StraitsKitchen | Halal Buffet Restaurants in Orchard Singapore - "Ramadan Menu
2 March - 29 March 2025
Lunch: 12:00pm – 2:30pm
Sun - Thu: $68++ per adult / $34++ per child (6-12 years old)
Fri, Sat: $78++ per adult / $39++ per child (6-12 years old)"
Is Singapore the only place in the world with Ramadan lunch buffets?
Ramadan 2025 Buffet | Atrium Restaurant | Holiday Inn Atrium Singapore | Hotel - "RAMADAN 2025 BUFFET...
Lunch (Mon-Fri) $94++ (2 adults)
Lunch (Sat-Sun) $98++ (2 adults)"
Nottingham head teacher banned after pupils 'had sex on Swiss ski trip' - "A school principal has been banned from the profession after she failed to stop students shoplifting, drinking and engaging in sexual activity on a skiing trip. Justine Drury, who worked at CP Riverside School in Nottingham, was in charge of an excursion to Switzerland in 2017, where teenagers had sex "on multiple occasions", a misconduct panel heard. The Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) said she failed to get parental consent for all of the attendees and "did not take sufficient steps to reduce the risk of inappropriate behaviour by pupils", including one reportedly stealing knives from a hotel kitchen... Mrs Drury, who was not present during the hearing, had been principal of the school - which provides "alternative education provision" for children aged 13 to 16 with "behaviour or social issues" - since September 2015... of the 12 pupils attending the trip, "10 had special educational needs, eight were known to be sexually active, seven were known to have substance misuse problems and three had current justice system involvement". "In the panel's view, certain pupils would have likely been identified as unsuitable for attending the ski trip if individual assessments had taken place," it said... While "some steps" were taken to reduce risks, such as having boys and girls in rooms on separate floors, the panel found "sexual activity had more than likely taken place throughout the course of the ski trip". "The pupils were left unsupervised within their bedrooms, leaving them vulnerable to engaging in sexual activity," the hearing said. "It was evident insufficient steps had been taken to reduce the risk of sexual activity, as this likely took place on multiple occasions.""
‘Bride kidnapping’ haunts rural Kyrgyzstan, causing young women to flee their homeland - "Bride kidnapping is common in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the Caucasus and Central Asia. In rural Kyrgyzstan, where over 60% of the country’s population lives, surveys suggests 1 in 3 marriages begins with a kidnapping. There, bride kidnapping is known as “ala kachuu,” which translates as “to take and run away.” It became illegal in 1994, but the practice continues today, especially in rural areas. And our research on labor migration in the country suggests bride kidnapping may push young women to leave their rural communities to avoid forced marriage. Kyrgyzstan, a Central Asian country of 6.5 million, is one of the world’s epicenters of marriage by abduction. A typical bride kidnapping occurs in a public place. A group of young men locates the young woman that one has chosen for his wife – whom he may know, but perhaps not well – and carries her, screaming and struggling, into a waiting car. The kidnapping victim is taken to the groom’s family home, where the women of the family attempt to talk her into consenting to the marriage. At this stage, some victims are rescued by their father or other male relatives. More often, though, having been kidnapped is so shameful that the victim or her family agrees to marriage rather than risk the stigma of being a “used” woman... Many Kyrgyz people, especially those in older generations, still see bride kidnapping as a harmless tradition, according to our interviews. “It’s a very old custom,” a 60-year-old woman told us. “Even I was married that way, and I’m happy with my family life. My husband never beat me, and everything turned out well.” People younger than 50 are more likely to reject “ala kachuu,” our research shows, especially when the couple are complete strangers. But they also believe that bride kidnapping is a thing of the past, and that such events today are “pretend” – staged kidnappings. Several Kyrgyz women confirmed for us that they had agreed to be kidnapped before marriage, to uphold a tradition they see as romantic. But some kidnappings in Kyrgyzstan are clearly nonconsensual. Since 2018 at least two women, Aizada Kanatbekova and Burulai Turdaaly Kyzy, were killed by their kidnappers when they attempted to resist the marriage. Both murders spawned protests nationally and in their hometowns, some of the largest rallies against bride kidnapping seen in Kyrgyzstan since visible public opposition began in the 1990s."
Religious charities are promoting Islamic extremist ideology 'with impunity', warn campaigners - "The charity watchdog could be given new powers to rein in extremism after the Home Office was warned charities are promoting Islamist ideology with “impunity”. The Charity Commission is understood to be in talks with government officials about how to strengthen its ability to curtail the activities of both extremist individuals and organisations under its remit... In one example cited in the document, a sermon delivered at a mosque which is registered as a charity suggested that “blasphemers” against Islam should be executed. In another example, a lecture delivered at a different mosque told congregants that a husband may “hit” and “shake” his wife if she refuses to have sexual relations with him. The note also says that in November 2023 alone, the NSS reported 44 charities to the watchdog over anti-Semitism relating to sermons, social media posts or other communications following the Oct 7 attack by Hamas in southern Israel. The document says that earlier this year multiple charities hosted an extremist Islamic scholar from Pakistan who has said sexual slavery is acceptable and has condoned the killing of “blasphemers”."
Time to crack down more on Islamophobia, because we all know that's what drives extremism
A Peculiarly Dutch Summer Rite: Children Let Loose in the Night Woods - The New York Times - "This is the Dutch scouting tradition known as a “dropping,” in which groups of children, generally pre-teenagers, are deposited in a forest and expected to find their way back to base. It is meant to be challenging, and they often stagger in at 2 or 3 in the morning. In some variations of the challenge, loosely based on military exercises, adults trail the teams of children, but refuse to guide them, although they may leave cryptic notes as clues. To make it more difficult, adult organizers may even blindfold the children on their way to the dropping, or drive in loop-de-loops to scramble their sense of direction. Sometimes, they hide in the underbrush and make noises like a wild boar. If this sounds a little crazy to you, it is because you are not Dutch. The Dutch — it is fair to say — do childhood differently. Children are taught not to depend too much on adults; adults are taught to allow children to solve their own problems. Droppings distill these principles into extreme form, banking on the idea that even for children who are tired, hungry and disoriented, there is a compensatory thrill to being in charge... Droppings are such a normal part of Dutch childhood that many there are surprised to be asked about it, assuming it is common to every country. But Pia de Jong, a novelist who has raised her children in New Jersey, said it reflected something particular about the Dutch philosophy of parenting."
B.C. man loses bid to have sexual assault case tossed over delay - "A B.C. man who raped a teenage girl, shared photos of her, and boasted to his friends about his crimes in a group chat, lost his bid to have the case tossed over delays and has been sentenced. Prakash Lekhraj was convicted of one count of sexual assault and one count of making or publishing child pornography after a trial in November of last year, according to the B.C. Prosecution Service... “Prakash Lekhraj sexually assaulted the complainant, then a teenaged girl, by, among other acts, both vaginal and anal penetration. He photographed her and via a group text message bragged to his friends that, ‘She took it like a champ; in every hole,’” the decision said. “He was convicted … after admitting to the acts complained of and advising the court that he never needs to seek the consent of a female to have sexual relations with her.”"
Boog on X - "*Flicks cigarette after a long drag* Here's the thing. If Santa knows when kids are naughty or nice then he knew Rudolph was being bullied"
Do People Actually Hate 'Forrest Gump'? A Statistical Analysis - "For the first twenty years of my life, I was like anyone else—walking around thinking Forrest Gump was universally beloved—and then I saw This is The End. For those who may have forgotten, the 2013 comedy This is The End follows a group of celebrities (playing fictionalized versions of themselves) who are trapped together as the apocalypse unfolds. The film features a cast of early 2000s comedy stars, including Craig Robinson, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, and James Franco... Surely, no one actually dislikes Forrest Gump, I thought to myself; that movie has everything: Tom Hanks, state-of-the-art CGI, American history, shrimp, 100 quotable lines, a humming soundtrack of classic rock staples, a pleasing piano score, and absolutely no material that has aged poorly 🤷♂️. But, alas, Forrest Gump hostility is real. Every year or so, major media outlets like Buzzfeed, Yahoo, GQ, and the BBC publish opinion pieces questioning the movie's long-standing popularity. Film podcasters and critics repeatedly use Forrest Gump as a punching bag—shorthand for popcorn entertainment unworthy of enduring cultural acclaim. Recently, I re-watched Forrest Gump and was surprised how little I enjoyed the movie (relative to the 80+ times I've passively consumed it on cable TV). But is my newfound distaste for Forrest Gump the product of anti-Gump media, or is this actually a bad movie? Am I thinking for myself or simply following a herd of film podcasters? ... Utilizing user-generated reviews from MovieLens, we can track online ratings for Forrest Gump over time, comparing changes in sentiment to other marquee 1994 releases like Pulp Fiction, The Lion King, and The Shawshank Redemption. If the film's reputation has soured, we should see a divergence between Gump's average star rating and the average for other well-known 1994 releases. Alas, we see no such divergence... When we look at Gump's standing relative to other classics, we find the 1994 Best Picture winner is "loved" and "liked" by a vast swath of YouGov respondents and, surprisingly, has few detractors "hating" on the movie. Similarly, a 2023 Morning Consult poll found Forrest Gump to be the most popular Best Picture winner of all time (when sorted by net favorability rating)... This same survey ranked Forrest Gump as the second most popular Best Picture winner among "avid film fans," just narrowly edged out by Titanic... YouGov recently polled American voters on their movie preferences vis-a-vis their preferred presidential candidate—an admittedly odd analysis (that yields intriguing data!). Shockingly, Forrest Gump is the most politically neutral film of the bunch, equally enjoyed by Trump and Harris voters. According to this data, America, a country notable for not agreeing on things, agrees on Forrest Gump. I guess Americans just love this long-distance running, chocolate-box-obsessed, shrimp-catching rapscallion. But wait, there's more! The YouGov and Morning Consult polls found Forrest Gump to be revered across every conceivable survey demographic... But, alas, these datasets miss a crucial moviegoer segment—one with an outsized voice in film discourse... Maybe—just maybe–there is a group of contrarian "hipsters" who are not being captured in our previous datasets. If that's the case, where could we find data produced by tight-pant-wearing, self-styled nonconformists who hate things and identify as "cinephiles"? Well, look no further than Letterboxd. For those unfamiliar, Letterboxd is a social network for movie discovery where users can rate the films they've watched, create personalized lists, and follow other users to see what they're watching... When we segment Letterboxd users by popularity, we find that the site's most-followed reviewers tend to give Forrest Gump lower ratings and are disproportionately responsible for one- and zero-star reviews. And which populations make up this elite cohort of Letterboxd reviewers? Well, this group consists of: Professional film critics. Movie podcasters. Film bloggers. People who might identify as "influencers". Apparently, and quite unsurprisingly, I've been immersed in an echo chamber of Forrest Gump-bashing. There is a small cohort of influential media punditry with a distaste for Forrest Gump who has dictated my Gump-related worldview—which is 21st-century media in a nutshell, I guess. Before starting this analysis, I was convinced everyone secretly disliked Forrest Gump and I was going to find some spectacular insight that proved my hypothesis true. Ultimately, the data revealed that I am 1) wrong and 2) parroting opinions shaped by an insular bubble of film hipsters... As a kid, I sat down and watched Forrest Gump, and without interference or influence from others, I decided it was one of my favorite movies. I made this determination without checking Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, IMDb, Letterboxd, or The New York Times. How did I go from loving this film to attempting (and failing) to quantify its shortcomings?... At some point—probably in college—I was informed that certain content was “bad”: The Big Bang Theory, sequels, Inception, romantic comedies, How I Met Your Mother, all other shows with laugh tracks, superheroes, Michael Bay, Avatar, and, of course, Forrest Gump. Over time, I internalized these opinions. Now, I can’t help but wonder if my leisure time would be more satisfying if I focused on the simple pleasure of watching something—anything—rather than adhering to some self-imposed quality standard. Was this progression natural, or have I somehow made things harder on myself (or both)?"
Thanksgiving Should Be in October - The Atlantic - "It will probably be lovely, or maybe it will be bad, but either way, it will be a little nuts because we will then (then!), in less than the time it takes a carton of half-and-half to go bad, do it all again... We tend to think of Thanksgiving as something fixed—part of our national topography, like Mount Rushmore. A major feature of holidays is, after all, that they are pretty much the same every year. But another major feature is that they are social constructs, and Thanksgiving has been changing basically since it was invented. The first Thanksgiving—the one many of us learned about in school, the one with the Pilgrims—is believed by historians to have taken place sometime between September and November, and aside from being a meal, it had almost nothing to do with our modern celebration."
MPs laugh as NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh brazenly declares PM Trudeau is "more interested in protecting his own job than defending Canadians. : r/CanadianConservative - "The Canadian left has zero interest in holding anyone on the Canadian left to account. That's how we have such a dumpster fire of a government / country. The Canadian left would rather sell out an entire generation, to such an extent that they'd never be able to own homes, rather than criticize or vote against an incompetent LibDP government. The Canadian left would rather Canadian Jews live in fear, with their schools getting shot up and community centres firebombed, than admit that the Canadian left has an anti-semitism problem. They'd rather no kids be able to get jobs, than give up their favorite passtime of slurring conservatives as racists for having the temerity to criticize broken immigration policy. In many ways, the echo chamber of the Canadian left, and the bigotry that underpins it, is the source of huge amounts of disfunction in this country."
Meme - "HOW TO CHOOSE OS
Are you idiot? Yes: Mac
No: Have a girlfriend or family?
Yes: Windows
No: Linux:
Meme - "DENIAL - I can't believe its not butter
ANGER - What, not butter!
BARGAINING - Could it be butter?
DEPRESSION - Unbelievable this is not butter
ACCEPTANCE - Margarine"
Meme - "Sir, is this, subreddit for the fans of the hit Pixar series "Cars"?"
r/fuckcars: "N-No...? We're just a bunch of fatherless tards who need to feel special by hating something while also pretending we want to save the world"
"We should go, Robbie. We're better off making those 1:3 replicas ourselves..."
"Damn right we are!"
Meme - White woman: "WHAT'S YOUR NAME?"
Black man: "It's snow"
White woman: "HAHAHA"
Black man: "WHATS SO FUNNY LADY?"
White woman: "WHEN I GET BACK TO THE UK, I CAN TELL MY HUSBAND THAT I HAD 14" INCHES OF SNOW IN JAMAICA."
Meme - "*Busty woman in bikini*
Your friends mom hands you beer & says: "I don't feel like drinking alone hun.""
Meme - "Helping mom clean the kitchen. She's giving me 5 points for it *Chloe Lamb*"
This is actually porn
Keep brain-dead women alive and use them as surrogate mothers, suggest doctors - "Colombia’s medical association has been forced to apologise after being accused of endorsing the controversial idea of keeping brain-dead women alive so their bodies can be used to have babies as surrogate mothers. The Colombian Medical College published an article focusing on a recent paper about whole body gestational donation (WBGD), which involves women who have given prior consent being used as would-be surrogacy mothers after being declared clinically brain dead. “What about all those brain-stem dead female bodies in hospital beds? Why should their wombs be going to waste?” asks the article, written by Norway-based academic Anna Smajdor. Proj Smajdor, a professor of practical philosophy at the University of Oslo, argues that WBGD could become a common way to bring new children into the world as it avoids health risks for the eventual mother and some of the difficult social issues surrounding surrogacy as it is practised today... Women have previously given birth after being declared brain dead. Prof Smajdor argues that there is no moral difference in such circumstances between organ donation and surrogacy. She also says that male bodies could potentially be adapted to give birth, “thereby circumventing some potential feminist objections”. The Colombian Medical College's decision to publish a Spanish translation of the piece has been met with fury. Colombian member of Congress Jennifer Pedraza described it as misogynistic."
Infosys co-founder repeats calls for a 70-hour work week - "Forget a four-day working week, Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy has again called for young Indian workers to spend 70 hours a week at work. The debate in India happens at a time of upheaval in the global workforce, particularly around hybrid working and some companies impose return to office (RTO) mandates in the wake of the COVID pandemic. At the same time, ideas like shorter working weeks are being trialed, largely successfully. But Murthy believes more work is needed in India at least to help the country's economic growth... It isn't the first time Murthy has called for longer hours for Indian workers. Last month, he told CNBC that he doesn't believe in work-life balance and thinks the shift from a six-day work week to five in 1986 was “bad for the country." In February 2023, he called out Indians for working from home, calling it a trap and accusing them of working multiple jobs. Months later in October 2023, he urged workers to voluntarily work 12-hour days for the next few decades so that India can become a top economic powerhouse; such work would need to be voluntary, as forcing such long hours is illegal in India. He reiterated his views in January, saying he didn't miss time with his children as quality was more important than quantity... Alternative research also contradicts claims that working longer hours is better for economic prosperity and productivity. A study from Stanford University, for example, showed that working more than 49 hours a week leads to a reduction in workforce productivity."
Kathy Hochul ripped for tweet about improved subway safety after NYC straphanger lit on fire - "New York Gov. Kathy Hochul was ripped for a “tone-deaf” tweet bragging about her subway safety improvements mere hours after a sleeping straphanger was killed when she was set on fire aboard a Brooklyn train Sunday. The Democratic leader was blasted from both sides of the aisle after her office put out a social media post celebrating a decrease in subway crime even in the wake of the horrific immolation and a double-stabbing on 7 train in Queens that left one rider dead. “In March, I took action to make our subways safer for the millions of people who take the trains each day,” Hochul wrote on X Sunday afternoon alongside photos of her in the transit system with law enforcement and riders... “Two hours ago, Kathy Hochul took a victory lap for making subways ‘safer.’ She congratulates herself on the same day two subway riders were stabbed in Queens (one in the face and one in the chest) and another was barbarically burned alive,” he wrote on X. “Has there ever been a more tone-deaf Governor in the history of New York?”"
Armand Domalewski on X - "democrats brag about putting billions into nuclear energy and then Zuckerberg has to cancel plans for a nuclear plant because of concerns about rare fucking BEES"
Danishova on X - "Many years ago, construction of a hospital in California was halted because of a fruit fly >>>that only lives for one week."
Time for left wingers to complain that nuclear is expensive, when that's because of |all the bullshit they throw at it
Thread by @isabelleboemeke on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "My photo kissing a nuclear waste cask went viral and people had… opinions about it. There was outrage, with many claiming it was dangerous and that I was hurting my future children (lol). Here’s why kissing a nuclear waste cask is actually fine🧵
The waste people are concerned about and say remains dangerously radioactive forever is called “spent fuel.” Contrary to popular belief, spent fuel doesn’t look like neon green slime. I know, shocker. It looks exactly like the fuel that goes into the reactor in the first place: Just a bunch of ceramic pellets, lined up inside very long metal rods that are bundled together.
When fresh fuel goes into a reactor, it stays there for about 18 to 20 months making electricity. After that, it becomes less efficient and needs to be replaced. That’s when it becomes spent fuel. The problem is that spent fuel is super radioactive and hot. We can’t just toss it anywhere, it needs to be managed safely. So, what do we do with it? The first step is to move it from the reactor into a pool called a… wait for it… spent fuel pool. It’s just like a normal, but very deep, pool and every nuclear power plant has one. The spent fuel stays in there for at least 5 years, cooling down.
On top of cooling the spent fuel down, the water in the pool is also great at blocking radiation. So much so that if you fell in it, but stayed close to the surface, you’d be totally fine. You’d need to swim very close to the spent fuel itself to get a dangerous dose of radiation.
🚨Side note: please don’t try to jump in a spent fuel pool. You’ll get arrested. This is just to show that even at its most radioactive stage, it’s very easy to protect people from spent fuel. After years chilling in the pool, spent fuel is ready for its next stage. That’s when it’s moved into big concrete and steel canisters called dry casks. Dry casks are so safe that you can kiss one without being concerned about getting a meaningful dose of radiation. That’s because thick slabs of concrete can block even the most radioactive stuff.
But I didn’t just blindly trust that the dry cask was blocking radiation from the spent fuel. When visiting a dry cask storage, you have to wear a dosimeter, a little device that tracks how much radiation you’re getting. After walking between casks and literally kissing one several times, I got a dose of 0.8 millirem or 4/10 of a dental X-ray. Insignificant. Lots of people worry about what happens to these casks in case of, let’s say, an earthquake. The truth is that they’ve been tested for pretty much *anything*, including having a train slam against one, and they survived every time. Check it out.
So, yeah, turns out the fear people have about nuclear waste comes from cartoons or straight up misinformation. In reality, spent fuel should be the gold standard for waste management. It’s the only industry that knows exactly where every ounce of waste is, and it stays safely contained. Try saying that about any other type of waste."
Libs of TikTok on X - "JUST IN: “Missing” Congresswoman Kay Granger (R-TX) who hasn’t been seen for 6 months, was found living in a dementia care facility. She’s been in office since 1997. She’s 81 years old. TERM LIMITS."
Meme - Iron Economist @IronEconomist: "So it turns out we spent £100m to protect bats from a purely hypothetical danger (there is no evidence bats can’t easily avoid trains) and the bat conservation trust says we managed to create a giant death trap for bats. Good job everyone. Another win for planning."
Lara Brown @lara_e_brown: "The infamous million bat tunnel may actually be a bat murder tunnel which bats can crawl into but can't fly out of.. The state is so broken it's not even funny"
"The Bat Conservation Trust told The Telegraph that the current holes in the mesh are too small for bats to fly through but big enough for the creatures to crawl into."
It’s the Democrats’ Turn in the Wilderness - "Human nature prevents people and organizations from achieving the wilderness mindset until they have reached rock bottom. That’s because, until they do, they keep thrashing about, trying to stave off the inevitable by rehashing the very items that caused their collapse. The left’s problem is that they consider themselves and their goals morally superior and virtuous—which, by extension, means everyone else is wrong. Voters, however, just rejected this ‘superior’ platform. Trump’s landslide proved that Democrats are not now and never have been aligned with normal Americans’ value systems. Their whole groupthink support system, which runs on pure emotion and feelings and not logic, just took a major hit, and their cognitive dissonance is spiritually crushing them. To recover meaningfulness, the party must go through the five stages of grief, a mandatory process to regain sanity and focus on the future. It is doubly important for many in the party because the secular world is all they have, and to have lost the election to (in their view) evil, uneducated morons has caused profound bleakness and despair. At this grief stage, Democrats are blaming everyone but themselves. While blame for this loss must include their fellow travelers on the left who hijacked the party and are the major cause of this complete collapse due to radical policies that normal Americans found distasteful (e.g., DEI, identity politics, boys in girls’ sports, etc.), they must stop blaming normal Americans if they are to accept the true reasons they lost... There is some good news for Democrats about this loss. First, this landslide ended their power to impose those misguided policies on the citizenry by use of authoritarian and social pressure controls (previously, anyone speaking out faced job loss, ostracization, doxing, and other punishments) and exposed just how weak their control was. That power change could never have occurred incrementally. This will make the party more, not less, appealing to ordinary Americans. Second, the loss has rid the party of Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Obamas, a necessary step in the process. They are now irrelevant. Their ‘fundamentally transforming’ ship has sailed, along with that quartet of grifters. Third, the loss has taken the mainstream media down with them in defeat. The blatantly partisan, daily fake news spewed by most of the classically trained Marxist ‘journalists’ has been exposed because they spent what was left of their credibility trying to drag a corpse of a campaign over the finish line. CNN, MSNBC, and three dollars will get you a cup of coffee these days. Again, this will help cleanse the party moving forward. Republicans have just come out of their own “wilderness days,” which started with Romney’s defeat in 2012. The past 12 years of house-cleaning catharsis, which was sped up by Trump’s win in 2016, exposed the remnant RINOs, opening the transition to populism. Liz Cheney is the final holdover whose political days are over, even if she doesn’t seem to know it. Only an outsider like Donald Trump could have done this."
bestsongs.com.ng 
