24 Underrated Places in Europe Where Expats Are Saving Big - "Lviv, in Western Ukraine, is an increasingly popular destination for expats. Rent in the city center is cheap, with one-bedroom apartments available for just €250 a month. Dining out costs no more than €8, allowing expats to enjoy the local culture and cuisine without straining their budget."
Shitty content farm not just has duplicate items but recommends living in a country at war
Canada world happiness ranking down to 18th - "Canada ranked as the 18th happiest country in the world last year, according to the 2025 World Happiness Report, down from 15th in 2023 and fifth in 2011. That drop coincided with a significant decrease in self-reported quality of life among surveyed Canadians, to roughly 6.8 out of 10 in 2024 from 7.5, 13 years earlier... Leading the pack this past year with a score of 7.74 was Finland, which has ranked the highest in reports since 2017. Also in the top 10 are Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Costa Rica, Norway, Israel, Luxembourg and Mexico. Among G7 countries, Canada leads in happiness, followed by Germany (6.75), the United Kingdom (6.73), United States (6.72), France (6.59), Italy (6.42) and Japan (6.15)."
This won't stop the people sharing the memes boasting about how great it is just to shit on the US
Is the dire wolf back from the dead? Not exactly - "Colossal carefully orchestrated its dire wolf reveal, giving exclusive access to Time and The New Yorker for the unveiling of Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi: three wolf pups born several months ago. With their snow-white fur and large bodies, the wolves look like they ought to be fighting white walkers in an episode of Game of Thrones, the hit fantasy TV show that gave dire wolves their current pop culture notoriety. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Colossal even collaborated with Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin before unveiling the animals on Monday. To create the trio of pups, scientists at Colossal edited the gray wolf genome in an attempt to imbue the animals with characteristics reminiscent of the dire wolf. These edited cells were then used to create embryos, which were implanted into surrogate dog mothers. “It’s not a dire wolf,” science writer Carl Zimmer, who covered the story for The New York Times, writes in a post on Bluesky. “It’s a gray wolf clone with 20 dire-wolf gene edits, and with some dire wolf traits.” Colossal’s critics have pointed out that, out of thousands of genetic differences that distinguish dire wolves from gray wolves, the company made only a handful of edits focused on recapitulating obvious physical traits such as fur color and texture. The company previously used a similar strategy to create the woolly mouse—a rodent genetically engineered to have a thick, mammothlike pelt. “Would a chimpanzee with 20 gene edits be human?” Pontus Skoglund, a geneticist at the Francis Crick Institute, muses in a post on Bluesky, adding that the newly announced pups “seem optimistically 1/100,000th dire wolf.”"
How a Gen Zer turned his dinner party into a business focused on busting intergenerational loneliness - "Tep is the founder of The Dinner Table, a new social dining community that's serving up communal meals for customers craving both food and socialization. Tep is hopping on a growing trend, as social dining and dinner parties are experiencing more robust demand. Americans want to see other people, and they want to eat — dinner parties offer a chance for both."
Meme - "What do you want to be when you grow up?"
"GENA BUMGARNER. Chicken Nugget Scientist"
Do workplacesin Singapore usually maintain a separate Microwave for Halal food? I.e a Halal Microwave just for use by Muslim staff. : r/askSingapore - "My client office removed their Microwave and Air Fryer after 2 Muslim staff voiced very vocal opinions about it. Now even the fridge is strictly for drinks only. To be fair, their office is really small. The microwave was literally beside their 3D printer and the air fryer needed to be unplugged and kept in the cupboard after use cos there was simply no space. Needless to say everyone was very unhappy about the change. The whole vibe of the office changed after that... They asked for a second microwave but was told it was not possible due to space constraints. So the management try to compromise by making everyone clean the microwave with alcohol wipes after use. But they wanted everyone to only heat halal food in the microwave and air fryer, essentially forcing everyone to eat only halal food. When they threatened to report to MOM, that's when my client decided that it was too much hassle and just got rid of the appliances. To be fair, the place is super ulu and the nearest eatery is a good 15 minutes walk away. I can understand why everyone wanted to bring their own food. And I also think the client didn't handle it very well too. I just remember walking into the office one day and feel that the whole atmosphere feels off and got the story from one of the staff. My first reaction was "put where?" cos I always put my laptop on a stack of cardboard boxes and stand while I work when I go there."
"That’s terrible. I’ve always tried not to impose my limits on others. Sometimes even turning down invites for dinners or outings because there’s alcohol or only non-halal food. Those Muslim employees should understand that they are the minorities and make do. It’s not a critical need to have a fridge or microwave."
Do workplacesin Singapore usually maintain a separate Microwave for Halal food? I.e a Halal Microwave just for use by Muslim staff. : r/askSingapore - "Yes, separate microwaves, separate sponges. As a chinese even if the food im warming up is labelled halal i was told to still use the non halal microwave because you want to avoid any potential misunderstandings. Its a sensitive issue"
Do workplacesin Singapore usually maintain a separate Microwave for Halal food? I.e a Halal Microwave just for use by Muslim staff. : r/askSingapore - "It’s actually very sensitive business. Yes microwave, sponge and even separate refrigerators. They even have have CCTVs directed at the separate refrigerators"
Contractors that built St. Lawrence Market North suing Toronto for $83 million : r/toronto - "Largely because they bid the project based on their experience with private clients. Government beaueocracy makes it that any decision takes literally 10x longer to make a decision which delays projects and adds costs. Speaking from experience as a developer with a project connecting into a TTC station. It has literally taken 3 years for TTC to review something that should've taken 6mo . Government cannot be developers, plain and simple."
Contractors that built St. Lawrence Market North suing Toronto for $83 million : r/toronto - "This is what happens when our government tries to play developer. There's so much beaueocracy and the inability to make decisions adds time and cost. This is why all hospitals are built with private public partnerships cuz you NEED private companies to get shit done."
Wall Street Apes on X - "Now this is mind blowing
Joe Rogan “Kids Wish Network:
- They raised $127 million
- They paid to solicitors $109 million
- They spent percentage on direct cash
- Aid to the actual kids is ONLY 2.5%
- Look at the Cancer Fund of America. LESS THAN 1% went to the actual thing”"
Elon Musk on X - "When the scams run for long enough with no one paying attention, they literally send zero dollars to the kids. Zero. Many times, I have asked for pictures of the funding recipients. Sometimes, they can’t even come up with a single picture."
Public College Charges Woman $29 Million for Honor Society Information, GPA Figures - " “A client of mine made a public records request of a community college in Flint Michigan that has an annual revenue of $95 million. To respond to her public records request... they want $29 million,” Randazza posted on Tuesday. The college in question is Mott Community College. Randazza attached an image of a communication from Leo Powers, assistant to the college's general counsel. “The College’s good faith estimate of the cost to the College to comply with your request … is $28,904,844.60,” the letter read."
World Happiness Report: Finland named as happiest country for eighth year
Finland among most racist countries in EU, study says
ɖʀʊӄքǟ ӄʊռʟɛʏ 🇧🇹🇹🇩 on X - "BRITAIN - WORLD LEADER IN NEAR FUTURE DYSTOPIA AESTHETICS
Something about Britain (now The Yookay) and British Culture that lends it so readily to the dystopian near future aesthetic. Children of Men, 1984, Clockwork Orange, Brazil, V for Vendetta, Third World Britain… etc. Which is, Authoritarianism on a silly gimmicky theme or ideology as well as a certain kind of grimy aesthetic and tweeness and then occasional touches or glimpses of high culture interspersed through all the absurdities. You couldn’t do direct Cult of Personality Stalinism in Britain. You couldn’t buy ‘Britain but it’s North Korea and has totalitarian military parades’ but you could buy ‘Britain where everyone is forced to clap for the National Health Service on the orders of bureaucrats in top hats and then fill out a series forms to certify that they have done so’. It’s authoritarianism but not in a traditional Caudillo ‘Evil Dictator’ type way - it’s more psychological. In many of those examples, it is the British state that’s the source of horror. It isn’t a kind of more primal, immediate and palpable folk horror. There is an under-explored psychological phenomenon that comes from being in say Luton town centre, just almost ethereal in a horrible way. The walls that surround a country have caved in and what’s replaced it isn’t anything other than meaningless squalor and it is entirely the result of runaway top down ideology imposed by the state. And then the walls are festooned with NHS and ‘Have you paid you TV License?’ and ‘Don’t be a burden on your loved ones support Assisted Dying’ and ‘New BBC Series: The Black Tudors (They’re Black)’ posters. The horror is at the banality of it all… It’s a sort of ‘Terry Gilliam Authoritarianism’, the perennial puritanical curtain twitching streak in British Culture taken to an absurd extreme and now preoccupied with some squalid farcical comedy ideology that isn’t a comedy anymore because it’s real life"
Meme - *Vince McMahon Reaction*
"Apologize, We only speak Japanese. If you dont speak Japanese perhaps you might think about going somewhere else."
"Japanese only. (外国人お断り。) (Ed: No foreigners allowed)"
"The following customers can't enter our pub.
1.Filipinos or people from other countries
2.The group of only foreigners
But the above-mentioned customers with Japanese can enter our pub.
PUB Audition chief"
"ATTENTION. FOREIGNERS ARE NOT ALLOWED TO ENTER WITHOUT JAPANESE
ESCORT 外国人の入店 お断り致します"
"no vacancy. 不凑巧是满座. この日本語が読める方は、ご入店くださいませ。" (Ed: Mandarin - Unfortunately it was full. Japanese - if you can read this Japanese, please come in.)
Meme - "Islamic Pre-School. SUNNAH. BRITISH VALUES. DUAS"
Luckily it's not a Christian school, or there would be no way they could teach British Values
Why Airlines Make Flights Longer on Purpose - "In the 1960s it took five hours to fly from New York to Los Angeles, and just 45 minutes to hop from New York to Washington, DC. Today, these same flights now take six-plus hours and 75 minutes respectively, although the airports haven’t moved further apart. It’s called “schedule creep”, or padding. And it’s a secret the airlines don’t want you to know about, especially given the spillover effects for the environment... “Stalling tactics like padding flight times have become common practice for airlines," says passenger rights activist Paloma Salmeron, spokesperson for AirHelp. She claims this tactic not only enables airlines to claim they have improved on-time (OT) flight performance, but it also makes it easier to swerve the “magical three-hour limit” on delays – the threshold that qualifies passengers to file compensation claims at least under European Union passenger rights’ law."
Meme - Shadowman311 @Shadowman311: "Things like Starship Troopers, and now Helldivers really unsettle shitlibs because they show them how important the "rule of cool" is to the human mind and how an ideology that essentially just says "yeah you just have to tolerate all this disgusting shit for eternity or we'll kill you" will always lose out to the nicely dressed dudes with machine guns promising clean streets and polite neighbors."
Meme - Venom Rach ☧ @SocialNomadRach: "This is what i learned about leftists today:
1. They think minorities are like bugs
2. They would prefer to be wiped out by bugs rather than fight back
3. They have empathy for a fascistic, genocidal hivemind but will project those traits on the Federation
4. They are the bugs: *bug on laptop*"
Stay indoors or risk being blown away by heavy winds, China warns light people - "Chinese authorities have told people weighing less than 50 kilograms (7st 9lbs) to stay indoors this weekend because they could be “blown away” by heavy winds. Gales of up to 93 miles per hour are expected to sweep through Beijing, Tianjin, and parts of Hebei from Friday to Sunday as a cold vortex is travelling south-east from Mongolia."
Meme - "Typical American Jewish family trajectory
Generation 1: garment factory worker
Generation 2: pharmacist
Generation 3: Chair of the Federal Reserve
Generation 4: feminist freelance journalist with hairy armpits"
Minocqua Brewing Company owner courts controversy, donations around rare criminal defamation charge. It’s part of a yearslong pattern. - "In the Facebook post, the female editor of a Northwoods newspaper stands over the paper’s publisher. She is wearing the latex and rubber gear of a dominatrix and holding a riding crop. The publisher is telling her “whip me harder.” The image is a Photoshop creation, with cartoon-style speech bubbles, and the post explicitly states that it is a parody. Still, it had a heavy impact on the editor, Heather Holmes of Minocqua’s Lakeland Times. She told police she “gasped” when she saw the post. She felt degraded by the image and afraid it would make her a target of attacks online or even in person. She had been sleeping with a knife near her bed, according to court documents. The image was posted in August by Kirk Bangstad, owner of Minocqua Brewing Company and the affiliated Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC, which advocates for liberal causes. Two months later, Bangstad would be arrested and charged with criminal defamation in Oneida County... To some Wisconsin liberals, Bangstad is a minor celebrity, selling irreverent T-shirts, brewing beers themed around Democratic politicians and posting provocative, sometimes inflammatory essays online. He’s said his newsletters go out to a list of some 100,000 people. He considers himself a “fighter,” he said in an interview. He paints himself as a crusader against “Republicans who I feel are feeding us misinformation and Democrats for not being strong enough.” He sees his adversaries as enemies of democracy and free speech. To critics, he is an online troll focused more on personal vendettas and self-aggrandizing publicity stunts than on changing public opinion in Northwoods Wisconsin. Those who have worked with him say he can be impulsive and needlessly confrontational. A series of lawsuits filed by the super PAC aiming to change policy in Wisconsin have all failed. And a close look at the organization’s spending raises questions about how he is using his donors’ money... Some spoke on background because speaking on the record could jeopardize their current jobs. A few said they feared Bangstad’s ability to harass them online. Bangstad spoke with WPR for more than an hour about his legal cases and political views, including financial and strategic decisions around his super PAC. But when WPR asked him for details on certain payments made by the PAC, he abruptly ended the interview... Bangstad was found liable in a defamation lawsuit by Walker. Bangstad was fined $750,000 in that case, reportedly the largest defamation fine in state history. In October he settled the case for $580,000, mostly paid by his insurance company... In August 2021, after Walker had filed suit, Bangstad wrote on Facebook that Walker “allegedly stood by and did nothing while his brother accidentally fell from a tree stand and died” because he “allegedly knew he would inherit the once-legitimate Lakeland Times if his brother was out of the picture,” according to court documents... At the trial, Bangstad taunted Walker in the courtroom, the Lakeland Times reported. He was eventually found to be in contempt, fined and threatened with jail time when his disruptive behavior continued... For years, he has been embroiled in a series of zoning disputes with the town of Minocqua over his business... He objected to zoning requirements that would have required him to pave the small parking lot and provide curb cut-outs accessible to wheelchairs. In 2023, the county briefly revoked the business’s operating permit. He sued the town of Minocqua in federal court, alleging that his First Amendment rights had been violated. That case was dismissed by a federal judge in June 2024. “Everything is unfair, unfair, and it’s all about freedom of speech and his constitutional rights,” said Scott Holewinski, chair of the Oneida County zoning committee. “Basically, he figures if he throws that out there, that exempts him from following any other rules.”... Bangstad said the question had “crossed a line” and threatened to end the interview if WPR persisted with questions about the payments. He briefly claimed to be speaking off the record, then declined to answer any further questions. As WPR left, he stood behind the bar in the empty taproom. “You’re doing a disservice to your country and a disservice to the fourth estate,” he said. “That’s on the record.”"
Left wing bullies strike again. The reality of "empathy" and "be kind"
Democracy dies in darkness, but don't you dare ask questions about left wing political activities
Lawsuit alleges Minocqua Brewing Company owner uses super PAC donations for personal expenses - "A new civil lawsuit against Minocqua Brewing Company owner Kirk Bangstad alleges that he has defrauded his donors by using funds raised for his liberal super PAC to pay himself nearly half a million dollars. The lawsuit was filed late Wednesday. In a copy of the complaint obtained by WPR, The Lakeland Times publisher Gregg Walker and general manager Heather Holmes also allege that Bangstad violated their privacy by using their images in the brewing business’s commercial products... Federal Elections Commission records show no payments made by the Minocqua Brewing Company to the super PAC, despite public promises to donate “a percentage of our profits” to the PAC. The lawsuit argues that Bangstad uses donations to the PAC to subsidize the business rather than the other way around. In part, the lawsuit relies on publicly available data on expenditures by the Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC submitted to the FEC. WPR first reported on apparent irregularities in the disclosures in a story published Thursday. WPR had no knowledge of the lawsuit or its allegations ahead of that story’s publication. The lawsuit alleges that two entities that received payments from the super PAC of more than $300,000 in the last two years are fronts for Bangstad’s personal expenses... “Bangstad pays himself ‘consulting fees’ with MBC Super PAC funds,” the lawsuit claims. “However, in an attempt to hide how much he is paying himself for alleged ‘consulting’ work, Bangstad makes the payments to Effervescent Blue and NCPS.” Bangstad did not respond to a request for comment. In an interview this month, he called questions about Effervescent Blue and NCPS “out of bounds” and accused WPR of being part of a Republican effort “to hurt my super PAC and hurt my activism.” The lawsuit also looks at FEC disclosure forms dating back to 2021. It finds that Bangstad has increased payments from the super PAC to the two entities from a total of $56,335.74 in 2021 to a total of $202,826 in 2024. Total payments to the two entities since 2021, according to the lawsuit, are $460,549.74 The lawsuit also alleges other misuses of donors’ funds, including to pay for personal legal expenses and bankruptcy counseling. A 2024 payment disclosed to the FEC showed a $10,000 payment to a Madison-based bankruptcy attorney that “has never established an attorney-client relationship with the MBC Super PAC.”"
Brewing Company owner Kirk Bangstad not allowed to operate Minocqua storefront - "Bangstad quickly derailed the meeting Friday which was was to discuss whether the revoking the Brewing Company’s permit was right or wrong... Bangstad was repeatedly told that his comments were outside of the scope of the meeting. Members of the board voiced their displeasure with Bangstad's arguments. Bangstad was eventually escorted out of the meeting by Captain Tyler Young of the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office."
Meme - Ben Miller doesn't recommend Minocqua Brewing Company.: "Beer tastes like urine. Would not recommend, unless you like golden showers. Rude bartenders"
Minocqua Brewing Company: "Reminder that this is your family, Bill. Are you teaching your three daughters to behave like this online?"
Left wingers love bullying others. Of course the fans were cheering him
Such unprofessional behavior (to say the least) suggests that "Rude bartenders" is real
my hamster exploded : r/copypasta - "ive been crying in my room for 2 hours now. I was making some salad dressing in the kitchen with my pet hamster manny (I let him roam around). My sister and her friends were also in there doing something. I spilled a bottle of vinegar, so I left to get a towel and when i came back manny was drinking it. I didnt think anything of it so I let him help me clean it up. all of the sudden manny starts acting really weird. hes normally very full of energy but he was just sitting still. Everyone gathered around him to try to figure out what was wrong. suddenly we hear a fizzling noise coming from inside manny and he started expanding. he let out a final squeak and bursted. bubbles and blood went everywhere. my sister and her friends started screaming and crying. I ran and got my dad and he cleaned it up. we looked in the pantry and apparently manny got into the baking soda and ate abunch of it. I think im traumatized now"
NJ Imam On Hadith about Muslims Killing Jews at End of Time - "Zaied Abbassi: "Yeah, the nation of Muhammad has no boundaries. [...] "My vision is very expansive. If Allah would allow it, I want to see the whole world in the nation of Muhammad. I want to see the whole world led by a just caliph. There is no shame in saying this. [...] "The famous hadith, quoted by one of the groups in Palestine... That at the End of Time there will be a battle between the Muslims and the J... and people of the Jewish faith, and the Jews will be hiding behind rocks and trees, and the trees and the rocks will tell on them. Do you want to say anything more about that, sheikh...""
Time to jail him for misinformation and Islamophobia
Clearly he meant "Zionists", not Jews
Yossi BenYakar on X - "🚨 Shocking: Islamic regime imam claims: “Women are animals created by Allah to serve men—like cows, sheep, or horses, designed to look human so they don’t scare men.” Why such hatred for women?"
Visegrád 24 on X - "The Taliban will no longer allow women to see with both eyes. They already required women to cover their entire bodies, leaving only their eyes visible under the burqa. Even that will now be restricted. Women will only be allowed to see with one eye"
Thread by @Billaric on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "If you’ve ever seen the dataset the “250 year imperial life expectancy” thing came from you’d split your sides from laughter. The author was just trying desperately to make his thesis work and should be in jail for first degree murder of periodization. Back-alley stabbing of the historiography
Sir John Glubb, 1978. Here’s his data table. Not a trained historian. Let’s tear into it:
- Cherrypicked states
- Roman republic separated from empire? Dumb. There was no discontinuity between the two.
- Ottoman entry is just insultingly stupid. 1570? Really?
- also, ending the Roman Empire in 180 is so intellectually dishonest it makes my head spin
- Romanov Russia? Seriously? Why not include the hundreds of years of Rurikid rule of Russia and Muscovy?
The British entry gives away the game a bit: the author is not an historian, but instead a storied military commander of an imperial state experiencing a pronounced decline in relative power. 1950 is probably the Suez crisis. A guess, but he was rationalizing the losses. There’s much more to say about the date in substantive and nitpicking ways but that’s just belaboring the point imo. It’s bad history, insultingly so, and it’s very annoying seeing the “250 year lifespan” thing repeated so often and so uncritically. God that meme is atrocious. more than five people have seen this so I should clarify my point: You should be critical of every historical claim you read. Find the source of the claim and really evaluate it. Reflect on the author and the evidence. This “250 year” meme would be dead if people did any of that "
On the claim that empires only last 250 years
