The hilarious story of 1908 "fake rescue dog" who pushed children into the Seine and then rescued them for steak rewards - ""Dog a Fake Hero: Pushes Children into the Seine to Rescue Them and Win Beefsteaks." That might be the greatest article in history. It was featured in the New York Times on February 2, 1908, way back on page 14. That's a cover story, if you ask me! The dog, who was a Newfoundland, heard a child cry out from the river. He leapt in and pulled them to safety and he was rewarded with a beefsteak. Just two days later another child fell into the same river and was rescued by the same dog. The article states that hardly a day passed by without an unfortunate infant taking an involuntary bath. It began to be suspected that the neighborhood was haunted by a mysterious criminal and a special watch was inaugurated. This is when the truth came out. It was the dog all along. Whenever he saw a child playing at the edge of the stream, he promptly knocked it into the water and then nonetheless promptly jumped into the rescue."
Does limiting the times you eat (intermittent fasting) prevent cardiovascular disease? | Cochrane - "We didn't find any data on mortality, cardiovascular mortality or risk of stroke, heart attack or heart failure. We found that people may lose more weight by intermittent fasting than by usual eating over three months (evidence from 7 studies in 224 people); but not when compared against energy restriction diets for three months (10 studies; 719 people) or longer (3 to 12 months; 4 studies; 279 people). We also found that intermittent fasting did not appear to affect blood sugar levels when compared against usual eating over three months (3 studies; 95 people); energy restriction diets over three months (9 studies; 582 people); or energy restriction diets over 3 to12 months (4 studies; 279 people). The weight losses and changes in blood sugars reported in the studies were small. These changes were not deemed to be clinically significant. Only four studies reported unwanted effects of intermittent fasting: some people taking part reported mild headaches. Only one study reported on people's well-being, showing a small increase in scores for physical well-being."
When it comes to fad diets, evidence doesn't matter
Can fasting help you live longer? Here’s what the science says. - "Longo packaged the fasting-mimicking diet into a food kit, which includes nutrient-rich crackers, olives, soup mixes, herbal tea, and supplements. A study of 71 healthy adults who followed the diet, for five consecutive days once a month for three cycles, found it reduced body fat, body weight, blood pressure, glucose, and C-reactive protein—all good things for staving off heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and other chronic ailments. The people at highest risk for these conditions improved the most... Now Longo is putting his diet to its biggest test. He is recruiting 500 people, ages 30 to 65, from Molochio, Varapodio, and neighboring villages for a head-to-head comparison of the effects of normal eating and FMD. He hopes the study will demonstrate, convincingly, that sending the body into fasting mode can improve the health of many adults and reverse age-related molecular and cellular damage at the root of the conditions that bedevil us late in life... Today’s fasting mania grew out of more than a century of research showing that extreme calorie restriction—a reduction of 20 percent to 40 percent—dramatically extends the lives of animals, including worms, flies, mice, rats, and rhesus monkeys, as long as they get the nutrients they need. No other antiaging intervention comes close. These studies also demonstrate that extremely low-calorie diets significantly reduce the incidence of age-related diseases, especially cancer... In humans, eating the bare minimum for survival might prevent or delay some ailments, but over the long term it would cause other problems, such as bone loss. Even if the practice was safe, many of us might not think a longer life worth living if it meant walking around hungry all the time... In a series of experiments, de Magalhães and his colleagues showed that a prescription blood pressure medication, rilmenidine, extends the lifespan of the worm C. elegans by about 20 percent—and does it by mimicking the protective biological effects of calorie restriction. The drug activates the same genetic pathways as a super low-calorie diet. It also induces what’s known as autophagy, or the clearing out of old cells, a critical process for health and one that deteriorates as we age. Worms lived longer even if they did not get the drug until they were old."
Meme - "Gatekeeping Explained:
Join The The Hobby *door open, man welcoming you in*
Change The The Hobby *man blocking door*"
Meme - Richie Respek: "my great grandfather is from the Middle East."
Jason Sapp: "and..?"
Richie Respek: "I would know more than you about this."
Ahh... seppos and their "lived experience"
Meme - Giun @Rocket_Worm: "Most of the people I know in real life have no serious concerns about the current state of the world. They go out, consume, and travel like everyone is safe and healthy, and like everything is peachy with the planet. This is partly the reason why I have so few friends."
Life as a left winger must be absolutely miserable
Don't deliver kids' forgotten items, school tells parents - "Signs are put up at entry points of Kuo Chuan Presbyterian Primary School (KCPPS) to discourage parents from dropping off their children's forgotten items. "Please turn around and leave..." state the signs. The school feels that children should take responsibility for their actions: "Let your child grow up. Your child will learn to solve problems and take responsibility for the consequences in your absence." Every day from 8am to 9am, there will be at least three to four parents or domestic helpers delivering forgotten items such as water bottles, textbooks and pocket money to the school in Bishan Street 13, said a school security guard. They are redirected to the general office, where they are turned away."
Another photo of the sign
Pizza Hut Used to Be One of the Largest Kale Purchasers in the US - "Once upon a time, beneath the warm glow of Tiffany-style stained glass light fixtures, Pizza Hut provided salad bars and topped them with a protostar garnish: kale. Back then, before restaurants and foodies caught onto the fact that it was more than just a pretty face, kale was the food chain’s go-to embellishment... In 2015, NPR baffled listeners when it revealed during one of its radio puzzle game shows that Pizza Hut was the largest purchaser of kale in the United States."
MOE told ACS it has to take in girls if it moves to Tengah to better meet local community needs - "the ACS Board of Governors had approached MOE with the idea of moving one of their two primary schools to the heartlands to serve a different community and inject more diversity into their student profile."
Meme - "When your friend plays rap music on the way to a KKK meeting"
"Dude. you're embarrassing me in front of the wizards"
ASTRAL BRAT on Twitter - "precum is so cute and cottagecore like?? lookin like a lil dew drop sitting on the top of a mushroom wow u are so pretty i love u"
5 Fun-facts you might not know about Vikings! - "When a wounded Viking warrior came back from battle, the Vikings in the village would give him/her very strong onion soup. After a few minutes a person of the tribe would smell the wound of the warrior very closely to check if they could detect the smell of the onion. If so, it meant that the abdominal wound was serious and deep enough that death was inevitable."
Meme - "What the weirdest place you have masturbated?"
"When I was 19 I was suicidal. I went to go lay down on the train tracks and get run over. I got bored waiting for a train so in decided to rub one out while laying on the tracks. Post nut clarity helped me get off the tracks and get the help I needed."
"Weirdest place for me was near some railway line watching some dude lying n the tracks beating off. It was like a race of who was going to come first him, me or the train."
Meme - "I'm a virgo so I'm very particular in who I date. What is about you? What is your sign"
"My sign is porcupine"
"That's not real"
"The zodiac isn't real"
Meme - "Oscar knew cutting a glory hole in his trashcan was a good idea."
sidney on Twitter - "I’m sick of my dog walking in the room when I’m sucking dick, it’s not your turn yet just wait holy shit"
Meme - Elon Musk: "Look I'm gonna need the blue tick back unless you give me $8 every month"
Celebrities: "No no no you can't do this. I meed the blue tick. Without the blue tick I'm nothing"
Elon Musk: "If you're nothing without the blue tick, then you shouldn't have it"
Meme - Ed Krassenstein @EdKrassen: "The attacks on Alyssa Milano are out of line. She brought up a concern I I think a lot of celebrities have. Celebrities on Twitter are left with 3 choices right now: 1) Pay the $8.00. 2) Cancel their Twitter Account. 3) Know that some of their fans will be misled, possibly..."
Elon Musk @elonmusk: "We've started a "save-a-celebrity fund" to pay their $8. We take this matter very seriously."
"LOL! Actually I think this could be a solution, even though I'm not sure if you are serious."
"It's a real thing"
Drew @_Drew_2_U: "We could get a card in the mail with the photo of the celebrity who we "saved". Kinda like when you donate to a child in Africa. Haha. Maybe a t-shirt that reads, "My $8 saved a Celebrity". We can have commercials too! "For 26 cents a day, you too could help save a celebrity.""
Some Celebrities Complain About The New Cost Of Twitter's Blue Check Mark And Refuse To Pay | Evie Magazine - "Singer Ciara tweeted, "Blue check or no check… I know my fans still checkin." Ciara's reaction was mild, especially compared to the likes of Alyssa Milano, who even changed her bio to reflect her refusal to pay for a blue check mark. "NOT PAYING FOR A BLUE CHECK MARK!" is the very first line of her bio. "So by revoking my blue check mark because I wouldn’t pay some arbitrary fee, someone can just be me and say a bunch of bullshit. Does that mean Twitter and @elonmusk are liable for defamation or identity theft or fraud?" she tweeted. Twitter Help added a disclaimer to Alyssa's question: :Impersonation is still, and has been against the site rules since 2018, verified check mark or not."... All of the celebrities' complaints about the new blue check mark have resulted in numerous users highlighting their entitlement and unnecessary whining. "Most of you have never had the displeasure of knowing 'celebrities.' They are trash, repulsive people. The good news is they are also miserable. There ain’t no free karmic lunch. They are crying over $8. It’s not the money. It’s the ENTITLEMENT. They think they are gods," lawyer and filmmaker Mike Cernovich tweeted."
Meme - "Ha ha, the rocket exploded. Elon is a failure"
"Karen, They/Them, 335lb, $335K in debt from a gender studies degree"
Meme - "Americans when they realise they use 9mm instead of 0.3543307087 inches bullets"
Nepean Private Hospital nurse Geraldine Lumbo Dizon disconnected heart monitor alarm to FaceTime - "A nurse has had her medical registration terminated after a tribunal found she had disconnected a patient's heart monitor alarm during a FaceTime call before he died. Geraldine Lumbo Dizon turned off the sound for the 85-year-old's monitor during a night shift at Nepean Private Hospital in Sydney's west... Ms Dizon also failed to inform doctors that the same patient had registered irregular heart rhythm prior to the incident... Ms Dizon then forgot to plug the alarm system back in after her shift, which the tribunal said led other staff to miss key alarms indicating his deteriorating condition... Ms Dizon explained during a tribunal hearing that she had simply turned off the sound to avoid confusion for other patients who were mistaking it for the sound of a doorbell. Seven minutes after the mute alert was detected at 7:07am, the man suffered cardiac failure - which also prompted a soundless alarm. He was found unresponsive in his bed by staff at 7:20am. It was also found that despite the fact that Ms Dizon was supposed to check the patient every six hours, CCTV showed that she had only done so once during her 10-hour shift. The tribunal said Ms Dizon was on her phone 15 minutes before the man's heartbeat began to slow down, and that she had spent more than 66 minutes on the FaceTime call. Ms Dizon said that her phone use was 'not conscious' and that she was checking on her family in the Philippines at the time. She also said that she didn't tell other staff about the heart rhythm because she wasn't 'good at ECG reading'."
‘Boris is a liar’: an infantile critique - "If you only get your news from British liberal Twitter, you could be forgiven for thinking that Boris Johnson invented lying. That before 2016 the idea that a leading politician might fudge the facts or even lie was unconscionable, never been done before... She was then kicked out of the chamber, as accusing fellow MPs of lying breaches Commons rules on ‘unparliamentary language’. Butler knew this would happen, but still feigned outrage about the whole thing and used the opportunity to pose as some freedom fighter, speaking truth to Boris’s BS. ‘I needed to call it out!’, she tweeted... The whole episode was an embarrassing example of how Butler (and other MPs like her) has essentially become the MP for Twitter, using the Commons not as a place to stick up for her constituents or hold government to account, but as a clip factory for social-media clout-chasing. But it also showed the paucity and hypocrisy of much of the opposition to Johnson. Just look at some of the people who are jumping on the ‘Boris is a liar’ bandwagon. Alastair Campbell has for months been pushing for broadcasters to show Stefanovic’s little clip, collating some of Boris’s porkies. This is the same Alastair Campbell who helped lie us into a barbarous foreign intervention. Everyone is full of it. Corbynistas say Johnson lied about Corbyn. And yet we await the great NHS sell-off that Corbyn assured us was coming if Johnson was elected in 2019. Remoaner Twitter still bangs on about the £350million, even though the actual leader of the Remain campaign has admitted to exaggerating the economic impact of Brexit. Some of the stuff Butler had a pop at Johnson for in the chamber yesterday didn’t even make sense. She said his statement that the vaccines had ‘severed the link’ between Covid cases and deaths was a lie, because some vaccinated people still die from Covid. But that’s pure semantics. Even so, the increasingly cautious Johnson has banged on constantly about vaccines not being a silver bullet. Plus, if we’re going to get pedantic about scientific claims here, should Butler be hauled over the coals for her own bonkers comments about babies being ‘born without sex’?"
From 2021
Preserved Victorian Wedding Cake – Basingstoke, England - "It is rare that a wedding cake survives the wedding itself, but an elaborate four-tiered wedding cake has remained uncut since it was made in 1898. The confection was made soon after Charles H. Philpott and his wife opened their family bakery—C.H. Philpott, Baker and Confectioner—in Basingstoke. For 66 years after the bakery’s opening, the Philpotts displayed the cake in the shop window, before moving it to their home in 1964 after the bakery closed. In 1995, almost a century after it was first baked and displayed, the Philpotts’ daughter donated the antique cake to the local Willis Museum."
Author details how she was able to retire early at 38 - "“My husband Mark and I just saved a big chunk of our income and let time and the magic of compound interest do the rest," Tanja Hester, author of “Work Optional: Retire Early The Non Penny-Pinching Way," told Yahoo Finance Live. Hester retired early at 38... “Each time we got a raise, even if it was small, could we bank that raise? Could we keep our spending the same as it had been the year before, more or less?” Hester said. Hester also advised people who dream of early retirement to get serious about cutting out large expenses. “The big things for most people are housing and transportation," Hester said. "Perhaps staying in a smaller home could be a good solution to help you save a whole lot more and invest a lot more over the long run. Lose a car for the household or look at other ways to cut your transportation costs." In addition to large expenses, Hester suggests that people who want to join the FIRE movement also examine small costs as well to save money."
TikToker Reveals Best Question To Ask During Job Interview: VIDEO - "Are there any concerns that you have about me that we can address before we end?"
WORLD : Belgian King Abdicates for Day to Avoid Signing Abortion Law - Los Angeles Times - "King Baudouin of Belgium temporarily gave up his throne today, saying his Roman Catholic conscience would not allow him to sign a controversial law legalizing abortion. After two late-night cabinet meetings, the government issued a statement saying it had declared the childless 59-year-old monarch unable to reign--a procedure last used in 1940 when his father, King Leopold III, surrendered to Nazi invaders."
From 1990
Is This Duck Kosher? It's Complicated - "The basics of Jewish dietary law—the laws of kashrut—are fairly well-known: no pork, no shellfish, no milk and meat together. But there are many, many more laws than that, some of which are unclear, some of which are localized and don’t necessarily apply to all countries, and many of which have never really been settled. The case of the Muscovy duck is one of the most fun. The rules of kashrut have a couple of issues that destabilize the entire process of figuring out what Jews can and cannot eat. One of these fundamental issues is that the laws don’t necessarily follow any larger philosophy. Jewish scholars have long divided the laws of Judaism into a couple of different categories. Mishpatim—the -im and -ot endings of words signify plurals in Hebrew—are laws that are self-evident to the survival of a society, like “don’t murder” or “don’t steal.” The edot are laws usually surrounding holidays, symbolic rules designed to memorialize events or bring a community together, like wearing a yarmulke or not eating bread on Passover. And then there are the chukim. The chukim are laws that make no sense. They are sometimes phrased in ways to make following them more palatable; for example, that these are laws passed down directly from God, and it is not necessary that we understand them. The rules of kashrut are sometimes, but not always, placed in this category. Another fundamental issue with the laws of kashrut is the lack of a Jewish governing body... Do sharks have fins and scales? Fins, obviously, yes. Scales? Well, haha, sort of. Turns out sharks are actually covered completely in placoid scales, microscopic spine-like scales. This wasn’t discovered for a couple of thousand years after Jews had already declared shark forbidden. So can Jews eat shark now? Generally, no: A bunch of those learned dudes decided that the reference to “scales” must have meant scales you can actually see and remove. What about, say, swordfish, which has scales when young but sheds them when mature? Responses vary... that list of birds is, obviously, total trash if you’re trying to expand it outwards and figure out what you can and cannot eat. We don’t know whether those words were referring to specific species or whole categories of birds, and certainly many more species have been discovered since the Torah was set down. Scholars, to make up for this, have tried to see the patterns in the banned birds, and then use those patterns to create rules that could apply to species new to Jews, like, say, an unusual duck native to the Americas. This is obviously a fraught endeavor if you subscribe to the belief that the laws of kashrut are chukim—totally senseless. Over the past 2,000 years, Jewish scholars have arrived at a couple of broad conclusions about what was meant by these particular 24 species. Or, well, 22 species and whatever tinshemet and atalef are supposed to be... In general, birds of prey are off-limits, no matter what. But for all the other birds, when there is debate over whether you can or cannot eat it, you rely on mesorah. Mesorah is sort of the oral tradition of Judaism. In this case, it means that if the ruling is unclear, but there is a history of Jews eating this particular species, then that species will be permitted. It’s circular... The Muscovy duck is not the only New World poultry subject to this kind of debate. One rabbi, Rabbi Shlomo Kluger (1785-1869), wrote that literally every bird in the New World is forbidden, because there were no Jews there until recently and thus no mesorah. It is still not really settled whether turkey is kosher"
Union shocked after Ottawa Police ticket striking government worker for excessive honking - The Globe and Mail
So many people on reddit were outraged about this. Turns out honking is only bad when it's a "right-wing" protest. Of course on reddit there was the usual gaslighting. pretending that hundreds of tickets weren't written for the convoy
The Fifth Column: Cholera and Catholic Faith - "'Among the ideas about the cause of cholera was electrical disturbances in the atmosphere'... The connection was not wrong. After all, cholera is caused by the vibrio cholera bacterium, which is found in raw sewage. The major cause of outbreaks was having drinking water sourced too close to latrines. Heavy rains would cause flooding which contaminated drinking water, and heavy rains were generally accompanied by lightning. Thus, lightning and thunder were associated with cholera outbreaks. This is why it was not unusual for communities to authorize the firing of cannons to ward off cholera. If sound and bad, damp air caused the disease, then a simulation of thunder, such as that produced by cannons, might prevent it... The idea that sin causes physical suffering is not unique to these preachers. St. Paul makes the same connection, asserting that consuming Eucharist without discerning the Real Presence is why "many among you are weak and sick, and some of you have died" (1 Cor 11:26-30). Similarly, Paul connects the sin of active homosexuality with "receiving due penalty in their flesh" (Romans 1:27). Therein lies the problem. Christianity, by its nature, insists on an inherent link between the physical and the divine. Sins of the flesh send one to hell, conversely, God took on Flesh to save the world from sin. Both sin and salvation are incarnational. We expect to see physical connections between the two, even when those connections don't exist. Search the Scriptures and see: the failure to separate drinking water and sewage is not a sin. Despite this, God's scourge is apparently set upon those who fail to separate the safe from the sewage. Notice, God does not visit deadly punishment on those who fail to separate the two kinds of cloth (Lev 19:19, Deut 22:11), or the ritually clean food from the ritually unclean (Acts 10:15). Instead, cholera's scourge is visited despite Scripture's silence. But it is worse than this. In the case of cholera, the failure to separate the two kinds of water is not the true cause of the scourge, rather, the poor nutrition that results from poverty is the actual cause of cholera... The Scriptures are quite, quite clear that plague and famine actually are scourges from God... Is Scripture wrong? Well... yes. It is. If we take these four apocalyptic signs literally, Scripture is absolutely wrong. After all, no one would say that 21st century civilization is less plagued with sin than 1st century civilization was, yet even though we have at least seven times the population, we also have far less war, famine or death than we have ever had in the history of the world. And the same data show, again contrary to Scripture's warning against kings (1 Sam 8), the establishment of states is a big part of what has reduced the suffering and violence. Now, some might take the recent WuFlu pandemic as an example of God wreaking His vengeance on us for our sins. If so, He has gotten a lot milder in recent centuries. We don't see a quarter of a town's population wiped out by the Chinese plague, with the remainder fleeing in terror, even though our sins today are arguably worse than any in recorded history. And our sins are unquestionably worse... Life expectancy in pre-abortion, 1960 America was 68 years. In 2022, after 50 years of murdering children, it is 79. How do we account for the fact that world-wide suffering has dramatically decreased while world-wide responsibility for sin has dramatically increased? This is not a new problem. When anesthesia was discovered in 1831, 19th century theologians were faced with the same problem. Why would God grant a sinful world surcease from suffering? How could the use of anesthesia be moral?... No one suffers today anywhere near as much as everyone did just two centuries previously. Given our increased knowledge, our sin is much worse, but our suffering is largely gone. Even the percentage of martyrs is dropping. Apparently, despite the warnings of the Scriptures, the Doctors, the saints and the visionaries, over the last two centuries, both the incidence and the severity of God's physical vengeance upon sinful man has steadily declined... Why should Don Bosco's use of vinegar reduce the punishment for sin? Apart from baptism, cleaning supplies are not part of any of the sacraments... We refrain from connecting suffering with divine action because such connections raise serious issues. We have already seen that, if we make this connection, we must assume God preferentially scourges the poor and undernourished. Similarly, 50% of America's murders and 50% of her murderers are young black men between the ages of 15 and 30. Black Americans are more likely to be Christian than any other demographic, yet they commit more sinfully violent crimes than any other demographic. On the other hand, Asians are the least likely to be Christian, yet are also the least likely to be involved in the sin of violent crime. Are pagan Asians closer to God and sanctity than young Christian black men? You see the problem."
Weird how historically Christians have gotten the connection between sin and punishment wrong. But definitely modern apologetics is correct
The decline of religion has socio-economic implications for all Canadians - The Hub - "Our latest research suggests that the activity of Canada’s more than 20,000 religious congregations produces $18.2 billion worth of benefits for society. We use a method first developed by researchers at the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania, which we adjusted for the Canadian context. A congregation’s economic impact can be assessed on the basis of 41 variables, in the following categories:
Open space, used for recreation or providing environmental benefit
Direct spending on salaries, operations, and facilities
Education through an on-site school or child care, among other programs
The “magnet effect” of attracting attendees to bar/bat mitzvahs, funerals, concerts, weddings and the like, who then spend their dollars at hotels, restaurants, and other businesses
Activities that benefit individual people, such as counselling, refugee resettlement, and other forms of assistance
Community development, including housing initiatives and job-training programs
Social capital and care, such as food banks and AA meeting space...
Of course, non-religious Canadians and groups are also active in giving and volunteering. But the fact is that religious Canadians contribute disproportionately more, to both religious and non-religious causes. Forty-five percent of the country’s total giving comes from the 14 percent of Canadians who attend religious services on a weekly basis, as do 29 percent of total volunteer hours. Returning to the example of refugee resettlement, my quick scan of the names of the 130 sponsorship agreement holders suggests that 94 of them are religious organizations. As the percentage of Canadians who participate in religiously motivated activity declines, these contributions will decline also. The socio-economic effect will be felt by us all. Will other civil-society institutions, or the various levels of government, be able to increase their contributions to fill the gap?"
