“Have more than thou showest/Speak less than thou knowest.”

That’s a quote from King Lear, a play by William Shakespeare, who was very good at writing things. As far as the plot goes, it probably revolves around a guy named King Lear who–I’m assuming–betrays someone, or gets betrayed, or something happens mid-betrayal–likely involving poison. The point is that I’ve never read King Lear, or much Shakespeare at all for that matter.

On the other hand, if I want to pretend like I’ve read King Lear, all I have to do is visit Wikipedia, memorize a snappy quote or two, and boom–I’m a semi-cultured, presumably literate guy at a cocktail party! You know what else that would make me? A know-it-all. You know, someone who pretends to know more than they really do.

In the working world, it’s easy to find yourself in jillions of meetings of all shapes and sizes. One thing I’ve noticed is that the most productive meetings usually involve someone conspicuously being not a know-it-all. Namely, someone who can own their total lack of understanding of a particular subject.

Confused? Here are three reasons why openly embracing ignorance can actually be the smartest thing you can do during meetings—even when you’re way over your head:

Pretending You Know Something Takes Up Valuable Headspace

To put it in terms my grandfather would understand: It’s hard to keep your eye on the ball while worrying about your fly being down (Yes, I was a terrible Little Leaguer).

I can only speak for myself, but pretending to know a bunch of stuff I don’t know, or half-know, or think I might know takes up a good bit of brain space–brain space I could otherwise use to apply the knowledge I already have to contribute something worthwhile. Making up pseudo-factual talk, tossing out canned responses to difficult questions, and focusing on salesmanship over craftsmanship might make for a snazzy meeting performance, but not necessarily great work.

Related:What If “Fake It ‘Til You Make It” Never Ends?

Instead, focusing on what I know allows me to really showcase my strengths and do what I do best. For example: I like presenting ideas. It’s fun! I enjoy explaining why a concept I worked on is new, exciting, and a good idea for our clients. However, I know that this does not make me an expert when it comes to analytics, emerging tech, or a bunch of other stuff that I only understand at a surface level.

That’s why when questions about metrics or software engineering come up, there’s nothing I enjoy more than turning to a highly skilled coworker who can answer that question with actual expertise. This way, once they’re done, I can go back to talking about ideas.

Of course, everyone wears multiple hats to some extent, but a limited primary skill set is not a limitation in itself. Trying to do too many things outside your wheelhouse leaves you a jack-of-all-trades, which can lead to diminishing returns in industries that value specialized knowledge–like most do.

Being Self Aware About Your Weaknesses Is A Strength

People are always amazed at how “brave” (highly relative term) stand-up comedians are. Now, it’s worth noting that stand-ups don’t go around saying, “Attention everyone, I am a perfect specimen of a human being!” In fact, they do the opposite–talking about shortcomings over strengths, failures over successes and, more specifically, what they don’t understand over what they do.

Why? Well, partially because being able to expose your flaws to a group of strangers is one of the most confident things you can do. It shows that you’re comfortable exposing yourself as a less-than-perfect person, while engaging in what is statistically the most frightening thing anyone can do: public speaking. When you don’t have a single smart thing to share in a meeting, never forget about the one thing you can still offer: a humble display of self-confidence.

Related:How To Embrace Your Weakness And Become A Better Leader 

Saying “I Don’t Know” Invites Collaboration

Like most people, I’ve been in some not-great meetings. Meetings where a client–irritated by a miscommunication, some kind of inaccuracy in the slide deck, or what they had for breakfast–asks questions faster than we can answer them. Sometimes they say we don’t know their business, and things get stressful.

At those moments, the best bosses I’ve had (so far) will almost always say something the effect of, “Look, I don’t know everything about your industry or category or everything you’ve ever done, but I do know how to get people’s attention and communicate what your product means to them, so let’s figure out how to do that together.”

Instead of disagreeing, doubling down, or trying to position oneself as an unassailably perfect ad-wizard, the smartest, most effective people in my field admit that advertising is a collaborative process–just as most difficult tasks are in lots of other industries. Shockingly/not shockingly, this kind of sentiment usually gets clients to chill out and look at the work with an open mind.

Will that happen every time? Of course not! But that slight acknowledgement of ignorance can help move the conversation to a productive place. Plus, an ownable area of expertise gives you more credibility to sell whatever ideas or work you’ve brought to the table with the understanding that if you combined your powers with those of everyone else in the room, you’ll be unstoppable.

So the next time you feel the urge to pretend you know more than you do, take a step back. It might be better for your career, not to mention the meeting itself, just to say three simple words instead–“I don’t know”–and make way for someone who does. Knowing when to do that might make you the most useful person in the room, which is way more valuable than being the most knowledgeable.

 Thom Crowley (@thomcrowley) is an Associate Creative Director at RAIN, a digital consultancy in New York. He’s also a writer and comic.

The tech crackdown on hate sites has been fast and furious: In the four days since white supremacists and neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville, GoDaddy, Google, and WordPress all denied domain registration for The Daily Stormer, Facebook started deleting white nationalist accounts, and PayPal said it wouldn’t do business with hate groups, among other efforts. “There is no place for hate in our community,” wrote Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a post. And yet the push to remove such bigots and racists from the public sphere could backfire, say experts in how to counteract white supremacism and neo-Nazism.

Many of the web-hosting firms and services that are cutting off hate sites say that it’s necessary to help prevent violence at future rallies by those inspired by such rhetoric. “That’s why we’ve always taken down any post that promotes or celebrates hate crimes or acts of terrorism—including what happened in Charlottesville,” explained Zuckerberg. “With the potential for more rallies, we’re watching the situation closely and will take down threats of physical harm.”

That potential for future violence was also cited by GoDaddy, which has long defended its decision to register the Daily Stormer’s domain by claiming that it’s a free speech issue. The company reversed course after the hate site published a post that mocked Heather Heyer, the young woman killed when she was run over in a car reportedly driven by a white supremacist in Charlottesville on Saturday afternoon. “Given their latest article comes on the immediate heels of a violent act, we believe this type of article could incite additional violence, which violates our terms of service,” a spokesperson told CNN.

Certainly, extremists from neo-Nazis to ISIS members have long recruited new members online, via websites or their social media presence. And making their vile content harder to find is sure to reduce its exposure to young minds, who might be lured by their heinous ideologies.

But when it comes to reintegrating such extremists back into the community, to teach them the value of empathy and love, such censoring or ostracizing tactics may actually backfire, says Sammy Rangel. The former gang leader spent years in a maximum security prison, seething with violence and taking part in race riots, before he learned the power of forgiveness. Now, he helps lead Life After Hate, a group founded by former white supremacists who now seek to help extremists transition out of their belief system and way of life.

Shutting down these sites is going to have a double-sided effect, says Rangel. It makes such extremist rhetoric less visible, but “it fuels the extremists to dig in further with their justifications because they take it as proof of their grievances rather than an indication of their own wrongdoing,” he tells Fast Company. It also could play into their narrative of themselves as an oppressed group that’s being unfairly maligned, even helping them attract new recruits.

Should The Focus Be Isolation Or Engagement?

But Rangel does believe that online platforms have an important role to play and should be much more “socially conscious and responsible.” These extremists tend to use the internet within filter bubbles and they need to be exposed to new ideas and ways of thinking.

In the midst of his rage, Rangel says his needs were being met through his gang lifestyle—”violence felt like the natural way to express what we were all going through and anyone outside our group was the enemy.” But in prison, a counselor started talking to him and exposed him to new ideas. “Once I felt that he was listening, I wanted to talk more. Not challenging me and make me feel like I was evil or crazy.” Eventually, that counselor showed him how to empathize with the main scapegoat in his life, his mother, and to see that she was a victim too. “I started to identify with her, to seek and pursue forgiveness.”

That experience guided his new life and how he approaches extremists. Instead of condemning them and shaming them, he tries to have a dialogue. “We try to position ourselves to be ready to talk to someone who’s vulnerable.”

Can I share a goal with you? Provoke friendship instead of anger

— Sammy Rangel (@sammyrangel) July 15, 2017

The majority of their contacts happen through social media, he says, using that presence on Twitter and Facebook and other platforms as a “counter-narrative for those who are questioning their way of life” and then developing a connection with that person.

One particularly compelling example of social media’s role at changing minds is that of Megan Phelps-Roper, the granddaughter of the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church, the extremists who picket the funerals of fallen soldiers to preach their message of hate. She ran the church’s Twitter account, posting homophobic and anti-Semitic diatribes until a Los Angeles rabbi reached out to her and started engaging in a dialogue about religion with her over Twitter for months and months.

@meganphelps you know, for an evil something something, you sure do crack me up…

— (((Jewlicious))) (@jewlicious) November 4, 2009

They eventually became friends and she left the church and now calls herself a peacemaker. She says that the best way to deal with extremists is to engage with them and share your own views, outlining her four principles: don’t assume the worst, ask questions, stay calm, and “make the argument.”

Phelps-Roper believes that the general approach to Charlottesville is flawed, and that shutting down sites is not an effective strategy.

“Isolating people with those ideas often serves only to push them deeper into echo chambers and further their sense of persecution,” she wrote in an email. “From my own time with Westboro and also from the hundreds of stories I’ve heard from others with similar experiences, it seems so clear that civil engagement is an incredibly potent antidote to extremism. I absolutely believe that the best way to oppose bad ideas is by promoting and advocating and defending and living better ones — not by using force or violence (which tends to push people deeper into extremism and will surely make it more likely that those we oppose will also resort to violence) and not by isolation.”

Her example serves as one way to increase engagement, but in general social media can make it very difficult to encounter different points of view. As has been much analyzed since Trump’s election, Facebook and Twitter allow users to create their own information bubbles, exposed only to the views of their ideological allies and isolated from opposing viewpoints.

As Rangel explains, the same algorithms that surface ads on Google for products you searched for just minutes ago also serve to reinforce your worldview on platforms like Facebook. “They’re tracking your keystrokes and providing what you think is a choice but it’s focused on what you’ve already expressed as your interests.” As a result, extremists tend to be insulated in a world of similar viewpoints and won’t see that post about a good deed performed by someone they consider their enemy.

Several years ago, he set out to try to disrupt that cycle of what he calls “selective information processing” and started a project with another group, Against Violent Extremism (AVE) to use technology to stop radicalization, with the support of Google Ideas and the Gen Next Foundation. “We wanted to create counter-narratives with a “counter algorithm” to expose extremists to different viewpoints when they were online. “We couldn’t stop hateful messages from surfacing online, but there’s nothing to stop us from putting our message out there too, exposing them to those opinions and stories.” But that project remains a work in progress and for now AVE publishes stories of redemption to increase the peace.

What: A new ad in the award-winning #LikeAGirl campaign that focuses on young girls’ self-confidence and fear of failure.

Who: Always, Leo Burnett

Why we care: Given the monstrous success of #LikeAGirl over the years, any new addition is worth noting. And while this spot itself doesn’t have the dramatic punch of the original, it’s still a worthy continuation of an important campaign.

A new survey by the brand found that 50% of girls feel paralyzed by fear of failure during puberty, while 7 in 10 girls avoid trying new things during that time because they are afraid to fail, and 6 in 10 said that failing during puberty made them want to quit. Perhaps knowing how common these feelings are might inspire young viewers to overcome them.

The brand also posted an interview with director Lucy Luscombe about the spot.

Well, it just got easier for brands to unleash custom-tailored customer service chatbots in Facebook Messenger. Analytics firm Sprout Social said yesterday it brought it’s Bot Builder tool to the popular instant-messaging app. Bot Builder, which Sprout Social introduced for Twitter DMs earlier this year, streamlines the process for creating, previewing, and deploying custom chatbots—making it easier for non-developers to get bots to do their bidding. According to Sprout Social, Facebook already has 100,000 monthly active bots (not scary at all) and some 80% of high-level marketers plan to implement bots by 2020. You can learn more about Bot Builder here.

There have been several times when Tina Fey sat at SNL’s “Weekend Update” desk and became the right person to say the right thing at the right political moment. Last night was not one of them.

At the tail end of a soul-testing week in which the president himself unambiguously threw his lot in with white supremacists and not those resisting them, viewers of SNL’s “Weekend Update” were probably expecting a strong response. When University of Virginia alum Tina Fey appeared, those viewers probably got their hopes up further. What they found instead was an exhibition of pre-November 2016 idealism, layered in with post-election despair like, well, like a sheetcake.

If you haven’t seen the clip yet, in it Tina Fey introduces a response to the far-right rallies still somehow scheduled for this weekend–a response she calls “sheetcaking.” Instead of going to protest these rallies, she suggests buying the aforementioned bar mitzvah confection from a black- or Jewish-owned business, and then wolfing it down while screaming. You know, like Martin Luther King would have wanted.

It’s a funny sight gag, and there are some excellent lines in it–including one in which Fey rightfully calls Paul Ryan a pussy–but what is she really advocating here? Let’s un-sheet this cake.

The bit is essentially a callback to the “when they go low, we go high” mentality that proved woefully ineffective in thwarting a white supremacist-aligned presidential candidate. Are there literal Nazis and Klansmen storming your streets? Don’t sink to their level with direct confrontation, the sketch suggests–just support local businesses and self-medicate instead. This kind of sentiment may have seemed funny and rang true when the threat was hypothetical; now that it’s staring us in the face and mowing us down with cars, it’s anything but. Fey even took to giving Trump the nickname “Donny John,” as if all the Drumpf talk and Cheeto Jesus tweets had any impact whatsoever on the president’s perception.

While the appearance got a mostly positive reaction, a visible backlash was brewing all night on Twitter as well.

Tina Fey's solution for the political unrest in the US is — literally — "eat cake."

— Eoin Higgins (@EoinHiggins_) August 18, 2017

Tina Fey adapts "don't show up" as an anti-fascism strategy from her years of doing the same for people of color, queer people, lower-clas—

— Avery Edison (@aedison) August 18, 2017

it's cute that Tina Fey wants everyone to ignore white supremacists because "they're morons" but the last time we tried to ignore one… pic.twitter.com/eBvEBNDIgR

— Zachary Fox (@zackfox) August 18, 2017

leftists: we must organize a mass movement of solidarity to defeat the literal nazis/KKK marching in our streets

liberals, led by tina fey: pic.twitter.com/Xs1VgXUzDp

— Lana Del Raytheon (@LanaDelRaytheon) August 18, 2017

God I'm so over Tina Fey and white feminism shit like this

— Sophia Benoit (@1followernodad) August 18, 2017

Tina Fey here folks, umm instead of trying to fight the gestapo U should try netflix, chill & make some gazpacho!!

— Christian (@nopoweradeinusa) August 18, 2017

tina fey: eating cake and not paying attention is actually a form of activism!

white feminism: YASSSS QUEEN!!

— jack wagner (@jackdwagner) August 18, 2017

Humor is subjective, and for some viewers seeing Tina Fey inhale an entire sheetcake may have delivered the cathartic laugh they needed after a tough week. Many other people, however, would have preferred if Fey had found a funny way to activate those viewers instead.

Do you have a different opinion about Fey’s appearance on the show? Tweet at me here.

This morning the very helpful Twitter bot “TrumpAlert” informed us that President Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. has followed Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on Twitter. There’s a lot to unpack here.

DonaldJTrumpJr has just followed @JulianAssange.

— Trump Alert (@TrumpsAlert) August 18, 2017

Why would a member of Trump’s family follow Assange now? Well, it just so happens that Republican Representative Dana Rohrabacher met with him in London earlier this week. According to the Republican lawmaker, who spoke with the Orange County Register after his meeting, Assange reasserted that Russia was not the source of the DNC leaks from last year–a claim Assange has been making ever since evidence came to light that the Kremlin may have facilitated the hack into the Democrats servers and given the info to Wikileaks, which ultimately helped Trump win the election against Hillary Clinton.

Despite alleged proof of Russian involvement with the DNC hack, Assange has remained steadfast that it’s not the case. Rohrabacher, who has been known to defend Vladimir Putin, is now on Assange’s side. He says he received information from Assange that will have “earth-shattering political impact.” Alas, first, the representative has to show this all to Trump.

Lest we forget, we recently learned that Donald Trump Jr.–along with Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort–had a private meeting last year with Russians about the “government’s support of Mr. Trump” while the election was still underway. Both Trump Jr. and his father have tried to downplay the meeting since it came to light.

And, what do you know, today Trump’s son began to follow Assange on social media, after news that he had information that would be helpful to both them and Russia. What a terrible political intrigue narrative non-fiction book this will all become in a decade or two.

This week, we explored what it’s like to spend a week adjusting your diet to fuel your brain (not just your body), which interview answers hiring managers just can’t abide, and how management guru Peter Drucker might have counseled business execs after the events in Charlottesville last weekend.

These are the stories you loved in Leadership for the week of August 14:

1. I’ve Interviewed Thousands Of Job Candidates, Here Are The Deal Breakers

It’s normal to be nervous for job interviews. In fact, as one former hiring manager explained, candidates usually don’t get knocked for giving answers that are just okay: “I understood that it was an awkward situation, and sometimes, people needed to find their footing.” However, certain answers are deal breakers. This week we learned what some of the most common ones are.

2. What Happened When I Ate The Best Brain Foods For A Week

You know you should eat healthy for your body, but there’s plenty of evidence that your diet is equally as important for your brain. Fast Company’s Anisa Purbasari Horton put her anti-diet bias aside and decided to try the “MIND” diet, an eating plan designed for optimal cognitive function. Here’s how she fared on a week of leafy greens, salmon, blueberries, and no sugar or dairy.

3. Peter Drucker Has Some Sage Advice On How Execs Should Respond To Charlottesville

When most people hear the name Peter Drucker, they think of his management principles. Drucker’s writing is still considered a must-read for business leaders and managers. But as Rick Wartzman reminded us this week, Drucker also urged every business to act as a “leading institution of society.” The corporation, Drucker saw it, “is one of the very few institutions . . . that is not nationalistic in its worldview” and, at its best, “brings together” all kinds of people and “unites them in a common purpose.”

4. Never Say These 11 Things During A Job Interview (Unless You Don’t Want The Job)

There are a few things you should never say in a job interview, but some candidates nevertheless continue to utter them time and again. For instance, telling a hiring manager that your last boss was terrible might send the wrong signal. Here’s a look at what else to avoid–and why.

5. Why Trump Blames “Both Sides” For Charlottesville

President Trump’s profession that “many sides” were to blame for the violence in Charlottesville drew a firestorm of criticism. In an op-ed this week, Sarah Kendzior, a journalist who’s studied authoritarian states, says Trump’s statement risks empowering hate groups. She writes, “Trump’s neo-Nazi adherents will likely continue their activity whether or not Trump is in office, though how emboldened they are may depend on who is in power.”

When Bill de Blasio became mayor of New York City in 2014, he made no secret of his intent to place affordable housing at the center of his term. Not long after his election, he rolled out his Housing New York plan–a 10-year strategy to build or preserve around 200,000 affordable units across the city’s five boroughs.

Affordable, when it comes to housing in New York, is a slippery term. Critics of de Blasio’s plan have pointed out that the majority of the units built or converted under Housing New York remain out of reach of low-income New Yorkers–those earning less than $43,000 per year. And while the plan has succeeded making a nearly 100,000 unit dent in the city’s 550,000 affordable-unit shortfall, the terms of the new unit’s affordability are ephemeral: The majority of the units created and preserved under the mayor’s plan are only regulated temporarily, often for as little as two decades. There is no guarantee that a unit designated as affordable today will remain so in perpetuity, and with New York’s population growing and incomes failing to meet living costs, the structure of de Blasio’s plan has left housing advocates concerned.

The New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development recently announced that it will be distributing a $1.65 million grant among four local community land trust organizations. The money comes out of $3.5 in settlements negotiated by Attorney General Eric Schneiderman against, appropriately enough, many of the large financial institutions culpable in the housing crisis; the nonprofit Enterprise Community Partners worked with the attorney general’s office to secure the funds for the development of CLTs across the state of New York, and divvied up the money between New York City and three other CLT initiatives in Albany and Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island.

New York City is currently home to just one fully fledged CLT: The Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association, which was established in 1994 in the East Village after a lengthy negotiation process. The city contains of the most complex networks of affordable housing solutions in the country: A combination of private, public, and nonprofit developers have a stake in the landscape. The fiscal crisis of the 1970s left a wide swath of properties vacant, relatively valueless, and in the hands of the city. In the ’80s, Mayor Ed Koch began an initiative to get those city-owned properties into the hands of developers that would rehab them into viable, profitable units. The introduction of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit in 1986 incentivized developers to convert and build affordable units, but under temporary agreements that would eventually allow them to turn market- rate. “Land trusts just didn’t take off then because there were so many different models,” Matt Murphy, assistant commissioner of strategic planning for HPD, tells Fast Company. And with the city on the upswing from a deep recession, preserving affordability over time was less of a concern.

The grant, which Enterprise Community Partners will administer directly, will enable Cooper Square to expand, but also support the development and expansion of more nascent CLT initiatives in the city. The newly formed Interboro CLT will use the money to begin acquiring properties in low-income areas in the Bronx, central Brooklyn, and Queens. The East Harlem/El Barrio CLT will work with an affordable housing developer to acquire and rehabilitate a group of buildings in the neighborhood for conversion to a CLT, and the New York City Community Land Initiative, a recently formed CLT advocacy organization, will put the grant money toward convening technical assistance and learning exchange programs for community groups interested in founding a CLT.

The money will not, says Elizabeth Zeldin, program director at Enterprise Community Partners, go anywhere near toward financing the full development of these CLT initiatives. Given that in New York City on average, it costs around $500,000 to develop a single 800-foot, two-bedroom apartment, the Enterprise grant will barely cover that baseline cost for the four grantees. “But funding for affordable housing is scarce,” she says. The New York City CLTs will use a combination of grants and loans from other public and private sources to finance their development; the money from the attorney general’s settlements will act as validation from the state, as well as support for start-up costs, “for which this is no real source of funding otherwise.”

While much of the buzz around the new CLT funding pot has focused on New York City’s share, and its potential to stymie exorbitant rents and gentrification, it’s important, Hiller says, that what are often called “weak market” or “cold market” cities–places like Detroit or Cleveland or Buffalo–understand the potential role of CLTs in their development process. Like in Albany, a CLT acquiring and buying up vacant properties and converting them to permanently affordable homes creates incentive for people to move in and stay in neighborhoods that may be struggling with population loss. “In cities where there’s a larger effort to rehabilitate blocks and neighborhoods, where there’s a growing public investment in amenities like parks, that’s where CLTs need to focus on getting a toehold,” Hiller says.

When property values are low, establishing a CLT could seem like a counterproductive endeavor, Hiller says. “It’s one of the hardest arguments to make to communities that are struggling,” Hiller says. She recalls few years ago, when she was in Cleveland on behalf of Grounded Solutions Network, trying to tell a group of local funders that this was a worthwhile model to invest in. “And they said, ‘We want values to go up, why would we want to preserve affordability?'” Hiller remembers. For the answer, she adds, look to New York City, where CLTs are having to do a very different kind of work. “At some point, they will wish they had,” Hiller says.

For years, Hollywood studios have wanted to offer earlier access to new movies at home, only to get shot down by theater chains. Now, at least a couple of studios are reportedly looking to play hardball. Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures are among several studios talking with Apple and Comcast about selling early movie rentals for $30 to $50 a pop, Bloomberg reports. And this time, they may go ahead with the plan even if theater chains don’t approve. (Comcast owns Universal parent NBCUniversal, but operates somewhat independently.)

Effectively, this would result in a game of chicken. Theaters could respond by boycotting early release movies, as they have with Netflix’s original films, but doing so would risk a lot of money if the studios, Apple, and Comcast formed a united front. That’s still a big “if,” though. Bloomberg reports that some studios don’t want to fight with theaters, and Disney apparently isn’t interested in the plan at all. Given how many times we’ve heard about potential early rental schemes in the past, there’s a chance this latest one could fizzle.

It’s easy to think that there’s one direction you should be moving in your career: forward. You’re supposed to keep putting one foot in front of the other until you finally reach the top of that proverbial ladder.

But here’s the thing: Career paths aren’t always so simple. And, just because something seems like it will get you one rung higher doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best decision for you long term.

Not convinced? Here are four times that a step forward at work is actually taking you one step back in your career.

1. When A Promotion Takes You Away From What You Love

Of course, a promotion is a great thing. You’re being formally recognized (and compensated!) for all of your valuable contributions with a new title and a pay bump. But that step up also likely involves some changes to your daily responsibilities–which may or may not be what you want.

Perhaps this new position means you’ll no longer need to attend those weekly marketing meetings, which are actually one of your favorite parts of each work week. Or, maybe instead of communicating directly with customers (which you love!), you’ll now be charged with overseeing the team that does that.

That’s not to say that you should turn down that offer for a promotion without batting an eye (that decision deserves some serious consideration!). But it’s worth thinking through whether or not you could take that superior role without losing all of the job duties you’ve grown to love.

2. When A New Responsibility Eats Up Time For Your Side Project

Your boss gives you a new responsibility to take on at work. You’re honored that she would trust you to grab the reins on something new. But you’re also aware that this is going to involve much longer hours–hours that you were previously dedicating to the side hustle that you’d eventually like to take full-time.

Related:How I Turned A Side Gig Into A Startup (Then Did It All Over Again) 

In a situation like this, it’s important to take a step back and consider your long-term career goals. If you do intend to make your side project your full-time career in the near future, that’s going to involve some time and dedication–which you’ll be short on if you continue to fill up your plate at your day job.

3. When A Speaking Opportunity Is About A Topic You Have No Interest In

Giving a presentation or agreeing to a public speaking opportunity is a great way to make some new connections and build your personal brand. But there’s a caveat here: You want whatever you’re asked to speak about to be somewhat relevant to your career and expertise. You don’t want to establish yourself as a thought leader in a subject that totally deviates from your area of interest.

No, there’s nothing wrong with pushing yourself out of your comfort zone a little bit. But you want to be careful not to foster a reputation that’s totally irrelevant to your actual skills and your goals.

Sure, being asked to speak about social media marketing at that association event might be an honor. However, it won’t do you too many favors if you’re growing your career as an engineer. In fact, agreeing to that opportunity will likely only serve to confuse people about who you are and what you bring to the table.

4. When A New Job Doesn’t Fit Your Goals

You weren’t actively job hunting. But, you were approached by another company that ended up offering you a position. By all intents and purposes, this new role is a big step up. It comes with a higher salary, a fancier title, a corner office, and an employer that’s a household name in your field.

Related:Managers, Here’s Why You Keep Promoting The Wrong People 

What’s the catch? Well, you’ve been thinking about switching industries or making a major career change altogether–meaning that this new role doesn’t fit with your plans for the future.

Yes, accepting that position might mean a step forward—but that’s irrelevant if that’s not actually the direction you want to be heading in.

More often than not, a step up in your career is a great thing that deserves to be celebrated. However, there are some circumstances when that one step forward would ultimately take you two steps back.

Regardless of your individual situation or preferences, it’s important to remember to give major career decisions–whether good or bad–the time for consideration that they deserve.

Do that, and you’re much more likely to take things in the direction that works best for you.

This article originally appeared on the Daily Muse and is reprinted with permission. 

More From The Muse:

• Your 3-Step Guide To Getting Over A Career Setback Fast 
• 3 Ways You Can Get Back On Track After A Major Setback (And Still Hit Your Goals) 
• The Secret To Climbing A Ladder When No One’s Telling You How To Do It 

When Marco Ramirez scored his dream job of writing Marvel’s superhero mash-up series The Defenders for Netflix, he quickly realized it was also going to be his most challenging gig. Not only was he tasked with bringing together four supremely individualistic heroes–the brooding, wise-ass private investigator Jessica Jones; the meditating martial arts maestro Iron Fist; the blind but otherwise sensorially super-powered Daredevil; and the bulletproof ex-convict Luke Cage–he also needed to preserve their identities so that they could seamlessly return back to subsequent seasons of their respective series. “It was like I was leasing one of my favorite cars–like, put the miles on, but bring it back with no scratches or dents,” Ramirez says.

Of course, Ramirez, who was a showrunner on the second season on Daredevil, had established parameters to work within. Marvel is a staunch guardian of its IP and works closely with the writers and directors of its shows and movies to ensure that projects adhere to the Marvel brand. But it was still up to Ramirez to figure out how to weave together four different storylines and come up with an overarching premise of why the four lone rangers would actually want to join forces and fight crime alongside each other. Complicating matters even more, when Ramirez and his original writing partner Doug Petrie (who left midway through to pursue other projects) began sketching out the narrative for The Defenders, Iron Fist hadn’t yet been written or cast. It was only well into the writing of The Defenders that Ramirez learned that British actor Finn Jones would be the fourth Defender.

Although we’ll never have ratings as a barometer, it seems Ramirez overcame all those obstacles. Reviews of the eight-part series have been solid, redeeming the streaming franchise, which went off-kilter with last spring’s Iron Fist. That series was critically panned and attacked by fans over the casting of Jones (who is Caucasian) as the lead in an Asian martial arts story.

Ramirez spoke with Fast Company about how he ultimately solved his narrative dilemma; the collaborative nature of the Marvel “dorm”; and texting with Krysten Ritter (who plays Jessica Jones) over lines in her script.

Laying The Groundwork Early On

Rather than rush headfirst into an action-packed plot, Ramirez took his time to set up The Defenders, carefully laying narrative groundwork in the first and second episodes. He also used early scenes to fill in story gaps for people who might be unfamiliar with the characters.

“The challenge was that these characters are really, really driven and independent,” Ramirez says. “They don’t like to ask for outside help. So how are you going to get solo, swimming sharks in the water to suddenly behave like pack animals and operating like a team? At no point would it be fair or right to any of the audiences of the shows to think that any of these characters would react well to getting a letter in the mail saying, ‘Hey, you’re now on The Defenders. Please come join a super team.’ That just wouldn’t work. So issue one was, in the writing, we need to get them all to where they’re going independently. All these characters needed to believe that they were on their own, singular journey that led them to the others.

“And I think because we did that in the script, and took our time to do that, and also to fill in the backstory on any element of the story that may not have been clear. We couldn’t assume that every audience member had seen every episodes of every show–that’s five seasons of TV. We had to do a tiny bit of expository backstory so you could understand every element. So that took the first two episodes.”

Using Visuals To Underscore A Point

To further drive home the point of one cohesive, Defender unit, the show’s visuals are an amalgamation of the heroes’ personalities and styles. Each of the Marvel TV series on Netflix has been defined by a certain color palette–Luke Cage has a golden hue that evokes 1970’s Harlem; Jessica Jones is dark and moody, etc. In The Defenders, these tones are brought together to reaffirm the idea that the characters are no longer operating solo.

“When we brought in [Director] S.J. Clarkson, she visually came up with one of the keys to unlocking how to make this show. She said, ‘We’ve done this work of isolating them each in their own worlds at the very beginning, and then slowly bringing them together. What I want to do as a director is make sure to highlight that as much as possible by using color palettes.’ So she made sure that Matt Murdock’s (Daredevil) world was very red, it had saturated reds in it. Jessica Jones’s was very violet and very blue. Luke Cage’s had amber, yellow tones. And Iron Fist’s had green, earth tones. And as those characters start to cross-pollinate, suddenly those colors are appearing in each other’s worlds. I think it’s one of the most visual, fun things about the show.”

Exploiting The Marvel Dorm

To help deal with the fact that Ramirez was “writing something that comes second, while the first thing is still being cooked”–i.e., writing The Defenders before Iron Fist was even a script–Ramirez spoke frequently with Marvel executives and other Marvel showrunners. This communication was made easier by the fact that everyone worked down the hall from each other.

“The physical proximity helped. I could just walk into [Luke Cage showrunner] Cheo Coker’s office–we were all in the same building. So I could just walk into his office and sit on his couch and talk about Luke Cage for a little bit. That really helped. Marvel has its own campus, so I was across the hall from Jessica Jones and next to Luke Cage. It’s not like we’re all hanging out in the dorm, but if you have a question, it’s just right across the hall.”

Marvel execs would also talk to the various showrunners to keep them abreast of what was going on with their characters in The Defenders. “It’s really a collaboration with Marvel at the center of it,” Ramirez says.

Looking Beyond The Obvious For Inspiration

To prepare for The Defenders, Ramirez immersed himself in the Marvel TV shows on Netflix, as well as the original comics that the shows are based on. But he also turned to classic films for inspiration.

“The comics are obviously a big source of inspiration for all of these shows. But ultimately I don’t think any of the showrunners on any of the shows want to do direct storylines from the comics. None of us ever want to feel like we’re just playing covers. We want to have some ownership of it. So yeah, we read all the comics, in the art department there were panels from the comics and we’d go, ‘Hey, we should put these on the show at some point!’

“But I took as much inspiration from cinema and movies where the characters come together reluctantly. So this, to me, is as much born from The Dirty Dozen and Seven Samurai as it is from any of the comics. The story of four people who are really independent, who do not want to partner together, but who have to for a temporary period of time–that, I think, goes beyond comics.”

Tapping Smart, Funny People To Be Smart And Funny Even If That’s Not Their Job

There wasn’t a huge amount of improvisation on the set, but Ramirez says that when it came time to fine-tuning dialogue, he would often have conversations with the actors “who were really collaborative and smart. I’d take their suggestions. The most extensive conversations I had were with Krysten. She’s the one who got to poke fun at the premise of the show. She got to look at Matt [Murdock, aka Daredevil] and say, ‘You don’t make sense.’ She gets to look at Danny Rand (Iron Fist) and say, ‘This is bullshit.’ Her character gets to do that. So by nature of that, she got a lot of fun lines and dialogue. And she and I would often find ourselves texting a different version of a line. Like, ‘What about this? Is this funny?’

“I think because she comes from a sitcom background, she’s really good at understanding what would make her line really good. There’s one that’s in the trailer that she came up with. We texted each other a bunch about how and what she would say about the Matt Murdock suit. (It’s the scene where Jessica Jones looks at Daredevil in his superhero suit and deadpans, “Nice ears.”) We had a whole lot of fun with that.”

Girl Scouts of the USA have always learned to be good citizens of this planet, but now they are aiming a little higher. Your favorite cookie sellers have teamed up with the SETI Institute for a five-year program called Reaching for the Stars: NASA Science for Girl Scouts. While the program, which is funded by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate and led by the SETI Institute, won’t train the bright minds of the future in the art of searching for intelligent life in the universe (unless they plan on showing Contact at the next Girl Scout Jamboree), it will hopefully encourage a lifelong love of science, tech, engineering, and math (STEM). According to a study by the Girl Scout Research Institute, while girls say STEM fields are interesting, only 13% would choose a career in STEM, and only one-third have participated in STEM activities outside school. Meanwhile, 57% say that if they went into a STEM career, they’d have to work harder than a man to be taken seriously. Hence the need for a STEM program aimed at young women.

As with many aspects of the Girl Scouts, learning is driven by competition and a burning desire to earn more badges than the kid sitting next to you at the campfire. To that end, the new Reaching for the Stars program coincides with the creation of the Girl Scouts’ first-ever Space Science badges. The new badges will be available for girls at every Girl Scout grade level, from kindergarten to 12th grade (or Daisies to Seniors, in scout parlance). While the badges are still being focus grouped, by 2019, starry-eyed Girl Scouts will be able to earn badges in NASA’s space sciences: astrophysics, planetary science, and heliophysics.

The program is a natural fit for the Girl Scouts as their current CEO, Sylvia Acevedo, is a rocket scientist who once worked for NASA’s famed Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It’s not just Acevedo, either. As SETI notes, many female astronauts in the U.S. are Girl Scout alumnae. No word yet on whether they’ll try to sell Thin Mints to alien life-forms.

Want to sign up your future astronaut? Visit www.girlscouts.org/join.

It looks like the inevitable has come to pass. Donald Trump has told his aides that he’s decided to remove Steve Bannon from his post as the White House’s chief strategist, according to sources speaking with the New York Times. (Although versions differ; other reports say Bannon is claiming that he resigned from the White House two weeks ago.)

Many have been calling for Bannon’s ousting for months. He helped Trump’s meteoric rise, thanks to his far-right connections and affiliations with organizations like Breitbart news. Given the events in Charlottesville last weekend, many have been calling on Trump to break ties with Bannon and his nationalist ilk. Not only that, but Bannon has reportedly had frequent disagreements with others inside the White House.

Now, it seems Bannon is really out. We’ll wait to see how Breitbart, et al. respond.

Mark Zuckerberg has been clear and outspoken about his belief that some type of glasses will eventually replace smartphones as our go-to computing device. Facebook is already spending R&D resources on developing those stylish glasses. Today we see a new patent that offers some clues: The AR glasses design uses an optical technology similar to that used in Microsoft’s HoloLens and in an upcoming product from Google-backed Magic Leap. The technology senses the real-world view of the wearer and place digital objects within it.

The patent lists three Oculus (owned by Facebook) engineers as the inventors. Business Insiderpoints out that one of the patent authors, Pasi Saarikko, led Microsoft’s HoloLens group until moving to Facebook in 2015. The design shown in the patent is far smaller and sleeker than the HoloLens headset. Analysts say, however, that the components needed for such a small form factor are not yet available in large numbers.

But it’s crucial for Facebook to be doing this research now rather than later. Facebook has long wanted to control the hardware on which people experience Facebook services. That’s the reason for the ill-fated “Facebook phone” and the main reason it bought Oculus and its virtual reality headset product. When personal computing does finally collide with augmented reality headwear, Facebook wants to be there with a product.

Most of the world is betting on lithium-ion as the future of batteries–Elon Musk for one. When fully up and running in 2020, Tesla’s Gigafactory 1 is expected to churn out 50 million kilowatt hours of lithium-ion power packs a year–enough for plenty of Model 3s and home Powerwall storage units.

But not everyone shares the prevailing wisdom about lithium-ion. Bill Joy, for instance. The Sun Microsystems founder and Silicon Valley legend is betting on what he says is a cheaper, safer technology. It’s a solid-state alkaline battery that uses some of the same materials as everyday batteries, like those in flashlights and TV remotes. But it’s also rechargeable, making it suitable for uses like electric cars and power storage for grids and homes.

Lithium-ion batteries have the advantage of high energy density, relatively low weight, and that they retain power after being recharged hundreds of times. Moreover, as they’ve become the default for electric vehicles and cell phones, their cost has fallen by at least 73% in seven years. But Joy argues that lithium-ion will remain relatively expensive in the long term because they’re made with relatively rare metals like nickel, cobalt, and lithium.

Last year, Samsung was forced to recall more than 1 million Galaxy Note 7 smartphone batteries amid safety fears. And lithium-ion will explode if you poke it with a stick or another sharp object. “If you puncture [a lithium-ion] battery and create a short, it will catch on fire and create a really violent fire that you can’t put out with a normal extinguisher,” Joy says.

Joy does, of course, have an interest in pushing the explosive qualities of lithium batteries: He has invested in a company called Ionic Materials, which uses a plastic-like polymer for its electrolyte. While still five years away from coming to market, it appears to be safer than lithium-ion, which have liquid electrolytes. A promotional video for Ionic shows its batteries keep working even after someone fires bullets directly into the surface.

Ionic’s polymer works with standard battery chemicals like zinc and manganese dioxide, which are more abundant than the material used for lithium-ion. And, it can be molded into different shapes. Joy says the electrolyte can be combined with a standard cathode and anode material, like zinc and manganese dioxide, and rolled into a plastic sheet like Saran Wrap. That means the batteries could potentially be arranged around a car–perhaps in the floor or roof–instead of always in metal housing under the hood, as with electric cars today.

The polymer was invented by Mike Zimmerman, a materials scientist. Joy invested in the company after being referred to Zimmerman by a friend. He says it jibed with a long-running goal–first made while he was a venture capitalist with Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers (KPCB)–to find a better battery.

“We can fix lithium-ion to be safe and do all the advanced things people want to do. But we can also make [alkaline batteries that are] cheaper and safer and simple to manufacture, and make them rechargeable,” Joy says. He estimates that his rechargeable alkaline battery, while less powerful than a lithium-ion battery, will have a tenth of the material costs.

Battery startups are notoriously hard to get right, however. Several big names have closed in recent years, having once championed technology that was going to revolutionize the world. Just in the last few months, Acqion, a hot company with funding from Bill Gates and KPCB, sought bankruptcy protection. “Creating a new electrochemistry and an associated battery platform at commercial scale is extremely complex, time-consuming, and very capital-intensive,” said CEO Scott Pearson after ploughing through $190 million of other people’s cash.

There are lots of other battery technologies under development, including magnesium-ion, sodium-ion, and lithium-sulfur, and none of them have made it to the productive end of the “Hype Cycle”–the process by which new technology goes mainstream. But Joy is confident that Ionic can move more quickly and safely than other companies. For one, using a solid-state polymer instead of a liquid electrolyte reduces the risk of unwanted chemical reactions, including slivers of lithium (“dendrites”) that can build up inside lithium-ion cells and cause fires. For another, Ionic doesn’t plan to do its own manufacturing. It wants to license its engineering to existing battery makers as well as auto-supply companies, and others.

That should help cut costs and reduce the risk of failure, but it’s going to be a hard road. Lithium-ion may not be perfect. But Elon Musk and others are already at the factory-christening stage, creating momentum that will be difficult to repulse. “The majority of rechargeable batteries will ultimately be alkaline, but it’s going to take years before we build new factories and supply chains and turn the ship around,” Joy says.

The sometimes-uncomfortable relationship between online service providers and their more unsavory customers changed in the wake of the Charlottesville tragedy. Companies that don’t take a public stand on the content they carry started to take one, with both GoDaddy and Cloudflare dropping infamous neo-Nazi site the Daily Stormer. Others, like PayPal, which had quietly taken one-off actions on hate sites in the past, started dropping customers by the dozens, including American Renaissance, League of the South, VDARE, and Richard Spencer’s National Policy Institute and AltRight.com. While tech’s crackdown on violence-inciting white nationalist sites came rapidly following the turmoil in Virginia, it took years of cajoling by activists and advocates to get Silicon Valley ready for action.

“We put out our first report about cyberhate in 1985,” says Brittan Heller, director of technology and society for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). In 2012, the ADL inaugurated its Working Group on Cyberhate. “This was one of the first bodies to get organizations across the tech industry to talk about these issues,” says Heller. The ADL doesn’t publish a list of its members, but Heller says it includes “all the major tech companies like Facebook and Google, Apple and Microsoft, Twitter.” In 2014, the Working Group put out best-practice guidelines for tech companies to handle online hate—like clearly explaining terms of service for users and providing mechanisms for people to report abuse.

Going For The Money

That same year, the Southern Poverty Law Center began its Silicon Valley push. “In 2014, we decided that we needed to at least make an effort to work with the tech companies to de-monetize hate,” says Heidi Beirich, director of SPLC’s Intelligence Project. SPLC persuaded Apple to stop selling music by white power bands including Skrewdriver, Max Resist, and the Bully Boys (with tunes like “Fire Up the Ovens”) on iTunes. Amazon agreed to drop many hate sites from its affiliate program, which pays site owners if people clicking on ads or other links to Amazon go on to make a purchase.

Related:The Tech Companies That Have Banned Hate Groups Since Charlottesville

The big prize, though, would be PayPal. “It’s the banking system for the white supremacist movement,” says Beirich, who is not one to speak delicately. “We’ve approached them, we’ve given them information about these hate groups. They’ve done nothing.” Yet another organization, Color of Change, had a different experience. “Some companies were very willing to talk to us, like PayPal,” says Rashad Robinson, the group’s executive director. “Others, it was a bit tougher to get them to engage in conversation.”

PayPal was a tag-team effort between SPLC, which started talks in 2015, and Color of Change, which began efforts to defund white nationalist groups in February. (It resulted in the Blood Money petition that launched on August 16.) “When Color of Change started to meet with PayPal months ago, we provided all our correspondence with Paypal to [them],” says Beirich. Robinson says his group could not have mounted its campaign without SPLC’s research on dangerous sites. “We made some very clear demands around a whole set of sites that we felt weren’t just about hate, but were about promoting violence and terrorism,” he says.

The result: PayPal agreed to drop over three dozen sites that had used PayPal for e-commerce or donations. And the company released a public statement on the changes, a break from its usual approach of quietly dropping sites. “This would not have happened right away this quickly if we had not been pushing, and there had not been internal debates inside these companies, where there were people probably on our side and people who were not,” says Robinson.

PayPal wouldn’t discuss its conversations with groups. But spokesman Justin Higgs replied with an email that read, in part, “The company welcomes constructive dialogue on this important issue and embraces feedback from groups that desire to work with us to prohibit hateful, intolerant and violent organizations from using our platform.”

Rising Tension

The level of rapport between advocates and companies varies, as do their perceptions of progress. “It depends on the company you’re talking about, like Facebook has always been better about content when there’s a violation,” says Beirich. “Twitter goes crazy on ISIS accounts, but will let other people post basically whatever they want.”

Heller, however, counts Twitter as a major success for the ADL, which is a member of the company’s Trust and Safety Council, created in 2016. That year saw rampant anti-Semitic harassment of reporters (regardless of their ethnic, religious, or even political background). Heller, a former Department of Justice attorney, used data analysis to find 2.6 million discriminatory tweets and identify the main accounts behind them. The data persuaded Twitter to suspend 2,000 white supremacist accounts.

Related: Cloudflare’s Matthew Prince Explains Why It Was So Hard To Dump The Daily Stormer

Other times, the results are mixed. “Google was a very complicated situation because they were very open to removing monetization, like the Google ads,” says Beirich. “But when we brought up issues with their algorithm [which SPLC says promotes fake news], they were like, ‘We are not talking to you about that.'”

Regardless of the company, steady pressure has been required. The ADL advocates a soft touch, compared to the SPLC’s in-your-face style. “It’s better to work with the tech companies as a trusted partner so we can be critical and they can listen,” says Heller, who takes a diplomatic tone. “And we can help them with the problems and really push from the inside for change.” Beirich says that SPLC tried the collaborative approach, but was frustrated by the lack of results and felt that the Valley wasn’t taking them seriously. So she and her team went on the offensive, putting out research like an excoriating report on security provider Cloudflare’s hate-site clients.

Color of Change also went public when diplomacy stalled. “PayPal knew that we were going public, launching this [Blood Money] campaign,” says Robinson. “And we heard from PayPal [the night before] that they were getting rid of a set of sites.”

Whether working publicly or privately, advocates have had to push for action. Ever politic, Heller says that the ADL was “encouraging” companies for months to drop white supremacist sites. Companies were aware of intensifying dangers over the past year, she says. Still it took the deadly drama in Charlottesville to get most tech companies moving. “I think it was a Rubicon, because it made it very clear that this was not people exercising their freedom of expression,” says Heller. “Incitement to violence . . . is not protected speech.”

How many bad weeks can a person have in one year? If your name is Donald Trump, many.

According to morethan a few headlines, this past week has been his worst. After a slow and ineffective response to the deadly rallies in Charlottesville, pressure is mounting against Trump—even from within his own party. But as we read that this is, by far, Trump’s worst week, let’s not forget that a mere few weeks ago he had another worst week. And another one preceded that. And another, ad infinitum.

By my count, Trump has had at least seven worst weeks. We’re 30 weeks in, so that’s a little less than a quarter of his entire presidency thus far.

For the sake of accuracy, and hopefully future better headlines, here’s a surely non-exhaustive list of all the times people have called any given week “Trump’s worst week”:

Winter to Spring–a slow but steady rise of bad weeks

February 17: A mere five weeks after being inaugurated, US Newscalled this week Donald Trump’s worst as more than a few of his nominees were shot down and the call for more information about his campaign’s collision with Russia began.

A note about March and April: While these months did not feature “worst weeks” for Trump, CNN’s Chris Cillizza did take the time to write during this period that both Steve Bannon and Sean Spicer experienced worst weeks. (A fun thing to do is Google “Chris Cillizza” and “worst week” if you want to learn about a certain sort of headline construction.)

May 16: After James Comey revealed that Trump asked him last year to halt Mike Flynn’s investigation, Julian Zelizer wrote for CNN that this was “Trump’s worst week in politics, and that’s saying a lot.”

May 20: Russian tensions are getting higher, and it becomes known that the government has determined a “person of interest” inside the White House who may have colluded with Russia. This, with Trump’s sinking numbers, allows Reuters to dub it as “Trump’s Worst Week.”

Summer–And now the worst begins

June 19: Now it’s Cillizza’s turn. He writes for CNN that “Donald Trump had the absolute worst week in Washington.” This is due to the Russian investigation. At the time, it was just revealed that Trump himself is under investigation.

July 29: After getting flak for turning a Boy Scouts youth rally into a political soapbox as well as encouraging police officers at another event to increase brutality, the Guardian dubbed this week “the worst week in Trump’s short presidency.”

August 3: In the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer wrote that, after the insane rise and fall of Anthony Scaramucci, this first week in August was “Donald Trump’s worst week.”

August 18: Two weeks later and, what do you know, another worst week. This time it’s from NBC News, who deemed his Charlottesville response worthy of the now-too-used descriptor of “Trump’s worst week.”

What’s next?

We’re not even a year into this presidency—there will surely be more. But for the sake of my mental health, I hope we have merely mediocre weeks for the next little bit.

Artist Chuck Close, author Jhumpa Lahiri, musician Paula Boggs, and actor Kal Penn were among the 16 members of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities who resigned today in the wake of President Trump’s response to the events in Charlottesville, Virginia. They issued a harsh rebuke of the president’s “false equivocation” and “refusal to quickly and unequivocally condemn the cancer of hatred,” and called on him to resign. Director George C. Wolfe was the lone member of the council to not sign on to the missive, and presumably is sitting in the conference room all alone, eating a donut.

The commission was established by President Ronald Reagan in 1982, according to the AP, and while mostly ceremonial, it works to advise the president on cultural policy and funding initiatives. But now no one wants to do that. “Supremacy, discrimination, and vitriol are not American values,” the committee members wrote in a letter announcing their resignation. “Your values are not American values. We must be better than this. We are better than this. If this is not clear to you, then we call on you to resign your office, too.”

Dear @realDonaldTrump, attached is our letter of resignation from the President's Committee on the Arts & the Humanities @PCAH_govpic.twitter.com/eQI2HBTgXs

— Kal Penn (@kalpenn) August 18, 2017

It should be noted that the move is not particularly surprising. Most of the members were appointed by the Obama administration, and stayed after Trump was elected, until new people were appointed. What is surprising is that it took the artists, writers, and actors longer to step up–er, step down–than the business folks. Kenneth C. Frazier, the CEO of Merck, resigned from Trump’s American Manufacturing Council on Monday, followed by other CEOs, which led to the disbanding of the council.

Forget your classic listening device: Researchers at the University of Washington have demonstrated that phones, smart TVs, Amazon Echo-like assistants, and other devices equipped with speakers and microphones could be used by hackers as clandestine sonar “bugs” capable of tracking your location in a room.

Their system, called CovertBand, emits high-pitched sonar signals hidden within popular songs—their examples include songs by Michael Jackson, Justin Timberlake, and 2Pac—then records them with the machine’s microphone to detect people’s activities. Jumping, walking, and “supine pelvic tilts” all produce distinguishable patterns, they say in a paper. (Of course, someone who hacked the microphone on a smart TV or computer could likely listen to its users, as well.)

Lately we’ve been hearing a lot about these sound-based hacks. Researchers from the University of Michigan and the University of South Carolina demonstrated in March they could induce false readings in a phone’s accelerometer by playing certain sounds, potentially disrupting apps that relied on the tool, according to a report in The New York Times.

Another study, from last month’s Black Hat conference, showed devices with balancing gyroscopes like drones and hoverboards could be similarly disrupted, Ars Technica reports. And last year, researchers at Israel’s Ben Gurion University demonstrated how malware could turn headphones attached to a computer into a microphone able to pick up sounds from 20 feet away.

Read more: How Cloudflare is steeling for the internet of easily hackable things

Sonic spying and sabotage are nothing new. Leon Theremin, the music instrument designer, also built a sonic bug that was hidden inside a wooden Great Seal of the United States in the U.S. ambassador’s home in Moscow after World War II. (It had been given to him as a gift by a group of Russian schoolchildren) The device had no power supply or active electronics, but when Soviet spies beamed radio waves of the right frequency at it, they could pick up the sounds of nearby conversations. The NSA, according to a leaked weapons catalog, has a similar radio-based tool for remotely hacking into air-gapped computers, a magical-seeming exploit that has inspired at least one engineer to brew his own.

Sound can be also be weaponized in more directly harmful ways. “We Are the Champions” and “Babylon” were among the songs blasted at high volume during some Iraq War interrogations. Despite the New York Police Department’s arguments otherwise, a judge ruled in June that a lawsuit related to officers’ use of a long range acoustic device at a Black Lives Matter protest can proceed, because sound can cause physical harm. And earlier this month, the Associated Press reported that five U.S. diplomats in Cuba had suffered severe hearing loss—the result, a State Dept. investigation said, of a covert sonic weapon.

We suck. Some of us suck more than others, but really, we all do, or have at sometime.

We suck because collectively, we toss 28 billion pounds of plastic into the oceans each year. We suck because those bits of floating trash, like six-pack rings and soda bottles, are strangling fish and sea creatures and killing coral reefs from the inside out. We suck because we know all this and continue to buy up and discard plastic anyways. And we suck because there’s one type of single-use plastic in particular that is, when you think about it, totally unnecessary, yet we continue to use: straws.

For the month of September, the Lonely Whale Foundation, a clean-ocean advocacy nonprofit set up by actor Adrian Grenier and entertainment entrepreneur Lucy Sumner in 2015, will be running a campaign in Seattle to point out just how ridiculous our reliance on straws is. Across the U.S., we use and toss around 500 million plastic straws each day, which totals out to around 12 million pounds of plastic waste over a year.

What the “Strawless September” campaign (part of the Lonely Whale’s larger Strawless Ocean initiative) and its digital leadup, the #StopSucking challenge, want to prove is that it’s possible for life in a city to go on without plastic straws. The Lonely Whale has coordinated an expansive effort across the city to get restaurants, facilities, and events to trade out plastic straws for paper alternatives, and for customers to say “no, thanks.” And leading up to September 1, the nonprofit is coordinating the #StopSucking challenge to get people across the country to think more actively about their plastic-use habits.

“There’s at least 20, if not more, plastic straw campaigns out there already,” Dune Ives, the Lonely Whale’s executive director, tells Fast Company. One, “Be Straw Free” was launched by Milo Cress, then nine years old, who went door to door in his hometown of Burlington, Vermont asking businesses to stop offering straws after he realized that the one he received at a restaurant was unnecessary to his drinking the soda he ordered. “We wanted to find a way into the conversation and add to what all these ocean-health organizations have been doing for years,” Ives says. And what they landed on as a solution was humor.

The #StopSucking campaign is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but the playful approach seems to be catching on, Ives says. After a successful launch at South By Southwest this year, where a PSA showing straw users being sucker-punched by an octopus tentacle, the Lonely Whale is hoping the challenge to go straw-free catches on in the same way the Ice Bucket Challenge raised millions of dollars to fight ALS since it took off in the summer of 2014.

It’s one thing to personally decide against using straws, but it’s another thing altogether for a whole business or city to decide to go plastic-straw free. “Across the board, the first question everyone asked us was: Will customers like it?” Ives says. Paper straws, despite being more sustainable, are relatively uncommon, and have a reputation for not being all that sturdy. But Ives says that they’ve encouraged businesses to have fun with it–to customize the straws with unique designs and logos, and to engage customers in a conversation about why the switch is necessary. Moving away from plastic also presents an opportunity for businesses to explore other alternatives: Seattle-based restaurateur Renee Erickson, for example, has switched to metal straws in all of her ventures.

Just like Ives hopes that the Strawless September efforts in Seattle will get more local business on board, so too does she hope that the plastic-straw effort follows the path of the plastic bag ban, and becomes a movement that spreads out from individual cities and counties before reaching the state level. Ives says that the Lonely Whale has heard from its partner nonprofits that the Strawless Ocean efforts have given lift to local-level policy conversations; lawmakers in Berkeley, California–one of the pioneers in the plastic-bag movement–is now pushing for a similar move away from straws.