Man who adopted 'child' that turned out to be 22-year-old woman explodes with furious outburst - "The whole strange story is set to be told next month when the documentary The Curious Case of Natalia Grace starts on ID. Basically, a couple in Indiana thought that they were adopting a six-year-old girl from Ukraine, but started to get other ideas about what was going on, as well as accusing their adoptive daughter Natalia Grace of attempting to harm them and their biological children physically. Michael and Kristine Barnett eventually made some accusations against Natalia Grace, at which point the revelation emerged that she wasn’t a six-year-old girl at all, but a 22-year-old woman... Natalia Grace actually had a form of dwarfism called spondyloepiphysieal dysplasia... According to PEOPLE, Michael and his wife weren’t aware that Natalia was 22-years-old until 2012, two years after they adopted her. The couple went to a probate court in Marion County to get her birthdate changed from 2003 to 1989, recognising her real age..., the couple said that they were forewarned by a doctor, who told them that their adoptive daughter was ‘a con artist’ and that they and their family were ‘in danger’."
Legalising All Drugs Would Have Major Health Benefits Say Researchers - "By legalising all illicit substances, governments would be able to better regulate drugs, remove barriers to addiction treatment and curb the activities of black market dealers and traffickers, resulting in a whole host of public health benefits. The paper states that since the global ‘war on drugs’ began in earnest in the early 1960s, use of illegal substances has actually increased, while also becoming more dangerous. For example, the increased prevalence of fentanyl-laced heroin has resulted in an epidemic of overdoses in the United States, which the researchers argue could be controlled through regulation if heroin were legal. In another often deadly unintended consequence of current laws, people suffering from drug addiction are sometimes reluctant to seek treatment due to the possibility of arrest or imprisonment – something the researchers point out that legalisation would also address."
Indonesia woman irked by mosque noise convicted of blasphemy - "An Indonesian court has sentenced a woman who complained about a noisy mosque to 18 months in prison for blasphemy. The ethnic Chinese woman, Meiliana, burst into tears as presiding Judge Wahyu Prasetyo Wibowo announced the sentence Tuesday. She was taken from the court in handcuffs. Prosecutors said the 44-year-old defendant violated the criminal code by committing blasphemy against Islam, the dominant faith in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation. Mobs burned and ransacked at least 14 Buddhist temples throughout Tanjung Balai, a port town on Sumatra, in a July 2016 riot following reports of Meiliana’s complaint about a mosque’s noisy loudspeakers. The woman’s lawyer, Ranto Sibarani, said the sentence would be appealed. A conservative group, Islamic Community Forum, said Meilana’s sentence was too light. The maximum sentence for blasphemy is five years. Indonesia’s Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and religion, but in recent years blasphemy cases have been filed against people perceived as offending Islam in a possible sign of a more conservative brand of the religion gaining ground in Indonesia. The overwhelming majority of cases end with guilty verdicts."
Another example of Moderate Islam, from 2018
Meme - "I just realized why this month is called May It may rain, it may snow, it may be 70 degrees or 20 below"
Loneliness around the world: Age, gender, and cultural differences in loneliness - "The BBC Loneliness Experiment provided a unique opportunity to examine differences in the experience of lonelines across cultures, age, and gender, and the interaction between these factors. Using those data, we analysed the frequency of loneliness reported by 46,054 participants aged 16–99 years, living across 237 countries, islands, and territories, representing the full range of individualism-collectivism cultures, as defined by Hofstede (1997). Findings showed that loneliness increased with individualism, decreased with age, and was greater in men than in women. We also found that age, gender, and culture interacted to predict loneliness, although those interactions did not qualify the main effects, and simply accentuated them. We found the most vulnerable to loneliness were younger men living in individualistic cultures."
What Food Makes Us Happiest? - "“You are what you eat.” This age-old proverbial saying contains the notion that what we eat plays a role in our health, including our happiness. Using data from the World Happiness Report and consumable data from Our World in Data, I studied whether this adage had any data science-backed truth to it. I looked individually at how numerous consumables seemed to be correlated with happiness in countries from around the world. I discovered that Meat had the highest Pearson Correlation (almost 0.75) and I was able to model this using a linear regression. When considering fruits, I found that countries which consumed more Oranges and Mandarins seemed to be happier than countries that ate other fruits. Likewise, in terms of alcohol, countries that consumed more wine and especially beer tended to be happier than countries that drank more spirits."
ICA officer who received sex and over $3k in bribes convicted of 8 graft charges, acquitted of 4 - "An Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) officer has been convicted of corruption for receiving sex and cash from a foreign sex worker who wanted to be arrested so that she could buy time and continue working in Singapore. The sex worker, Liang Qinglan, knew that foreigners issued with a special pass (SP) could remain here to assist with investigations. The Chinese national concluded that as long as she was not deported, she could still work... He said he would arrange for her to be arrested. Teo, who previously worked in ICA’s Intel Ops Branch, had contacts who alerted him to potential immigration offenders. He gave an informant Liang’s details, and the informant in turn alerted an ICA officer. Liang was arrested on Oct 16, 2018. When asked whether she wanted to remain in Singapore to assist with a related ICA investigation, she agreed... Teo, who has been suspended from his duties by ICA since Nov 25, 2020, was convicted on Tuesday of eight graft charges for receiving cash and sex from Liang on multiple occasions in 2018 and 2019. He was acquitted of one graft charge linked to Liang and three similar charges involving another Chinese national, Ms Cheng Wenjuan. He received the acquittals after Liang gave unclear and puzzling evidence involving a purported sexual favour, and following Ms Cheng’s death from suicide"
This is novel
Meme - "Her: Wanna try anal?
Me: Sure
Sector is clear
Her: *Whips out strap-on*
NOT CLEAR! NOT CLEAR!"
Meme - "The genie misunderstood his wish *Boy with 6 cats/pussies on lap*"
'Pantry porn' on TikTok and Instagram makes obsessively organized kitchens a new status symbol - "Today, over 85% of new homes built in America that are over 3,500 square feet feature a walk-in pantry, reportedly the most desirable kitchen feature for new homebuyers, according to a 2019 report... Like its food porn predecessor, pantry porn thrives on stylizing everyday life in exaggerated ways. But where food porn elicits a desire for gluttonous indulgence, pantry porn taps into a different cultural desire: the orderly arrangement of abundance... What lies beneath the surface of this anti-messiness, pro-niceness stance is a history of classist, racist and sexist social structures. In my research, influencers who produce pantry porn are predominantly white women who demonstrate what it looks like to maintain a “nice” home by creating a new status symbol: the perfectly organized, fully stocked pantry."
Anything white people do is racist. Anything women do is because of sexism. Anything rich people do is classist
Maroon 5 Singer Allegedly Cheated On Wife With Instagram Model, Asked To Name His Baby After Her - "Hyper-Woke Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine cheated on his Victoria’s Secret model wife Behati Prinsloo with Instagram model Sumner Stroh and tried to name his child with Prinsloo after the mistress"
Meme - "Okay, also, when did sex workers start calling regular people civilians? You're not cops. You're not in the fucking military. Get your head out of your ass"
5 Energy Beings in an antifascist t-s... @challah_chic: "Sex workers do more for this country than any cop and are braver than any US Marine. unironically, sex workers deserve more money and respect than violent state actors"
YouTuber Trevor Daniel Jacob agrees to plead guilty to federal charge after intentionally crashing his plane for online views, DOJ says - "Trevor Daniel Jacob admitted to authorities he planned to crash his plane in a video he made to promote a wallet. He later collected the aircraft’s wreckage and got rid of it to hinder federal investigators from probing the crash site"
A Niagara Falls Parking Hack Has Gone Viral & It Can Easily Save You Money (VIDEO) - "instead of paying $35 for a day of parking, visitors can purchase an annual pass from the Niagara Parks website for just $40."
McDonald's found liable for hot Chicken McNugget that fell from Happy Meal and burned girl - "McDonald’s and a franchise holder are at fault after a hot Chicken McNugget from a Happy Meal fell on a little girl's leg and caused second-degree burns, a jury in South Florida has found. A second jury will determine how much McDonald's USA and its franchise owner, Upchurch Foods, will pay the child and her mother... Thursday's decision was split, with jurors finding the franchise holder liable for negligence and failure to warn customers about the risk of hot food, and McDonald’s USA liable for failing to provide instructions for safe handling of the food. McDonald's USA was not found to be negligent, and the jury dismissed the argument that the product was defective... The jury heard two days of testimony and arguments about the 2019 episode that left the 4-year-old girl with a burned upper thigh before finding McDonald's to blame. Philana Holmes testified that she bought Happy Meals for her son and daughter at a drive-thru window at a McDonald's in Tamarac, near Fort Lauderdale, the SunSentinel reported. She said she handed the food to her children, who were in the back seat. After she drove away, her daughter started screaming. The mother testified she didn't know what was wrong until she pulled over to help the girl, identified in court as Olivia, the newspaper reported. She saw the burn on the girl's leg and took photos on her iPhone, which included audio clips of the child's screams. The sound of the girl's screams were played in court. The child, who is autistic, did not testify, the newspaper reported. Lawyers for McDonald’s noted that the food had to be hot to avoid salmonella poisoning, and that the nuggets were not meant to be pressed between a seat belt and human flesh for more than two minutes. The girl's parents sued, saying that McDonald's and the franchise owner failed to adequately train employees, failed to warn customers about the “dangerous” temperature of the food, and for cooking the food to a much higher temperature than necessary."
Sweet moolah! This is why you have warnings telling you not to drink battery acid
The mother should be charged instead for child abuse, for letting the nuggets burn her kid for more than two minutes
Meme - "Wizard who got tired of fighting and casts fucked up unethical spells like "super brain hemorthage" to end them faster"
"One time did "Summon Water" inside guys lungs and the GM allowed it because he had been playing for years and never seen anyone do that"
"Me "I can raise the temperature of a space by 5 degrees (Fahrenheit) per success"
DM "Okay."
Me "And that's 6 successes, 30 degrees.
DM "Okay.
Me "And 'inside the human body" is space, right?"
DM "... I don't ike where this is going."
Me "So I'm going to raise the temperature inside his body 30 degrees"
DM "Yeah, so he's dead now. He was fine, and then went through all the stages of heat stroke in half a second before his body went 'No thank you" and just shut off to stop it from being hot. Good job""
"I CAST FUCK YOU"
Meme - "I Love THAT WE CAN JUST SiT TOGETHER in SiLENCE"
"W... WHAT DID You put in My drink?"
Meme - "Lawrence 27
!MUST READ! Any female wanting to swipe right must meet the following criteria. You must be between 5'1 and 5'5 NO EXCEPTIONS. You must weigh no more than 110 pounds NO EXCEPTIONS. You must fit enough to hold me but no visible muscle tone. The anime girl in the second picture is a reference so if you don't look like her swipe left. NO RELIGIOUS PEOPLE! I want to raise intelligent children and can't sacrifice my seed to someone delusional enough to believe in so called "God". I am extremely smart
*Busty animal girl*"
This is even better than most single mother bios
Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be) - Wikipedia - "Contrary to popular perception, the phrase is not Spanish in origin (in Spanish it would be "lo que será, será"), and is ungrammatical in that language. It was evidently formed by a word-for-word mistranslation of English "What will be will be"."
Meme - "Dude just got served."
"Hey Mike, I've been so horny since I've met you! I've never felt like this after meeting a guy!"
"Sorry? Who is this?"
"I'm glad your phone is working, it's your window cleaner and you're due the past three cleans. Please settle your account before we pass it to the small claims court"
Meme - "Street Fighter 2 actually only contains 1 street
Temple (Not a street)
Jetty (Not a street)
Rooftop (Not a street)
Factory (Not a street)
Quay (Not a street)
Temple (Not a street)
Airfield (Not a street)
Bar (Not a street)
Bath House (Not a street)
Monument (Not a street)
Casino Entrance (It's a street, just about)
It's a street!"
Does anyone actually enjoy living in Toronto? Or am I the only one? : askTO - "Happy people don't come to reddit honestly. The more I come here the more I think people just whine about how life is unfair and how they have 27 different self-diagnosed mental illnesses (badge of honor btw) and how they were raised by parents with maxed out dark triad personalities"
Sarah Jessica Parker Looks Like A Horse | A Loving Tribute to New York's Self-Proclaimed Aging Fashion Icon! - "You be the judge…"
Why you need to consider a variable-rate mortgage now more than ever
From 2021. This ddidn't age well
Meme - "This is Dr Annie Vallirres. She is the director of sleep laboratories at Laval University
Dre ANNIE VALLIERES, directrice laboratoire sur le sommeil a I'Universite Laval
*haggard*“
Engineering Victory with Elon Musk | Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum • Podcast Notes - "‘When I think of, you know, one of the things that used to teach us in the military history classes was that if you're facing another opponent, the the side that has the technological advantage is at its greatest disparity at the very beginning of the conflict. And that it, the longer the conflict goes on, the more time the adversary has to adjust and come up with countermeasures. So that's how tribal peoples in Afghanistan maybe adjust to being the technologically inferior side. Um, could one make a case today that there are examples of that? You know, the US still I would, I would assume, correct me if I'm wrong, the technological leader there in military technology, but if you're the Russians or the Chinese and we end up in a war in 20 years, are there ways that they can compensate for the fact that they're behind on, cert-, is an electromagnetic pulse attack something that helps compensate for a satellite discrepancy?’"
EP18 Iranian Interconnections – Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum – Podcast – Podtail - "‘The British were absolutely bankrupted by the Second World War. And as you said, yes, looking for soft landing is a good way to put it. I mean, they were they were trying to adjust this new postimperial of reality, which took some time. And they desperately needed money. And the Anglo Iranian oil company had been and continued to be the source of great profits for the United Kingdom. Of course, after the war, Britain creates this massive welfare state under the Labour Government of Clement Atlee, but needs to fund it. And well, for me, this is I mean, one of the things that's often not appreciated, in Britain actually, is just how much of the British welfare state that people kind of cherish and take for granted, things like the National Health Service and so on, was really funded, not entirely, but in very, very large measure by the profits from Iranian oil.’"
EP24 Manifesting the Muse with Rick - Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum | Podcast on Spotify - "‘People were not afraid of sharks before the movie Jaws. Now there's a percentage of the population that are afraid to go swimming in the ocean because they're afraid of sharks, whether it's a shark infested area or not. All because of a movie. It changed our world to be afraid of sharks’...
‘The shark didn't work right. The the the the mechanical shark rarely worked and so Spielberg who had all of these ideas for scenes where the shark was going to appear had to figure out ways to write the scenes without the shark because the shark so rarely was available, and it turned out that by doing that it created a building suspense in the film that wasn't there in the original treatment for the movie because they assumed you'd have a shark to work with and it worked out better because of it’"
Meme - Mugshawtys @mugshawt...: "public intoxication, providing false information to a police officer, and possession of a fake ID *cute blonde with nice hair*"
*sweating and presenting proposal ring*
Man who married women 54 years his senior: No time for 'toxic' people | Toronto Sun - "Gary Hardwick, now 23, but just 17 when he wed Almeda, who was 71 and is now 75, says he’s cutting out “toxic” people who don’t support his marriage."
Anyone who doesn't support what you do unconditionally is "toxic". There's a good bet that he's the toxic one, since those who keep throwing that word around are the really toxic ones
Should You Cut 'Toxic' People Out of Your Life? - The Atlantic - "he and my boyfriend started bickering about which Lorde album is better, the first one or the second one. This kind of argument can be entertaining if the participants are making funny or interesting points, but they weren’t, and they wouldn’t drop it. The roommate was getting louder and louder; my boyfriend was repeating himself. It was Friday; I was tired. I snapped and said, loudly, “This conversation is dumb, and I don’t want to keep having it.”... “Your girlfriend is toxic,” he warned, followed by an emoji of a monkey covering its face. This accusation was upsetting because I crave approval at all times from everyone around me. But it was also surprising because toxic is an internet word. I had seen all kinds of advice on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit about how to deal with “toxic” friends, generally by never speaking to them again. But I had rarely heard it used offline, and then only semi-ironically, or in regard to people who were objectively terrible. I had never had to consider whether it was a word that could be applied to me. he internet is wallpapered with advice, much of it delivered in a cut-and-dried, cut-’em-loose tone. Frankly worded listicles abound. For instance: “7 Tips for Eliminating Toxic People From Your Life,” or “7 Ways to Cut a Toxic Friend Out of Your Life.” On Instagram and Pinterest, the mantras are ruthless: “There is no better self-care than cutting off people who are toxic for you”; “If I cut you off, chances are, you handed me the scissors.” The signature smugness and sass of Twitter are particularly well suited to dispensing these tidbits of advice. I don’t know who needs to hear this, a tweet will begin, suggesting that almost anyone might need to hear it, but if someone hurts your feelings, you are allowed to get rid of them. There is even a WebMD page about how to identify a “toxic person,” defined aggressively unhelpfully as “anyone whose behavior adds negativity and upset to your life.” Well, by that measure … !... A person has no obligation to forgive anyone for anything, he may have been reassured by some tinny internet voice. Or as one “Inspirational Quotes” account tweeted over the summer: “Cut them off silently, they know exactly what they did.”... the advice I’m sifting through isn’t just about sloughing off casual acquaintances; it’s meant to apply to close friends, siblings, partners, parents. The message—implied if not always stated outright—is that other people are simply not my problem... Joshua Coleman, a psychologist focused on family estrangement, described advising an influx of parents whose adult children had cut them out of their lives. Karl Pillemer, a professor at Cornell University, published a book on the topic in 2020 in which he estimated that about 67 million Americans were estranged from a family member. Some blame self-absorbed young people. In a New York Times column last year, David Brooks employed the work of Pillemer and other experts to argue that the estrangement epidemic might be driven by “a generational shift in what constitutes abuse”—difficult or distant parents, redefined as dangerous. He wondered whether today’s young people view the family as a “launchpad for personal fulfillment,” rather than the site of lifelong obligation. Brooks then painted a lonely picture of the “psychological unraveling of America,” working in high rates of depression and suicide, as well as the sizable percentages of Americans who feel that they do not have even one close friend and that nobody truly knows them. Two decades ago, Robert D. Putnam lamented the breakdown of social ties in Bowling Alone... Why is this happening? Maybe young people have been inspired by the impermanence and infinite choice baked into online dating and social media. Maybe our brains have been pickled in wellness culture and “self-care” rhetoric, which stress the need to privilege our own well-being above all else. Or maybe we’re just good American capitalists, encouraged by the cult of individualism to think of ourselves as compelling brands, the main characters of cinematic star vehicles, the centers of the universe... Jack Worthy, a psychotherapist in New York, doesn’t care for the word toxic: “As far as I know, it’s not an actual psychological construct that has validity and reliability.” But lately, he told me, it’s been coming up “again and again” in his practice. Many patients “want to explore ideas or frameworks that they learned online.”... Earlier iterations of self-help often stressed the hard work of building and maintaining relationships, of opening up and connecting with others. That’s more arduous than simply removing from your social network anyone who causes you discomfort... The relationship advice I’ve been describing doesn’t necessarily encourage anyone to think of themselves as a victim of abuse, but it does imply that one person is always in the right, while the other is in the wrong—so much so that the person in the right should summarily dismiss the person in the wrong... As he spoke, she was thinking, “Wait a minute. Why is this being called abuse? It sounds like a 16- or 17-year-old kid with no experience with relationships who doesn’t know anything about intimacy … I saw his confusion and his pain and his humanity. And I had no desire to label him as being bad.” In 2016, the writer Sarah Schulman published a book called Conflict Is Not Abuse, elaborating on Hodes’s work. She argues that overstatement of harm can itself cause more harm. The person seen as good will be supported and the person seen as bad will be shunned. On social media, Hodes said, these binaries become even more entrenched, because people are encouraged to take sides... One of the easiest explanations for the “toxic” trend is clearly false: Young people aren’t misanthropes. In the past few years, Millennials and Gen Zers have helped rejuvenate the concept of mutual aid, participated in some of the country’s largest-ever demonstrations in favor of racial justice, and expressed a renewed interest in organizing labor"
The narcissists who call everyone else toxic are the toxic ones. Clearly if a child is estranged from a parent, it's always the parent's fault
You can love humanity as a concept while hating humans. And many people - especially young people - do hate humanity, as evidenced by misanthropic environmentalism)
The Atlantic - Posts | Facebook - "A reader writes in: "My 32-year-old daughter has developed the idea that I am responsible for all her failures—not having the job she wanted, not being a sociable person, not being capable to love and to be loved.""
Comments: "I supervised a lot of people over my career, and some of them had serious performance problems. And the single factor that every problem employee had in common was that they refused to take any responsibility for their situation. Every bad thing that had ever happened to them was always someone else’s fault."
"Not to sound harsh, but the 32 year old will have to move forward and stop blaming others for her so called failures. I had a tough childhood with a mentally ill single parent. At some point, I realized that it was time for me to pull my shit together and stop lingering in the shadow of whatever had occurred before. I could wallow in self pity or move on. I chose the latter. It wasn’t easy but my mother and I have an understanding now. I have tremendous empathy for what SHE went through with HER crazy parents and gratitude for all she managed to do RIGHT in SPITE of her illness. Now that I’m a parent, I feel empowered to make choices that my mother did not have."
Of course lots of commenters are just bashing the parents