Originals by Adam Grant and Ilium by Dan Simmons

A plane parked at Narita Airport, Tokyo

Dear valued employee,

We want you to know what we value most in you is your commitment and loyalty to our company. And that commitment and loyalty is what makes our company valuable to others. And as we all learned in small, middle, high, and college school, it’s all about how others value us — especially shareholders — that make us valuable. It’s external validation, the best validation!

And you? You’re the tops! Ducky! The cat’s pajamas! The bees knees!

Thanks for loyalty, your work, your commitment, and of course your loyalty.

Have a great weekend!

One minor thing before we’re all “slipping on chili dogs outside and tasting free” as America’s Poet Laureate, John Cougartown, R.I.P., wrote about our freedom and Indiana. You guys and gals and other employees get to work from home next week, that will be great for everyone. Yes, we were requiring on-site attendance 3-4 days per week after the pandemic was solved through the government sanctioned use of light and bleach inside human bodies. Think of the 5 full days working from home next week like a throw back to the good old times when we disinfected groceries, but this time with a benevolent company AI, Phil, always there to help you achieve your best.

To sum up: good on us defeating COVID, freedom, turgid about the company’s success, don’t show up in the office next week, what union?, and enjoy these pictures of cats wearing pajamas! Seriously, though, don’t come to the office.

Kudos to Jane Reads, KeCute, and Loucodorgado for the pics.

A pipe burst yesterday. It’s in an unheated bonus room, so I started up my portable heater when it froze. The rest of the house was fine, so I soldiered on with my lazy Christmas Eve day. Then I noticed the water pressure in the house dropped. The pipe burst, and it was kind of unsurprising as there’s almost no insulation out there for the pipes.

The new whole house shutoff I had installed this year worked a treat, but it left me without flowing water, but …

I filled up my big bathtub last week before the cold snap hit. I happened to have been sous vide-ing some beef in a large container. I keep a 7-gallon water container filled. I always keep a pitcher of water in the fridge. And my humidifiers were all filled and misting my place into a decent humidity. Good planning and happenstance!

Then the utility announced rolling blackouts. The fire, with ample wood, was already going for heat and ambiance. I ended up “roughing it” in my house, making tacos with a big cast iron grille on the fire, and ready to read books with my well charged eInk reader in the dark. No blackout for me, thankfully, so I watched a bunch of non-Christmas Christmas movies.

The bottom line: a little bit of advanced planning paid dividends when things weren’t going right. nIt makes it so much easier to make it into an adventure instead of a disaster. Happy Holidays, y’all!

“CNN’s new boss Chris Licht says that beginning today, CNN has added a “Breaking News” guideline to its stylebook, to address overuse of the breaking news banner across its network and cable news writ-large.” (Pro tip: Drop the breaking news banner and the news ticker altogether. If cable news actually covered the news, they wouldn’t need either.) 

(H/t & kudos NextDraft)

I renewed my Chattanooga Public Library card. It cost me $50 because I no longer live in the city. My town, for reasons perhaps lost to time, doesn’t participate in the greater Chattanooga library system.

The town library does some things: readings for kids; events, or did in the before times; sells used books; and … hmmm … not much else.

I wonder about the rationale to keep the local library independent of the city system.

Anyway, if you are not part of your local library system or a nearby larger one, consider doing so. Libraries are wonderful resources. Support them.

Tennessee gov: No restricting firearms after mass shootings:

By KIMBERLEE KRUESI
Associated Press

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – Gov. Bill Lee has announced he does not support restricting firearms or strengthening gun control laws in response to recent mass shootings in Tennessee and around the country.

…  because Bill Lee is a terrible governor who should resign.

Instead, Lee has joined a growing list of Republican governors who are stressing the need for more security at schools.

Big Tech Wins One.:

An experimental cancer-killing virus has been administered to a human patient for the first time, with hopes the testing will ultimately reveal evidence of a new means of successfully fighting cancer tumors in people’s bodies. The drug candidate, called CF33-hNIS (aka Vaxinia), is what’s called an oncolytic virus, a genetically modified virus designed to selectively infect and kill cancer cells while sparing healthy ones. In the case of CF33-hNIS, the modified pox virus works by entering cells and duplicating itself. Eventually, the infected cell bursts, releasing thousands of new virus particles that act as antigens, stimulating the immune system to attack nearby cancer cells. Previous research in animal models has shown the drug can harness the immune system in this way to hunt and destroy cancer cells, but up until now no testing has been done in humans. (Source: sciencealert.com et alia)

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(Via John Ellis)