“Be the reason HR makes a new rule.'” – Riven
Yes, we knew it was going to happen. I got my first student complaint for “inappropriate behavior.” Sequential visits to my office from the head of the academic center (where she works tutoring the students from my Intro Chem class) and my department chairman. I apparently did something horrible. Did I tell a student that she had nice tits? Offer her ‘extra credit’ for ‘special effort?’ Nope.
“You made her very uncomfortable.”
“How?”
“You used an emoji in your email to her.” (That’s a screenshot of the offending missive, the key for my practice exam which she had requested)
I was stunned into silence. “Uhhh…. OK….”
“We do not use emojis in professional communications. This made her feel very uncomfortable.”
“Uhhhh… OK… I won’t use any more emojis.”
Solemn nods and departure. I think I’ll always have someone else in there when she comes in for our regular meetings and course reviews.
Speaking of which, there are birthdays galore, and a few of them would include a guy we put before da horse; a guy who taught me what a baryton is; an actual prisoner of love; a guy whose views were crystal clear; a guy who thought of better things to do with a mallet than croquet; a guy who was so great at guitar that a whole style of chording is named after him; a guy we had to study when I took Education courses in college (and convinced me that Education was a scam); a guy whose name is second only to Martin Luther King’s as an indicator that this is a street you don’t want to be on; the quintessential TV milf; one of the guys who funded my first start-up; the reason you wanted Rush Limbaugh to get sick or go on vacation back in the day; a congressman who knew what to do with his staff; a guy whose popularity mystified me (and was irl an insufferable Proggie); a guy who took diction lessons from Paul Harvey; a guy who taught me my teaching style and had the hottest TV wife; a guy who could outgrift Bernie Sanders and Al Sharpton combined; and a short chick I met on my first honeymoon.
Shall we move on to Links? Let’s shall.
So are these real or is Toria Nuland still trying to overthrow governments?
They are scared. Deeply scared.
This just seems… appropriate. They need to be on the other side, though.
This is actually killing our admissions numbers.
Never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
I dunno, seems a lot for a cover band.
One of my favorite rhythm sections backing up an amazing vibes player. This got the Old Man’s heart pumping today.
Happy Easter to those who celebrate it.
“Rush Limbaugh” birthday doesn’t contain a link.
Happy Easter! Can we maybe have Trans Invisibility Day once just to give us a break?
Would be hard to pull off but invisible tranny would be a great Halloween costume.
Just dress up as a giant penis – it is either the one that haunts you, or the one you dream of. And there is no trace of a human attached to it.
You’d never win a contest that way — most folks wouldn’t give you a second glans.
Oh they would, with a good cutting remark.
This line of conversation is very bris-appointing,
Let me give you a tip, urine trouble with Swissy if he sees this.
Competition for best pun in this thread is pretty stiff.
I’m not sure there is a vas deferens anyway.
I’m somewhat curious when the tipping point was between the admin telling the students to be adults and fuck off with such trivial crap and the current “Offend No One, Ever” garbage. I can’t imagine complaining to anyone about an emoji (it would take full on cussing me out with creative words in email back in the day, most likely… and then only if I didn’t deserve it — which would not be my default position), much less anyone in Administration giving a crap.
Ah well — we knew it wouldn’t be anything like fondling, OMWC… these college age kids are way beyond the free candy stage after all.
Morning all — Happy Easter for those of you who observe. Happy Transgender Day of What-the-fuckery for those who don’t, I suppose.
SP (wisely, as always) used to say about college girls, “They may be fun to look at, but eventually you have to talk to them.”
Tiny Easter eggs for some, and size 13 pumps for others.
🤦♀️
This makes me hope I have high school dropouts to take care of me in The Home someday, because college students have become too stupid to live.
I know we love them, but I’ve had to tell some juniors not to use puns in official communications.
Everybody but Jews gets a safe space at college.
I actually agree with this.
No Emojis ever. Use complete sentences, correct spelling, and write everything as if it was discoverable. Because it is.
Do not ever be alone in a room with without witnesses and a video camera.
Swiss — if you can be disturbed from your Swiss Chocolate Bunny this morning… we could use a narrowed gaze about now.
I saw a Swiss diplomatic jet when I was on Dauphin Island this week.
Its call sign was Tobler One.
Was she doing standup or something? Kind of curious now if you met DeVito as well (because if she wasn’t doing a gig, I would think there’d be a chance they’d be wherever-it-was together, after all…)
No, she and Danny were staying at the same resort we were. I was dragooned into doing a horseback ride with a group and they were in it. I can recall that DeVito was actually quite skilled as a rider. Pearlman, like me, was… not. We chatted a bit. Nice folks.
better things to do with a mallet
Happy Birthday Gallagher!
Happy Birthday, Mark Steyn! 😁 (I now vow to use an emoji in every comment!)
Oh for God’s sake… we’re going to wear out the bits underlying the Picard facepalm meme picture in this generation at this rate.
They’re just trying to rebuild this city on rock and roll.
Yo, Yo Ma!
https://youtu.be/RRdIxP3e2QY
Yomage to Yo Yo Ma 🎸
Yo Ma Ma!
This is actually killing our admissions numbers.
Well that and a shrinking demographic.
Some sought to cast Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, who is Black, as a diversity hire, despite him being elected to office with more than 70 percent of the vote in a city with a predominantly Black population.
I see the point – you can hardly call that a diversity hire. No, that’s more like good old tribalism.
They’ve come a long way since the days of Don Schaeffer.
It’s like with Winchester rifles, there are the pre-64s, and then there is the junk that has come after.
Why do you hate the Winchester 73?
Hahaha, yeah the pre-1864 Dems were even worse than the pre-1964 version.
Funny how that is from 1950…
The guy who pretty much went straight from school into the Baltimore machine.
I knew of the school-to-prison pipeline.
Happy Easter all, Christ is King.
See?? Y2K WAS a thing! Those students have ceased to exist! 😱
They’re pining for the fjords?
By choice.
Bloomberg got elected twice without pandering to that POS.
Another day another security fail.
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/30/1241863710/att-data-breach-dark-web
Sigh… this is like the 3rd (at least) really major one in the last 5 or 6 months. Getting stupid.
Hey companies — here’s an idea (again)… use company-unique identifiers for people, stop using SSNs for anything. I know the “credit report” people will complain… but I don’t care. Frankly, I think society will be better off without them… especially given rumblings like this (which seems a bit light on the details and how widespread it really is getting).
an actual prisoner of love;
Also a prisoner of love
Is it just me or has Google archive/cached view gone away completely on all browsers? Not sure if it’s a setting on my new machine or what – havent been able to access articles at a lot of sites without that feature now.
Deprecated. They can’t have you know what was actually first written.
Dead web won’t kill itself.
Old Guy Music should have been this.
and a short chick I met on my first honeymoon.
Happy birthday Audrey Meadows!
I played https://squaredle.com/xp 03/31:
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I played https://squaredle.com/xp 03/31:
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Happy Easter, friends.
He is risen!
He is risen indeed!
Fortunately, it’s not Passover or he would be chametz.
Got my kosher Coke yesterday. 💛🥤
When I used to regularly drink soda, I avoided the high fructose and would always hoard the (((Coke))) this time of year. We had some neighbors over and I told the wife to “get me some Jew Coke” for my whiskey. Then had to explain to the neighbors about the Passover formula being made with beet sugar instead of corn syrup and to look for the different colored caps with Hebrew written on it.
Mexicoke, la misma. Don’t know why the kosher comes only in 2L.
That’s my usual go to when I grab a coke, but the passover 2Ls only cost what a mediolitro of the MexiCoke costs.
i am with the department on this one. I am always annoyed when I get a message about some technical issue from a coworker and it has emojis,. I never use any.
They piss me off too 😡🤬😾. Keep your head up though, things will get better 😄😉👍😁.
Somehow, I just don’t care. Important things, like lunch or dinner, take precedence over what is the latest fashion in communications. What does annoy me though, are junk emails that start out with (insert first name here) as though we are old friends.
Grittings, Fours Core. Hoffa gut tay.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d1/b9/1a/d1b91aa2d09053772dec27046783b1bf.jpg
the links seem to be back at the right hour
so what is everyone drinking?
https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/protos+grand+rsrv+ribera+duero+castilla+y+leon+spain/2014/
not bad, needs to breathe
We have a party to go to this afternoon. I’m thinking a magnum of the 2019 Weis Vineyards Riesling Winzer Select A, and a smuggled in bottle just for me (a la Nixon’s Margaux) of a nice 1995 Cote-Rotie..
Going shooting this AM, and followed by brewery time, so I am thinking a Weis. As it is spring, and the weather is really nice today.
So not all bad.
It Only Takes a $7,000 Debt to End Up Trapped in China
I’d be hard pressed to take a post in China for my employer.
Obligatory.
I wouldn’t set foot there again under any circumstances.
I think I missed the window for Hong Kong, too. ☹️
Meanwhile
https://www.state.gov/announcing-the-fallon-smart-policy-visa-restrictions-on-foreign-government-officials-who-have-assisted-fugitives-in-evading-the-u-s-justice-system/
Also Easter is not today it is on May 5th
American Easter is better than Orthodox Easter.
But the Orthodox people get to buy all the discounted regular Easter candy.
We hates them conservatives, of all kinds.
In the immortal words of The Captain: Some men you just can’t reach…
And to think they, MSNBC especially, just had a major circle jerk about being so, so committed to the Truth(tm).
“I think I’ll always have someone else in there when she comes in for our regular meetings and course reviews.”
Yes. And always leave the door ajar.
Oh yeah, and if this is really a thing then it should be in writing in your faculty handbook and email use policies.
But how can you predict what’s going to make a student feel unsafe at any given moment?? Hell, when they wake up in the morning they don’t even know what gender they are that day!! 🙄
Maybe my mid-size public university is very unusual, but in my experience the actual number of the gender-conflicted is way smaller than the media would have you believe. Also, see my next comment below. It may not be the tutor who is making this into a personnel issue, although there isn’t much reason to contact the chair otherwise.
Small private liberal arts university, so we’re stuffed with attention-seekers.
One more thing: the fact that she went to the department chair instead of simply politely saying “OMWC, a word please…” is a big red flag. It also raises the possibility that it’s not her who has the problem, it’s your chair, who has for some reason decided to make this into a big deal. He can’t get rid of you for the crime of Too Much Math (academic freedom and all that), so he has to look for other ways.
You should still leave the door ajar.
You’re assuming that today’s students are young adults, and not overgrown, coddled children who run to mommy.
well, my “assumptions” are based on working among them for 35 years (and counting). There are certainly overgrown, coddled children among them, just as there are at any workplace of several thousand. Today’s students were raised on metoo and “if you see something, say something”…it doesn’t make them coddled, it makes them carry around a lot of baggage that we have to work at unloading.
Oh look, I don’t blame them for how they were raised – that’s a different generation’s responsibility (and fault); mostly a generation I’m associated with.
Although damn, the kids these days aren’t the children of Boomers.
Youngest Boomer I know is parent to a 23-y.o., so possible.
A 53yo friend has an 8yo son.
Some things happen late in life.
Zwak see my stepmom WSJ article…
53 is genx
TBF, she first went to the head of the tutoring center. That person then went to my department chairman.
Yeah, it’s impossible to predict everything that any of the children might find upsetting.
The Aristocrats!
Inside a Magical Holiday Home Like No Other (House Tour)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqh_HK8MsYA
interesting design though i assume sizable land in the Hamptons is not that cheap
HAPPY EASTER 🙂
The step kids not happy with the new arm piece. I don’t know how she was incentivized to show up in the UK.
https://www.wsj.com/world/walmsley-robert-death-inquest-family-stepmother-a2b94026?st=h6h2wsinjg63nxl&reflink=share_mobilewebshare
Old people can fall down without any outside help.
/Experienced Falldowner
As my neurologist says, at 65 you have one foot in the grave. At 80 you have both.
Yes, a fall can kill, and yes, so can a step-mother.
“‘Hyperactive’ Oklahoma boy, 9, is served with anti-stalking order by sheriff’s at his elementary school after girl in his class complained he was harassing her”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13256099/Lavonne-McCoy-grandson-nine-hyperactive-anti-stalking-school-Elsy-Goggin-classmate.html
OFFS!!
“We’re just following orders”
The picture of the accuser’s mother is exactly what you think.
Holy shit, that is perfect.
If this is true “According to Goggin’s handwritten letter, the boy makes cruel comments about her wheelchair-bound husband (pictured here with Elsy Goggin and their daughter) to the little girl – including ‘telling her her should break his legs’ ” then the little scamp needs to have his butt blistered.
Gee. After reading the article the kid could legitimately be problematic.
The solution here, of course, is way easier than dealing with the school or parent(s) of the accused stalker.
OTH, just as effective I’m sure.
Careful, the (eccentrically named) boy’s mother looks Native.
Did you read the article? Fuck that kid.
Sounds like the girl isn’t so innocent either.
Regardless, you need a sheriff to handle a nine-year-old child?
Today, in everything I don’t like is fascist
“Fire Department brass ordered an East Village ladder company to remove its “red line” American flag honoring the squad’s six brothers killed on 9/11 – after a neighborhood resident complained it was “fascist” and a local lefty pol questioned whether it was a “politically charged symbol.””
https://nypost.com/2024/03/31/us-news/fdny-firefighters-forced-to-remove-flag-honoring-9-11-heroes-after-nyc-pol-questioned-if-its-a-political-symbol/
Defaced American flags are tacky.
This, I don’t like them reclined, bluelined or rainbowized.
Dammit autocorrect- redlined
I agree, but it’s part of American culture.
Or today in I hate everyone.
More of this please. Voting habits won’t change until people’s noses are rubbed in it good and hard.
GT, I like how you think.
🤜 🍆 💦
🤛😁👍
Looks like someone is having a Happy Easter.😁
I don’t see an upright fist emoji, so that was my closest approximation to onanism.
I thought GT punched a black guy in the dick.
“Because me being at my position means that their way of thinking, their way of life of being comfortable while everyone else suffers is going to be at risk, and they should be afraid because that’s my purpose in life.”
Que?
Racist twaddle.
“Climate activists disrupt New York Auto Show, pour oil on electric vehicles to protest climate change
“We just disrupted the NY Auto show to make it clear that electric vehicles alone won’t save us. There are no electric vehicles on a dead planet!” the group stated on X, reposting the video of their protest.
Following the incident, Extinction Rebellion NYC issued an official press release denouncing the promotion of EVs. They argued that the production of EVs is still carbon-intensive, and the vehicles fail to address the root causes of environmental degradation associated with conventional fossil-fuel-powered cars.”
https://thepostmillennial.com/climate-activists-disrupt-new-york-auto-show-pour-oil-on-electric-vehicles-to-protest-climate-change
They’re right that it’s not a solution. What they are missing is there is no solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.
Lulz
Then they all moved across town to join the big event today.
CWABOA
Nothing screams ‘we’re here to save the planet’ like dumping oil all over the place.
Small private liberal arts university
named after a superhero vigilante’s butler.
“Climate activists disrupt New York Auto Show, pour oil on electric vehicles to protest climate change
They should try vandalizing the cars at the Oakland Fucking Roadster Show and see what happens.
Freddie Green – learn to chord
He’s loose! Run, everybody!
“We’re absolutely going to see a decline in students going to college,” Laitinen said. “The question is how catastrophic it will be.”
I’m struggling to see the downside.
whaddup doh’
yo whats goody yo
TALL RESURRECTION CANS!
From the sidebar in Rhywun’s link:
Tearful wife of ‘migrant influencer’ who urged others to ‘invade’ US, squat in homes can’t see husband inside Ohio jail
¡Qué lástima!
BFH
I guess that means the taxpayer is paying for the other half.
I was just reading a long CNN infomercial about Biden’s student loan forgiveness programs, and why all Americans should vote to re-elect him. I’ll forego the link. Nowhere, prior to the point where I tapped out, was there the slightest consideration of whether those indebted students received any value for the money. Nobody ever asks why those people can’t earn enough to repay their debts, or what that means.
😆
Did you tell the department head that chick is too old for anyway?
Fun with numbers
Dump trucks, delivery vans and other big trucks make up only 4 percent of U.S. road traffic, yet they spew a quarter of harmful air pollution from vehicles.
——-
Traffic-related air pollution is responsible for about 22,000 premature deaths in the United States every year. Those emissions disproportionately affect communities of color and low-income areas, which are more likely to be located near highways, freight corridors, rail yards and warehouses.
Respiratory consequences are not felt evenly across the country. Black and Native Americans have the highest asthma rates compared to other races and ethnicities. In 2018, Black people in the United States were 42 percent more likely than white people to suffer from asthma, according to federal data.
It must be true.
I bet pollution causes sickle cell anemia too.
Nope, that’s caused by racism and climate change.
That RFK Jr. article was amazing. The best part is that every single person quoted knows that every single thing that they are worried about could have been avoided by allowing RFK to seek the Dem nomination during the primary. Selected, not elected, indeed.
What a shithole
But while hundreds of thousands of new residents have flocked to the state on the promise of beautiful weather, no income tax and lower costs, nearly 500,000 left in 2022, according to the most recent census data. Contributing to their move was a perfect storm of soaring insurance costs, a hostile political environment, worsening traffic and extreme weather, according to interviews with more than a dozen recent transplants and longtime residents who left the state in the past two years.
“It wasn’t the utopia on any level that I thought it would be,” said Jodi Cummings, who moved to Florida from Connecticut in 2021. “I thought Florida would be an easier lifestyle, I thought the pace would be a little bit quieter, I thought it would be warmer. I didn’t expect it to be literally 100 degrees at night. It was incredibly difficult to make friends, and it was expensive, very expensive.”
Cummings expected she’d have extra money in her paycheck working as a private chef in the Palm Beach area since the state doesn’t have an income tax. But the high costs of car insurance, rent and food cut into that additional take-home pay. After six months of dealing with South Florida’s heat and traffic, she began planning a move back to the Northeast.
They talked to more than a dozen people. Out of 500,000. What more do you need to know?
*I would not live in Florida (or the south) for love nor money.
I left Texas 40 years ago, after 10 years. The heat wore me out. My kids live there but that’s where they grew up. I grew up shoveling snow and using jumper cables.
I grew up shoveling snow and using jumper cables, that’s why I’m in TX now.
Along with the rising costs, Rotkowitz said he generally felt unsafe in the state between the erratic traffic — which resulted in a number of his patients being injured by vehicles — and a state law passed in 2023 that allowed people to carry a concealed weapon without a license.
“Everyone is walking around with guns there,” he said. “I consider myself a conservative guy, but if you want to carry a gun you should be licensed, there should be some sort of process.”
Just like Haiti. Constant gunfire. Rotting corpses everywhere.
The reverse migration out of Florida isn’t just among newcomers, but also among longtime residents who said they can no longer afford to live there and are uncomfortable with the state’s increasingly conservative policies, which in recent years have included a crackdown on undocumented immigrants, a ban on transgender care for minors, state interventions in how race, slavery and sexuality are taught in schools, and a six-week ban on abortions.
——-
Having grown up in Oklahoma, Smith considered herself a Republican, but as Florida’s politics shifted to the right, she said she began to consider herself a Democrat. It wasn’t until the past several years, though, that politics started to encroach on her daily life — from feuds between neighbors and friends to neo-Nazis showing up at a Black Lives Matter rally in her small town.
Gracious sakes alive.
“a six-week ban on abortions”
Politically, that was a stupid move.
“neo-Nazis showing up at a Black Lives Matter rally in her small town”
Pics or it didn’t happen.
“British Museum Claims Some Birds, Dinosaurs May Have Been Queer In New Exhibit
A museum in the United Kingdom is facing mockery after claiming that some dinosaurs may have been queer. In its latest exhibition celebrating LGBT history, a pamphlet handed out to guests speculates on the sexuality of dinosaurs….
ncluded among the stories is one about a cast fossil of the herbivore’s footprint. Although the excerpt notes it cannot conclusively say that the dinosaur that made the fossil was a homosexual, it is a nod to LGBT history because Christopher Winter, the boy who found it, “is now grown-up, happily married to his husband Greg and living in a pink house in Hastings.”
Explaining how Winter first came across the fossil with his father at the age of 11, the description of the fossil notes that “queer history takes many forms, and in this case, it makes up an important part of the fossil’s provenance.”
https://www.thepublica.com/british-museum-claims-some-birds-dinosaurs-may-have-been-queer-in-new-exhibit/
Remember the non-binary penguin?
Alright, aebleskiver have been made to bring to my sister’s for Easter. A third filled with apple cider jam, another third filled with banana strawberry jam, and the last third with dark chocolate. This is about the full extent of how fiddly I’ll get with cooking.
So I was telling my neighbor about how Facebook showed me a “suggestion” for a fan page of a poet that she had told me about a few weeks ago. A poet whose name I have never typed on my phone or any other device, ever. Like, I’d never heard of the poet until my neighbor talked about her.
Anyway, she thought it was cool that Facebook and my phone would do that.
I fear for this country so much.
That’s just creepy.
Not the first time it’s happened, but this time was just glaringly obvious.
The scary part is my neighbor thinking it’s nifty and swell.
Ask her if she’s still thinking of overthrowing the gov’t. See how neat she thinks it is when the FBI stops by for a chat.