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Comic [1609] "it's rare, but it happens."

Chapter 13: "Redemption" comic 1609
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glazed apple cider doughnut cake

Confession time! As someone with more opinions than I can fit in three cookbooks, one audiobook, and even 18 years of archives on this website, sometimes when I want to grumble about something food-related but it’s not the time or place, I tuck it in a little document called “rants” that is so full of cringe, you only have my permission to publish posthumously. But I can’t write a headnote for this particular cake without first owning up to #23 on the list in advance: “Apple cider cakes are lies.” Which begs the questions: Who hurt you, Deb? What gives? Essentially, my quibble is that you can put all of the wonderful fresh-pressed apple cider you want in a cake, but it rarely comes through to actually taste like apple cider. The flavor is not robust enough. I’m not saying it can’t be wildly delicious with all of the cinnamon spice we also put in these cakes, but it rarely, to me, tastes like an accurate representation of its name.

Read more »




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Happy VS Flappy

It's Bat Appreciation Month, minions, and I'm sure we can all agree: bats of every kind are pretty amazing.

Whether they're long and lumpy:

Or short and girthy:

Whether they have a huge, misshapen head:

Or bend juuuust slightly to the right:

Yep, bats are the bees knees, no matter where you stick them.

[urgent whispers from John]

What's that? I'm celebrating the wrong kind of bat?

OH! Bat bats. The flappy ones. Got it.

Huh.

::pause::

I dunno, after all that, a pumpkin in a bat hat feels a little... anticlimactic?


Well thanks anyway, Paula I., Marlene B., Heidi B., Emily D., Angela K., & Daniel G. I'm sure we'll have much less confusion with next week's hard rock cakes.

*****

Here's my actual contribution to Bat Appreciation Month: I found the prettiest lil' bat necklace for less than $10:

Gothic Bat Necklace

OooOOOOooh.

*****

And from my other blog, Epbot:




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If I Stopped Haunting You by Colby Wilkens

This guest review comes from Lisa! A longtime romance aficionado and frequent commenter to SBTB, Lisa is a queer Latine critic with a sharp tongue and lots of opinions. She frequently reviews at All About Romance and Women Write About Comics, where she’s on staff, and you can catch her at @thatbouviergirl on Twitter. There, she shares good reviews, bracing industry opinions and thoughtful commentary when she’s not on her grind looking for the next good freelance … Continue reading If I Stopped Haunting You by Colby Wilkens




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HaBO: Anti-Gravity Nipple Pasties

This HaBO request is from Delia, who is trying to help a friend find this book: The heroine is an astronaut or scientist on a fairly normal space travel mission, but ends up either back in time, forward in the future, or in an alternate universe. My friend is confident it’s the same planet, but it has an ancient-yet-futuristic civilization. It’s very metaphysical: crystals, prophetic visions, etc. They don’t remember any plot details, but the … Continue reading HaBO: Anti-Gravity Nipple Pasties



  • Help a Bitch Out

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It Really Happens




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Heirs Apparent

Anh is just awful (writing awful people is fun)




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Apple, Tree, Etc.




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supposedly phone

Today on Toothpaste For Dinner: supposedly phone


This RSS feed is brought to you by Drew and Natalie's podcast Garbage Brain University. Our new series Everything Is Real explores the world of cryptids, aliens, quantum physics, the occult, and more. If you use this RSS feed, please consider supporting us by becoming a patron. Patronage includes membership to our private Discord server and other bonus material non-patrons never see!





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‘So I ruined him’: Landlord neighbor siphons water from man's water supply for over a year so the man cleverly cuts off the supply, resulting in tenant complaints and a hefty fine

Moving to a new place has its pros and cons. You might've caught a good deal on a nice home and are looking for a change of scenery. Most of the time, everything seems perfect on paper until you actually get to your new neighborhood. Once you settle into your humble abode, you start noticing some strange, not-so-coincidental things going on.

Aside from the one-off neighbors parking their bikes in front of your gate, you might notice that your water pressure isn't up to par. You think that, maybe, you might need to call a plumber to get the issue looked at so it doesn't get worse. The thing about observant people is that they really see things for what they are. The homeowner in this story realizes soon enough that his neighbor, who is a landlord to two tenants, has been hooked up to his water supply for who knows how long.

The man's water pressure would only work well when he noticed his neighbors were not using water, and he waited a while before he made real accusations. When he was sure his suspicions were correct, he cuts of the supply, which leads to a chain reaction of issues at his next-door neighbor's building, including: no water, ruining of electrical wiring, and some very angry tenants.




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'[He] was on 24/7 call, so unplugging the phone wasn't an option': Tech support guy gets revenge on an angry IT customer by programming the office phone to call him at 2, 3, and 4 AM every night

We learned from a young age that you should be nice to the other kids on the playground. Share the bouncy rubber ball, don't pull a girl's pigtails, and include everyone in your fun games! That's how it should be in the working world–the adult world–because if you make an enemy on the blacktop, you might just get destroyed in the next game of dodgeball. 

This IT customer learned never to mess with their tech support crew after being a total buffoon on the phone. He was known for screaming at the guys who were just trying to help him troubleshoot his modem, but finally, after being placed with the same phone support guy one too many times, he snapped and decided to get some revenge. 

Frankly, I think this guy's sleep schedule became a little more precious to him after he got completely pwned by the dude he was used to screaming at–I guess now it looks like the phone is the only thing screaming at 2 AM… 3 AM… and 4 AM. Do you think he'll be nicer to his next customer service rep after this? You be the judge.




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'This is the first time I have ever asked to have some time off': 22-year-old babysitter gets denied vacation time for her sister's wedding, boss tries to guilt trip babysitter into skipping it

This kind of boss is just the worst, as this flustered nanny can tell you. 

Taking time off at your job can be awkward at times, especially if you're close friends with your boss. You might feel obligated to tell them everything you're planning to do with this time off. This person certainly did, but they at least had a great reason for requesting a few days off. U/Nannyneedabreak writes that as a babysitter for two kids, ages 6 and 8, she gave her boss a generous warning that she'd be gone for a few days. She gave this boss an incredible seven months of notice that she would be out of town for just four days! That's way more generous than most employees would be. 

This woman shared that she also reminded her boss about that important date at least once per month. Still her, boss insisted she cancel the trip when the date got close. Come on, lady, there are other babysitters in the world! Just ask for a reference to someone else, and let this woman go to her sister's once in a lifetime event. 

Up next, this non-HOA homeowner is refusing to take down their holiday lights, and told the HOA member to "just get off my property… I've just had enough."




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Sneaky landlord enters residence without tenant's approval and steals some items, demands another month's rent after tenants accuse him: ‘What are our rights?’

Just like landlords, tenants have rights. When a conniving landlord decides that they are above the law and impede on your rights as a tenant, there landlord can't expect you to keep quiet.

When something seems fishy, it likely is. Always trust your intuition, but even more so, trust the evidence you have and do something with it. The more power that landlords have, the more they're willing to do whatever it takes to pull a fast one on you and every other tenant they have in the future.

The tenant in this story is moving out of their unit and it is their last month paying rent. They noticed their cleaning supplies were gone from their apartment, in addition to two set of blinds and a shelf they had installed in their closet for storage purposes. They first thought their neighbor might've taken their belongings, but they noticed their landlord posted an advertisement of their unit and they had never approved of him coming in and taking photos to post on apartment-seeking websites. When they confront him, instead of fessing up, he demands they pay another month's rent. Scroll to read.




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Candidate gets rejected from a job they perfectly qualify for, they reapply with a new email account and immediately get moved up in the hiring process: ‘It was even the same recruiter’

Who didn't experience the frustration of getting email after email of rejection from countless jobs you thought you'd be perfect for? If you never experienced that, then congratulations! You are one in a million. If you do know what we're talking about, our question to you is – After how many rejections did you acknowledge that maybe the problem is you and something should change? 50? 100? 1000?  Plus, what does one should change to actually make a difference?

The person in this Reddit story came up with an interesting tactic after getting rejected from a job for which they were perfectly qualified. After several more similar rejections that made no sense to OP (original poster), they decided to open a new email account and reapply for jobs using the same exact resume. This tactic proved successful when they were immediately moved up to the next step in the hiring process for that initial perfect job.

Keep scrolling to read the full story. After you are done, click here for a story of an employee who overheard their boss talking about major workplace changes, and then confronted him about it.




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'I stopped trying to cover for her': 15-year-old calls out grandmother over concert attendance

This teenager is not going to waste her breath trying to convince her grandmother to watch her end-of-the-year school concert. Instead, she had a quick conversation with Grandma, and then turned off her phone!

In life, you'll learn that a lot of people are flaky. Being the friend who actually shows up to events time and time again isn't easy, but it's so worth it to deepen your relationships with those around you. It's a sign that you care enough about that person to carve some time out of your busy schedule and attend their function. For this kid, all she wanted was to invite her grandmother to one of her events: an annual school concert for the choir she participates in. But this grandmother continually makes up last-minute excuses for why she can't go to the show. Instead of just telling her grandkid that she isn't a fan of live shows or that she's just plain uninterested, she's been letting her down for years. This year, the 15-year-old put her foot down in a sassy yet polite way, and at least one of her parents has her back. 

Up next, the internet was rather critical of this 22-year-old employee's tactic to get their colleagues to reply to their emails, because they "decided to start including the Chairman/CEO…on all emails." 




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28-year-old employee flirts with supposedly single 40-year-old coworker, turns out she's been married for 16 years: 'She was lying about being single'

Here is another example of why one should never try to form a romantic attachment with a coworker. It never works out for a plethora of potential reasons. In this instance, however, the reasons had less to do with the professional side of things and more to do with this lying coworker's personal life.

The Redditor described how their close friend, a 28-year-old male employee at their company, had been engaging in continuous flirtations with his 40-year-old female coworker, who had led everyone in the office to believe that she was single. These weren't assumptions; she was actively advertising her single lifestyle to anyone who would listen. The younger employee even took her out on several dates, and the two seemed to be keeping their romantic lives and their professional lives separate.

Unfortunately for the younger guy, he and the Redditor discovered that she had been hiding her marriage of over 16 years. When the employee decided to get even with his coworker, things went south very quickly and HR ended up getting involved. Keep scrolling below for the full story. For more, check out this post about a company that tried to steal a job candidate's idea.




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Mother appoints her brother to be her 3 under 10-year-old children's unpaid personal chef: '[She] expect[s] me to make something every day for the kids'

Meals are undoubtedly one of the most important daily chores, along with sleep. Being properly fed is one of the things that everything else in a successful and happy life stems from. But providing healthy meals for your family isn't cheap… Have you seen the price of groceries these days? And the time it takes to cook and clean for an entire family can't be understated. So, undoubtedly, the combination of those two things, the time and the price of the actual food, would be supremely valuable. 

Of course, you can just trick your sous-chef brother into cooking for your three children instead. Surely, if he's willing to do it once for free, you can just ask him to do it again and again. Even when it comes to family, there's a limit to the favors you're expected to perform, and there's a point where demanding favors just becomes freeloading and entitlement




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Happy Friday from Marlowe and Her Dad

Have a wonderful weekend, friends.




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What happened to the Share button in Zoom?

Zoom has always included a clickable button/badge at the top left of its primary meeting interface window. Click the badge to copy the URL of that meeting. You can then, with just one more click in any messaging system, send that URL to the other meeting participants. Fast. Simple. Drop-dead easy. Elegant. It comes in […]

The post What happened to the Share button in Zoom? appeared first on Zeldman on Web and Interaction Design.




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UK's Ukraine support 'resolute' after Trump win

Darren Jones says there "shouldn't be an element of conceding to illegal invasions from Russia".




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Macron and Starmer vow 'unwavering' Ukraine support

The leaders' discussions also focused on the Middle East and the problems caused by migration in Europe.





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Tech Life: Mapping a changing world

How live updating of online maps is helping humanitarian work around the world.




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How does WhatsApp make money? It's free - with some tricks

We all use messaging apps such as WhatsApp for free, but what's in it for them?




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Trump says Apple boss called him to complain about EU

The EU ordered Apple to pay Ireland billions in unpaid taxes in September.




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Apple's AI features roll out on iPhones - but not for all

The new features include notification summaries and tools to assist users in writing messages.




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Snapchat most-used app for grooming, says NSPCC

The children's charity says the police data shows people are "still waiting" for social media to be made safe,




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NatWest blocks staff from using WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger

Employees must stick to official channels to make sure their messages are fully retrievable.




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iPhone and iPad app update

On Tuesday we are releasing an update to the BBC News iPhone and iPad app in the UK designed to make the app faster and more stable, with bigger, better quality images on the home screen.


We are busy doing some research and thinking at the moment about what people are looking for in our News apps in the longer term, but we thought that in the meantime, it was important to fix one or two bugs affecting some users of the existing app and to make it a better, slicker experience overall.

We want to make sure the current app remains a great way to get a quick overview of the top stories across a wide range of subjects, easy-to-scan on a mobile and, once the stories have loaded, handy to read offline too.

So, it will now be quicker to start up the app and to update it, and it should feel smoother and faster as you scroll and swipe through the screens and stories.

The larger homescreen images we've introduced serve two purposes:

  • first, you can see what's in them more clearly and there's more room for the headline
  • second, their positioning makes it clearer that you can scroll horizontally in each news category to reveal more stories (we noticed that in user testing some people assumed there were only three stories a section).

There is a new layout on iPad when you view the home screen in portrait mode - designed to show more headlines and make it easier to find the stories you're interested in.

Among the bugs that we've fixed is an issue that sometimes caused the app to get stuck when updating, and another where you sometimes saw duplicate stories within a single news category.

For our product team, these improvements required a fairly major reworking of the app's code. The good news is that they are now working from a more stable base which can be built on with new features and functionality. This revising of our code is something we've already done with our Android app, so we'll now be able to release upgrades simultaneously on both iOS and Android, which are by far the largest mobile platforms for us in terms of users. This latest update is already available internationally.

If you're a user of the app, or decide to try it out, we hope you'll like the improvements we've made. And as we think about our apps generally and plan our next steps, we'd like to hear about what you'd most like to see in future.

Steve Herrmann is editor of the BBC News website.




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Jury shown video of father slapping Sara Sharif

The home video was filmed less than 13 months before Sara was found dead with multiple injuries.




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BBC News app

Top stories, breaking news, live reporting, and follow news topics that match your interests




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Pepper ready to realise Paralympic dream

Dan Pepper faces crunch time at the GB swimming trials as an athlete with a learning disability.




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Simmonds opposes Paralympic merger

Double Paralympic champion Eleanor Simmonds says she would not support any plan to combine the Olympic and Paralympic Games.




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Huge fire engulfs shopping centre in Brazil

There have been no reported fatalities, according to the fire department.




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McCloskey has change of opponent

Paul McCloskey has a change of opponent for his contest on 5 May after former IBF champion Julio Diaz pulls out of the bout.




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India Nature Watch - grasshopper

id please




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India Nature Watch - Pygmy Grasshopper




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Hughes loses 50-day ban appeal

Top jockey Richard Hughes will miss the first month of the new Flat season after he failed to overturn a 50-day ban incurred in India.




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Tax-News.com: COVID-19: Philippines Further Extends Multiple Tax Deadlines

The Philippines has announced that it will again extend tax filing and payment deadlines, following the prolongation of restrictive measures during the coronavirus outbreak.




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Tax-News.com: Philippines Moots Digital Tax

A proposal has been put forward for a digital services tax regime in the Philippines.




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Tax-News.com: Russian Duma Approves Changes To Luxembourg And Cyprus DTAs

At its December 22 plenum, Russia's lower house of parliament approved revisions to the country's double tax agreements with Cyprus and Luxembourg.




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Tax-News.com: German Cabinet Approves COVID-19 VAT Cut For Catering

On May 6, 2020, the German Cabinet adopted the draft Coronavirus Tax Assistance Act, which provides for a temporary reduction in value-added tax on food served in catering outlets.




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Tax-News.com: German Cabinet Approves COVID-19 Stimulus Package

A EUR130bn (USD148bn) fiscal stimulus package with numerous tax measures, intended to help revive the German economy following the COVID-19 pandemic, was approved by the Federal Cabinet on June 12, 2020.




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Tax-News.com: German Parliament Approves COVID-19 Tax Package

Both houses of the German parliament have now approved the EUR130bn (USD146bn) COVID-19 economic stimulus plan, which includes numerous tax relief measures.




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Tax-News.com: German Tax Payment Relief For Airports Approved By EU

The European Commission has approved a broader support package, proposed by authorities in Germany, for German airport operators.




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Tax-News.com: Russia's Cabinet Approves Maltese DTA Amendments

Russia's Government has approved wording for a draft Protocol that it will seek to conclude with Malta, to revise their double tax agreement to increase withholding tax rates at source for cross-border dividends and interest income.




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Tax-News.com: Malta To Continue To Apply EUR20,000 VAT Registration Threshold

Malta has received approval from EU authorities to extend its heightened value-added tax registration threshold for certain suppliers of services.




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Tax-News.com: BVI Says New Global Tax Rules Should Appreciate Offshore IFCs

The British Virgin Islands Government has released a statement expressing concerns on the proposals being discussed by the OECD to establish modernized rules for the digitalized economy, including a minimum global corporate tax rate.




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Tax-News.com: Colombia Enacts Decree To Support Struggling Firms

The Colombian Government has issued Decree 939 of August 19, 2021, which enables the tax agency to revise an assessment for potentially viable companies that are facing insolvency, where doing so may save the company and jobs.