Woodburning stoves face tougher restrictions - "Andrea Lee from environmental law charity Client Earth said putting pressure on councils to impose fines on households was “passing the buck”. “It’s not fair to put the burden on people [by using fines], especially when the Government is not really coming clean on what damage has been caused by woodburners,” she said. “At the moment, there are people who may have no other choice because of the energy crisis. In that case what the Government should be focusing on is not leaving people to choose between heating and their health.”... The Government is also considering extending the ban on the sale of wet wood and traditional coal for use outdoors, after a ban for domestic use in 2021."
My beloved wood burner is staying put, no matter what the Government says - "How can my beloved stove – which is simultaneously warming the family, encouraging the bread dough to prove, using up a waste product and lowering my heating bills – be anything but good? The, uh, burning question is whether I am contributing to the poor air quality in my area. Well, the neighbours have never complained, despite one side having a roof terrace and the other being, for a while, keen gardeners. In fact, the engine-idling delivery drivers are the real polluters. Apparently, even my equally beloved gas hob is more harmful"
Clearly, a dangerous criminal who needs to go to jail
Doctor Removes 23 Contact Lenses From Patient's Right Eye - "Asking the patient to look down again, I could see a huge, dark-purple blob of contact lenses stuck to her eye. It almost looked like a second pupil. I gently started using a Q-tip to peel the lenses apart one by one, like you would deal a deck of cards. They were coming out in a chain, drooping down her lid. There were a lot of contact lenses — I thought this could be my Guinness Book of World Record moment. In nearly 20 years of practice, I had never seen anything like it... I posted the video of the examination, and it went viral straight away. Optometrists from South America, Mexico, and Europe were using the video to educate people about making sure they take their daily contact lenses out of their eyes every single night. These are light, flimsy lenses and should not be used for more than 24 hours... Although I can't be certain of how she managed to forget to remove all those lenses, it could because she had been wearing contact lenses for 30 years. When a person wears contact lenses over a long period of time, it can cause desensitization of the corneal nerve endings. She wouldn't have felt something like 23 contact lenses as sharply. It also could have been her age. Older people's eyelid fornix, the least sensitive space, is much deeper, and the contact lenses just sat there for a while not bothering her."
Stop training so many doctors, universities told | News | The Times - "Universities have been told they must limit the number of medical school places this year or risk fines, a move attacked as “extraordinary” when the NHS is struggling with staff shortages. Medical schools have been told to curtail offers to ensure that there is “no risk” of them accepting more would-be doctors than permitted by a government cap, with universities saying they are likely to offer fewer places than normal to sixth-formers this year. Ministers have been criticised for holding firm to a 7,500 cap on new medical students in England while also acknowledging that a chronic shortage of doctors and nurses is contributing to long delays for NHS treatment... Medical school places are capped to limit the cost of doctor training, with the taxpayer paying about £160,000 towards the cost of each medical student. The cap was suspended during the pandemic, allowing thousands more medical students to be admitted, and reinstated for this academic year. Ministers have been under increasing pressure to raise the cap, with the head of NHS England, Amanda Pritchard, calling for a “very ambitious” increase in medical training, to end an over-reliance on foreign doctors."
Health, Sex and Scary: 50 Shades of Grey's Anatomy - FML - "Today, I had the best sex I’ve ever had in my life. Too bad it put me in the hospital with a slipped disc and a concussion, and yet I just know me and the violent lady in question will probably do it all again at our next date. Good thing my health insurance is paid up. FML"
Boss Erika Lust Lets Staff Take 'Masturbation Breaks' At Work - "The boss of an adult entertainment company offers her employees half hour daily masturbation breaks after finding they had become 'agitated' during lockdown. Erika Lust, boss of Erika Lust Films, is hoping to 'normalise' masturbation by allowing her 36 members of staff a half-hour masturbation break every day and has even set up a private 'masturbation station' at the office. The filmmaker decided to offer the break after noticing her staff were 'agitated' and 'performing with less energy' during the pandemic. She launched the initiative to coincide with Masturbation Month, which is May, but plans to allow staff to make the most of the extra 30-minute break for the rest of the year... colleague Avril, a clinical sexologist and project manager of The Porn Conversation, agreed, adding: "Masturbation has been shown to not only make you happier, more relaxed and more focused, but it's also good for creativity and increases your drive to get things done. "Basically, it's the perfect medicine for a stressful day at work.""
Boss Erika Lust Lets Staff Take 'Masturbation Breaks' At Work - "An open-minded company is offering its employees the opportunity to masturbate during work hours, and they’ve even ordered custom-built ‘w*** pods’ to help them out. The unusual work perk has been introduced by Stripchat, an adult website and social network with 200 employees."
Meme - "Who loves you more, your wife or your dog. Try this quick test. Lock them both in the trunk of your car, then let them out after an hour. See who's happy to see you."
More S'porean workers dissatisfied with job, suffer poorer mental health than Filipino, Indonesian peers: Survey - "More employees in Singapore are dissatisfied with their job, and more suffer poor mental health, than their counterparts in Indonesia and the Philippines, a survey has found. The grim profile of the Singapore workforce came even though workers here report spending either less time at work than their regional counterparts or, at worst, the same amount of time on the job.. employees here are the least engaged at work among employees of the three nations, and experience the poorest quality of life... Although Covid-19-pandemic-related and geopolitical uncertainties have contributed to this burn-out, “the glamorisation of productivity" and the “rise and grind” mentality has taken its toll on the region’s workforce, especially younger employees, the authors of the report said... workers tying self-worth and identity to professional achievements may tend to glorify workaholism... In a similar survey done in 2020 among more than 2,000 Singaporeans, Milieu Insight found that 52 per cent of workers aged 16 to 24 “embraced the idea of hustle culture”."
Why Roman concrete outlasts its modern counterpart - "Roman concrete, in many cases, has proven to be longer-lasting than its modern equivalent, which can deteriorate within decades. Now, scientists behind a new study say they have uncovered the mystery ingredient that allowed the Romans to make their construction material so durable and build elaborate structures in challenging places such as docks, sewers and earthquake zones. The study team, including researchers from the United States, Italy and Switzerland, analyzed 2,000-year-old concrete samples that were taken from a city wall at the archaeological site of Privernum, in central Italy, and are similar in composition to other concrete found throughout the Roman Empire. They found that white chunks in the concrete, referred to as lime clasts, gave the concrete the ability to heal cracks that formed over time. The white chunks previously had been overlooked as evidence of sloppy mixing or poor-quality raw material... For many years, researchers had thought that volcanic ash from the area of Pozzuoli, on the Bay of Naples, was what made Roman concrete so strong. This kind of ash was transported across the vast Roman empire to be used in construction, and was described as a key ingredient for concrete in accounts by architects and historians at the time. Masic said that both components are important, but lime was overlooked in the past."
Here’s What Romans Ate at the Colosseum 2,000 Years Ago - "The recent find shows that spectators snacked on a variety of meats, vegetables, and fruits. Pizza may even have entered the scene. Archeologists found remnants of olives, figs, grapes, peaches, plums, walnuts, cherries, hazelnuts, and blackberries. They also believe that the meat was “cooked at the moment on improvised braziers, together with some pizza”"
A randomised controlled trial of dietary improvement for adults with major depression (the ‘SMILES’ trial) - "‘SMILES’ was a 12-week, parallel-group, single blind, randomised controlled trial of an adjunctive dietary intervention in the treatment of moderate to severe depression... These results indicate that dietary improvement may provide an efficacious and accessible treatment strategy for the management of this highly prevalent mental disorder, the benefits of which could extend to the management of common co-morbidities."
Of course, if you don't support only medicating people you don't think mental illness is real and are contributing to "stigma" and are a bad person
Review of 1,039 studies indicates exercise can be more effective than counselling or medication for depression - "The largest improvements (as self-reported by the participants) were seen in people with depression, HIV, kidney disease, in pregnant and postpartum women, and in healthy individuals, though clear benefits were seen for all populations. We found the higher the intensity of exercise, the more beneficial it is. For example, walking at a brisk pace, instead of walking at usual pace. And exercising for six to 12 weeks has the greatest benefits, rather than shorter periods. Longer-term exercise is important for maintaining mental health improvements. When comparing the size of the benefits of exercise to other common treatments for mental health conditions from previous systematic reviews, our findings suggest exercise is around 1.5 times more effective than either medication or cognitive behaviour therapy. Furthermore, exercise has additional benefits compared to medications, such as reduced cost, fewer side effects and offering bonus gains for physical health, such as healthier body weight, improved cardiovascular and bone health, and cognitive benefits... Some clinical guidelines already acknowledge the role of exercise – for example, the Australian and New Zealand Clinical Guidelines, suggest medication, psychotherapy and lifestyle changes such as exercise. However, other leading bodies, such as the American Psychological Association Clinical Practice Guidelines, emphasise medication and psychotherapy alone, and list exercise as an “alternative” treatment – in the same category as treatments such as acupuncture. While the label “alternative” can mean many things when it comes to treatment, it tends to suggest it sits outside conventional medicine, or does not have a clear evidence base. Neither of these things are true in the case of exercise for mental health. Even in Australia, medication and psychotherapy tend to be more commonly prescribed than exercise. This may be because exercise is hard to prescribe and monitor in clinical settings. And patients may be resistant because they feel low in energy or motivation."
History of McDonald's Apple Pie: From The 1960s To Now - " If you decide to try an apple pie from McDonald’s today, you will unfortunately not be biting into the golden crispy outside of a fried apple pie. This is the result of a huge change in 1992. In 1992 McDonald’s switched from frying their apple pies to baking them. Unfortunately, not with a lot of success. While the restaurant maintained most of the original recipe, the switch from frying to baking resulted in a loss of flavor and texture."
Meme - "Mac os:
Can you install this 5 year old program? Nooooo. i can't! this program is too old!
Windows:
Can you install this 25 year old program?
Yes, i can! Installing... done!
Linux:
Can you install this 25 year old program?
it's already installed"
Meme - "THIS IS ONE OF THE GREATEST PLEASURES IN LIFE ... READING A BOOK ... IF YOU SEE ANYTHING ELSE CONSULT YOUR PSYCHOLOGIST."
Meme - Ayy Wu Wei @RealBigBaby: "Jesus died for me? That's manipulative."
"He didn‘t stay dead either so add gaslighting to the mix"
The World’s Most Efficient Languages - "The prize for most economical language could go to certain colloquial dialects of Indonesian that are rarely written but represent the daily reality of Indonesian in millions of mouths. For example, in the Riau dialect spoken in Sumatra, ayam means chicken and makan means eat, but “Ayam makan” doesn’t mean only “The chicken is eating.” Depending on context, “Ayam makan” can mean the “chickens are eating,” “a chicken is eating,” “the chicken is eating,” “the chicken will be eating,” “the chicken eats,” “the chicken has eaten,” “someone is eating the chicken,” “someone is eating for the chicken,” “someone is eating with the chicken,” “the chicken that is eating,” “where the chicken is eating,” and “when the chicken is eating.”... When a language seems especially telegraphic, usually another factor has come into play: Enough adults learned it at a certain stage in its history that, given the difficulty of learning a new language after childhood, it became a kind of stripped-down “schoolroom” version of itself. Because all languages, are, to some extent, busier than they need to be, this streamlining leaves the language thoroughly complex and nuanced, just lighter on the bric-a-brac that so many languages pant under. Even today, Indonesian is a first language to only one in four of its speakers; the language has been used for many centuries as a lingua franca in a vast region, imposed on speakers of several hundred languages. This means that while other languages can be like overgrown lawns, Indonesian’s grammar has been regularly mowed, such that especially the colloquial forms are tidier. Lots of adult learning over long periods of time is also why, for example, the colloquial forms of Arabic like Egyptian and Moroccan are somewhat less elaborated than Modern Standard Arabic—they were imposed on new people as Islam spread after the seventh century."
Should We Be Asking For Counter References From Bosses? - "“The biggest reason we are seeing people move jobs is culture,” Baker says. “A boss that has an open-door policy or where you feel like you can approach them, keeps staff settled.” Not surprisingly, there is a strong correlation between an employee's happiness and their relationship with their direct manager. According to McKinsey, relationships with management are the most influential factor in determining employees’ job satisfaction, which is also the second most important influence of overall wellbeing. And yet, in a 2019 survey, McKinsey found that 75% of participants said that the most stressful part of their job was their immediate boss. “A business that has turned over a lot of staff? That's usually a red flag. Why have they gone through so many employees? If an employer or a boss is a good boss they tend to be able to retain staff,” says Baker. In the interview process, she recommends that candidates ask why the vacancy is available in the first place. She also encourages people to do some background research on business turnover and retention... In addition to asking for counter references, Baker says that clear communication is the simplest indicator of good management. A clear onboarding process and a business plan that outlines how employees can achieve their professional goals are two other green flags that Baker likes to tick off."
Konstantinos Konstantinides's answer to What percentage of total box office revenue is made in the opening weekend? - Quora - "Lots of good data in http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/weekends/ which lists the biggest openings and % in terms of Gross. It can be as high as 44% with the majority between 25-35%."
Eliot Jarrett's answer to What percentage of total box office revenue is made in the opening weekend? - Quora - "The short answer is that the percentage will be much higher for large budget, action-adventure, 'tent-pole' movies. But as with other box-office related questions, it will vary significantly based on such factors as: Film genre & if it's part of a franchise (e.g. Batman, Terminator, etc.), Production and marketing budget, Release saturation (number of theaters), Time of Year (which often ties into the above three), Quality of film (ratings, word of mouth)... Hangover 2 had a production budget of $80 million and was released into 3,615 theaters. It's opening weekend box-office was ~ $86 million, or 1/3 of its final gross. Bridesmaids had a more modest budget of $32 million and was released into 2.958 theaters. It's opening weekend gross was ~ $27 million or 15% of its final tally... The disparity will be even greater if you consider a platform-released, Oscar-contender niche film versus anything that's more mainstream. For instance, 2007's Juno only grossed 7% of its eventual total box office in the opening weekend."
Wirawan Winarto's answer to What are some hilarious but effective military tactics? - Quora - "British air forces once dropped a lot of guidebooks into enemy lines that contained instructions on “How To Fake Illnesses” with detailed step-by-step guide on how a soldier or a factory worker could fake illnesses to get sent home. Once the Nazi high-commands caught these leaflets, they stopped believing soldiers who claimed to have illness and refusing to send them home. Not only degrading their morale, this also caused genuinely ill soldiers or workers to get sent back into combat, spreading real disease among their ranks."
Calls grow to cancel Kevin Hart's comedy show in Egypt over 'Afrocentric' views - "Egyptians have taken to social media, calling for comedian Kevin Hart’s debut show in the country to be cancelled over his past comments in support of Afrocentrism on Ancient Egypt. A hashtag calling for Hart’s show to be cancelled or boycotted has become one of the top trending topics on social media in Egypt over the past few days. One Twitter user said Afrocentrists "want to steal and attribute Egypt's civilization to Africans and tell modern Egyptians that we are occupying Egypt from them. We must all participate in the campaign to cancel Kevin's concert." Hart, a popular US comedian, is a proponent of Afrocentrism, which advocates examining history through a lens that focuses on the role of Black Africans. Some followers say modern Egyptians have no claim to the country’s ancient history because they are the descendants of Arab invaders... Hart’s critics from across Egypt have noted an interview the comedian gave where they say he claimed Africans were the kings of Egypt. ”We must teach our children the true history of Black Africans when they were kings in Egypt and not just the era of slavery that is cemented by education in America. Do you remember the time when we were kings?”... Many Egyptians criticised Hart’s financial backing of an Afrocentric animation series by the company Black Sands Entertainment, which some have accused of "Blackwashing" ancient Egyptian history."
Meme - "Sub-Saharans were always painted in a different color than Egyptians
And even when they were painted with a similar color to Egyptians , They still looked different
And even without any colors they looked different
Ancient Egyptians never considered you one: of them , so stop trying to fit in"
Too bad for the "We Wuz Kangz" crowd. Ironically a lot of them are going on about true history or whitewashed history
Meme - "The real reason they don't invite me to parties anymore:
T-shirt: 'I'm here to f*** someones wife'"
A Total Of 20 People Showed Up To Brittney Griner's Waco 'Homecoming' - "The recently published piece described the sparse scene at the church while insinuating that the city of Waco and Baylor weren’t, and still aren’t, all that accepting of Griner... To no surprise, MSESPN believes Griner is a hero and deserves some sort of praise after her stint in a Russian prison. Waco is in the wrong, and Griner is in the right, according to the four-letter network’s opinion... As is the protocol for any story over 500 words published at ESPN, the story was sure to mention former President Donald Trump to portray the message that anyone that supports him is a bad person that doesn’t care about Griner."
Meme - "What's Up in Windom
Jackie Junior Hollon: "I hate to ask but would anyone would donate some food me and my roommate are running low and we don't get paid until the end of next week. I have already been to the food bank."
Paola Morales: "I have this, I hope it helps you"
Jackie Junior Hollon: "Paola Morales thanks my buddy is kinda picky about those types of food."
Angela Johnson: "Jackie Junior Hollon How can a person asking for food donations be "picky" about the food they receive?""
Meme - "WOMEN'S GRENADE
I was filming a beautiful woman get into her car when I saw she dropped a grenade.
I took it to my military service friend who said "this is a real grenade"
PLEASE!
I believe God made you drop the grenade to meet me. My mother and father met in a Grenade Store. For halloween as a child I dressed as Grenade. God is connecting Grenade-Themed events in my life.
YOU ARE THE WOMAN I'M SUPPOSED TO MEET!
The mother of my children said she can't understand why I‘m always filming amazing women get into their cars. Who's laughing now! Call me to meet and discuss your grenade."
How 'Good Vs Evil' Narratives Are Breaking Your Brain - ""Every big problem can be traced to some evil group of villains, and progress is entirely about defeating them." This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the world works and how humans behave... Imagine Yale released a detailed study on rising crime and their conclusion was just, "Since 2019, Americans have simply become more evil. There are just way more assholes now." Experts don't talk like that; they deal in quantifiable factors like poverty, substance abuse, mental illness, etc. Studies into the obesity epidemic don't rant about the sins of sloth and gluttony, if you ask your vet why your dog won't stop chewing on the furniture, she doesn't reply, "Because he's a bad dog. Just a real piece of shit." Experts don't think that way (at least, not when functioning in their roles as experts) because it's not productive in finding a solution. "The subject is evil and/or disgusting" is a thought-stopper, a reason to not do any more work on the problem. It never offers a course of action beyond, "Heap scorn on them so that we can revel in our superiority."... if your job is to study how diseases spread in humans, the behavior of the pathogen is only half of the equation, right? The behavior of the people matters just as much... most Americans don't like masks. They impede interpersonal communication in frustrating ways (obscuring facial expressions, hiding lips and muffling voices) and have negative cultural connotations. We see masks as dehumanizing, which is why cannon fodder bad guys always wear them... and superheroes remove them at their most heroic moment. We even use the removal of a mask to symbolize a character has been redeemed, or had their full humanity restored... Also, the fact that the nation is highly polarized and that a certain percentage of the population would resist any mandate, no matter how unobtrusive, was also easily predictable based on available data. For all sorts of cultural and political reasons, this group sees compliance with government as emasculating and humiliating. Disease experts could have done that research by opening any random page of a US history book, or just walking outside for five minutes. And yet, among my peers, around 100% of the reaction boils down to declaring the non-compliers to be evil, end of discussion. "They're selfish assholes." It's the exact kind of value judgment we'd find laughable if coming from a scientific journal. It's no different from Christian schools teaching abstinence-only Sex Ed because they refuse to accept the undeniable fact that young people are going to do sex stuff regardless of any moral condemnation from the adults they’re already rebelling against. This is a problem. Once you’ve settled on "moral failing" as the root cause of an issue, no other thoughts are possible because the mere act of considering any other intervention would just be enabling the moral failing... What about a supply of free COVID saliva tests, so that vaccine resisters can at least be confident they're not dooming grandma with their next visit? Or guidelines about how to have safe social encounters in the COVID era, instead of issuing the kind of abstinence-only commandments that we would openly mock in literally any other circumstance?... I don’t see how the same doesn’t apply to climate change. A statement like, "We can't fix climate change until we overcome human greed!" is as unscientific as, "We can't fix climate change until someone can convince CO2 to knock it off."... You can't so much as buy a cup of coffee without involving someone who profoundly disagrees with your morals. Society is literally nothing but cooperation among people who, in ancient times, would have brutally murdered each other... Housing prices are rising? It definitely can't be due to supply and demand, too many people moving to the cities and fighting over too few homes. There has to be someone to blame, some evil person or party we can find and punish. My feeds are full of memes about murdering landlords; now go find me a rational, scientific analysis that proves that is a successful long-term strategy for lowering housing prices... I think we’re stuck on the same belief in guilt and atonement that pervades organized religion, this idea that solving the problem isn’t enough, that some humans simply deserve to feel pain, that the cosmic bill must come due... we have an entire subreddit making fun of COVID deniers who died of COVID... "Those oil executives should be in jail!" I thought we wanted to abolish prison?"
This is like how to many people, to explain is to justify. It is easier to just write off people as deplorables. But then, attacking "the other side" can be more important than solving the "problem". New "problems" always come along, after all, due to the reality of the slippery slope. Humans are tribal beings after all
It is interesting that even in December 2021 the writer believed that covid vaccines prevented transmission (and didn't believe the vaccines worked in the elderly). This won't stop all the gaslighting about how nobody said that
Jason Pargin, author of John Dies at the End, etc on Twitter - "GRAPHIC VIDEO: Cruel uncaring tourists fed this tree too much Taco Bell"
A Lee Dynasty in Singapore After All? - "“It is clear that Lee is holding onto power, but it is not clear why, or what he is waiting for,” said Michael D. Barr, an associate professor and Singapore expert at Flinders University in Adelaide. “This business of him holding on to give the fourth-generation leaders time to sort out the succession mess is nonsense. If he wanted to give the next PM the chance to step up and have plenty of time to make his mark and assert his authority before the next general election, he would simply announce that he is stepping down in a month, or a week, and leave them to sort it out. And they would.” By deciding to continue in power, Hsien Loong is contributing to suspicions that he intends to perpetuate a Lee dynasty by ultimately working out a stratagem to bring his son, Li Hongyi (above, left, with his father), currently a director of a government technology firm, into power although the son has said he is not interested in a political career. This is an idea that in the past has been met with stiff resistance and resort to the Singapore – but not international – courts by the family. In 2010, the now-defunct International Herald Tribune apologized to Hsien Loong, Kuan Yew, and former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong and paid a hefty fine for an article on dynastic politics in Asia despite the fact that nowhere did it say or imply that nepotism played a role in the Lee family's – or any other family's – political prominence in the region. In that way, the case is reminiscent of another in which the Financial Times apologized for a September 2007 article in which there appeared to be no libel. The article merely listed the names of Lee family members in high positions in the island nation... Anyone who takes over, be it Lawrence Wong or ministers Ong Ye Kung and Chan Chun Sing, both of whom have been mentioned in the past, is likely to be regarded as beholden to the Lee family, and “that is exactly what Lee doesn’t want,” Barr said. “He wants to be able to exercise power. He thought he could do it through Heng, since Heng is so obviously a creature of the Lee family, and clearly no one was ever going to marvel at how good a job he was doing. But that plan is out the window because Heng was much too obviously below par, an embarrassment.” The general disenchantment on the part of the general public already manifested itself in the general election last August when voters handed the PAP its worst showing since 2011... Another indicator of growing disenchantment with the PAP and the Lee family was delivered in April, when an opposition political figure, Leong Sze Hian, the latest victim of Lee family serial defamation suits, became the first individual to raise enough public money to fully pay off S$133,000 (US$99,000) ordered by the high court within days after he was convicted of sharing an article uploaded onto Facebook deemed to have libeled Hsien Loong. Leong was followed in short order by Roy Ngerng... Then there is the bitter feud between Lee and his younger brother and sister"
From 2021
The Paris Review - And Alexander Wept - "And Alexander wept, seeing as he had no more worlds to conquer... nobody seems to have located any citation of the quote earlier than 1628... The quote is a hash of three passages in Plutarch, first century CE... Alexander is not weeping in sorrow that there are no more throats to cut. This is not a picture of a man at the end of a career of world conquest; he’s at the beginning. “Look at all these throats—and I haven’t even cut one!”"
Billions in CERB payments provided to over 800,000 ineligible claimants
People who don't understand the tradeoff between emergency measures being quick to take effect and being poorly targeted will complain either way
Why is Canada more expensive than other countries? - "Compared to other countries that are part of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the price of basic wireless internet and cellphone packages in Canada is consistently on the higher end... The Economist’s Intelligence Unit’s Inclusive Internet Index for 2022 ranks Canada as 15th out of 100 countries in internet affordability... Canadian housing prices have more than doubled between 2005 and February 2022, growing at least twice as quickly as those of any other G7 nation by the end of 2021. Canada has the worst price-to-income ratio among developed nations, according to recent data by the OECD, tied with Portugal and the Netherlands... Interchange fees – otherwise known as transaction fees or processing fees – refer to the amount a merchant or company must pay to be able to accept credit cards... Interchange fees have been restricted to less than one per cent in various regions of the world, including the European Union, Israel, the United Kingdom, China, and Australia. The average interchange fee in Canada, on the other hand, is 40 per cent higher at 1.4 per cent, making it one of the most expensive countries in the world to use a credit card... The European Union set a 0.3 per cent interchange charge ceiling in 2015. Between 2015 and 2017, this adjustment alone helped EU businesses save up to two billion euros, according to a 2020 report by the European Commission. According to a different 2020 study by the European Commission that looked into the impacts of the cap, “there is no systematic evidence” that banks reacted to the lowered fee by “increasing consumer banking fees or by making changes in issuing of cards.”"