I awoke this morning from troubled sleep with a plan resounding in the cathedral of my mind, emptied during the night by the distressing action of unpleasant dreams. The plan was this: to cause to be made business cards with, on one side, the text "we used to be friends", and, on the other, the text "but now we're enemies". Still halfway dreaming, I hoped that it might be possible to devise some way to make the "but" movable from one side to the other—like you could lift just the text up, and put it down again, though I retained enough of a grip on reality to be stymied by the thought of how the remaining text would then be justified—depending on the precise gradation of emphasis I wanted to create.

This put a smile on my face. The anchors had no idea what hit them (the woman anchor has since called Katebi to apologize).

Let's just note that Adam Rippon is the goddamn personification of fabulous.

While you were busy being heterosexual, I studied the blade pic.twitter.com/rsYF2oF08j

— Adam Rippon (@Adaripp) January 24, 2018

Not much to say, but I think a (possibly emerging?) widely-shared meme should be, "The NRA is a terrorist organization, funded in part by a hostile foreign government" in response to such things. That way when nothing ever changes, we'll have more evidence of the kinds of memes people used to share in 2018 during a tragedy.

Mossy Character writes: The TPP has been signed, without the US:

One of the most ridiculed provisions in the TPP, the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provision, has been scaled back while a government's right to regulate its markets has been afforded increased protections. This was only possible after the United States withdrew from the deal: U.S. companies are the most frequent users of the measure, which allows companies to sue foreign governments over arduous regulations.

Another key provision the United States pushed for that has fallen to the side is the extension of copyright, or intellectual property, protections. Washington had negotiated for copyright to exist for the author's lifetime plus an additional 70 years. While this is standard in the United States, it is not in the other TPP members, and with Washington out of the deal, copyright lengths will be shorter.
[...]
Washington could rejoin the agreement, though it remains to be seen if the 11 signatories would accept possible U.S. demands to reinstate the IP and ISDS provisions or if they would make the United States bend to their will. That possibility alone presents a significant reversal in global trade.

A few weeks ago, I was telling my wife that my guess is that about 20% of Americans would be ok with bringing back slavery. She thought that was way too high, but she was forgetting about the University of Chicago!

Man, McArdle to the Post. It's one thing to find yourself thrown into a world of chummy incompetence, but it's a worse kind of thing to watch it develop in real time, with people you've known, or known of, from back in the day. In the grand scheme of America's decline, it's a small thing, but it's a thing.

A lurker sends in Can You Date a Co-worker? (which is paywalled, but they thoughtfully included the article for me in the email.) IT companies are wrestling with their HR policy around dating, and I'm reminded of what is oft-reminded around here: that HR departments exist to protect the company, not you.

The group also grappled with the question of when employees who are not each other's managers should disclose a relationship. What about a one-night sexual encounter? No, that felt too intrusive. What if they have gone on several dates, but it was still not a committed relationship? Anna Binder, Asana's head of people operations, suggested that employees might casually inform someone in human resources but not formally record it.

"I want to be reasonable," Ms. Binder said during the meeting. "I just don't want to be policing every kiss."

Over the last decade, the share of workers who say they have ever dated a colleague has hovered around 40%, according to an annual survey from CareerBuilder. In its survey conducted at the end of last year, the share dropped to 36%, a 10-year-low, from 41%, a 10-year high in 2016.

This annoys me just because it doesn't sound like sound methodology. If you dated a colleague two years ago, you still have dated a colleague. Retirees must be an outsized portion of dipping in the work-dating pool! Why not ask "who has dated a colleague in the last year?"?

Many companies have long had policies discouraging relationships between managers and direct reports, human-resources experts say. But some employers are starting to review their rules and are now "drawing a hard line in the sand," said Doug Smith, managing principal of law firm Jackson Lewis' Pittsburgh office.

Mr. Smith said he has had a dramatic increase in employer clients calling about sexual-harassment policies since September. He is recommending that they put strict rules in place barring managers from dating anyone further down in the organization, with firing as a potential consequence. He said every company he makes the recommendation to is following suit.

This perhaps should just be a general rule in life:

One rule at Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google: Employees are only allowed to ask a co-worker out once. If they are turned down, they don't get to ask again. Ambiguous answers such as "I'm busy" or "I can't that night," count as a "no," said Heidi Swartz, Facebook's global head of employment law.

We're 15! I have been posting here for 10 years, and Ogged has been back for 5 years, if you can believe all that. Also the last Unfoggedecon was a full five years ago.

Is there interest in a celebratory get-together, at some point in 2018? I am happy to organize such a thing, but I detest trying to generate enthusiasm for things, so if it's not organically present, I will not bother. Last time, we accepted donations and were able to provide funding for anyone who wanted to come but was cash-strapped, so if that's a consideration, know that there could again be such a solution.

Also: I've been to two of the three of these, and both times were deeply fun and satisfying. Much better than an awkward meet-up (although those are fun as well) because we did things like head to a museum, or the farmer's market, as well as have a party, and it was all very casual and lovely.