Man Replaced Wife’s Cat With 'Well-behaved' Lookalike Years Ago and She Has No Idea - "Six years ago, i swapped my then-girlfriend now-wife's cat with a more well-behaved lookalike. She had an all black cat that was extremely aggressive. It scratched everyone, hissed at everyone, and didn't use its litterbox half the time. My wife insisted she could get it to behave better. One week she went out of town to visit her family and I was supposed to go to her apartment and feed it. The first night I went over, it scratched the shit out of my arm. I joked to the cat that it's not special and I'll replace it if it scratches again. The joke stuck with me until I had thought about it enough that it wasn't a joke. The next morning I went to the local animal shelter. Found an identical cat who was already litterbox trained and acclimated to people, but was a little skiddish (it's old owner died of a heart attack and the animal shelter people said they think that's why it was skiddish). But overall, it was a lot friendlier and better behaved, and the skiddishness would help it resemble the original cat. So I adopted it, took it to my wife's apartment, settled it in, then drove her original cat to an animal shelter a town over (I was paranoid my wife would find out if I took it to a local one). It's been 6 years since then. We got married 4 years ago. We still have the swapped cat. It answers to the original cat's name. My wife knows nothing. She loves this cat and brags about how much better behaved it is. Everytime I see it, I feel like a total piece of shit. Edit: For the people saying the other cat was likely euthanized by the shelter, I just double-checked and the shelter I dropped it off at was and still is a no-kill shelter."
Meme - "Plan A *condom*
Plan B *pills*
Plan N *running*"
We SHOULDN'T put shoplifters in jail - and victims should pay for thieves' rehab, says police chief - "Persistent shoplifters should be spared jail and instead retailers could pay for their rehabilitation, a police chief has said. Donna Jones, an elected crime commissioner, believes short jail sentences for low–level criminals with drug addictions do not work and prison should be reserved for more serious violent and sex offenders. But her suggestion that shop owners could pay to help those who steal from them enraged the British Retail Consortium."
Fantastic Beasts and where to cancel them: how the Wizarding World lost its magic - "How quaint it feels now to look back on the sort of low-level furore with which JK Rowling once had to contend. In 2009, Matt Latimer, a former speech writer for George W Bush, claimed in his book Speech-less: Tales of a White House Survivor that the Harry Potter creator had been dropped from consideration for the presidential medal of freedom because of suspicions in the administration that her books “encouraged witchcraft”. What the Wizarding World wouldn’t give today for a controversy of that stripe: one that doesn’t result in lost revenue, accusations of hate speech, and the previously unimaginable spectacle of Vladimir Putin declaring that he knows how Rowling feels."
Meme - "*Bathrooms were invented in 1596*
Indians in 2019: *shitting in street*"
Good gamers, good managers? A proof-of-concept study with Sid Meier’s Civilization - "Human resource professionals increasingly enhance their assessment tools with game elements—a process typically referred to as “gamification”—to make them more interesting and engaging for candidates, and they design and use “serious games” that can support skill assessment and development. However, commercial, off-the-shelf video games are not or are only rarely used to screen or test candidates, even though there is increasing evidence that they are indicative of various skills that are professionally valuable. Using the strategy game Civilization, this proof-of-concept study explores if strategy video games are indicative of managerial skills and, if so, of what managerial skills. Under controlled laboratory conditions, we asked forty business students to play the Civilization game and to participate in a series of assessment exercises. We find that students who had high scores in the game had better skills related to problem-solving and organizing and planning than the students who had low scores. In addition, a preliminary analysis of in-game data, including players’ interactions and chat messages, suggests that strategy games such as Civilization may be used for more precise and holistic “stealth assessments,” including personality assessments"
Forum: Has Singapore become a smart nation or smart device nation? - "Our nation has come a long way since the Smart Nation initiative was launched by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in 2014. Digitalisation is undoubtedly an existential issue for a small resource-limited country like Singapore. However, I have viewed with consternation how some government bodies have purely focused on making their mobile app the "centre of the universe". In doing so, they are forgetting their core mission to serve all citizens and residents, not just the mobile-savvy ones... All transaction-related matters require CPF members to first have an Internet or mobile banking account since payments are through PayNow QR or eNets. The new service by OCBC Bank for top-ups to customers' CPF accounts also requires Internet banking. CPF services have been removed from channels like Singpost and AXS kiosks. My father, who used to make top-ups to his CPF account and my mother's CPF account with his Nets cards at AXS kiosks, is no longer able to do so. When contacted, CPF customer service encouraged my father to open an Internet banking account. I do hope that in our Smart Nation drive, citizens who are not digital-savvy are not left behind."
Elderly left behind by spread of digital services in China after coronavirus - "Wang used to pay by cash at supermarkets, could use public transport freely, and made medical appointments by walking into a hospital and speaking to a receptionist... she is still not able to do essential things such as making a medical appointment online, hailing a taxi using her phone, or transferring money to others... On WeChat, China’s most popular messaging app, children can now make payments on behalf of their elderly parents. It also offers an easy way for elderly users to check their health insurance online. However, most of China’s elderly still don’t use most digital services – people like 78-year-old street vendor Zhang Baohua. In his free time, he sells salted duck eggs on the street. Like all street vendors, he has been using a QR code to collect money, but admits he has no clue about where the money goes. Every night when he goes home, his children help him count and retrieve it. They also help him make medical appointments, pay for transport and do the shopping, he says."
Meme - "Polite request
You've got a new Customer Service message:
Sam (Starling Bank) Feb 9, 2022, GMT
Hi Joe, You have recently marked payments, 'taliban training', 'Jihad fee' & 'ISIS training' While we appreciate that you are probably having a joke with your friends, we are obliged to investigate such matters which is time consuming. Be assured your friend's banks will be doing the same. This is a polite request to ask you to cease marking payments in this manner. Thanks for your cooperation.
Kind regards, Sam
Team Starling"
Meme - "We Buy Things We Dont Need
With Money We Don't Have
To Impress People We Don't Like"
"We Vandalize Things That Aren't Ours
With Quotes We Didn't Write
To Impress People Taking Shits"
Meme - "Elaine's in love with Anne Heche?"
"No, she only thinks she is because she's a celebrity that's made her smile a few times. She's completely ignoring the fact that she slammed a 2 ton vehicle into a residential neighborhood going 90+ mph while high af on at least cocaine."
Tifany on Twitter - "Someone just called my 9YO “gay” on Xbox and he responded “I’m straighter than the pole your mom dances on.” I’m not intervening."
Bizarre poster for a free 'cursed fridge' has South Londoners in stitches - ""My stepmother had a heart attack on our kitchen floor in the middle of an electrical storm, and her soul was transferred into the computer unit of our smart fridge. She has been subtly undermining me ever since, commenting on how many processed cheese slices I've eaten, or whether I've put properly a lid back on a thing. Whilst my wife finds comfort in her mother's still being around, I'm starting to feel it completely unreasonable that she's decided to linger in our fridge, judging me on my culinary decisions. She has to go. Aside from the soul within, the fridge itself is in complete working order. And I'm sure the unit would be far more agreeably housed with someone who hadn't forced their 'perfect child' into a life of 'mediocre servitude"... Twitter users were quick to point our that it appeared the author of the poster "married their stepsister", as they spoke of their "stepmother" and wife who found "comfort in her mother's still being around". They also noticed that the contact number on the poster was the same as that of a kitchen showroom based in Vauxhall."
Meme Indian: "No eat cow, cow pet!"
Westerner: "Lol who cares."
Chinese: "Doggo yum yum."
Westerner: "Nooo don't eat dogs, they're pets!"
Stephen King Estate Reveals He Died Years Ago And His Twitter Account Is Being Run By A Mentally Ill, Glue-Sniffing Parrot With Tourette's | Babylon Bee - "Stephen King fans have long been perplexed as to how the man who wrote The Shining, the Dark Tower series, and Misery could possibly be the same guy who logs onto Twitter and tweets like a 7-year-old chimpanzee with anger issues"
Look: Class rules poster threatens to waste students' pokeballs - "Amelia Carnagey, who teaches a college class in Abilene, Texas, shared a photo on Facebook of the poster she made to warn students against playing the popular augmented reality game on their smartphones during class...
"No playing Pokemon Go in class
1st offense: I will take your phone from you and WASTE all of your pokeballs! Probably on a Pidgy or Rattata... But I will miss. Over and over and over...
2nd offense: After wasting your pokeballs, I will use your incense and a lucky egg! Pokemon might be surrounding you, but you're out of ways to catch them!
3rd offense: I will transfer your highest level and rarest Pokemon! Maybe even 2... or 3 of them. 1 candy in exchange for a 1453 CP Dragonite.. seems fair.
If I can't catch them you can't catch them!"
Carnagey said her students were amused by the poster and the threats made by the document are only meant to be taken as humor."
Meme - "MASCOTA DE INTERIOR
MOL 6 M.
'Madam, I think your pet is very sick.'
'No, no! Hahahahahahahahaha! This is not my pet! My pet is inside!'
'Come out, pretty."
'Who loves mommy? Come on, kiss mommy! Kiss mommy!'"
Cat keeps little baby safe. #shorts #viral - YouTube
Meme - "Egyptian Strawberries. Try one there great! :)"
*small chilis*
"Seems like Satan works in my office"
Meme - "BEACHES ARE NOT TOILETS
Don't do it here!
Gyae! Ennfatawo!
STOP OPEN DEFECATION"
From Ghana
Kraft Dinner is Canada’s True National Dish - "We eat 3.2 boxes each in an average year, about 55 percent more than Americans do. We are also the only people to refer to Kraft Dinner as a generic for instant mac and cheese... what does it mean if a national dish is manufactured, formulated by scientists in a laboratory in Glenview, Illinois, and sold back to us by the second-largest food company in the world?... “True innovative cooking comes from a deep understanding of, and respect for, different cultural roots and certain openness to new ideas. This is in contrast to the rigidity of more traditional cooking cultures like French and southern European. What I find so exciting about Toronto, and North American urban society in general, is the possibility for the betterment of the human condition through experiencing on a daily basis differentness and diversity.”
Is Canada losing itself? Author Lydia Perović on her adopted country’s political and cultural decline - The Hub - "There’s a tendency in our popular discourse to either romanticize the immigrant experience or focus on negative cases of alienation, discrimination, and struggle"...
"The country was much more optimistic when I came here in ’99. All countries have issues and it’s a fluctuation through history, but back then, it was interested in this culture, for example. We had built some good institutions, but today, I don’t think we’ve ever been more American both in political obsessions and in what we read and what we discuss, so-called water cooler discussions, and what we talk about on the internet... A lot of us moved Westward in search of liberal democracy. Now, people who grew up in a liberal democracy don’t find it particularly interesting. As Fukuyama said, it’s possibly quite boring not to have a radical political private life. That’s something we’ve been struggling with in the Western Balkan region, which always has an intrusion of history and politics into your private life. You cannot pursue your private obsessions... Of course, we romanticized the West. Nothing is ever set in stone. Of course, now 20 years later, free speech has fallen down the list of values, and freedom of assembly has fallen down the list of values. Police having the monopoly on violence and policing is being questioned. One set of laws for all is being questioned in Canada, both philosophically and practically and politically. All these things have been chipping away a Canadian liberal democracy profile and Canada seems to be okay with it."...
"One of your criticisms of Canada is a growing tendency towards conformity. That Canadians have lost, in your view, “the independence of spirit and curiosity.”"...
"These are the important so-called meaning-making institutions: public schooling, arts organizations, media, the alternative media. Most of them have accepted the division, the irreconcilable differences approach to what is Canada. You now see writers-in-residence ads that advertise for Canadian and Indigenous writers, so somehow now, these are two different cultures. This is completely new. Then you see ads for jobs that specify preferred ethnicity. Maybe I’m naive, but that’s very unexpected. I understand people want to redress historical injustices. They want to improve diversity in their organizations. Having it as a public policy, “Only ethnicity X and ethnicity Y need apply”, maybe either I’m crazy and find this unusual or the Canadian institutions have gone a little bit crazy. Things like that are a little bit puzzling."
"I cited the book earlier when I talked about how one of the reasons that you chose to come to North America and Canada was to reject a system of blood and belonging. Yet it’s striking that after being here for 20 years, there are these elements of blood and belonging emerging in our society counterintuitively in the name of liberalism which is, as you say, something that may not have been anticipated."...
"a serious society and serious culture should look at and wonder about what unifying narratives do we have. Because as the situation is now, our one unified narratives are those that come from the US. We’re just mad about American culture and that’s what’s mostly available... Here in Canada, we have the progressives against the libraries... My theory is the coddled generation has gotten jobs. The coddled generation has gotten power, and this is what’s happening. I talked with people in these institutions, and I recently talked to a teacher in Ontario Public School System. She says the evangelizers are a minority, that everybody’s terrified of them. Of course, whoever’s near the retirement age, they don’t want to rock the boat. They just look forward to retirement. This is what’s happening in our media. This is what’s happening in our other institutions. A very vocal, very ardent minority, a whole bunch of polite Canadians who don’t want to offend, and then a bunch of people just waiting to retire. I suppose that’s what happened... I understand that people want to show solidarity. This is one of the unbelievable things. Montenegro had a Black Lives Matter solidarity march, and there are practically no Black people in Montenegro... Why would the Isle of Wight have the Black Lives Matter march in support? Why would Keir Starmer take the knee? Which I think is an incredibly moving gesture within an American context. I was really moved, for example, when Eminem did it in the middle of a Super Bowl concert without making much fuss about it. It’s a meaningful gesture in the American context. It has nothing to do with us. Abolish the Police stuff. When we were all in the grip of Black Lives Matter just after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, our media were just chomping if the bits were a story of a police person being somehow implicated in a murder of a Black person. You can see. We want to have American problems. To that degree, we want to be American and we want to have their problems as well. There’s all this extensive vocabulary about how they’re dealing with a problem, what the problem is. It’s very tricky. Of course, race discourse. Now, all the countries in the world talk about race. Countries in which the concept is completely useless have started talking about race. If you look at the Europeans, we hate each other on different bases, culture, language, any number of issues. Race is completely useless as a concept. If you look at inter-African relationships, look at the genocide in Rwanda. It was genocide between two Black ethnicities. There are a whole lot of countries in which the concept of race is useless, but it’s very hot now. Everybody’s using it... We’re in the grip of this fantasy because the U.S. is in the grip of this fantasy. Probably, it’s their foundational sin but we’ve got to get out of it. We totally need a new vocabulary that is not confined to the relationship between races."
"To your point about the emergence of a new lexicon, I’ve been struck recently that I keep seeing the phrase “equity-deserving groups” which just strikes me so bizarre as if there are some groups that ought not to be entitled to an expectation of equal treatment."
We Can Achieve: When Restraint is a Virtue - "In acknowledging this other version, titled, “We Can Achieve”, the MCCY initially stated, via a Facebook post, that they would be investigating potential copyright infringement by the creators of “We Can Achieve”. However, that post was later edited, removing any mention of investigation. Instead, MCCY decided that it would take the high road and that “imitation is the best form of flattery”... As all practitioners know, the practice of law demands more than a command of the law – being a good lawyer requires wisdom and an ability to judge what is the move to make in any situation. You can benefit your client by applying the right touch at the right time. Yes, we lawyers are trained to be skeptical of our opponents’ intentions, and we spend our time sharpening our ability to challenge propositions, and go after an opponent with adversarial rigour. But sometimes, just sometimes, being that model of restraint might be something that (as we sing every year), we can achieve."
In praise of GPs, unsung heroes of the healthcare system - "medical specialists are usually not as good as primary-care doctors in treating problems that are outside their main area of expertise... It is this sort of coordination and follow-through that is one of the defining aspects of good primary care: helping a patient navigate a hyper-specialised healthcare system which comprises a private and a public sector; ensuring that the patient goes for her specialist appointment; calling after that appointment to find out what has happened; and being available to answer any questions that the patient might have... studies have shown that a patient is far more willing to seek help earlier if there is a regular doctor who the patient trusts as someone who understands the experience of being sick, and gives reliable and honest advice - a relationship that contributes significantly to better clinical outcomes, including lower death rates... Despite the obviously intellectually and professionally demanding nature of what they have to do to keep up and not slip up in their care of patients, the status of GPs is generally viewed to be lower on the totem pole of medicine; they are generally paid less than other specialists; and there is that unfair perception that the smarter medical students would go into some specialities; and those who cannot, or who could not make up their mind, would end up being GPs who would mainly see those proverbial "cough and cold" patients. "The common error in thinking about primary care is to see it as entry-level medicine... and because of this, rudimentary medicine - for mostly (say) the common cold and imaginary illnesses. This is a false notion," writes Dr Eric J. Cassel, who was a clinical professor of internal medicine at Cornell University in New York, in his book Doctoring: The Nature Of Primary Care Medicine. "Everyone knows, however, that knowing when you don't know requires sophisticated knowledge." In his recent essay in The New Yorker, Dr Atul Gawande, a general and endocrine surgeon in Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, wrote of his initial impression that primary care seemed "squishy and uncertain". Chastened by a colleague who sent him a slew of studies that showed that primary care could have very significant overall impact on the general health of the population, including lower mortality and better health, and lower medical costs, Dr Gawande admitted that "primary care… does a lot of good for people - maybe even more good, in the long run, than I will as a surgeon". He called these doctors "incrementalists" because they give care incrementally over the course of the patient's health; treating not with those dramatic and heroic life-saving interventions that snatch a desperately ill patient from the jaws of death, but walking steadily with a patient and with nudges - to exercise, lose weight, quit smoking, eat right, et cetera - along the way to steer the patient out of trouble, and recognising problems before they happen, which quietly and almost invisibly add years of healthy life to the patient."
The elites have run The Straits Times into the ground. What’s next? - "Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) is spinning off its media unit, including The Straits Times and many other publications, into a non-profit entity. This follows years of consistently poor performance amid digital disruption and other changes to the media industry... Why exactly is Lee Boon Yang the chairman of SPH? Lee is a trained vet who entered politics in 1984 aged 37, and then entered the cabinet in 1991... It is not clear what qualifications Lee had to lead the board of a global conglomerate with offshore, marine and other interests, or the board of Singapore’s biggest media company. (Subservience?) What we do know is that during his tenure both companies have performed poorly. Their stocks have tanked. Keppel has been ensnared in a massive corruption scandal while SPH is now on its knees seeking charity to salvage, among other things, one of Singapore’s fabled brands, The Straits Times, which was established in 1845. (Or one hundred and twenty years before Singapore became a fishing village.) Yet it may seem harsh to focus only on a non-executive chairman, whose remit is limited. Far more damning is the composition of the entire SPH Board, which in turn is responsible for the choice of SPH’s CEO: Ng Yat Chung, a former chief of defence with zero prior experience in the media industry, was hired in 2017. (He’s the person caricatured by Sonny Liew above). The Board advises and helps the CEO on strategy and operations... Remember, Ho Ching and other elites love to lecture ordinary Singaporeans about improving ourselves to face global talent competition. Well, let me ask the same question: is Lee Boon Yang the most talented person available to serve as chairman of Keppel and SPH? Does Ng Yat Chung have to face competition from the world’s best media moguls?"
From 2021
Epic Campus – Verona, Wisconsin - "Software company Epic Systems has created one of the strangest and largest workplaces of all time."
Mum claims speed of Aldi cashier left her 'crying and shaking' beside her kids - "The loyal Aldi shopper says the worker refused to slow down his scanning - even as food fell from the allocated packing area onto the floor "like a slot machine.""
Worried About Money in Politics? The 2020 Election Showed Political Cash Can't Buy Electoral Victory. - "While it is true that the vast majority of races are won by the candidate that raises and spends more money, most of those races aren't competitive, and it's essentially millions of dollars getting raised and spent for no reason"
Cashlessness may have gone too far in Norway, government warns - "Norway’s government wants to make sure banks don’t stop providing cash, as the country becomes the world leader in abandoning physical notes and coins... That’s after the FSA’s own survey found that a number of Norwegian banks “claim that they are not responsible for offering cash services.” Banknotes and coins are used in only 3-4 per cent of all transactions in Norway, the lowest level of cash usage in world"
“Waugh of the Worlds” - "“My own feeling, despite several unhappy experiences, is that wine-writing should be camped up: the writer should never like a wine, he should be in love with it; never find a wine disappointing but identify it as a mortal enemy; an attempt to poison him; sulphuric acid should be discovered where there is the faintest hint of sharpness. Bizarre and improbable side-tastes should be proclaimed: mushrooms, rotting wood, black treacle, burned pencils, condensed milk, sewage, the smell of French railway stations or ladies’ underwear – anything to get away from the accepted list of fruit and flowers. As I say, I am not sure that it helps much, but it is more amusing to read.” ~ Auberon Waugh"
Mcdonald's in China : funny - *Exercise bike tables*
A village of raccoons living under a deck : Damnthatsinteresting
What a nightmare
Meme - *person upside down doing handstand/penis hanging downwards*
Meme - "*hedge carved into scary face*
Meme - *Woman doing yoga pose with head turned 180 degrees*
Just Fit ad. Volle Flexibilität translates as "full flexibility" so this is probably on purpose
The Complicated History of the 'Magdeburg Unicorn' - "Though many news publications have reported that it was the misaligned remains of a woolly rhinoceros, these claims are only half-true — and may never be conclusively confirmed. Today, the unicorn is housed at the Museum für Naturkunde in Magdeburg, German. One theory is that the unicorn was likely first reconstructed as a chimera of many different fossils."
Meme - "SO GLAD I GREW UP DOING THIS
*kids on desktops*
NOT THIS
*kids on phones*"
Meme - "I am autistic (severe food aversions, sensory issues, insomnia, social issues) , bipolar type 1 mostly manic with psychosis, severe ocd manifesting as dermatillamania (obsessive skin picking resulting in head to toe dark scaring and several serious infections like flesh eating bacteria), borderline pd, multple issues, chronic fatigue, mobility issues, migraines,e ct plus issues from high dose steroids to treat flares) , hep c, rarest form of herpes leisons), reduced cartalidge in my knees, and more I'm sure I forgot something... plus I am nonbinary, pansexual and polyamorous which comes with its on stigmas and traumas from being different. I would just like"
Meme - Jo @JoJoFromJerz: "If I hear one more Republican ever whining and crying about how some Democrat was mean to them ina restaurant I'm going to lose my fucking shit."
Jo @JoJoFromJerz: "Tonight was a rough one. I was at a Yankees game with my son's little league team and out of the blue (and thanks to alcohol) I was targeted. Coaches who had just become aware of my Twitter started screaming my name and my handle and then they started taunting me. Tbh I'm shook."
Quote by Dia Reeves - "Emotional abuse is just as bad as physical abuse. Worse! You can heal broken bones; you can't heal a broken mind"
So much to unpack here. Among other things: therapy is useless?