'They said this had to happen'

Finally, something to watch that isnt the news

'Get her off the teleprompter'

'I took a moment to look and actually see what he had said'

At Georgia Tech, an incredible piece of biotechnology has cured one lucky child in a groundbreaking new treatment for a rare birth defect of the windpipe. Partnering with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, the invention is a 3D-printed tracheal splint, which has allowed 4-year-old Justice Altidore to leap into preschool with all the gusty enthusiasm of […] The post Children with Rare Birth Defect Are Breathing Easier with Device Made at Georgia Tech appeared first on Good News Network.

The post Is Your Cat a Loud Groomer? Olga Certainly Is! by Christopher Bays 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 Christopher! Read my introduction to learn more about me and my silly Russian Blue cat, Olga. First-time owners are often surprised when their cats’ grooming noise drowns out the volume from the television or stereo. I didn’t realize it was much of a problem until I read several posts from irritated owners complaining about their noisy cats. Excessive grooming is unhealthy and often the result of allergies, anxiety, and other health problems, but loud grooming isn’t unusual or harmful. High-Decibel Grooming My Siamese cat stayed clean and groomed his fur consistently until he got kidney disease, but he didn’t make as much noise as Olga. Olga’s coat isn’t as dense and doesn’t shed as often, and although it shouldn’t take her long to clean it, she devotes a lot of her time to grooming and wants everyone to hear it. Her lip-smacking is loud enough to wake light sleepers, but I’m used to it. She likes to hide and sneak up on me, and her plans are foiled when a sudden urge to groom interferes with her stealthy approach. Her grooming racket lets me know where she is when I’m too lazy to search for her and provides an opportunity to tease her when she’s nearby. This chair was designed for me. It’s much comfier than a cat bed. Teasing Olga When I imitate the sounds she makes, she stops grooming and gives me an evil glare. Since she has lived with me for several years, she’s used to being teased, but she doesn’t tolerate physical contact during her licking sessions. If I mess up her recently groomed hair, she tears up my hand with her claws. I don’t suggest discouraging the behavior if you have a loud groomer. Interrupting your cat’s grooming by imitating them occasionally isn’t inhumane, but shouting or throwing something at them when the lip-smacking annoys you is. Unless you wear noise-canceling headphones or move to another area of your home when your cat is grooming, there’s not much to do but accept it. You’re making too much noise with your keyboard. I’m trying to sleep! Indoor Freedom I’m pretty tolerant of Olga’s odd behavior and probably allow her to get away with more than most cat owners. Like many people with indoor cats, I regret confining her indoors, even though it’s the safest option. She’s a natural predator and explorer, and I wish she had more space to run, climb, and pounce. I don’t let her jump on the countertop, but she can scratch up her favorite chair, slam the rocking chair against the wall, play in the unused bathtub of the spare bathroom, and sleep anywhere. She’s a quiet cat, and it entertains me when she makes a lot of noise as long as it doesn’t involve knocking office supplies and devices off of the desk in my office. Olga isn’t as violent and destructive as she was as a kitten, and she’s never eaten my clothes or defecated on my bed. She’s spoiled rotten but reasonably well-behaved. I don’t let her get away with murder, but I’m not strict or care when she acts insane. Since Olga is an indoor-only cat, she has limited ways to entertain herself, and she’s happy I don’t act like an authoritarian. The post Is Your Cat a Loud Groomer? Olga Certainly Is! by Christopher Bays 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.

Column SFF Bestiary The Dover Demon: A Cryptic Cryptid Alien? Mutant monster? Lab escapee? By Judith Tarr | Published on August 5, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share I had not heard of the Dover Demon until I happened to be noodling around in the back matter of Hunter Shea’s novel about the Jersey Devil. He horror-fied this cryptid as well. In a way it’s a counterpoint to New Jersey’s official state cryptid: relatively new, little known, and only seen over a period of two days. I’m a little surprised that the paranormal shows haven’t picked up on it. It’s quite obscure, apart from a few local reports at the time and on anniversaries of the sightings. The Lost Tapes Blair Witched it in 2009. There was a short film in 2017. And that’s pretty much it. The story is that on April 21st and 22nd, 1977, in Dover Massachusetts, three teens had separate sightings of a weird-looking creature, two on the first night and one on the second. They described a smallish, orangey-pink entity, maybe three feet tall, with an oversized, watermelon-shaped head and glowing red eyes, a small, skinny body, and long, thin fingers. They all drew pictures of it, which were remarkably similar. It didn’t approach the witnesses, let alone attack them. It was just there, perched on a rock or standing by the road or scurrying off into the woods. Two of the witnesses were driving by in cars, and saw the thing caught in headlights. The third was on foot, walking down the road. The most skeptical interpretation is that this is a kid hoax. It was spring vacation, they were bored. They were all in on it. But if that’s the case, it’s a little odd that they waited a couple of weeks to report the sightings. None of them has ever confessed to the hoax, that I’ve been able to find. There were no sightings afterward, no copycats. The creature appeared, showed itself, disappeared. It was never seen again. So what was it? Maybe it was an alien, but it didn’t coincide with any UFO sightings. Mutant monster? Lab escapee? There’s no evidence of anything of that sort. The Lost Tapes episode makes up a fiction about would-be hoaxers in 2007, around the thirtieth anniversary of the sightings. These supposed indie filmmakers concoct a plan to dress a guy in a cheap monster suit and film a fake attack and rake in the cash. Instead, in classic Blair Witch fashion, they find a real creature, tape grainy, jerky footage of the encounter, and are never seen again, except for a few bloodstains and an empty monster suit. This silliness is framed by a pretty decent mini-documentary describing the history and details of the sightings. Two possibilities are baby animals—a horse foal or a moose calf—though at that time of year, a baby moose would be, as one of the resident experts notes, “the size of a Volkswagen.” It’s also possible the witnesses saw a snowy owl. The glowing eyes would fit, and the fingers might be the bird’s wing feathers unfurling. It might look pinkish-orange in the type of headlights that were common in 1977. Or, a biologist suggests, it might have been an escaped exotic pet. She proposes that it may have been a slender loris. This nocturnal primate has long, skinny arms and legs and long fingers, and enormous eyes with what’s called the tapetum lucidum, a reflective structure behind the retina. Cats have it, as do dogs, horses, and owls. When they catch the light at night, they glow. If it was an escaped pet, that would explain why it was only seen for a short time within a small area, and why there were no sightings after that. Either it found its way home, or a predator got it. Of course it’s more fun to speculate that it’s a creature unknown to science. Cryptids don’t usually appear and disappear that fast. One sighting tends to beget another. People see what they hope to see, and feed on each other’s fears. The Dover Demon showed itself to three people, for two nights. Then it was gone. There were no phone cameras to capture it. All we have are the witnesses’ sketches. That’s as cryptic as a cryptid gets. Fiction aside, there have been no (subsequent?) hoaxes. No satellite sightings. Those three are it. That’s all they wrote.[end-mark] The post The Dover Demon: A Cryptic Cryptid appeared first on Reactor.

News The Last of Us Get the Quickest Peek at Everything Coming to Max, Including Season Two of The Last of Us Everything from knights to clowns is coming our way soon By Molly Templeton | Published on August 5, 2024 Screenshot: Max Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Max ’Tis the season for the HBO/Max establishment to offer us a teaser reel of all its upcoming shows, from the coming soon to the coming sometime next year. The “soon” shows are ones we’ve seen more of already—like the Batman spinoff The Penguin, which arrives next month—but there are some enticing first glimpses in this video of things like the It prequel It: Welcome to Derry and, of course, the second season of The Last of Us. The prestige zombie show is saved for last, here, and serves as a powerful (and very brief) reminder of what happened at the end of season one: “What did you do?” Catherine O’Hara asks, before it cuts to a series of scenes of violence and infected and screaming, with quick looks at Isabela Merced as Dina and Jeffrey Wright as Isaac. The only other dialogue comes from Joel (Pedro Pascal), face closed off, tearing up, as he answers, “I saved her.” Oof. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms gets just a few scenes, but already looks a bit lighter than its ponderous Westerosi sibling shows. It: Welcome to Derry offers the line, “This ain’t America. This is Derry,” and a character with a very creepy grin, seen through a window. Dune: Prophecy has a full trailer, so these quick scenes don’t add much to our knowledge of it yet. Of course there’s also Creature Commandos and a new season of Harley Quinn—and there’s also a very brief (too brief!) look at The Franchise, a series about the crew of a superhero movie, which comes from Sam Mendes (Penny Dreadful), showrunner Jon Brown (Succession), and producer Armando Iannucci (Veep). The Penguin arrives September 19th, Dune: Prophecy and Harley Quinn in November, and Creature Commandos in December; The Franchise is coming soon, and the rest are all next year.[end-mark] The post Get the Quickest Peek at Everything Coming to Max, Including Season Two of <i>The Last of Us</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Vice President Kamala Harris has a short list for running mates, and it seems Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is her most likely choice. Both Harris and former President Donald Trump will campaign heavily in the Keystone State, as it is considered pivotal for both of their paths to victory in the Electoral College in November. While the legacy media will likely hail Shapiro as a moderate, that’s far from the whole story. Here are 6 things to know about Shapiro: 1. His Resume Shapiro, a Pennsylvania native, graduated from the University of Rochester in New York and earned his law degree from Georgetown University. He worked as a senior adviser to then-Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., and won election to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in 2004. He joined the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners in 2011, and he successfully ran for Pennsylvania attorney general in 2016. He won reelection in 2020 before winning the gubernatorial race in 2022, defeating Republican Doug Mastriano by a 14.8% margin of victory. He and his wife, Lori, have four children. The family attends Shapiro’s childhood synagogue, Beth Sholom Congregation in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. The synagogue is part of the Conservative movement in Judaism, which employs a historical-critical approach to the Torah and is far less traditional than other strains of Judaism. 2. Broken Promises on School Choice While campaigning for governor in 2022, Shapiro pledged to support school choice, supporting the Lifeline scholarship, which would directly fund students, empowering parents to choose the best schools for their kids. Yet when the House of Representatives passed a bill including Lifeline scholarships, Shapiro threatened to veto the very proposal he had campaigned on. Pennsylvania state Rep. Joseph D’Orsie, a Republican, put it this way in an op-ed for National Review: “Not only did [Shapiro] renege on a campaign pledge, he broke ranks with the two-thirds of Pennsylvanians who support school choice.” 3. Using Up a Surplus D’Orsie also faulted Shapiro for spending the budget surplus he inherited when he took office last year. Shapiro “has presided over two annual budget negotiations, and both failed to pass before the constitutional deadline of June 30,” the representative noted in National Review. “The budget surplus of over $8 billion that the governor assumed when he took office will be totally depleted by next summer, according to Pennsylvania’s Independent Fiscal Office. This will very likely spell tax hikes in the near future, a very unwelcome gift for the 60% of Pennsylvanians who live paycheck to paycheck.” 4. Enforcing Gender Ideology Under Shapiro’s leadership, state licensing boards adopted strict policy statements that gave them authority to take disciplinary action against licensed therapists who provide “conversion therapy” to “transgender” children. Under these rules, if a boy comes to a therapist saying he struggles with identifying as a girl, the therapist must “affirm” him in the gender opposite his sex and set him on the path to experimental transgender interventions. Failure to do so counts as “conversion therapy” and may result in discipline. As governor, Shapiro worked with staff at the LGBTQ pressure group the Trevor Project to further such policies, according to documents obtained by The Daily Caller. The emails show staff at Shapiro’s office and at the Trevor Project lamenting that legislation to ban “conversion therapy” would not pass the state legislature. The documents also revealed that Trevor Project staff sent Shapiro’s office a report of alleged conversion therapy “practitioners” in Pennsylvania. The Trevor Project discovered them by perusing databases maintained by Christian organizations, such as the Restored Hope Network and Focus on the Family. In an email The Daily Caller obtained, Ashleigh Strange, executive director for Shapiro’s Advisory Commission on LGBTQ Affairs, wrote, “We are working with the Trevor Project to amplify ways the public can report conversion ‘therapists.'” “Disturbingly, The Trevor Project is seeking to ban counseling choice and punish counselors,” Anne Edward, executive director of the Restored Hope Network, told The Daily Caller. Shapiro also opposed a bill to protect kids from experimental transgender medical interventions, filed a court brief supporting allowing males or females in opposite-sex restrooms, and invited a drag queen to perform at the governor’s mansion. Between 2015 and 2023, Pennsylvania spent than $19.8 million on so-called puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and gender surgeries for minors. ?Josh Shapiro’s History Of Radical Transgender ActivismAs Attorney General of Pennsylvania, Shapiro opposed the “Save Women’s Sports Act,” a bill that banned men from competing in women’s sports, calling it “cruel” and discriminatory. pic.twitter.com/a0pxXLdN54— Meg Brock (@MegEBrock) August 4, 2024 5. A Mixed Record on Israel Left-wing activists have protested the possibility that Harris would pick Shapiro, launching a campaign called “No Genocide Josh” in an attempt to tie the Pennsylvania governor to Israel. Shapiro, a practicing Jew, has condemned the antisemitism of some anti-Israel protesters. In April, he compared those protesters to the Ku Klux Klan. “Students shouldn’t be blocked from going to campus simply because they’re Jewish,” Shapiro told CNN in April. “We have to query whether or not we would tolerate this if this were people dressed up in KKK outfits or KKK regalia making comments about people who are African-American in our communities.” Shapiro also condemned Liz Magill, then president of the University of Pennsylvania, after she failed to condemn antisemitism in a congressional hearing. He supports a bill to punish colleges that boycott or divest from Israel. Yet the Pennsylvania governor also backs a two-state solution with both Israel and Palestine and has branded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “terrible leader” who “has driven Israel to an extreme.” He has defended Israel’s right to defend itself after the Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7 and called on Hamas to immediately return the hostages it had taken, but he has also brought up the civilian deaths in Gaza, saying leaders “can’t ignore the death and destruction.” 6. Sexual Harassment Scandal Shapiro has faced criticism for reportedly failing to address sexual-harassment allegations against a senior staffer. Last year, his office paid $295,000 in Pennsylvanians’ tax dollars to settle the complaint of a former employee who claimed Shapiro’s then-legislative affairs secretary, Mike Vereb, sexually harassed her. The National Women’s Defense League faulted Shapiro for the alleged harassment. “The American people deserve to know that, if called to a higher office, Gov. Shapiro will do more to ensure the safety and dignity of employees, volunteers, and constituents in his office,” Emma Davidson Tribbs, its director, said in a statement Wednesday. The post 6 Things to Know About Josh Shapiro appeared first on The Daily Signal.

We present you funny dog posts from Jul 28 to Aug 03 that will paws-itively make you through the rest of the week!