It is giving Hillary 2016

'You're gonna lose'

The boss of a seafood delicacy business has spoken of the shock he experienced harvesting a monster oyster as big as a newborn baby. Tom Haward said he was fascinated after his company retrieved the huge mollusk, weighing 5.5lbs (2.5kg) along the coast of Mersea Island, Essex. Mr. Haward estimates the 12 inches long and […] The post Monster 12-Inch-Long Oyster Harvested Off English Coast Weighs Over 5 Pounds appeared first on Good News Network.

The post Slip, Slop, Slap: Feline Sunburn at a Glance by Dr. Lauren Demos DVM (Veterinarian) 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. Lauren! Read my introduction to learn more about me and my two adventurous cats, Pancake and Tiller. Slip, slop, slap goes the famous Aussie saying, encouraging the use of sunscreen. As humans, thanks in part to large public awareness campaigns such as this one, we’ve become eminently aware of the risks of sun exposure, and most people these days go to great lengths to ensure they use appropriate sun protection. But what about cats, some of whom spend marked quantities of time outside? Have you ever thought about your cat, and sun protection? Most pet owners don’t really spend much time considering their cat’s sun exposure. And that in part might arise from the fact that sun exposure in cats can look very different than sunburn in people. Also, they’ve got fur, so many assume that it will be fully protective. Pancake and Tiller love a good sunbath. In clinics during the summer months, many clients bring in cats with scabby ears, asking what has brought this on. Or the top of their nose pad, or the bridge of their nose has dark dried crusty debris, and similarly, a pet owner wants to know what has caused it, as it’s only recently shown up, in the last month or two. Would you know that these can be signs of sun exposure and skin damage in cats? Well, they are probably two of the most common signs of actinic or solar keratitis in cats: i.e. pathological sun exposure. As we head into the hottest and sunniest months of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s great to be able to increase awareness that indeed- cats can get sun damage to their skin, and even skin cancer. Because this skin cancer is quick-growing and locally invasive, it can necessitate fast surgical responses, including removal of a cat’s ears, or even their nose. Light-haired cats, or those with light haircoats in sensitive areas such as the ears and face, seem to be particularly at risk. Pancake enjoying a sunny spot on the bed. As a cat owner, what can you do to help? Well, consider keeping your cat indoors during the hours of the most direct sun to limit their UV exposure. When they are outside, offer them places outside where they can have shade, such as cubbies. Pet-safe sunscreen is also becoming more readily available, so consider applying it to your cat’s sensitive areas, especially if they are at risk. Easy solutions and an ounce of prevention are worth a pound of cure- especially in the case of feline sunburn. So next time you slip, slop, slap, don’t forget that your feline friend might benefit from some of the same sun awareness! The post Slip, Slop, Slap: Feline Sunburn at a Glance by Dr. Lauren Demos DVM (Veterinarian) 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 Backlist Bonanza Backlist Bonanaza: 5 Underrated Weird Books for Weird Girlies Weird books, weird girlies. What more is there to say? By Alex Brown | Published on July 24, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share I love weird books. I love weird girlies. I love weird books for weird girlies. What more is there to say? Undead Girl Gang by Lily Anderson Mila, a lonely outcast at school, manages to bring her best friend Riley back from the dead, but accidentally resurrects two other teens as well. The girls have a week to figure out who really killed Riley before the spell reverts them back to corpses. When I reviewed it, I comped it to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie meets The Craft meets Mean Girls, and called it “the most delightful young adult zombie/witch small-town murder mystery romance I’ve ever read.” This one is for the horror comedy girlies who like their young adult fantasy with a streak of “fuck the patriarchy.” (Razorbill, 2018) Once & Future by A.R. Capetta & Cory McCarthy Ari Helix is an orphan in a future run by corporations, a teenage space outlaw, and the reincarnation of King Arthur. When she meets Merlin, who is now a teenager due to him being cursed to age backwards, Ari and her crew of queers and misfits are sent on a two-book quest across alien planets, futuristic Medieval Times playlands, and ancient Britain to break a curse. McCarthy and Capetta’s YA duology has weird characters, weird situations, weird settings, and my favorite of all, a weird blend of sci-fi and fantasy. (Jimmy Patterson, 2019) Queens of Noise by Leigh Harlen The Mangy Rats is a punk band fronted by Mixi. The plot starts off simple enough: they’re trying to win the Battle of the Bands at their favorite dive bar, which is dealing with a hostile corporate takeover. What’s weird about that, you ask? Well, everyone in the band are  werecoyotes, there are vengeful witches, and there are more hexed chickens than you can shake a stick at. A little punk, a little goth, a little romance, and a whole lot queer. (Neon Hemlock Press, 2020) Weird Fishes by Rae Mariz Do you like mermaids? Well, here are some weird-ass mermaids. Ceph is a squid-like creature living in an ocean civilization. She teams up with Iliokai, a seal-like creature who sings stories of the sea. Ceph and Iliokai must save each other and their people, not just from polluting terrestrials but their own kin as well. Get your weirdness kick with a dose of environmentalism and anti-colonialism. (Stelliform Press, 2022) Green Fuse Burning by Tiffany Morris Rita, who is Mi’kmaq, and her white girlfriend are already struggling with their relationship when Rita’s father dies. Rita retreats to a cabin in the woods as part of an artist residency her girlfriend pressures her into attending. There, her tether to reality frays as surreal experiences and impossible things start happening to and around her. Morris funnels grief, Indigeneity, the climate crisis, and the cultural devastation caused by colonization into a tense eco-horror novella of surreal grotesqueries. (Stelliform Press, 2023) [end-mark] The post Backlist Bonanaza: 5 Underrated Weird Books for Weird Girlies appeared first on Reactor.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of the accompanying video from professor Peter St. Onge. Big Tech is slashing jobs—half a million and counting. And it’s blaming artificial intelligence. A new study by Layoffs.fyi reports that layoffs in the tech industry have exceeded 100,000 so far this year —and keep in mind that the year’s only half over. That’s on top of 212,000 tech layoffs last year. And 165,000 in 2022. Recent layoffs include Microsoft and Facebook, which each cut 10,000 jobs. Cisco dropped 4,000, Intuit 1,800. Even Amazon and Apple are laying off. Part of this is the slowing economy, part of it is the hangover from the 2020 hiring binge. But what’s interesting is that now Big Tech is blaming AI for the mass layoffs. Microsoft announced a multibillion-dollar investment into AI the same day it announced those 10,000 layoffs. Facebook announced plans for “investing heavily in AI” in the same letter it used to lay off 10,000 workers. Intuit followed its mass layoffs by declaring that companies that don’t go all-in on AI will die. Essentially, tech companies are slashing entire armies of workers and replacing them with a few people who can use AI. The net is a wipe-out in tech jobs—half a million and counting. In fact, for the first time since the 2000 dot-com bust, IT unemployment is actually higher than U.S. unemployment overall. When I used to give career advice to my MBAs, I joked that going into tech is like becoming a stripper—you make a lot when you’re young, but it goes down fast. Even today you can find former senior programmers driving an Uber or mowing lawns, aged out of a fast-changing industry. That’s about to get a lot worse. (Photo illustration: Runstudio/Getty Images) Of course, AI has its own problems, including hallucinations that invent information and phenomena thatdon’t exist. Google pulled an AI blunder after it assured users that cockroaches living in a penis is totally normal, indeed that’s how they got their name. Chatbots have gone rogue, cursing out and threatening users or writing poems about how bad their company is. Lawyer chatbots invent cases. Air Canada’s chatbot promised customers refunds that didn’t exist—which the airline had to honor. Still, AI is improving faster than human programmers are improving. Moreover, tech is just the canary in the coal mine, given how rote many tech jobs are. A recent study by Citibank found that 54% of the jobs in banking can be replaced by AI, and another 12% augmented by AI —so lay off the current worker and hire somebody else. That’s 66% of jobs at risk of replacement or elimination. Many industries are more like banking than tech in terms of workflow, so that could come to a whole lot of layoffs. So what’s next, brought to you by Unchained.com? Technological unemployment is centuries old, from the mechanization of agriculture to container shipping to the internet. Usually, the tech itself makes us richer, which leads to new jobs that actually pay better. But there are also failures where the old jobs went away and nothing replaced them. Detroit with cars, or the forest of factories that used to exist in South Philly or Baltimore. New jobs were created, sure, but they went to Dallas or Atlanta—places that were more business-friendly than the big government dystopias of a Detroit or a Baltimore. So artificial intelligence is a threat to jobs, but it’s not the tech that’s the problem. It’s the mountain of regulations and taxes that threaten to turn America into a continent-sized Detroit. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Big Tech Cuts Half a Million Jobs, Blames AI appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Oh My: Deal Brewing Between Trump, RFK?

When a duck glides across the surface of a pond, it may appear to be effortlessly traversing the water, but in fact, its hidden feet are working overtime to keep it afloat. It is this contrast of outward calm and concealed exertion that inspired the term "floating duck syndrome". Beyond the name, it has very little to do with ducks, instead describing how individuals advertise their achievements and simultaneously mask the struggles underpinning them.In a recent study, scientists investigated the phenomenon, its consequences – it can have a huge impact on our health and well-being – and potential solutions.“An increasingly common phenomenon in modern work and school settings is individuals taking on too many tasks and spending effort without commensurate rewards,” the study authors write. “Such an imbalance of efforts and rewards leads to myriad negative consequences, such as burnout, anxiety, and disease.”Attempting to explain how this disparity arises, the researchers investigated "floating duck syndrome", which describes the social pressure on individuals to celebrate their successes while hiding the toil behind them – much like a duck appearing to move effortlessly across the water. In doing so, these people create problematic social learning dynamics that lead others to underestimate the effort required to meet their goals. “This in turn leads individuals to both invest too much total effort and spread this effort over too many activities, reducing the success rate from each activity and creating effort-reward imbalances,” the team explain.They built a mathematical model of social learning and, using students choosing activities as a case study, modeled a world wherein people try to judge how much effort to put into their work without full knowledge of how much effort it will take to succeed or how difficult the world is.In the presence of visibility biases, such as people who appear effortlessly perfect, individuals in the model erroneously expected greater rewards for their effort than they actually received.The team also identified that even if individuals had a greater absolute number of successes following increased overall effort, their success rate still went down, because they invested in too many activities.“These findings matter. Modern life constantly calls upon us to decide how to divide our time and energy between different domains of life, including school, work, family, and leisure. How we allocate our time and energy between these domains, how many different activities we pursue in each domain, and what the resulting rewards are, have profound effects on our mental and physical health,” study author Erol Akçay of the University of Pennsylvania said in a statement.And, perhaps unsurprisingly, the veneer of perfection that is presented to us on social media isn’t helping things. “Floating duck syndrome is often exacerbated by social media platforms and institutional public relations, which make successes more visible but not necessarily failures or the effort spent to achieve successes,” Akçay added.So what can we do to combat the floating duck? Tackling the root cause is the way to go, the researchers conclude: we need to stop underreporting effort in social learning dynamics and foster a culture of openness when talking about our successes and failures. That way, we should become more aware of the work required of us and less likely to spread ourselves too thin chasing unrealistic perfection.The study is published in the journal Evolutionary Human Sciences.

How quickly things change. Heading into the weekend, high off a successful convention, Republicans held a $44 million lead. Then, President Joe Biden stepped aside, freeing the tens of millions of dollars top donors had held as ransom and simultaneously jolting depressed Democrats and small-dollar donors out of their malaise. By Monday evening, the Republican lead had vanished and the Republican Party found itself $37 million behind. And with the addition of “soft money,” or money given to PACs and parties instead of to individual candidates, the number Democrats raised in two days looks more like $350 million. Even when you count the money megadonors held up, these are unreal numbers — and as strong a sign as you’ll see this summer that the Democrats are re-energized by the change in lineup. That’s not to suggest that Vice President Kamala Harris has any real personal appeal herself, no matter how many cringey CNN segments are devoted to making her look cool (or how hard TikTok plays with its algorithms). But it can be said that Democrats aren’t ready to give up fighting former President Donald Trump — they were just sick of doing it with Biden in charge. In reality, D.C. Democrats are quietly excited about the news cycles coming down the line — and how they might shield the voters from how incredibly grating a person Kamala Harris is. Republicans eager to rest on how poorly Harris did in a crowded field of Democratic primary voters might reconsider those priors: It’s a different race now. The Summer Olympics kicked off in Paris Friday and will help distract Americans’ attention from the political circus through the first two weeks of August. By then, it’s just one week of recess until the Democratic National Convention and, with it, a whole new week of pageantry. That only gets them through most of August, however. Lots of time left for everyone to remember just how annoying the least popular Democrat of 2020 truly is. Republicans eager to rest on how poorly Harris did in a crowded field of Democratic primary voters might reconsider those priors: It’s a different race now. There are, of course, land mines for the Democrats all around. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu comes to Washington Wednesday at the invitation of both parties for a joint address to Congress. Harris is heading to a campaign event instead of presiding over the address, and the next in line, Senate President Pro Tempore Patty Murray (D-Wash.) is boycotting the event. Meanwhile, Biden, who has appeared in public once since withdrawing (and didn’t take any questions) canceled his meeting with Netanyahu, though the PM and Harris are supposed to meet later in the week. She’ll be treading carefully there, too, trying to reaffirm her support for the embattled ally while also scolding its leader enough to appease her radically anti-Israel base. That Netanyahu’s speech is happening at all is a coup by Israel and her friends in Washington and a victory for Republicans happy to poke the Democratic foreign policy civil war. That civil war is almost certainly coming to Chicago, too, where Democrats are set to gather for the first time since 1968. The ghosts of that violent and tortured convention past are so present as to be spooky: a deeply unpopular president declining to run for re-election, a new nominee the voters never actually voted for, and Democratic activists battling police in the streets over Democrats’ own foreign policy. And finally, there is the president himself, who has completely disappeared from view since before he told his campaign staff and the world that he wasn't going to run again with a post on X. He’s set to address the nation Wednesday night from the Oval Office. What does he have to say, and how will he look and sound? It’s not all wine and roses for the party in power. Nor are Republicans taking the sudden shift toward a unified Democratic Party sitting down. The rumor around town is that billionaire Elon Musk intends to send his recently pledged $45 million a month to fund the Republican ground game. Political consultants generally advise donors to funnel cash toward TV ads. Even though super PACs get a terrible TV buy rate, those same consultants earn lucrative commissions from the buys. It’s an ugly ecosystem. Meanwhile, Democrats routinely dominate the ground game, relying on federal employees, unions, and an army of suspicious, ACORN-like nonprofits to do the work for them. If confirmed, Elon’s donation strategy is unusual — and a highly welcome turn for the Grand Old Party. Just last week, Republicans couldn’t be more confident in their prospects for November. This week, Democrats are riding high after successfully replacing an addled president without sparking a vicious primary or convention battle. Neither side should rest easy. There’s plenty more to come. Ben Boychuk: Don’t get cocky about Kamala Daniel Horowitz: How ballot tricks could flip red states blue Sign up for Bedford’s newsletter Sign up to get Blaze Media senior politics editor Christopher Bedford's newsletter. The fire rises: Punchbowl: Schumer to move on kids' online safety package Turns out the Senate isn’t totally checked out. In an unexpected move, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is bringing a series of major bills designed to curtail Big Tech’s power and predatory practices. The legislation is a rare thing: supported by conservative populists and liberal Democrats while opposed by a bipartisan coalition of corporatists and libertarians backed by big money. Andrew Desiderio reports: The package of bills, which includes the Kids Online Safety Act and the Children’s and Teens Online Privacy Protection Act, represents the most significant federal crackdown on Big Tech companies and social media platforms in the digital age. The bills impose new privacy rules and require the platforms to give parents and guardians increased control over their children’s account settings. There’s broad bipartisan support for both pieces of legislation. Schumer has tried to secure a time agreement in order to pass the package quickly, but hasn’t been able to get unanimous consent. Absent an agreement, final passage wouldn’t be until next week.