I didn’t know who Jenny McCarthy was when I started watching The Masked Singer. I don’t keep up with a lot of pop culture, so I thought she was probably an actress who’d just been on shows hadn’t seen before. (I didn’t know Robin Thicke or Nicole Scherzinger were either, at first. And I often don’t know who the celebrity contestants are, too.) Then one time a contestant thanked her for her work… and so I wondered and searched online.

Ken Jeong is a comedian, but he was a medical doctor first and he continues to work enough as an MD to keep his credentials. How can stand to sit at the same table as her? Especially when it was COVID and people were literally dying by the millions. (That’s when I first saw the show.) I suppose the money is good enough for him to put aside his medical credentials and Hippocratic oath aside when he’s not actually practising.

In Ontario, Canada, existing bike lanes are being removed because of premier is personally offended by people who live healthier lifestyles than him.

You may be interested to read about the scheme of intellectual and ethical development by William Perry. This website has it discussed only in terms of cognitive development, but I think you’ll see how it directly correlates to ethical development: https://neurolaunch.com/perrys-theory-of-cognitive-development/

I’m going to be the “um, akchually” person:

Lunar calendars, like the Chinese and Jewish ones, have leap months for the same reason the Gregorian calendar has leap days: to keep our seasons in line. It’s an entire, extra doubled-up month. However, one would say that year has 13 months, not 12. (At least for the Chinese calendar, not sure about the Jewish one.)

My dad (not even American, but he would 100% be Republican if he were) will randomly bring up Obama and Biden and blame them for the economy, and even blame them for what’s happening in Iran. He claims that Trump had no choice but to attack Iran because of what Obama and Biden did to the economy 🤦🏻‍♀️

My father has multiple degrees and a professional designation, but he is living proof going to school doesn’t make you smart.

I loved opening flip phones with a flick of the wrist, and the physical action of ending a call by closing it.

The philosophy of libraries are great, but the reality is that they are cost-centres that are usually financially neglected. Public libraries especially, IT depts especially especially. Ask any librarian or library worker ☹️

The author of Heated Rivalry donated $300k to save five libraries that were slated to close due to underfunding. That’s wonderful news, but she’s only bought them one year. But hopefully her celebrity and the donation brings enough attention to the matter. We need to vocally support libraries!

Speech-to-text (a type of AI) has been around for a fair good years, but now they’re being paired with generative AI. This is the kind of thing that shouldn’t be paired with a generative LLM. A language model to identify words? Yes. Generative? No.

Where I am, there’s a requirement for 15% (I believe) of new condo developments to meet accessibility standards. You wouldn’t believe how people—potential buyers, not developers—are against that, saying it’s too many. That’s just new developments. All the existing old stock is not accessible, so that percentage of total accessible living spaces is, actually, still tiny. But it’s still too much to accommodate accessibility.

Literally everyone is one accident, illness, or old age away from being disabled in some way. I can’t believe how stupid and short-sighted people are. (Maybe that’s their disability.)

The thing that surprises me is he was arrested instead of promoted.

As cheers_queer has experienced, “flood” means something specific in insurance. It’s wise for everyone to check your specific policies (even if you’re not currently experiencing water in your home). Water that comes up from your pipes/sewer, fresh water that enters your home over land, and salt water can be referred to and covered (or not covered) separately, depending on your specific policy.

Is this a real screen capture or are you having me on? Because did someone really ship this out???

The other day I went out for lunch with a friend and some acquaintances. One guy ordered a burger, and then he went on for a little time about how is it possible there are enough cows for everyone to have a burger? How many burgers can you get from a cow? Where are all these cows coming from??

So I said it’s factory farming, these cows are produced for the sake of their meat. A cow is huge, a quarter cow is enough meat to feed a family for a whole year. I don’t think this guy was being purposefully obtuse, because I don’t know him to have that kind of personality, so the only remaining explanation is he really is that ignorant/stupid. In this age, we have lots of people who don’t care, or wilfully turn their eye from it. But to not know?

Yes?

My dude, Trump worship doesn’t make sense to begin with, and yet, here we are. You can’t use logic and reason in a situation that has no logic and reason.

May I suggest an iPod shuffle; there isn’t even a screen to interface with.

I’m a fairly reasonable, educated (masters), Millennial (i.e., have some life experience). I think it could be a false flag conspiracy. The fact that I think it’s possibly credible that the current president of the USA could have arranged (or, rather, he had it arranged) a fake threat on his life is an indication that the office is the president and the US government around it has no credibility. The lies every day that sometimes contradict not only actual evidence, but what their own offices said just the day or days before. Not to say anything of the moral bankruptcy and corruption on display every day.

If it’s real (and I’m not saying it is, only that it is not outside the realm of credibility, given what we’ve seen), there are many die-hard Trumpers who, essentially, worship him. The images of him being embraced by Jesus and then as Jesus were not the end of him, were they? We only need to consider J6 where people expected to take a took a day off work, overthrow the government and maybe kill some Democrats, and then what? Return to work the next Day? They expected Trump to be installed as president and face no consequences.

More recently, look at ICE. Pro-Trump “irregular immigrants” still expect Trump to personally exempt, protect, and pardon them.

Trump has and does pardon true and real criminals. If I were a Trump worshipper, and told he personally asked me to do this, and he would use his power to protect me, I would probably to it. Only I’m not a delusional Trump worshiper.

I understand where you’re coming from, and it wouldn’t apply in this specific context (where locals had rejected the poor boy), but in a general sense, the idea is to partner or invest in such a way to enable locals to lead the change efforts, or at least have a significant stake and voice.

In the business world, there are often silent investors who back entrepreneurs. Their financial input make a business possible, but leave the operations to the entrepreneur. The investor backs the entrepreneur, and they both profit.

It’s a different model and it takes more time and effort to find local partners to build up their capacity over time, but enabling locals will get stronger long-term results for the recipients of charity. It’s the difference between providing food packages to people and giving people agricultural tools to provide food for themselves in the long run. Obviously, in a situation of dire need, providing food is an immediate need, but only providing food instead of also providing tools keeps the recipients in a dependent situation. If they’re dependent on foreign charity forever, it’s just another form of control and colonialism.

What this woman had done, by caring for this poor boy, was long-term investing in him. Now he has an education and will be able to work and care for himself.

In Canada, a court ruled that Air Canada was liable for its AI chatbot. Air Canada’s lawyer(s) attempted to argue that the chat bot was a separate entity responsible for itself, an astonished judge said, “lol no” (not an exact quote). https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/air-canada-chatbot-lawsuit-1.7116416

But that’s Canada, and Target is not here (anymore), so…
Not relevant to the company at hand, but there is some precedence somewhere.

Your choice of wording is telling. You compare child commitments to leisure commitments, as though people without children only have leisure to think of. While the comparison is children and no children, making one side obvious and the other side highly variable, but, for example, many people care for other family members and extended networks who are not biological children. It is definitely not leisurely to care for a parent with dementia.

The problem isn’t that parents should get special understanding and special treatment, the problem is that capitalist society (distilled into the work scenario) values productivity over humanity. Automation, and now AI, were supposed to let us work less and still sustain the same output, but instead, we’re demanded to produce more and more, and we’re pushed to work even more than before.

Its the classic strategy of making the poor blame and fight each other instead of fighting the ruling class together.