speak positively of the things a reference is likely to ask. That’s a reasonable thing to say! If he tries to dispute that, you can say, “What I’m saying is that I am not positioned to give you the kind of reference you need, so it is in your best interest not to offer them my name.” From there, it’s up to him whether he still lists you or not.
Also, part of the problem here is your management, in keeping this guy on without addressing all the problems you listed. It shouldn’t be on you to grapple with whether to give him a misleadingly positive reference to get rid of him; it should be on them to do their jobs and manage him more appropriately.
4. Consequences for secretly working two full-time jobs at once
A coworker was recently fired when it was discovered that he was secretly working full-time at both my company and another in the same industry for two years. He has already lost both jobs. What other ramifications, legal and otherwise, might he face?
He’s unlikely to face legal consequences unless the circumstances are extremely unusual (like if he works in a patient care role and was negligent in one job because of his focus on the other and that negligence endangered someone). He might have a hard job getting another position in his field if word gets around or employers contact the previous jobs for references. And he won’t be eligible for unemployment benefits. But other than that, there aren’t really other ramifications other than, you know, losing the jobs.
5. How long should I wait after getting a promotion before job-searching?
I work within a very small (and shrinking) but necessary team in my company. Recently our team’s core personnel was reduced to just me and the team lead, leaving a vacant position, and just today they significantly cut the team lead’s pay, leading him to walk. This leaves me as the only person with significant day-to-day operational knowledge in a technical position, as everyone else are mid- and high-level management who work with several teams and oversee much larger programs.
I’m the senior most member of the team besides the lead and am very likely to get the vacant position. Given the recent state of the company, however, it’s clear that I should not count on any long-term plans with them.
The raise is likely to be significant and the position would look good on a resume, but I’m certain they will overwork and underpay me. But I’m afraid, and with some precedent, that if I refuse, they will lump whatever of his work they can on me and divvy the remaining responsibilities among the upper levels as a “temporary” or “necessary” measure. But I also fear that taking this promotion could shackle me to this position for a while yet.
If I take the promotion, how long should I wait before seeking new employment? I imagine recruiters would look at someone applying soon after a promotion rather negatively, particularly since this would be a jump into a leadership role and could lead to me being seen as either unreliable or unable to handle such a position. Is there any other way I could diplomatically present this within interviews besides “differences of opinion” and “not seeing eye-to-eye with [Employer]”?
You don’t need to hold off on job-searching. Take the promotion and start a job search. It’s not going to look weird.
If a recruiter asks why you’re looking so soon after being promoted, you can say, “I was happy to help out with the role when the company asked me to, but the company has also been making a lot of cuts and I’m looking for something more stable.”
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PALO ALTO, CA—Shouting over the sound of the alarm as it blared through the headquarters of Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, panicked xAI technicians were reportedly throwing levers Monday in a frantic effort to find the one controlling Grok’s pedophilia. “Come on, everybody, it’s got to be here!” said xAI engineer Matthew Fedorov, who ran down a row of flashing control panels as he searched for the lever that would stop the AI-powered chatbot from creating sexualized images of minors. “No, not that one. That’s just making it talk like a pirate. It’s still expressing a sexual interest in children, though. No, not the MechaHitler one either. Wait, I think I found it, but it’s stuck! Someone get over here and help me pull!” At press time, sources confirmed horrified employees were slowly backing away after they had accidentally broken off Grok’s pedophilia lever while the controls were set to serial-predator mode.
The post Panicked xAI Technicians Frantically Throw Levers To Find The One Controlling Grok’s Pedophilia appeared first on The Onion.
Misinformation concerning menopause abounds. The Onion’s health experts examine the myths versus the facts.
MYTH: Hot flashes are the first sign of menopause.
FACT: Sharing an AI image of a golden retriever with angel wings is the first sign of menopause.
MYTH: Going through menopause is a miserable experience.
FACT: Many women actually enjoy the opportunity to try a bunch of new drugs.
MYTH: All of a woman’s eggs are gone by the time she hits 50.
FACT: You can typically guilt your eggs into staying longer by telling them how empty the house feels.
MYTH: Menopause marks the permanent end of a woman’s period.
FACT: Most women regain their periods upon arriving in hell.
MYTH: Perimenopause symptoms can begin in your 30s.
FACT: You need to take a deep breath and drink a glass of water.
MYTH: After menopause, women cannot become pregnant.
FACT: Scientists know very little about the nascent field of women’s health.
The post Menopause: Myth Vs. Fact appeared first on The Onion.
As you’ve probably heard, a corrupt authoritarian president has been destroying his country for over a decade—and as of this weekend, he decided to invade Venezuela. But just who is this political criminal?
If you’re just catching up, here’s what you should know: He’s a despotic demagogue who has abandoned the working class, stifled political dissent and organized labor, threatened to jail political opponents, and abused state power to no end. His country may very well be on the brink of social and economic collapse, but in recent months, he turned his focus to bombing little boats in the Caribbean.
You might be thinking, Wait, how is this guy in power at all? Well, he narrowly won his first election after a campaign in which he claimed he could shoot people in public with impunity. He left office briefly after losing his bid for a second term, but not before attempting to overturn a free and fair election and encouraging a mob to murder his own vice president. He eventually returned to power and has hinted that he will never relinquish his iron grip on a country that, by and large, has come to despise him. Now, in a not-so-subtle attempt to take over foreign oil reserves, he has plunged his country into a new, violent quagmire in South America.
Why haven’t I heard this guy described this way before? Probably because he has systematically oppressed independent media and sowed distrust in journalism. Even now, his administration is attempting to paint its international incursion and kidnapping of a foreign leader as a necessary justice for narcotics trafficking—at the same time that he’s pardoned other politicians for the same crimes.
What about his wife and their sons? They are just a few examples of how frequently this cabal has placed family members and business associates in positions of power, a tradition of nepotism rooted in greed. Their thirst for riches and status knows no bounds, as evidenced by a cryptocurrency they launched that swindled supporters—and the country’s economy at large—out of money. Now, they’ve gone a step further: They want to personally run the entire country of Venezuela.
So… what can we do about it? Not to worry, he’s promised all this won’t affect you, just so long as you keep your head down, do what he says, and be very rich. For more on the totalitarian ruler who is destroying the lives of regular, everyday people in his own country, read our report about his yet-to-be-announced invasions of Mexico, Cuba, Colombia, Greenland, and maybe even Canada.
Every time I close a menu in Death Stranding it is only so I can make room in front of my eyes for a different menu.
SOLVER is back back back! And so is Dean Thompson. But following the events at Wobbly Head (you may wish to refresh your memory on part 4), he seems to be a man in deep turmoil. Clippy can help. Clippy always helps.
Subscribers can read the new chapter in full on my Patreon, now!
The post How To Be A Pythonista appeared first on Bad Machinery.
I like your cakes! I mean, your desserts.
Hey, it’s the captain of the Valdez.
OTTAWA – This morning, in an unscheduled press statement, the Prime Minister’s Office has said that Prime Minister Mark Carney has turned off geolocation services for all his electronic devices “for no particular reason whatsoever”. “This is just a normal, everyday, temporary precaution the Prime Minister is taking to avoid unwanted public or perhaps presidential […]
The post Mark Carney turns off geolocation on phone just in case appeared first on The Beaverton.
OTTAWA – Canadian Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre was reportedly seen lighting emergency flares, in hopes that U.S. President Donald Trump would “liberate” Canada in the same fashion that he has done with Venezuela. “Please, Mr. Trump! Depose the tyrannical Mark Carney in the way I utterly failed to do,” shouted Poilievre as he held aloft […]
The post Poilievre lights emergency flares to beg Trump to invade Canada appeared first on The Beaverton.
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