'She left him there to die'

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An image shared on Facebook claims that 2024 Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris was purportedly fired from fast food restaurant chain McDonald’s in 1981 for stealing. Verdict: False The claim is false and originally stems from a satire page. There is no evidence to support the claim. Fact Check: Former Republican Wyoming Rep. Liz […]

A video shared on Facebook claims 2024 Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris was purportedly involved in a hit-and-run accident in 2011 in San Francisco. Verdict: False Lead Stories and VERIFY both reported the claim was false. According to Verify This, KBSF-TV, the news organization where the report originally appeared to stem from, is not real. […]

Our “10 Compelling Rock Songs About Wanting To Be With Someone,” showcases a collection of tracks that not only highlight the diverse ways artists interpret the theme of longing but also how they translate these feelings into music that moves the soul and stirs the heart. From the haunting lyrics of David Bowie’s “Wild Is the Wind” to the driving force of Bruce Springsteen’s “Drive All Night,” each song on this list offers a unique perspective on what it means to yearn for another. Bowie’s rendition of a classic tune adds layers of emotional depth and sophistication, reflecting the longing The post 10 Compelling Rock Songs About Wanting To Be With Someone appeared first on ClassicRockHistory.com.

Dozens of volunteers and an entrepreneur have teamed up to save the statue of the UK’s Kindest Man from being melted down to save space. In 2023, GNN reported on the UK’s kindest man receiving a bronze statue of himself in honor of his work performing a good deed every day for 3 years during […] The post Statue of ‘UK’s Kindest Man’ Saved from Being Melted Down by Volunteers from His Hometown appeared first on Good News Network.

The post Acupuncture for Zazzles: Dr Karyn & Holistic Treatments for Cats by Catster Editorial Team appeared first on Catster. Copying over entire articles infringes on copyright laws. You may not be aware of it, but all of these articles were assigned, contracted and paid for, so they aren't considered public domain. However, we appreciate that you like the article and would love it if you continued sharing just the first paragraph of an article, then linking out to the rest of the piece on Catster.com. Hi, I’m Dr. Karyn! Read my introduction to learn more about me and meet my five hilarious cats: Clutch, Cyril, Alex, Zelda, and Zazzles. Acupuncture has been around for thousands of years; at least as far back as 300 B.C.E. when Chinese emperor Huangdi wrote the text known as “The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine”, but possibly even earlier.1 The 5300-year-old mummified remains of a man found in the Italian Alps showed tattoo markings and corresponding bone impressions that archaeologists believe may have served as markers for needle treatments, meaning that acupuncture is not just ancient, it may also have multiple origins. Until recently, most Traditional Chinese Medicine practices were treated with derision by the modern medical community, seen as old fashioned and outdated. So what has changed? Apart from the thousands, if not millions, of anecdotal success stories, a greater understanding of how acupuncture actually works has allowed this non-invasive technique to find a place in mainstream medicine. The Basics of Acupuncture In the briefest possible terms, traditional acupuncture uses ‘dry’ needles placed at certain locations along meridians to manipulate and unblock ‘Qi’ (pronounced ‘chee’) – the body’s life force energy. These meridians correlate to different parts of the body, though not every point along that meridian affects those body parts. Meridian Abbreviation Meridian Abbreviation Heart HT Small Intestine SI Lung LU Liver LR Stomach ST Gallbladder GB Kidney KI Bladder BL Pericardium PC Spleen SP Large Intestine LI Triple Energizer TE Extra Meridians Conception Vessel CV Governor Vessel GV We now appreciate that meridians may actually link back to tissue differentiation during embryonic development, while Qi could be another way of describing nerve pathways, tissue planes, and energy transfer. From here, it becomes easier for dedicated scientists to appreciate how this ‘alternative’ therapy might actually work. Zazzles relaxing into acupuncture Embracing Holistic Treatment for Pets After attending a course on veterinary acupuncture, I became obsessed with using this technique in practice. Although the majority of my acupuncture patients were of the canine variety, feline acupuncture arguably has a greater potential for success. Cats have been found to respond more strongly to acupuncture, and there have been promising results in its use in managing feline asthma. I have been using acupuncture at home on my Labrador, Bailey, whose joints are feeling their age. Recently, I decided to introduce Zazzles, our timid tortie, to this treatment and I was astounded with the results! When we rescued Zazzy eight years ago, we became aware of a poorly healed fracture on one of her hind legs. She has coped with this very well, but recently she has started to limp, so we decided it was time to get started on a pain management plan. Being quite a nervous girl, I wasn’t sure how she would respond to this unusual form of stimulation, but far from being afraid, she actually rolled over purring! It’s a little too soon to know how well the treatments are going to work, but at least I know that there’ll be no problem repeating them! Don’t Try This At Home! Obviously, acupuncture isn’t something you can do at home on your own pets, but you can try some acupressure and massage. As the name suggests, acupressure involves using targeted pressure over specific areas, such as those used for acupuncture, to achieve similar results without a needle. It is a technique that just about anyone can use to help relieve tension, provide pain relief, and soothe their pets at home. In addition, if you have a cat that suffers with respiratory issues like asthma, there are a couple of pressure points you may like to try: Massaging a cat is pretty straightforward, with very little difference between it and regular stroking. The main thing to be aware of is applying firmer pressure either side of the spine with the palm of your hand, as well as focusing on the neck and shoulders. The only trouble you’re likely to run into is when you try to stop! Feline massage is all about flat pressure and slow strokes. If you think your cat may benefit from acupuncture, talk to your vet. Not all vets and veterinary practices will offer this service, so you may need to look around. Rest assured that, far from being a stressful experience, most cats find acupuncture to be quite relaxing! This article is a part of Dr. Karyn's series with her five hilarious cats. Read her previous article: The Great Debate Part One: Why Cats Are Better Than Dogs The post Acupuncture for Zazzles: Dr Karyn & Holistic Treatments for Cats by Catster Editorial Team appeared first on Catster. Copying over entire articles infringes on copyright laws. You may not be aware of it, but all of these articles were assigned, contracted and paid for, so they aren't considered public domain. However, we appreciate that you like the article and would love it if you continued sharing just the first paragraph of an article, then linking out to the rest of the piece on Catster.com.

Books Science Fiction Three Helpful SF-Related Rules of Thumb, According to Me Behold, Nicoll’s Three Laws: pithy observations on science, language, and space exploration. By James Davis Nicoll | Published on September 6, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share In the comments of a recent essay of mine, dlomax commented on my observation that “there is no lawn so large as to lack at least one person demanding other people get off it.” He wrote: “I think we might have just witnessed the creation of Nicoll’s Law.” Alas, there is a compelling reason why that cannot be Nicoll’s Law. Anyone who writes or writes about SFF for any length of time is likely to document consistent patterns. Framed correctly, these become easily cited rules of thumb1. I am no exception. The No Lawn Large Enough rule cannot be Nicoll’s Law because there is already a Nicoll’s Law. In fact, there are a few Nicoll’s Laws2, at least three of which are worth mentioning. Well, three was good enough for Clarke and Asimov. In reverse order of the likelihood that I will encounter them, the top three Nicoll’s Laws are: Nicoll’s Law It is a truth universally acknowledged that any (online forum) thread that begins by pointing out why stealth in space is impossible will rapidly turn into a thread focusing on schemes whereby stealth in space might be achieved. There are two reasons for this. First, if one grants that stealth in space in the conventional sense is very difficult to achieve, it eliminates many beloved stock plots3. Therefore, there is incentive to ignore the issue or find innovative methods around it4. Second, it is human nature that when one is told that something is impossible, one starts to look for ways in which that impossible something can be achieved. This human quirk put humans on the Moon! It also routinely kills people as they encounter the limits imposed by natural law. Nicoll’s Law is probably just a subset of a habit I snarkily called SF’s Lysenkoist Tendency: when actual, tested science contradicts some detail in an SF story, attack the science5. The Rusting Bridges Rule of Space Exploration No matter how effective your space program was, one can always imagine how the program could have been much, much better. This takes its name from Larry Niven’s classic All The Bridges Rusting. In that story, humanity had by 2018 had dispatched not one but two crewed missions to Alpha Centauri. You’d think that would be cause for jubilation but it wasn’t. The culprit is human imagination. No matter the achievements of the space program you have, whether it is having explored every planet with space probes or having reached nearby stars, they will always fall short of what might have been accomplished by the space programs you can imagine. Imaginary programs aren’t limited by issues of politics, funding, or engineering. The Purity of the English Language The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. [I didn’t do spell-check in 1990 and misspelled rifle as riffle in the original] That is really more of an epigram than a law6. Consistency is not my strong suit. Nevertheless, if someone is familiar with my work, odds are what they’re familiar with is that quotation. There is a “but” that I will get to. The prescriptivist sentiment that provoked my comment—that English is an unchanging, perfect edifice passed down since time immemorial, to whose rules we must all adhere without exception—is a long-standing one. So is the sentiment that such prescriptivism provokes from anyone even remotely familiar with English’s past, which is a sarcastic belly-laugh7. The phrasing is all mine. The “but” inserted two paragraphs above deserves its own pithy corollary: if some nobody happens to say something memorable, that something will very quickly be attributed to a celebrity. It is easier to imagine a famous person said something catchy, than it is to accept the same from a game store owner from Kitchener, Ontario. In this case, the attribution is often to someone else. Many someones. So many someones. The list of people to whom the quotation has been attributed includes Booker T. Washington, a 19th century painter also named James Nicoll, Star Trek’s Captain James T. Kirk, and more recently, Terry Pratchett. On that last I am happy to say the misattribution is due to over-eager fans, NOT the Pratchett estate. For what it’s worth, the author I had in mind when I wrote that epigram was Mark Twain.[end-mark] Few of my observations are supported rigorously enough to justify the term “law”… but heck, law uses a lot fewer keystrokes than “general tendencies I have mistaken for natural law, because I don’t know the meaning of confirmation bias.” ︎I have left aside some of my advice that is not applicable to SFF, advice such as “If you notice you are regaining consciousness, bleeding profusely, and/or are on fire, take a moment to assess recent decisions to see if there was something you could have done differently.” Now that I look at that written down, I wonder if maybe I should add “If so, actually do that something different next time.” Also, if the issue is bleeding, apply pressure. ︎Re: stealth in space, mystery writers were confronted with an even more vexing challenge when cell phones came along. Many stock plots depending on communication being difficult don’t work if everyone has a phone in their pocket. The short-term result included a flurry of fictional cell phones whose battery life made the flashlights in Half-Life look long-lasting. The internet presented similar challenges, because now information that used to require legwork was just keystrokes away. ︎In Glen Cook’s Passage at Arms, for example, stealthy “Climbers” hide in “null,” greatly reducing their cross-section in this universe. The catch, and it is one that shapes the plot, is that Climbers can only radiate heat through that minute cross-section, which means heat management is a potentially lethal issue in stealth mode. ︎Which in turn is just a specific case of people and organizations rejecting science because they don’t like the answers it provides. ︎What would have been a good law is “spell-check before posting, not after.” What I actually did back in 1990 was worry about the spicy phrasing, as I was not sure obscenity was allowed on the internet. ︎See, for example, H. Beam Piper’s quip from 1964’s Fuzzy Sapiens: “And you know what English is? The result of the efforts of Norman men-at-arms to make dates with Saxon barmaids in the Ninth Century Pre-Atomic, and no more legitimate than any of the other results.” ︎The post Three Helpful SF-Related Rules of Thumb, According to Me appeared first on Reactor.

Editor’s note: This is an adapted excerpt from the book “What to Say When 2: Your Proven Guide in the New Abortion Landscape—How to Discuss, Clarify, and Question Abortion in a Hostile Culture” (Kolbe & Anthony, Sept. 10). When discussing the transgender craze and abortion, less is often more. But the alliance between the trans movement and the pro-abortion movement has become so aggressive that we can’t avoid talking about it (as much as we might like to). At first glance, the issues of abortion and LGBTQ appear unrelated. Same-sex relationships are sterile and can’t result in pregnancy. But the homosexual movement has actively inserted itself into the abortion debate because both the trans and pro-abortion movements are built on a shared philosophy: sexual license that accepts no sexual limitations from church, state, or culture. Abortion advocates and LGBTQ advocates alike generally believe that sex should be free for any reason, with anyone, and with zero consequences. And they demand that this philosophy be accepted by everyone. The two movements are locked arm-in-arm, not only in principle but financially. This is why you see so many “Pride” flags at pro-abortion events and abortion rights signs at “Pride” parades. Enter the transgender movement. Gay rights activists achieved total victory in 2015 when the Supreme Court forced all 50 states to legally recognize same-sex unions as marriages. But the revolution never ends—it just finds a new outlet for upending society. So it’s no surprise that the same year, the TQ (transgender/“queer”) end of the LGBTQ acronym rose to prominence as Olympic legend Bruce Jenner insisted he is a woman named Caitlyn. Just like the homosexual cause, the trans movement has joined forces with the pro-abortion movement. Abortion appears to be next, as trans advocates shout, “Trans men are men … and sometimes they need abortions!” We are reaching peak insanity. The pendulum may well swing back toward sanity sooner rather than later because the coalition of sexual deviants supporting the abortion industry becomes increasingly unstable. The abortion industry long has been allied with a feminist movement built on advancing the interests of women. But now the abortion industry has joined forces with a trans movement that essentially denies there is such a thing as a woman. Increasingly bizarre rhetoric reveals that the unholy trinity of the abortion industry, radical feminism, and LGBTQ is built on a house of cards. And it’s on the brink of collapse. Perhaps no two movements in the history of the world have put more emphasis on the reality of biological sex than feminists and homosexuals. For more than a century, feminists have worked for equality in the workplace, equality in sports, and celebration of the many things that women can do as well as or better than men. This approach is well intentioned—even if it sometimes seriously goes off the rails by veering into advocacy of abortion and other evils. But whether the feminist movement is right or wrong on a given issue, it’s indisputably true that for feminists being a woman matters. The difference between women and men matters. Your sex was no more “assigned at birth” than the reproductive organs you have. Vaginas and penises are not interchangeable to feminists. They are absolutely binary, and they are relevant to feminists and to their cause. Men cannot get pregnant. Men don’t bear the joys and pains of pregnancy, labor, and delivery. Men don’t make the sacrifices necessary to breastfeed their children. The feminists know this as well as anyone, and they have traditionally been the loudest in sharing it. The homosexual movement, too, understands that “biological sex” is a redundant term. This is why the LGBTQ movement was always destined to fracture. On one hand, you’ve got the “TQ” side of the acronym that argues an infinite number of genders exist, genders can change, or there’s no such thing as gender. On the other hand, the “LG” side of the acronym takes the reality of biological sex so seriously that homosexual people choose their sexual partners based on the reality of their biological sex. Homosexual men want to have sex with other men because they’re men. Lesbians want to have sex with women because they’re women. Homosexual people often go so far as to root their very identity in their attraction to the same sex. They dedicate an entire month to celebrating their attraction to members of the same sex. They spent decades pushing for legal and social recognition of same-sex marriage. Christians and homosexual activists sharply disagree on the morality of sexual relationships between two individuals of the same sex. But we can at least agree on what those relationships are and who they involve. Transgender activists throw that shared understanding—which has been in place for all of human history—right out the window. Some insist that gay men actually must be straight trans women. Others insist that lesbians are bigots if they refuse to date trans women (who are actually men). The previous paragraph would be laughable—if it wasn’t the dominating philosophy in media, politics, business, entertainment, and academia. But the bottom line is, the transgender movement is driving a wedge between itself and some of the other progressive movements you probably think of as their natural allies: the feminist and homosexual movements. They don’t always admit it publicly, but many feminists and homosexuals are outraged at how the trans movement has hijacked their causes. We got a peek at this when there were split opinions on whether trans women (actual men) could be part of the Women’s March. These types of divisions show why the alliance between feminism and transgenderism isn’t sustainable. Remember these three points when transgender nonsense enters your discussion of abortion: First, you’re not crazy. Men cannot be women and women cannot be men. There are two sexes—always have been and always will be. No medication or surgery can change this reality. To affirm those suffering gender dysphoria is to participate in a lie. We cannot participate in the lie no matter how loudly and forcefully transgender advocates shout. If I demand that you call me a woman (or address me as Frank Sinatra or Rosa Parks or President Ulysses S. Grant), you should not acquiesce. Second, the notion that men can get pregnant and have babies is the greatest insult to women of our lifetime. And it’s brand new. Can you imagine Jane Fonda, Whoopi Goldberg, Hillary Clinton, or any feminist from even 20 years ago saying, “Men can have babies”? But amazingly, some of the same feminists who championed abortion by arguing, “I’m a woman, not a womb,” now reduce their identity to their reproductive capacity by self-identifying as “birthing persons.” Clearly, the feminist movement has failed if women no longer can claim exclusive domain over the unique genius to conceive, bear, nourish, and nurture another human being. And if men can have babies, it was only a matter of time before we’d be told that men can have abortions. Third, women who have abortions—whether they regret it or not—know it was a serious and hard decision. The way abortion supporters discuss the topic, you’d get the impression that abortion is the Vince Lombardi Trophy of what women can accomplish in post-Roe America. The staunchest and loudest abortion supporters have turned it into a sacrament. In this brave new world, the essence of womanhood is access, willingness, and ability to get an abortion. Abortion is seen as the pinnacle of the female experience—socially, politically, and morally. There’s just one problem: Real women don’t agree. Attacking women in the name of women’s rights isn’t something new. And it’s not something we should fear in conversation. But the transgender attempt to annihilate women is just one more piece of evidence that the pro-life side is the side of science, reason, nature, compassion, medical alternatives, and—of course—women. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Here’s Why—and How—We Must Confront Pro-Abortion Transgender Activists appeared first on The Daily Signal.