(![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png)
questionable_content_feed Dec. 10th, 2025 09:00 pm)
questionable_content_feed Dec. 10th, 2025 09:00 pm)
It's hard to believe the first Cubetown visit was like 800 friggin' comics ago, holy crap. Time does weird things when you draw a comic every day for 20-odd years. As I recall, at this point I was still trying to figure out if QC would switch solely to focus on Marten and Claire's Cubetown adventures, or if I'd split the focus between Cubetown and Northampton. I ended up doing the latter, which I think was the right choice. Too many fun characters to just leave behind like that! And of course then I immediately added like four new ones, and then Anh basically took over the comic for a year. Is Sam still going through her goth phase? IS it just a phase? ONLY ONE WAY TO FIND OUT (I will do whatever seems funniest at the time)
(bbc_sci_nature_feed Dec. 11th, 2025 12:20 am)
bbc_sci_nature_feed Dec. 11th, 2025 12:20 am)Survivors of a deadly typhoon in the Philippines have filed a claim against the UK's largest oil company.
(bbc_sci_nature_feed Nov. 27th, 2025 08:02 pm)
bbc_sci_nature_feed Nov. 27th, 2025 08:02 pm)In true feline style, cats took their time in deciding when and where to join us on the sofa.
⌈ Secret Post #6914 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
01.
( More! )
Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 19 secrets from Secret Submission Post #987.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
(![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
flareonfury posting in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png)
dw_community_promo Dec. 10th, 2025 07:43 pm)
flareonfury posting in dw_community_promo Dec. 10th, 2025 07:43 pm)![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
comicsfanfictionCommunity Description:
comicsfanfiction is for any comic book fanfiction including comic strips, webcomics, and graphic novels. Any rating is accepted. Feel free to post your old or new works!
One of the things I found yesterday, while getting distracted from transcription by regretting not having taken History and Philosophy of Science (or, more accurately, not having shown up to the lectures to just listen), was some tantalising notes on the existence of a four-lecture series entitled Visual Culture in Science and Medicine:
Science today is supremely visual – in its experiments, observations and communication, images have become integral to the scientific enterprise. These four lectures examine the role of images in anatomy, natural history and astronomy between the 15th and the 18th centuries. Rather than assessing images against a yardstick of increasing empiricism or an onward march towards accurate observation, these lectures draw attention to the myriad, ingenious ways in which images were deployed to create scientific objects, aid scientific arguments and simulate instrumental observations. Naturalistic styles of depictions are often mistaken for evidence of first-hand observation, but in this period, they were deployed as a visual rhetoric of persuasion rather than proof of an observed object. By examining the production and uses of imagery in this period, these lectures will offer ways to understand more generally what was entailed in scientific visualisation in early modern Europe.
I've managed to track down a one-hour video (that I've obviously not consumed yet, because audiovisual processing augh). Infuriatingly Kusukawa's book on the topic only covers the sixteenth century, not the full timespan of the lectures, and also it's fifty quid for the PDF. I have located a sample of the thing, consisting of the front matter and the first fifteen pages of the introduction (it cuts off IN MID SENTENCE).
Now daydreaming idly about comparative study of this + Tufte, which I also haven't got around to reading...
From Truly Victorian on FB, today/yesterday:
FRAUD ALLERT UPDATE - We have identified the fraudster as Dorothy Ohare of thefarthingale.com and Farthingale Enterprise here on FB.
NOT Farthingales in Canada
farthingalescorsetmakingsupplies com <- this company is not related to the pirate in any way.
She has now removed her sales listings from her website of Truly Victorian, Laughing Moon Mercantile, and Margo Anderson patterns. I suspect those other patterns were fraudulent as well.
It looks like she has been doing this for some time, since 2023 possibly. I am sad to say that I know this person, and many years ago was a legitimate reseller of our patterns. We are such a small community of Historical Costumers, and it is hard to believe that one of our own would do this.
FRAUD ALLERT - I was just contacted by a visitor to the San Fransisco Dicken's Fair that she was sold a pirated copy of a Truly Victorian pattern. It was a printed version of our AO digital pattern. Not only was the pattern unauthorized, is was also incomplete. I have not yet ferreted out who sold the pattern, so if anyone has any leads, I will be thankful.
The unfortunate buyer was unaware that the pattern was fraudulent, and only contacted me to get the missing pages.
The buyer provided this photo of the pattern she bought.
If you ever see a Truly Victorian pattern being sold in a manila envelope, it is a pirated copy! If you see a pattern that has A1 in a circle (or other letter/number combo) on it, IT IS A PIRATED COPY!
This seller also created their own cover page, with illustration (without scrollwork frame), and self typed size chart and description.
If you see these patterns for sale, do not buy these patterns, and please contact me with any information you may have about the seller.
FRAUD ALLERT UPDATE - We have identified the fraudster as Dorothy Ohare of thefarthingale.com and Farthingale Enterprise here on FB.
NOT Farthingales in Canada
farthingalescorsetmakingsupplies com <- this company is not related to the pirate in any way.
She has now removed her sales listings from her website of Truly Victorian, Laughing Moon Mercantile, and Margo Anderson patterns. I suspect those other patterns were fraudulent as well.
It looks like she has been doing this for some time, since 2023 possibly. I am sad to say that I know this person, and many years ago was a legitimate reseller of our patterns. We are such a small community of Historical Costumers, and it is hard to believe that one of our own would do this.
FRAUD ALLERT - I was just contacted by a visitor to the San Fransisco Dicken's Fair that she was sold a pirated copy of a Truly Victorian pattern. It was a printed version of our AO digital pattern. Not only was the pattern unauthorized, is was also incomplete. I have not yet ferreted out who sold the pattern, so if anyone has any leads, I will be thankful.
The unfortunate buyer was unaware that the pattern was fraudulent, and only contacted me to get the missing pages.
The buyer provided this photo of the pattern she bought.
If you ever see a Truly Victorian pattern being sold in a manila envelope, it is a pirated copy! If you see a pattern that has A1 in a circle (or other letter/number combo) on it, IT IS A PIRATED COPY!
This seller also created their own cover page, with illustration (without scrollwork frame), and self typed size chart and description.
If you see these patterns for sale, do not buy these patterns, and please contact me with any information you may have about the seller.
(askamanager_feed Dec. 10th, 2025 09:59 pm)
askamanager_feed Dec. 10th, 2025 09:59 pm)It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are four updates from past letter-writers.
1. Men are gross in our non-gendered bathrooms (#3 at the link)
The bathrooms in our building continue to be a source of mirth and disbelief.
As well as continued seat-up, shake-it-all-about behavior, there’s been the (female) facilities manager who refused to accept that “all gender” means sanitary bins should be available in all stalls (“men don’t want to look at those”), and building-wide reminders to use the supplied brushes to remove anything you might leave clinging to the bowl … with a very weak flush simply meaning the transfer of matter from bowls to brushes, neither less visible than the other.
The building-wide reminder that caused the most consternation was a recent request from facilities for people to stop using toilet paper to dry their hands and throwing the damp balls of paper on the floor. It went on to declare this must be retaliatory behavior in protest against the fact the bathrooms don’t have paper towels for hand drying or waste bins (only air dryers and the hard-fought-for sanitary bins).
We wandered the corridors and break rooms for days murmuring “who DOES that?” to each other, knowing full well some of us meant “who throws balls of damp toilet paper on the floor?” and some of us meant “who sends a blanket email claiming toilet crimes are political?”
There are half a dozen executive-level leaders in our building, all of whom received the email and were asked to share the message with their teams, and none of whom attempted to hide their bemusement at the entire thing.
Under these conditions, standard male behavior around seat placement becomes positively benign. Although part of me is disappointed the reminders haven’t mentioned that particular aspect of how you leave the bathroom for the next person, I’m now (along with everyone else in my office) so invested in what the next episode of new office drama The Bathroom will bring we’re willing to turn a blind eye at this point.
2. I’ve been getting all my colleague’s meeting invites … for 10 years (#4 at the link)
Thank you for the advice! It did help, it was the blunt encouragement that I needed. I contacted IT again with the mindset that I was not going to let it go until it was resolved. They responded with some instructions that the director needed to follow, which I sent to him in a friendly email, hoping it wasn’t too weird. He followed the instructions and as far as I can tell it worked! It’s a huge relief, it happened so quickly that it made me feel silly for giving up before but IT really did keep telling me they’d fix it before and I started to feel like a nuisance. Anyway, thank you and your readers!
3. I’m being docked PTO days for a suspension, despite not doing anything wrong (#4 at the link)
You answered my question about three PTO days that I lost after an internal investigation against me found no wrongdoing.
As you suggested, I tried to concentrate on getting the PTO days back. I mentioned in the comments of the original post that I finally managed to track down my department manager (my team manager could not help me). He really pushed back hard on HR but was mostly unsuccessful. I got the third day back eventually after the team manager and department manager both confirmed I did my normal job on the days I was partially suspended. I also had to submit a detailed record of my work done on those days. HR refused to reinstate the other two days. I was able to make my trip (an important family event that required travel) by taking unpaid leave.
However, what affects me much more is the uncertainty of why all of this happened. Some commenters suggested that I must have an idea of why I was suspended. This is unfortunately not true. I do not handle money or interact with external customers. I went over all interactions and projects of the last month again and again, but nothing problematic comes to mind. Some commenters suggested a mix-up with someone else. This might be the case, but I have no idea. I also do not know if I was truly cleared or if they just gave up. All of this makes me very anxious. Can this happen again tomorrow? Am I now on a short list for layoffs? Have I inadvertently offended someone? Is there someone who wants to hurt me? … I have always liked to work for this company, but now I’m panicking when my phone rings. The behavior of HR does not help. I’m looking for another job. I hope to be out of here by the end of the year.
Two minor points that are not that relevant (anymore): I had plans to go for a promotion in the near future. I asked HR how the situation would affect that. I got a non-answer like “the investigation will be considered in an appropriate way.” Great. And this is almost funny: I was scolded by HQ HR (the ones doing the investigation) for having a misleading job description. It contained a lot of boilerplate things like being required to travel. This might have been behind the restrictions during the temporal suspension. When I contacted local HR and asked for a correction, I was told that the boilerplate section has to stay in.
I want to thank you and the people in the comments for the feedback and the support!
4. Customers with ridiculously long payment times (#4 at the link)
I never found a way to get that client on a reasonable payment plan. I haven’t worked for them in months and they still owe me money. The frustrating part is that they aren’t a small business struggling to make ends meet; they just don’t pay people for a quarter of the year.
At any rate, a few months after I wrote, a former colleague reached out and asked if I wanted to work for the company he works for. Initially, I turned him down, but then they asked me to name a price. So I did thinking they wouldn’t be willing to pay it … and they decided to prove me wrong.
So, I’m back “workin’ for the man,” but I am loving my job and my coworkers are great. Plus the healthcare plan is excellent. Which, let’s be honest, is really why we all work here in America — to be able to afford healthcare.
The post updates: the gross bathrooms, the docked PTO, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.
Tags:
(dorktower_feed Dec. 10th, 2025 06:00 am)
dorktower_feed Dec. 10th, 2025 06:00 am)
Most DORK TOWER strips are now available as signed, high-quality prints, from just $25! CLICK HERE to find out more!
HEY! Want to help keep DORK TOWER going? Then consider joining the DORK TOWER Patreon and ENLIST IN THE ARMY OF DORKNESS TODAY! (We have COOKIES!) (And SWAG!) (And GRATITUDE!)
(in_the_pipeline_feed Dec. 10th, 2025 03:48 pm)
in_the_pipeline_feed Dec. 10th, 2025 03:48 pm)I found this to be an interesting paper, and it uses an idea that’s not always easy to realize. There are a lot of time when we’d like to be able to use small proteins and peptides as drugs, but they often have poor pharmacokinetics (absorption, membrane penetration, and most especially metabolic liability). In addition, some of these small-protein ideas can end up being immunogenic, since your body can react to them like the foreign substances they are, with your immune system taken them as signs of some sort of viral or bacterial attack.
As an aside, the current vogue for “peptides” (very loosely defined) among wellness types, bodybuilders, and other such groups is grimly amusing from a medicinal chemistry point of view. Most of these people have no actual idea of what they’re talking about, and “peptide” gets used as a synonym for “cool dietary supplement known to guru insiders” with no further thought. So asking someone if they take peptides just gets a blank stare from anyone who knows biochemistry, since your body is swimming with tens/hundreds of thousands of different short protein sequences that fit inside that name. And the number of different possible peptides, even reasonably short ones, is just beyond human comprehension. It’s not a very useful term when thrown around like this!
Anyway, what the new paper above is discussing is more in the “miniprotein” class - that is, long enough to fold itself into a defined three-dimensional structure. In this case, they’re about forty amino acids long. And the authors are looking to compare hit rates against a difficult target (PD-1/PD-L1) versus shorter sequences I blogged just the other day about a quick computational approach that came up empty against this one, and it’s really no wonder - that interface features two rather flat beta-sheet surfaces that don’t give small structures very much to grab on to, as far as anyone’s been able to see.
And they’re also interested in making these miniprotein candidates out of D-amino acids. Those are of course the mirror-image forms of the ones used normally in living systems, and the idea there is that a peptide or protein made out of such enantiomers will probably not be a substrate for hydrolase enzymes (and may be less immunogenic as well). But you’re not going to be able to take a sequence that you know binds to you target, synthesize it with all the amino acids flipped into the D stereochemistry, and expect it to bind. You’ve made a different compound entirely! So the D-proteins you get out of such a screening/synthesis exercise would not be expected to look much like sequences you’re seen before - you’re just using this non-natural stereochemistry to put the side chains and functional groups into the right position to hit the target, one way or another.
But how do you do that? There are, as mentioned, ridiculously huge numbers of potential protein candidates available, and the best ways to produce and evaluate huge mixed libraries of them rely on living-system-derived techniques like phage display (subject of the 2018 Chemistry Nobel, I might add). But the phages and bacteria you’d use for such library preparation are of course all using the good ol’ L amino acids that we’ve stuck with for a few billion years now. Well, here’s a way out: if you can go to the trouble of making a supply of your target protein (the one that you’re screening for binders to) as an all-D protein, then you can screen against whatever normal phage libraries you want. If you identify a binder, then all you have to do is synthesize that hit out of D amino acids so it can bind the natural L-protein target! This mirror-image screening was pioneered back in the 1990s and has been used in a number of applications since for people interested in D-protein screening hits.
Now, making any substantial sized protein out of all D amino acids is not enjoyable, but it’s gotten more feasible over the years with advances in organic-chemistry routes to protein synthesis. And that’s what this paper did, making a 146-amino acid construct of the PD-1 extracellular domain as the screening target. (It was assembled from seven shorter sequences by various chemical ligation reactions - not the work of a moment, but certainly doable if you have the time, skill, and patience. Oh, and the money. That too.
Most of the commercial screening libraries of various-length peptides didn’t yield much of interest. But their miniprotein library, which had been targeted towards a different purpose entirely (SUMO binding) from another project, actually yielded a micromolar binder. They used that sequence to prepare a new phage library with several hundred million proteins randomized around this one. The twenty or so best survivors from four successive rounds of screening and enrichment turned out to be pretty good when tested as individual compounds - many of them were sub-micromolar and one of them came in with an IC50 of 60 nanomolar (but was about a hundredfold less potent in the cell assay, which is certainly not unheard of either, unfortunately). NMR evidence seems to confirm direct binding to the PD-1 protein, albeit without many structural details.
This comes under the heading of “an interesting start”, and it certainly seems to demonstrate that miniproteins can be ligands for such difficult targets. Turning D proteins of any sort into drugs is something that hasn’t quite crossed the finish line yet, although there are two such candidates in clinical trials against other targets. It seems that the advantages of greater stability and lower immunogenicity can be realized with these things, although you certainly don’t want to take either one of those as given without proving it for yourself. There are though, an insane number of possible miniprotein scaffolds and designs, each of which can partake in the equally insane variety of protein sequences, so you’d have to think that there are drugs in there somewhere!
Today has been a busy day but first.
As I mentioned in the last post the library stint yesterday was quiet and I mentioned to mum about getting the tree sorted. I was saying it in the sense of ‘we’ll do it Saturday’ but mum took it to mean ‘we’ll get it down yesterday’. Cue me lugging the thing down after the food shop came, opening the box and getting it out… only to find the stand for it is nowhere to be seen.
I think we’d boxed it last year, forgot to add the stand and it got put with other things but do I know where they are? Nope. So we have the tree box where it would go cause I didn’t have the energy to mess with it. (Mums genius idea? Sort it while food was cooking and obviously that went wrong)
Sigh.
Today started with sorting out an order for mum (the gingerbread Lego that’s meant to be for Xmas, but it’s on back order, but at least doing it now got a freebie) then mums friend came, ostensibly to bring Xmas stuff but of course she wanted stuff ordering too ugh.
Mail came today too, the new Stranger Things annual (which I got under half price!) which looks really good on my flick through! There was also God Is A Bullet, the blu ray with hot Garrett Wareing (which I was told to expect by Jan 22) so I hope it’s good (and works!). Then when I came back Doctor Who books were here (I got some 2 for £5 deals from zavvi, which are mostly hardbacks so oop sorry mum that you had to move them).
Today I went to town, the town part was pretty short. I looked in smiths for the new stranger things stickers but they’re not out yet, but I did get a Stranger Things thing from b and m (the box that I lost when I lost my bag the other month) but they didn’t have the snack pack or bag alas.
I went into Smyths but alas they didn’t have the stranger things funkos I was looking for (even Vecna which was listed on the site, but I guess he was on the high shelves hidden) but I did get the Lego happy plants though (look how cute!). I also got the Frankenstein art/making off book which was a real bargain from Asda (less than half off!). I had a little flick through and it looks beautiful.
None of the trailers were interesting so I will just jump right into the film talk. (Unlike the last film thoughts these will be more spoilery. So let’s get onto thoughts of Pillion and Five Nights At Freddy’s 2
( Read more... )
That might be it for cinema adventures this month. I might see The Shining on one of it’s showings though but I’m not sure yet (it depends on mood, energy and weather) and I do wanna see Anaconda but that likely won’t be till early January cause it comes out just after Xmas.
Now though I’m gonna bundle up, watch stuff and might fic some.
Next days are low energy I might watch stuff (and the game awards is tomorrow) and I might go back to home bargains to get more Star Wars doorables (they’re so cute! And this set has some of my favs) but who knows if I’ll feel up to it. I also wanna make peanut butter booped cause I found recipes.
And there was something else but it’s gone out of my brain completely.
As I mentioned in the last post the library stint yesterday was quiet and I mentioned to mum about getting the tree sorted. I was saying it in the sense of ‘we’ll do it Saturday’ but mum took it to mean ‘we’ll get it down yesterday’. Cue me lugging the thing down after the food shop came, opening the box and getting it out… only to find the stand for it is nowhere to be seen.
I think we’d boxed it last year, forgot to add the stand and it got put with other things but do I know where they are? Nope. So we have the tree box where it would go cause I didn’t have the energy to mess with it. (Mums genius idea? Sort it while food was cooking and obviously that went wrong)
Sigh.
Today started with sorting out an order for mum (the gingerbread Lego that’s meant to be for Xmas, but it’s on back order, but at least doing it now got a freebie) then mums friend came, ostensibly to bring Xmas stuff but of course she wanted stuff ordering too ugh.
Mail came today too, the new Stranger Things annual (which I got under half price!) which looks really good on my flick through! There was also God Is A Bullet, the blu ray with hot Garrett Wareing (which I was told to expect by Jan 22) so I hope it’s good (and works!). Then when I came back Doctor Who books were here (I got some 2 for £5 deals from zavvi, which are mostly hardbacks so oop sorry mum that you had to move them).
Today I went to town, the town part was pretty short. I looked in smiths for the new stranger things stickers but they’re not out yet, but I did get a Stranger Things thing from b and m (the box that I lost when I lost my bag the other month) but they didn’t have the snack pack or bag alas.
I went into Smyths but alas they didn’t have the stranger things funkos I was looking for (even Vecna which was listed on the site, but I guess he was on the high shelves hidden) but I did get the Lego happy plants though (look how cute!). I also got the Frankenstein art/making off book which was a real bargain from Asda (less than half off!). I had a little flick through and it looks beautiful.
None of the trailers were interesting so I will just jump right into the film talk. (Unlike the last film thoughts these will be more spoilery. So let’s get onto thoughts of Pillion and Five Nights At Freddy’s 2
( Read more... )
That might be it for cinema adventures this month. I might see The Shining on one of it’s showings though but I’m not sure yet (it depends on mood, energy and weather) and I do wanna see Anaconda but that likely won’t be till early January cause it comes out just after Xmas.
Now though I’m gonna bundle up, watch stuff and might fic some.
Next days are low energy I might watch stuff (and the game awards is tomorrow) and I might go back to home bargains to get more Star Wars doorables (they’re so cute! And this set has some of my favs) but who knows if I’ll feel up to it. I also wanna make peanut butter booped cause I found recipes.
And there was something else but it’s gone out of my brain completely.
Tags:
(cosmolinguist Dec. 10th, 2025 08:51 pm)
cosmolinguist Dec. 10th, 2025 08:51 pm)I was so tired after work I had a nap. Didn't notice D texting to say dinner is ready. He came upstairs to see how I was doing...and now is asleep himself.
Tags:
(askamanager_feed Dec. 10th, 2025 08:29 pm)
askamanager_feed Dec. 10th, 2025 08:29 pm)Several years ago, a reader shared with us this epic email that was sent by their company’s boss after a holiday party gone terribly awry, and as we enter the holiday season we remember its glory.
“This happened about ten years ago, but the email I received from our boss was so epic I preserved it.
Context: The second year I worked at this company, our holiday party was held on a dinner cruise boat. Our boss footed the bill for dinner and an open bar, and a few other companies also hosted their own parties on the boat at the same time. Since I was underage at the time, I did not drink, and actually left early with my date. Everything was fine when I left. The Monday after, I rolled into the office– the first person there– and was greeted with this email from our boss [identifying details removed]:
‘Good morning to all. I hope all of you had time to recuperate and reflect about the unusual chain of events and circumstances at this year’s Christmas party. Some of you went home early and did not take in the full range of events.
Unfortunately, some of our staff got out of hand, including the spouses. Things were said, and things were done, that quite frankly were very inappropriate. Also, we had people from the adjoining group that decided to take advantage of our open bar and co-mingle with our group.
In regards to the inappropriate behavior, I am not going to go into all of the details, but let it be said that the root cause was probably due to the open bar. Some of our staff decided that the open bar meant that the drinking could be unlimited, not only in how much, but how they drank. As a result, some our staff and spouses decided that shots were OK. Shots were ordered for some who do not even drink. Shots are not OK at a company Christmas party. Other staff and spouses got multiple drinks at once for themselves and for people not even in our group. Others decided it was OK to get openly drunk and beligerent, to the point of making racial slurs. I, myself, am guilty of attacking someone from the other group after he decided to retaliate by groping my wife.
Having thought about the circumstances and the fact that we have to work together as a firm and team, some of you need to apologize for your behavior and/or for the behavior of your spouse. We specifically implemented a no fraternization policy and some of you could get fired on that alone, while other staff exercised no restraint over their spouse for their drunken condition. It is not OK for a spouse to misbehave, just because he or she is not an employee. Many careers have been destroyed, and people get fired, due to the conduct of their spouse. You are expected to exercise constraint over your spouse, or take them home. And if that cannot be done, then you should not bring your spouse.
In regards to the Firm’s policy on drinking, there will be no more open bars. Unfortunately, some of you and your spouses exercise extremely poor judgment. Because of this poor judgment, it puts the Firm at risk. Given the poor road conditions that night, some of you could have ended up dead. It is also unfortunate that a few have to ruin it for the whole group.
I would like to start the apologies by stating I am sorry for not handling the situation that I was confronted with in a different manner. I feel embarrassed, and it was not conduct befitting of the firm’s president. I also felt betrayed by some of you for patronizing the one individual from the adjoining group, who’s behavior was lewd and offensive, not to mention the outright theft by running up our bar tab.
I invite others to make some form of apology, either by email or in person for what they did or said, or what their spouse did or said. You can do this voluntarily, and you know who you are, or I will confront you by Wednesday of this week. I do not intend to ignore what happened. If I have to confront you, you could lose your job. I will be available Monday and Tuesday late afternoon, or you can email me and/or others. Let’s not let this one incidence stop us from being [#1 company in field]. We have a lot going for ourselves and let’s keep it going.’”
The post “I will confront you by Wednesday of this week” appeared first on Ask a Manager.
What I read
Finished Saving Suzy Sweetchild, which has our protag not only dealing with the usual movie hassle but being called in to deal with the papers of a suddenly deceased in possibly suspicious circumstances academic, as well as (with the usual cohorts) trying to work out what exactly the game is with the apparent kidnapping for ransom of child star, who is beginning to age out of cuteness. We observe that the classic sleuths may sometimes have had two mysteries on their hands but very seldom had to multitask like this.
Some while ago I read an essay by Ursula Le Guin on the novels of Kent Haruf: I fairly recently picked up Our Souls at Night (2015), which is more or less novella length, as a Kobo deal, and it was well-written, and unusual if very low-key, and I daresay I might venture on more Haruf but am in no great rush to do so.
Then on to Upton Sinclair, The Return of Lanny Budd (1953) - perhaps not quite as good as the earlier entries in the series - some of it felt a bit info-dumpy - Lanny and his friends who are promoting peace face the problem of Soviet Stalinist Communism in the Cold War era. I can't help contemplating them and thinking that they are probably going to be sitting targets for HUAC in a few years' time, because they are coming at the issue from a democratic socialist perspective and I suspect their Peace Program is going to be considered deeply sus by McCarthyism. Also, Lanny jnr is going to be of draft age come the 1960s....
On the go
To lighten the mood, Alexis Hall, Audrey Lane Stirs the Pot (Winner Bakes All #3) arrived yesterday.
Up next
The new (double-issue) Literary Review
Also (what was in the straying parcel last week) Dickon Edwards (whom some of you may remember from LJ days?) Diary at the Centre of the Earth: Vol. 1.
(askamanager_feed Dec. 10th, 2025 06:59 pm)
askamanager_feed Dec. 10th, 2025 06:59 pm)It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.
There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.
Remember the letter-writer whose friend hired them but wasn’t paying what they had agreed on? Here’s the update.
I’m happy to say that the outcome of the conversation with my now former boss was positive and I didn’t expect it to end as well as it did. Thank you, Alison, and everyone who provided helpful feedback.
I respectfully brought up with my friend what she was thinking to do in terms of the summer when the days were longer and I told her I needed to know what she was thinking to figure out my finances. I also said I was expecting the benefits and the pay we had discussed. I wanted to see what she would do / if it would change anything before making my final decision to leave. Instead, this led to her changing my pay once again and paying me by the hour instead of by the booking, both of which were not what we had first agreed upon. I was supposed to be paid a salary amount we had discussed when she was hiring me. I realized it was time to have the conversation to leave.
I ended up telling her that I was no longer able to work for her as I required some stability in my life financially and I was not receiving the pay and benefits that we had initially discussed. I also told her that I valued my time as I had given up many weekends and worked sometimes seven days a week at both jobs and it affected me financially, as well as my health. I said I understood if it was difficult in the beginning but that as time went on, I realized that she wasn’t capable of holding her end of the deal and I had to consider my well-being as well.
Surprisingly, she took it well. I was expecting her to try to convince me to stay, but I think she realized it herself too that she was stringing me along. She admitted that it was a lot to ask of me to be on call and how it affected my life. I’m a bit wary of how genuine it was, though.
In the aftermath, we still talk and are amicable but I have made my boundaries clear and I have been all the better for it. She did ask if she could reach out to me if she was ever in a tight spot and needed an extra hand, and I left the door open to that but only on my terms. I have not gone back to help as of yet, I’m focusing on my primary job and enjoying some free time. I’m realizing that running yourself into the ground for an extra check isn’t always worth it!
Some questions that came up in the comments:
- I hadn’t ever signed a written work agreement (though looking back I should’ve). Lesson learned. But she was my “friend” or so I thought and I didn’t think it through as I should have.
- She did lure me away from my previous job with promises of the same pay plus benefits and that I would be hired as a full-time employee from a government program incentive she had received to start her business. She had kept saying “by February” or “by March” I would be officially “hired,” but come May/June nothing had happened yet.
- I am currently living and working in Greece so things are a lot different than how it is in the U.S. and perhaps other countries.
- This was a part-time gig but she was treating it as full-time. At the time, I heavily relied on a second job to stand on my own two feet here.
- The boss of the job I worked at before I started working for my friend happily would take me back in a heartbeat. He is a kind and genuine man and very straightforward, almost the polar opposite of my friend.
- I am a private English teacher here. That is my full-time job that I have focused on building here on my own. The job my friend hired me for was focused on tourists and highly seasonal and dependent on weather, among other things. It was for horseback riding tours in the area. I had years of experience riding and training horses and it was what I did as a hobby.
The post update: my friend hired me but isn’t paying me what we agreed appeared first on Ask a Manager.
.