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Death at Morning House by Maureen Johnson

Death at Morning House is a YA that’s part historical mystery, part haunted house story. I enjoyed it, but I kept getting pulled out of the story because it seemed wildly implausible to me that the kids in the book were as unsupervised as they were. In the present day, Marlowe Wexler is struggling with teenage awkwardness and realizing her own queer identity. When the book opens, she’s house-sitting for a friend of the family … Continue reading Death at Morning House by Maureen Johnson





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Tribal Alliance Against Frauds Says Colby Wilkens is Not Indigenous

Here is a news report that absolutely dropped my jaw: the Tribal Alliance Against Frauds (TAAF) has released a report that debut romance author Colby Wilkens, whose bio says she is of Choctaw and Cherokee descent, has no Native ancestry.  The TAAF “is an intertribal anti-fraud non-profit whistleblower organization comprised of allies and citizens of Tribes whose sovereignty has been formally acknowledged.” Wilkens is the author of If I Stopped Haunting You, which released last week … Continue reading Tribal Alliance Against Frauds Says Colby Wilkens is Not Indigenous




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Augmented Reality

Tolerability




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Caucus

I'm gonna be at Gencon this August! I'll have some books and stuff and will be doing sketches and complimenting your pet photos. SEE YOU THERE???




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What's Bugging Aurelia

house centipedes are our friends. our creepy, disturbing little friends.




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nothing was my fault

Today on Toothpaste For Dinner: nothing was my fault


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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just because i said

Today on Toothpaste For Dinner: just because i said


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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smiling and or laughin

Today on Toothpaste For Dinner: smiling and or laughin


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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This weekend: I’m in Juneau!

After a very long time with no appearances, I’m pleased to say I’ll be in Juneau, Alaska this weekend with books, trinkets and sketches! The 2024 Alaska Robotics Minicon takes place on Saturday, April 27 at the APK Libraries, Archives, and Museum building. I’ll also be doing a presentation the night before, Friday 4/26, at the kickoff variety show at the Mendenhall Valley Library. The full events schedule is here!





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Mother bans adult daughter from family Thanksgiving after she refuses to host the event: 'I made it very clear she needed to stay true to her word and if she dumped it on someone else she wouldn't be going to Thanksgiving'

Hosting events is a lot of work; there's a house to be cleaned, food to be prepped, and a lot of general setup that needs to be taken care of. When it's family, it's even more so to do—it's probably a good idea to hide the things your family won't approve of and save yourself the judgment.

Family hosting schedules help to ease the burden of any one person having to host too often, and the reality is that for a member of the family to drop from hosting duties places a disproportionate amount of responsibility on the other members of the family to host additional events.

The problem is this assumes that each member of the family is equally able to host in the first place. The reality is this is never the case. Some people, usually older members of the family, have homes with more space for hosting more people and the space to store the things necessary for hosting a large family. Many of us, particularly in our younger adult years, live in spaces that we'd be horrified to let our family into.




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'My dad’s beautiful brain started thinking': Karen neighbor insists HOA remove neighbor's boat from view, neighbor maliciously complies with her demands

Minding your business? This woman has never heard of such a thing. She's being a rather nosy neighbor, as u/Ok-One-3240 shared in their family's story of malicious compliance

Some people just can't help being busybodies. They have too much time on their hands, and they're going to make it everyone else's problem, too. This person shares that their family enjoyed living in a gated community, and they spent a good amount of time using their boat. Each weekend, they'd take the boat out for a few days, then store it again for the rest of the week. As long as the boat wasn't within view of the street, their local HOA had no problem with it. That's a common issue that people seem to have with their HOAs… who cares if you can see someone's boat? It's a pretty frivolous rule in the first place, and this person mentions that their HOA didn't really enforce the rule too strongly.

Then along comes this busybody neighbor who decides to make it her mission to bug the boat family. Read the whole dramatic story below. 

Up next, read about what happened when this 17-year-old babysat her aunt's kids and helped herself to a piece of cake… from a dessert that cost $90! 




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'His hand pauses in midair': Front desk attendant gets scolded for using his phone at work, instead he maliciously complies with company policy by wasting other precious office resources

No personal cell phones? Okay. This employee took his malicious compliance to the next level after getting scolded one too many times for using his cell phone on the job. 

I get it… It doesn't look good for a hotel receptionist to scroll memes while the line at the concierge starts to grow. Smacking your gum, rolling your eyes, and scrolling endlessly really isn't something you're supposed to be doing at work, but as many of us forget, our phones are actually super useful little tools. We've grown accustomed to traveling around all day with a tiny computer in our pocket that it's easy to let slip their more convenient functions. The front desk reception guy in our next tale knew all the ways his phone could help out clients, but after his manager got on his back about using his personal device on the clock, he decided to use the second language translating tool at his disposal. 

Keep scrolling to read how an employee turned a spiteful MC into a memorable guest experience when a traveler needed help with a quick translation.




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14-year-old daughter asks her mom to tell her the truth about how she looks, 39-year-old Karen mother does not mince her words: 'I told her she was average-looking'

Sure, honesty may seem like the best policy, but this Karen of a mother took things way too far.

At first, when reading about her seemingly genuine concern over her teenage daughter's body insecurity, one might think that this is an attentive, caring, and decent parent. However, when her daughter asked her to honestly tell her the truth about how she looks, this Karen thought it would be a good idea to tell her that she is, in fact, only average-looking. Her supposed point was to inform her daughter that most people in the world are average-looking, but as one might expect, this "truth-telling" moment did not sit well with a 14-year-old. 

When the mother shared her side of the story on Reddit, people eviscerated her in the comments section, and rightfully so. Keep scrolling below for the full story and for the best reactions from other mothers and daughters. For more, check out this post about a husband and wife's heated argument over money.




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18-year-old stepdaughter refuses to accept younger stepdaughter and 39-year-old stepmother, stepmother tells her to move out: 'I told her that if she hates us so much then she can leave'

At 18, you are an adult in every sense of the word. Sure, your frontal lobe hasn't fully developed, and you're going to make a whole lot of bad choices over the next seven or so years, but the difference between 17 and 18 is that you're going to be solely responsible—and accountable—for those decisions. That means the way you engage your personal relationships and the decisions you make for your future are on you, despite your relative inability to properly rationalize them and your lack of experience in making them.

If you're fortunate and privileged, you'll still have the support of parents, guardians, and other mentors who push you in the right direction. If you're even more fortunate, you get to spend these years in a structured simulation environment called "college," where you get to engage with other frontal-lobe-ly challenged "adults" where you can go on adventures and make all kinds of terrible decisions that you'll look fondly on and/or regret for the rest of your life. But regardless of whether or not you attend this life-simulator, you're going to have to start getting your act together and taking responsibility, which is why the behavior of this 18-year-old, despite her tragic background, needs to desperately be adjusted.

This stepmother has been really struggling to develop a closer relationship with her 18-year-old stepdaughter, who has not adjusted well to her blended family, saying horrible things about her stepmother, who she has known as a parental figure for most of her life. This tragically complex situation is probably a signifier of some underlying trauma that the young woman is dealing with, but it prompted the stepmother to turn to this online community to see whether or not she was in the wrong for telling her stepdaughter to leave their home, to which the young woman complied.




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‘I got extra pay, a box of chocolates, [and] an apology': Karen gets fired after screaming for 40 minutes at a customer service rep because they refuse to break company policy

Is it really so difficult to be kind to the customer service person trying to troubleshoot your problem over the phone? I get it, everything's falling to pieces on your end, but it doesn't make any logical sense to be unsavory to the one person who can actually help you.  

This Karen in our next story proved that being aggressive over the phone doesn't get you everything you want, and sometimes it can get you fired…. Or maybe even investigated by the Feds. 

Imagine, this customer service employee was about 15 seconds from clocking out for the day–it was Friday at 4:59:45 PM and they were grabbing their coats on their way out and the blasted phone rang. Seeing that the number was from an internal caller, as in, someone within their company, the employee thought this would be a simple thing to solve and that they could make quick work of their coworker's problem. Except, the woman on the other end of the line wasn't looking for solutions, she was looking for a customer service rep to break the rules for her. 

Keep scrolling to see how a 40-minute IT support call turned into an apology letter, a box of chocolates, and an immediate, dishonorable resignation. 




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Dad gets back at teenage stepdaughters for making his 16-year-old daughter sleep on the floor of their hotel room: 'I gave my daughter an entire room for herself'

Who knew that evil stepsisters were still a thing? One would think these two teenagers would get a grip and be kind to the Cinderella of this story, rather than lean into the Evil Stepsister caricature. Unfortunately, however, they could not help themselves.

This Redditor was traveling with his family for a memorial service, and his wife booked a hotel room for his daughter Shiloh and two stepdaughters to share. Things went a bit south when the stepdaughters insisted that Shiloh sleep on the floor. When the original poster (OP) discovered that this was going on, he told Shiloh to pack her things and immediately booked her a separate hotel room.

This ultimately backfired as the two stepdaughters went crying and complaining to OP's wife (their mother), accusing OP of playing favorites. The fact that OP's wife had the audacity to not hear and empathize with her husband's side of the story leads us to believe that this second marriage is unlikely to work out. For more stories like this, check out this post about some Thanksgiving drama.




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25 Job Hunting Memes for Exhausted Resume Jockeys

Having a job is a requirement in today's society. In fact, having multiple jobs is kind of a requirement these days… So many are on that job hunting grind. That LinkedIn warriors kind of life, ya know? Every day you're checking your messages and crossing your fingers for a recruiter or some company's HR to give you a chance. Why not? You have the experience! Oh, but sorry, they need 30 years of experience for an entry level job. How is a 20-something-year-old supposed to get 30 years or experience?? Also, what's with the whole "just upload your resume!" but then they literally make you still type out everything that is on your resume? That is SO annoying. And cover letters. The BANE of anybody searching for a job's existence. Like, "here's a cute little love letter as to why you should love me back." Gross. Can we please just be professional and get back to memes?? Thank you. 




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‘I’m not giving you my cat’: Entitled mom asks cat owner to ‘loan’ her their cat for her daughter's birthday party, owner refuses but mom shows up on their doorstep the day of the party

First and foremost, pet owners are very protective of their animals. Rightfully so, as you never know what kind of crazy is lurking around the corner. It's in the owner and their pet's best interest that they don't let just anybody hang around their animals or watch them unsupervised. 

If someone wants to be in an animal's company, they better go adopt their own! It's not up to pet owners to fulfill an entitled person's pet fantasy for a day, especially after they refused to do so on multiple occasions. The pet parent in this story experienced this first-hand.

An entitled neighborhood mom asked the original poster (OP) if they could lend her family their cat for her daughter's upcoming birthday party. Cats are not similar to dogs in the way they interact with humans, and the pet owner politely refused. They didn't want to put their cat in an uncomfortable position. The entitled mother doubles down and exclaims that the pet owner "owes it to the community" to have their cat, Mochi, attend her daughter's birthday party. 

The pet owner thought she got it through the mother's head that no means no, but the mother shows up at their doorstep with her daughter in an attempt to guilt-trip them. Scroll to read.




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'Had to sit in different seats at the theater because this is what we found': 20+ Movie theater moments that made people want to walk out early

Going to the movie theater is all fun and games until you remember you have to deal with the general populace while there. 

For many people, having a night at the movies is the perfect way to view the newest blockbuster. There's nothing like the feeling of entering the theater and smelling that strong popcorn scent. You get your tickets and snacks, then make your way to your seat to watch a bunch of trailers. (Some people don't like watching trailers, but I think it's a good way to get your money's worth out of your excursion!) Then you settle in to watch the film on the giant screen in total darkness.

Well, that's the ideal situation. But I'm sure you know that the people below had much worse movie dates than that. For example, a shocking amount of people enjoy using multiple screens during the showing. Some pull out their phones at full brightness. Others will shell out $20 for a ticket, only to pull out their laptops and work the whole time (or at least until the manager tells them to knock it off). And that's just one of the numerous issues that these movie-goers encountered… check out a bunch more below. 

Up next, read about the single very silly reason this manager refused to hire a qualified barista, saying that "[It] is just really tacky.




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Aug 3, 2007




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August 13, 2004




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Cartoons from the August 7, 2023, Issue


Cartoons from the August 7, 2023, Issue




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Cartoons from the August 14, 2023, Issue


Cartoons from the August 14, 2023, Issue




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Cartoons from the August 21, 2023, Issue


Cartoons from the August 21, 2023, Issue




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Cartoons from the August 28, 2023, Issue


Cartoons from the August 28, 2023, Issue




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Restaurant workers' jobs threatened by Budget, bosses warn

Hospitality bosses are calling for changes to what they describe as "unsustainable" tax rises.






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Probability of operating an alarm clock Rubix cube, doable with hours of concentration Qauntum physicists have yet to unravel the mysteries

Probability of operating an alarm clock





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Why there's a rush of African satellite launches

Falling launch costs have given African nations a chance to send their own satellites into orbit.




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Tech Life: Olympic esports and Saudi Arabia

The IOC announced the inaugural games will be hosted by Saudi Arabia. Not all are happy




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Facebook and Instagram launch celebrity scam ad crackdown

Celebrities including Elon Musk and Martin Lewis repeatedly feature in ads for products they have not endorsed.




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Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 launches with eyes on Game Pass

It is available straight away to subscribers of Microsoft’s Game Pass service, a first for a game this big.




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Australia plans social media ban for under-16s

The government says it wants to mitigate the "harm" social media is inflicting on children.




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'I was moderating hundreds of horrific and traumatising videos'

The BBC speaks to social media moderators, whose job it is to find and remove distressing and illegal content.




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Sale on The Law Audiobook

Through March 31st, the audiobook edition of The Law is 80% off on Audible!




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eBookDaily Deal on The Aeronaut’s Windlass

Get it for $2.99 today!




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'My autistic son is like a prisoner in hospital'

Sebastian has been deemed fit for discharge but the 19-year-old has nowhere suitable to go.




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VW launches $5.8bn tie-up with Tesla rival Rivian

The firms will share EV technology as they face slowing demand and competition from Chinese rivals.




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Dating fraudster could have scammed 'hundreds' more women

Women were seen as targets by a serial scammer, but together they ensured he would face the truth.




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British author Samantha Harvey wins Booker with space story

The first book set in space to win, Orbital follows astronauts in the International Space Station.




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'My wife died because the NHS used cheap labour'

Roy Pollitt's wife died after a physician associate mistakenly left a drain in her body for 21 hours.




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Year ban hurt me - champion Bauge

Gregory Bauge, who beat Jason Kenny to track cycling's sprint world title in Melbourne, says the fallout from his year-long ban still 'hurts'.




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Hoy takes audacious keirin gold

Sir Chris Hoy concludes the World Track Cycling in Melbourne with a stunning ride to win the men's keirin gold medal.



  • Cycling - Track

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India Nature Watch - <h1> <font color = blue> Blue mud dauber wasp <h1/p>

Thanks to Sivakumar ji for correcting the ID.

Family: Scoliidae




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No hurry on Kauto Star - Nicholls

Talk of retiring two-time Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Kauto Star would be "very premature", says trainer Paul Nicholls.




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Tax-News.com: Netherlands Mulling Tax System Overhaul

The Dutch Government has submitted a report to parliament which includes an extensive set of proposals intended to improve and "future-proof" the country's tax system.