4 pumps = 1 load. marvelously concentrated"
Meme - "HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY MY PRECIOUS" - Gollum
Meme - "MOST OF THE POPULATION VALENTINE'S DAY *Arwen and Aragorn*
Me *Gandalf the White alone with staff*"
Meme - "Authoritarian Left: No, it wasnt real communism
Authoritarian Right: Yes, it was real monarchism and it was glorious
Libertarian Left: No, It wasnt real anarchism
Libertarian Right: No, It wasnt real capitalism"
A VPN might be your ticket to an ad-free YouTube experience - "Some redditors claim that this is because it is illegal for YouTube to stream advertisements in the country. However, this doesn’t seem to be the case — the VPN loophole is likely working for YouTube viewers because Google's ad platform doesn’t support the Albanian language just yet"
New wasp species named after Shakira for its 'dance-inducing' larvae - "Colombian singer Shakira's belly dancing moves are so awesome, they're the reason why a new species of parasitic wasp was named after her: Aleiodes shakirae causes its host caterpillar to shake and wiggle like there's no tomorrow."
OMGThatsInteresting on X - "24 years ago, jennifer lopez wearing the green versace dress was the reason google images was invented"
Meme - "Look how BIG this TV is compared to the dishwasher. *woman lying beside TV*"
Meme - "Waitress: and how would you like your eggs sir, scrambled? over easy?"
Me: "big naturals please""
Northwest Airlines Flight 188 - Wikipedia - "Northwest Airlines Flight 188 was a regularly scheduled flight from San Diego, California, to Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota, on October 21, 2009, which landed over one hour late in Minneapolis/St Paul after overshooting its destination by more than 150 miles (240 km) because of pilot error... Cheney and Cole told National Transportation Safety Board investigators that they were going over schedules using their laptop computers—a serious breach of piloting fundamentals, as well as a violation of Delta Air Lines policy (Delta had recently merged with Northwest). The pilots denied suggestions from some aviation safety experts that they had fallen asleep"
More migrants, including Singaporeans, moving Down Under - "Mr Edwin Sia, 41, moved to Melbourne in August 2023 hoping to achieve a better work-life balance. In Singapore, Mr Sia, a car mechanic, would often have to work one or two hours beyond the end of his shifts, but now he never works overtime. “In Australia, if a customer comes 20 minutes before closing time, we will not entertain them and tell them to come back the next day”"
Ottawa man on trial for recording sex acts says he uploaded videos online to save space on phone - "Rockburn, 38, has already pleaded guilty to posting videos of sexual encounters with two women without their consent, and is now on trial for sexual assault. It’s a rare case, and believed to be the first in Ontario where the Crown is equating non-consensual recordings of consensual sex to sexual assault."
Former journalist in Singapore reveals her encounters with media censorship in Mediacorp - "“Only writing about things I’ve heard and experienced. First, at the old building in Caldecott, there was a censorship room. The door plate literally said ‘censorship’,” she wrote in a Twitter thread – which has since been deleted – on Wednesday (15 July). According to her, journalists in Singapore who intend to do a vox pop – short interviews with members of the public – outside of Parliament would need to obtain permission from the Government in advance... She was also informed by a producer friend, who just got her Permanent Residence (PR) in Singapore, that journalists who are not Singapore citizens, including PR are not allowed to do coverage on the General Election (GE). Other instances were when her TV script – which covered about Singapore’s athletes had to do crowdfunding themselves for the Olympics due to lack of Government support – was “ruthlessly edited” without her knowledge. “Above was taken out only to be replaced w[ith] paragraphs of available gov[ernment] scholarships (mostly academic scholarships…),” she added. Expressing her curiosity on the series of MRT incidents occurred in Singapore between 2017 and 2018 – including the train collision at Joo Koon MRT station on November 2017 which she claimed was called a “bump” by the state-media – she asked a former reporter at Mediacorp on why no media was looking into it. But the response that she received was, “This is Singapore”. The former journalist went on to share about the coverage on smart factories in Singapore which she was assigned to by her superior, claiming that the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) had given four “options” and asked her to “let them know” the companies that she chose to cover beforehand... when she called the Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI) to inquire about the ratio of Chinese and Malay officers in the Government. “Idk[I don’t know] exactly what story I was working on but I got curious about the ratio of Chinese vs Malay gov [government] officers so I called the relevant gov comms. Got a call asking what my ‘agenda’ is,” she noted. Although there are journalists in Singapore who are committed to “legit reporting”, the former journalist opined that it will still be difficult when high-level editors are being appointed from different ministries. It is “not surprising” to find an editor-in-chief (EIC) at Mediacorp who listed out his “extensive Government relations experience” in the LinkedIn bio, she said. One netizen – who happens to be a journalist – commented in the thread, saying that there are former officers of the Internal Security Department (ISD) who were appointed to be editors at the Straits Times’ (ST) political desk. The netizen hinted that the editors would occasionally ask his colleagues “would this make the Government look silly?” on ostensibly non-political stories, which left them wondered if the editors had resigned from the ISD... Citing the ST’s article titled “HDB officer fined $2,000 for breaching Official Secrets Act by giving confidential info to ST journalist” which was published on 20 December 2017, she stated that the ST journalist’s phone was taken by the authorities without a warrant. The former journalist was told by her friends – who are Singapore’s journalists – that a Government official went to have a meeting at ST office and display screenshots of the journalist’s private conversation with the HDB officer. She regarded it as a “very disturbing” story to hear. “Yes, this is why NYT[New York Times] didn’t relocate their digital team to Singapore. It’s a business-friendly place, not for media,” she asserted."
SMA reveals losses of IP insurers due to rapid rise in management fees and commission payouts - "The Singapore Medical Association (SMA) issued a statement last Thu (25 Mar) highlighting its displeasure with the insurance companies covering the Singapore’s national health Integrated Shield Plan (IP). SMA said that IP insurers must take “much of the responsibility” for the insurance mess they find themselves in, where they are losing money over IP insurance. This is because IP riders were introduced by the insurers with the knowledge of the consequences of such riders known in the industry for a long time, SMA said... SMA revealed that IP insurers are losing money NOT because of excessive or higher claims by policyholders. Rather, it’s due to the rapid rise in management expenses and commission payouts, it noted. SMA showed that for the period between 2016 and 2019, the estimated Average Payout Per Claim went down by 1% while the claim incidence rate for IPs grew only at a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 9%, which is comparable to the general Medishield Life’s corresponding rate of 10%."
From 2021
Meme - alicia @nerdjpg: "Air fryers are so funny cause it's like. That's an oven. They made easy bakes for adults"
Meme - *Walmart kettles*: "Rollback. Was 19.88. $14.88"
Walmart is full of white supremacists
Meme - "Lindsay Lohan, actress
What subject would you be good at teaching?
I could teach anything I set my mind to. Maybe ethics."
Meme - Black Kid: "Santa is black!"
*Santa with bicycle*
*Santa with bicycle disappearing up chimney*
Meme - "This is the saddest
she said no
$1,200 *engagement ring*"
Meme - ">be me
>be white
>have job in landscaping for multiple HOAs
>work with a lot of latinos who speak little to no English
>white lady comes up to me "OH thank God, someone who speaks English"
>start speaking back to her in Dutch"
Calexico–Mexicali - Wikipedia - "Calexico–Mexicali is a transborder agglomeration in southeastern California (in the United States) and northwestern Baja California (in Mexico) with its center being the border between the sister cities of Calexico and Mexicali."
Silvio Berlusconi duped Italians for years - "But for the genitalia of the women of the Caucasus, the whole improbable adventure might never have happened... the 27-year-old Silvio Berlusconi deployed his irresistible charm, seduced the vice-president’s secretary, persuaded her to tell him when her boss was next travelling to Milan and booked the seat opposite. By the time they reached Milan they were both at the bar, half-drunk, with the pension-fund manager telling him how extraordinary were the private parts of the women of Caucasia... A poll of young Italians conducted in 1993, the year before he first became prime minister, found they loved him more than Jesus. Though he never succeeded in getting a majority of the electorate to vote for him, those who backed him did so with a fervour rare in democratic societies. At the height of his personality cult, before the general election of 2008, his campaign song was entitled “Thank goodness for Silvio”... Perhaps most hurtful of all, some people insinuated that he was a misogynist. But he loved women. At least, those who were young and beautiful. Not like Angela Merkel, whom he allegedly described as an unbeddable lard-arse and publicly humiliated at a Nato summit. He nevertheless adored his mother, Rosa, and, whether coincidentally or not, it was after she died in 2008, just before his third spell as prime minister, that he became involved in the first of many scandals involving young—sometimes very young—women. His second wife, Veronica Lario, a former actress, separated from him, after declaring she could not share her life with a man who consorted with under-age girls."
From 2023
Nigel Farage booed as he is named News Presenter of the Year at the TRIC Awards after public vote - "Nigel Farage last night called on his hecklers to 'keep the abuse coming' as it 'says a lot more about you than about me!' after he was named the best news presenter in the country at the 2023 TRIC Awards. The GB News host, 59, was booed after he beat established veteran journalists Eamonn Holmes and Susanna Reid to the award, before he told industry award attendees 'You should be frightened because you will lose your jobs'... 'I suspect had the industry had the say, I very much doubt I would have won. 'I'm certain three GB News presenters would not have been in the shortlist of five which should be very instructive for the rest of the industry.'... Host Rinder reminded the room the categories were voted for by the public. He said even though he didn’t agree with Farage everyone needed to listen more to other opinions."
Weird. I thought only fascists criticise the media. Of course the left get around this by claiming he's not a real journalist. Only left wingers are real journalists, of course
What Archaeology Tells Us About the Ancient History of Eating Kosher - "Omri Lernau—senior research fellow at Haifa University and Israel’s top authority on all things fish—spoke about remains of aquatic creatures unearthed in ancient Judean settlements. He mentioned catfish, skate and shark. Adler, who works at Israel’s Ariel University, was instantly intrigued. According to the Jewish laws of kashrut—the set of rules written in the Torah, the Hebrew Bible, that outline foods suitable for human consumption—these species are deemed non-kosher, and therefore unfit to eat. So why were the ancient Judeans eating them? Did they not yet know these rules? To Adler’s knowledge, no one in archaeology had tried to analyze why remains of the non-kosher fish existed at the ancient Judean settlements... ancient Judeans, in a period that spans throughout much of the first millennium B.C., enjoyed a diet that didn’t fully adhere to Jewish kosher laws. According to the study, archaeologists have found the remains of three non-kosher species in the two ancients Judean settlements—the Kingdom of Israel in the region’s north and the Kingdom of Judah in the south. Judah residents in particular ate a lot of catfish. These findings help scientists and historians build a more complete picture of how the ancient Judean cultures developed and adopted these rules. According to rabbinic tradition, Moses, the most important prophet in Judaism, received the commandments that outlined how to live life as a Jew sometime around the 13th century B.C. Scholars don’t know exactly when these rules and practices were written down into the Torah, but in his upcoming book, Adler argues that evidence for its observance does not appear until the Hasmonean period that lasted from 140 B.C. to 37 B.C. And the point in history at which Judean citizens adopted the dietary rules prescribed in Torah into their lifestyles, essentially becoming kosher, is also not certain... while the educated intellectuals of the time had penned down laws, scribbling them on animal skins or papyrus, the vast majority of Judeans didn't necessarily know about them and couldn’t read them either. Even if the societal intellectuals may have started adopting kashrut, the masses likely hadn’t yet gotten the memo... Lidar Sapir-Hen, archaeozoologist at Tel Aviv University, who also studied the history of Judeans’ dietary restrictions but was not involved in this study, found similar evidence that Judeans weren’t following the laws of kashrut around similar dates that Adler examined. She had examined pig bones found in ancient Judean settlements. Pork is another type of non-kosher food and yet some digs yielded a number of pig remains. The ancient Kingdom of Judah, located in the region’s south part had very few pig bones, but the Kingdom of Israel up north had quite a few. “It looks like in the Kingdom of Israel, a lot of people ate pork during the 8th century B.C.,” Sapir-Hen says. “So we think that these dietary prohibitions happened later.” Thus, the new study adds to the already mounting evidence that ancient Judeans weren’t strictly kosher. “I was happy to see that Yonatan and Omri came to a very similar conclusion as we did,” Sapir-Hen says."
This News Publisher Quit Facebook And Readership Went Up (2021) - "Almost a quarter of Stuff's traffic came from social media — and mainly from Facebook. "We were expecting that it would bring a significant drop in our traffic," Boucher said. Those fears never materialized. While Stuff's social media traffic did drop, overall traffic went up. Boucher attributes that in part to 2020 being such a busy news year, from the pandemic to global racial justice protests to big elections in New Zealand and, of course, the U.S. "If we had remained on Facebook, we might have had another 5% growth," she said. "But even if we throttled our growth ... it's brought us a lot of positives." Donations from readers went up, for example, once word of Stuff's decision leaked out. Boucher said the company's newsrooms felt the impact, too. "We can definitely see a change in the way people react to us and talk to us" she said. "Hearing anecdotally from journalists, they feel like they've been able to get interviews they would not have got before. They feel that it has really has contributed to people trusting us more, thinking about us as an organization with a clear set of values.""
After three years away, Stuff has (accidentally?) returned to Facebook - "in 2023, it appears Stuff’s approach to Facebook has shifted. (It’s worth disclosing here that The Spinoff has a content sharing agreement with Stuff.) Data from social analytics tool Crowdtangle showed that Stuff had the fifth largest Facebook presence of any local media outlet in the week ending March 5, an average of roughly 18 posts per day. By comparison, NZ Herald shared a whopping 102 each day and The Spinoff about 16."
In Canada’s battle with Big Tech, smaller publishers are caught in the crossfire - "while public broadcaster CBC or legacy newspapers will unlikely suffer much due to their robust funding models and name recognition, smaller, independent publications are already seeing the impact of the new law. Alfred Hermida is a digital media scholar and a professor at the University of British Columbia School of Journalism. Hermida’s research focuses on news digital startups in Canada, which has experienced a healthy growth since 2015, particularly in local communities. “If you're a local startup, the key thing you need to do is develop your audience and social media has become very important for audience engagement,” Hermida says. “You don't have the marketing budget and the reach that the larger players have so social media is a good way to alert people that you exist.” Since Meta’s rolling blackout just came into effect in August 2023, it is hard to determine exactly how hard local news organisations have been hit, but Hermida estimates that between 20% to 30% of audiences for these organisations that rely so heavily on Facebook in particular have disappeared overnight... The River Valley Sun didn’t even have a website, so their news articles were posted directly on Facebook. “Facebook helped us and gave us the space to put our stuff without having to spend the resources and the time in learning how to make a website, which I'm doing now, obviously, but Facebook allowed us to get our message out,” Blackburn says. With a follower count of almost 19,000, Blackburn says their weekly engagement was quite healthy before the Meta blackout. Then, in early August, Blackburn saw their online traffic essentially disappear overnight... Alongside with Meta blacking out news in Canada, the company has also pulled back on its partnership with The Canadian Press news agency that saw the company support the hiring of a number of emerging journalists at the national newswire service... A survey done in mid-September by the Centre d'études sur les médias in the French-speaking province of Quebec suggests that the blackout may be having some impact on news consumption. Up to 32% of respondents said that the blackout has impacted their news habits. Asked whether they have changed their consumption habits on Facebook or Instagram, 29% said they've been driven to other sources like going directly to the news media while 34% said that this form of consumption does not apply to them."
Post-hoc, ergo propter-hoc
Meme - "My cousin picked up a hitchhiker about 20 years ago. Nice enough guy. Cousin was hungry so stopped at McDonald's, grabbed the hitchhiker some breakfast, too. Dropped him off where the guy had said he was headed. No big deal. Next morning, my cousin's watching the morning news and sees that hitchhiker's face. Dude was a serial killer and had killed someone that picked him up. Cousin calls the cops and they have him come in. Turns out the hitcher had killed the very next person after my cousin that had given him a ride. He'd killed a few people that had given him rides, that was his MO. They asked the hitcher why he didn't kill my cousin. He said "eh, I'd planned to, but he was a really nice young man, he bought me breakfast. I couldn't kill someone that bought me breakfast.""
Freezing indoors? That’s because Australian homes are closer to tents than insulated eco-buildings - "As winter sets in, and temperatures plummet, it can sometimes feel as cold inside as it does outside. The reason for this is the poor thermal performance of houses in Australia. Our homes need to be rapidly improved to combat climate change, tackle energy poverty and improve our everyday lives. Minimum building standards for energy and comfort in Australian houses lag far behind many regions... The performance of our homes is governed by the nationwide house energy rating scheme (NatHERS for short). Ratings range from 0 stars, for a house that would provide no protection at all from the climate, to 10 stars, where virtually no artificial heating or cooling is needed all year round. The current minimum performance for new homes is 6 stars, which has been in place since 2011. However, the average Australian home sits at just 1.8 stars. This is perhaps closer to a tent than a modern eco-house... Australian homes are leaky too. Older houses can have an “airtightness” of more than 30 changes an hour – that is, all the air inside them will leak out 30 times every hour at 50 pascals of pressure. In newer homes it’s closer to 10-15 air changes. In comparison a high performance “Passivhaus” benefits from 0.6 or fewer air changes per hour. For many of us, we are paying thousands of dollars a year to heat our homes, only for this heat to escape straight through gaps in the walls. What’s the impact of this? Sky-high bills for starters."
This pretends that it's costless to have upgraded standards though
Australian houses are just glorified tents in winter - "As we shiver through the first weeks of winter, here's a fact to give you goosebumps: more people die from the cold in Australia than in Sweden. According to a new study published in medical journal The Lancet, cold contributed to about 3.9 per cent of deaths in Sweden, but 6.5 per cent in Australia. And here's another one. Even in balmy Australia, cold weather claims more lives than hot weather. The same study concluded that heat contributed to only 0.5 per cent of deaths. How can the "sunburned country", a land known for its asphalt-melting heatwaves, claim more people through cold than heat?... it's not the extreme events like blizzards that cause the most deaths from cold. Rather, it's things like increased blood pressure from constant exposure to low temperatures... Victoria's housing stock averages two stars or less – equivalent to keeping a window open all the time."
Opinion: A big reason so many Americans are still single - "A paradoxical reason, I argue in my forthcoming book: Dating apps. The conventional wisdom, of course, is that online dating has made it easier to meet people. While that may be true, few of these matches are leading to marriage — or even meaningful relationships. In 2019, only 12% of Americans had ever had a committed relationship with someone they met online. In “Over the Influence: Why Social Media is Toxic for Women and Girls — And How We Can Take It Back,” I argue this is the case because dating apps don’t function as advertised. Their design prompts people to stay single and even to value the people they date less than they would if they didn’t think they had loads of other options on dating apps. But there are ways people can use them more strategically. First, many dating sites ask users a slew of questions and claim they’ll use the answers to match them with the right people. OKCupid, for example, says it matches people based on the answers they provide on their views of “everything from pineapple on pizza to voting rights.” This flies in the face of decades of academic research. Unfortunately, people’s qualities can’t predict whether they’ll be compatible. Second, plenty of other research tells us that when people are overwhelmed with choices, they respond by not choosing any of them. Dating sites give people the impression of having loads of options because there always seems to be another person to swipe on. When people think they can easily find another romantic partner, they view the one they have less positively, are less committed to them and are more likely to break up with them... Another reason, of course, is that when people meet online, they might have less reason to be concerned with their reputations... Of course, people of all genders sometimes treat one another awfully after matching online, but when strangers treat women cruelly or erratically, there are often added fears of sexual violence. While the risk of sexual violence isn’t exclusive to matchups that happen online, dating and other apps have made it easier than ever for strangers — including sexual offenders — to connect and arrange to meet in person. And, as I write in my book, I fear that all of the abuse women experience on social apps is normalizing the abuse of women offline. Also contrary to conventional wisdom, research shows that women are less interested in dating than men. Only 38% of single women are looking to date or pursue a relationship, compared to 61% of single men, according to the Pew Research Center"
Too bad that feminists tell us that dating at work or picking people up in public are sexual harassment, so dating apps are the only choice