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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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Cousin tries to guilt-trip woman into giving up family heirloom their grandma personally left to her in her will, woman refuses but family is divided: ‘She hoped I’d keep it safe’

When a family member we hold near and dear to our hearts passes on to the next life, everything they leave behind holds astronomically more sentimental value—especially those who had special bonds with this family member. We can only hope that this family member can live on in the life they lived with and without us, and the items they pass down to us stick with us for as long as we are here, too.

That's the thing about passing on—this event really makes certain individuals show their true colors. Family members who have been nice to you all of your life now turn sour. Others creep out of the woodwork and assume they were grandma's favorite (which means they get everything she left in the will, despite her last wishes.) It's baffling that some folks use somber life events like this to gain something instead of grieving, going so far as to try and rip family heirlooms away from those who have the legal right to keep them.

The woman in this story is dealing with an entitled cousin who, despite not having a close, personal relationship with their grandmother, automatically assumes she is entitled to a necklace grandma left behind. Their grandmother personally gave the woman this necklace in hopes that she'd "treasure" it, and also wrote it into her will before she left them. Their family is divided, though it doesn't make sense as to why. Going against someone's last wishes in order to "keep the peace" is an entitlement that knows no bounds.





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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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'[I] asked for a 15k raise': Hybrid employee pressured to come into the office 5 days a week, employee refuses to give in without his promised promotion

Let this story serve as a friendly reminder to stand up for what you were hired for in the first place. If your boss tries to impose new rules and regulations, new responsibilities, and new expectations that were not expressly written in your initial contract, then you are well within your right to advocate for yourself. That means advocating for a raise or promotion if you feel compelled to do so. It can also mean enforcing what's currently written in your contract if you do not wish to accept the new changes. Be prepared to receive some pushback, of course, but again, you have some leverage here.

This hybrid employee was hired with the expectation that he could spend two days working remotely, which was convenient for his family and young kid. When his boss suddenly decided to adjust those expectations and demand that he come into the office five days a week, the employee stood his ground and said he would only do so if he were granted a 15k raise. This led to a difficult negotiation process, but folks like us are proud of the original poster (OP) for not backing down. For more stories like this, check out this post about a company that tried to steal a job candidate's idea.




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'He was a nightmare': Employee's savage review after quitting exposes entitled boss, leads to their termination

When you're applying for jobs, you're probably checking out every online review you can find to dodge any potential red flags. After all, who wants to go through multiple interviews only to discover that the company's run by an entitled boss who thinks coworkers should act like "family"? Hard pass. Sites that let employees rate companies are a goldmine for honest feedback—sometimes with details that make you grateful for the warning.

Well, after one employee spent six grueling months working under a new VP, they tried to clue in the higher-ups about just how awful the new boss was. When the owner didn't take their concerns seriously, they took things a step further, leaving a brutally honest review that laid everything bare. The best part is it worked. The entitled boss eventually got the boot, and the company's culture finally went back to normal. Unfortunately, the original employee who exposed the mess had already quit—but at least they left with a story of sweet, well-deserved karma.




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'I didn't even think it was possible to get fired at orientation': 20+ Employees who were stunned to be fired for their big mistakes

In case you've never considered it before, yes, you can get fired at your job orientation. It probably makes things easier for the hiring team. Why bother hiring a person who can't even make it through the first few days of the gig?

Some people get hired at a job, but they make it clear from day one that they're just utterly uninterested in doing work for even a minute. One guy chose to only work from 10 AM-12 PM each day, which is iconic of him, and I wish him all the best. Another woman became notorious for her habit of refusing to work, and only riding the office tricycle all day! It's pretty startling that some people make it so blatantly obvious how little they want to work. Have some subtlety! Just do what a lot of higher-ups do and work half a day, grab a long lunch with your coworkers, then claim you're taking a phone meeting and leave at 3 PM. How hard could it be to get away with that? Keep scrolling to read some of the funniest stories about coworkers getting fired early on. 

After that, read the tale of the babysitter who ate about $25 of a $90 cake, and the woman she babysat for (her own aunt!) wants to be repaid ASAP. 




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Stage mom of 16-year-old divorces husband via email, CC's his entire family and friend group: '[He's] unable to adapt to any change'

There's divorce, and then there's burning every bridge you've ever built! This stage mom of a 16-year-old is sharing her story about what happened when she and her husband decided to call it quits via email, and it is a messy story. 

I suppose every divorce is messy in its own way. Some couples face cheating allegations, with one partner losing trust in their spouse. Others realize they're just not compatible anymore, and have different life goals. And of course, it's always more complicated when family is involved, whether that's having a bunch of kids or having parents who live at home (or both). 

It's not like you can totally keep the public out of the loop when you divorce your spouse. You'll have to pack up everything you own and move, sign legal documents, and face big life changes. Still, the way this stage mom went about it had people on the r/AITAH subreddit calling her out for her behavior. Check out the full story below and see if you side with her or her husband. 

Up next, read about these employees who got fired almost as soon as they started the job, like one dude who refused to wear safety gear, telling the supervisor "no" to his face! 




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Stepsisters hide 18-year-old's passport so she would miss the family vacation and take care of the kids, father retaliates by cancelling the whole trip: 'I was livid'

There is a lot of irresponsible parenting in this story. First, let's start with the stepsisters in question. This is a pair of 25 and 28-year-old single moms who were so reliant on the Redditor's 18-year-old daughter to babysit their kids that they couldn't possibly get a real babysitter to take care of them. So when it came time for a family vacation, the stepsisters tried to convince the Redditor's daughter to stay behind, despite the fact that she wanted to partake in some much-deserved time off as well.

Then, there's the Redditor's wife, who tried to defend her fully-grown daughters for trying to sabotage the 18-year-old's ability to join the family on the trip. These ladies stole her passport, leaving the 18-year-old and her father scrambling just hours before their flight departure. Tension was so high between all the members of the family that the Redditor decided to cancel the entire trip. Looks like his stepdaughters would have to take care of their own kids for a change.

Keep scrolling below for the full story and for the best reactions from folks in the comments section. For more, check out this post about a Thanksgiving meltdown.




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'I am not allowed to do anything': Retail worker faces down angry parents after colleague sells parents the wrong computer for kid's gaming ambitions, prevented from helping them by silly company policy

Working retail is a hectic and endless stream of customer interactions that balance on a knife's edge, with any one of them threatening to teeter off into a full-blown customer meltdown with possibly little to no cause. It's a way of living that leaves you emotionally drained and completely exasperated, while weekends end up giving you just enough time to self-isolate and prepare for your next shift.

Meanwhile, despite claiming to have the customer's best interest at heart, upper management makes decisions that only serve to maximize their own bonuses and profit, putting you directly in the firing line for even more hostile interactions with customers. They'll enact some broad-sweeping policy that flies in the face of logical reason and expect you to follow it to the letter, vaguely implying serious consequences should you not blindly obey and refuse to listen to the insistence of everyone that their plan is a bad one. Then, acting like it's the worker's fault when they receive customer complaints about their policy. That's what this retail worker shared experiencing when they recounted this story from their days in retail, facing down belligerent customers whilst handling bizarre directives from their superiors.




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News: THE STATE OF THE COMIC: 09/18/2017

Lots of subjects! This is going to be a long one I think!


I’m Behind on Everything! But I’m catching up with a smile on my face!
There’s a lot missing from the site! Defenders content, contact info, Dialogue Search, etc. And things left to automate too! News Headlines, Forums, Comics Posting; all these things are not automated yet. But we’re making progress, a little bit every day.
On a personal note, I’m feeling my way through the way I want everything to happen in this new lifestyle of mine. There’ll be some growing pains as I flex my elbows and shape my schedule. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed right now with the new little details in my life, but every day gets a little more shiny! Give me a month or two and we should have our groove back!

On the Comic Itself: I know it’s been cliffhanger after cliffhanger in the strip. I really appreciate the elbow room to tell the story right instead of trying to crowbar it all in by the 25th of August.  I really was thinking about doing that. Also I was fearing having to just end things. But as all of this has unfolded I am thrilled to have this happy medium. “The Fall” will run as I always intended! That in and of itself is enough reason to sincerely thank each and every one of you Defenders of the Nifty and New Defenders 20+ for allowing this to happen!


The Store will stay closed for a bit! I’m thinking it won’t  open until October! Maybe later! I can’t even think of fulfilling orders until I get Book 17 locked down and figure out how to get all the bookmarks and pawnz out!


Speaking of The Defenders Exclusive Pawn and Bookmark of the Month: Everybody who’s been a Defender 20+ at Level 2 or higher for all of September will get a digital version of the Dark Gwynn Pawnz and the Dark Gwynn bookmark. Level 3 or higher lands you a printed version sent to you.



This monthly reward-printing is new to me, but I’m sure will go smoothly! I’ll keep y’all posted on that! If you want the yet-undesigned Demon-Spear Psyk Pawnz and Bookmark make sure you’re at level 2 or higher for all of October (level 3 or higher for a printed version)! This is a Public Service Announcement.


On to the biggest thing I need to get my tail in gear on:
The Archives- I need to finish my Archives Approving! This is my new top-of-the-list as of today!  We fixed a lot of the bouncing and bandwidth issues on the archives and got some calendar navigation in! And by “we” I meant ‘Team Not Including Me’. I said at site launch that “Chapters 48-64: Haven’t looked at yet! Uncharted Territory! New Readers AVOID these Chapters, rows of many strips may just be GONE! (It’ll take me maybe a week to clear these up!)” Well I haven’t had that time yet. Who knew lightened my workload was so much work? No more excuses, I’m doing it!!!


BONUS BEHIND THE SCENES: How We Remastered The Impossible Archives:  Here’s some insight on how the bigger archives were created. At one point I was doing one hi-res file per comic. (Back when comics were rarely more than 1 row). Theses would be dropped into books. Then, for the more epic stores I started doing larger comic files. These had to be broken down into multiple pages at book time. Then I was like ‘what a pain in the butt! I’ll just lay these out in book form directly and pluck from them the individual comic files. So some comics crossed pages. Some pages held multiple comics. And the patterns varied over the 20 years Sluggy’d been going on.

We have hi-res pdfs of the books, but sometimes books had different layout, comic order (sometimes holiday stories were moved to the back to the book for example), and the pdfs were sometimes missing filler art, guest artist weeks, and the random wacky things that have fallen into the archives into the years.

So with all that mess, how does one create a higher-res archive?

The team turned a computer into the Ultimate Sluggite! It read every comic, breaking it into slices, pouring over every detail, and matched the low res archives to my hi-res various files. For TWENTY YEARS OF almost DALY STRIPS! That’s 6,696 comics made of 8,445 low res files sliced into 12,215 rows matched against 5,511 high res pages to produce 10,050 matching high res files! THAT’S INSANE! And I dig that one of my biggest fans is a robot forced to be a fan against its will! OK I like to think that way at least!


In conclusion: We’ve done so much! So much left to do! Every day is getting better! THANK YOU DEFENDERS! And this was one long news story!


-Pete




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Comic: 11/13/2024

A new comic has been posted at Sluggy.com!




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ProgCore is Coming

For years, a whole bunch of my friends kept telling me that I needed to meet Todd Stashwick, because we would be fast friends who share a ton of extremely […]




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Six unelected people forcing their unpopular christian nationalist agenda on a population of three hundred and forty million is not a Democracy. It is tyranny.

America has not been attacked like this since 9/11. Six unelected people forcing their christian nationalist agenda on a population of three hundred and forty million is not a Democracy. It is tyranny.




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So that’s how they missed me

The rich have a well-funded network that has been poisoning the collective mind of the country, yet somehow they have failed to penetrate my soft, permeable, liberal skull. How could that be? There it is, they targeted “gaming, sports, fitness” thereby completely bypassing all of my interests. Another point not mentioned: have you ever noticed […]




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You have to admire their cunning

Every year, around this time, as the weather gets colder, we get an influx of mice moving into our house to find refuge. Our cat is useless — she makes a lot of noise, usually in the middle of the night, but she can never deliver the coup de grace. It seems I already have […]




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Screaming Barfies

A term used mostly by [ice climbers] to describe the feeling of having your hands go numb only to come back to feeling with [extreme pain]. The terminology coming from when your hands are coming back to feeling you want to scream and [barf] at the same time.




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Faisal Islam: Reeves doesn't mind if you don't like her Budget

The Budget is about the long game on the economy and Reeves believes the current pain is a price worth paying.




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Kemi Badenoch: Who is new Tory leader and what does she stand for?

Kemi Badenoch is a political trailblazer with a combative style and a mission to renew her party.




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My parents went without to feed me, says Treasury minister

Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones talks to the BBC about his childhood.




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Sinn Féin's difficulty over Michael McMonagle

Senior party figures faced pressure to explain their handling of McMonagle's departure.




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Lammy dismisses past criticism of Trump as 'old news'

The foreign secretary previously called Trump a "tyrant" and "xenophobic" when he was a backbench MP.




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Defence chief calls for more spending on military

Treasury minister Darren Jones says defence spending should rise to 2.5% of GDP, but avoids saying by when.




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Starmer: New UK target for 81% emissions cut by 2035

The PM insists the government will not "tell people how to live their lives" in achieving the aim.







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Crash dummies and robot arms: How airline seats are tested

Building hi-tech airline seats has become a huge business in Northern Ireland.




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The house paints that promise much more than colour

Paints now promise to make your house cooler, warmer, or simply peel off.




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Five tips for turning gaming from a hobby to a job

Gaming: Five tips for turning your hobby into a job




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SpaceX's Polaris Dawn mission blasts off

The expedition, funded by billionaire Jared Isaacman, will attempt the world's first private spacewalk.




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Musk promises self-driving Tesla taxis, but are they safe?

BBC Tech Correspondent Lily Jamali analyses the 'robocabs' and if their technology is up to par.




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Instagram lowering quality of less viewed videos 'alarming' creators

The revelation has sparked concern among some creators it may impact their reach on the platform.




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How X users can earn thousands from US election misinformation and AI images

The accounts are part of pro-Trump and pro-Harris networks sharing each other’s content multiple times a day.




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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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Law firm finds grooming claims against MrBeast co-host baseless

The YouTuber hired the firm to look into claims that a co-host had sent inappropriate messages to a minor.




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Fool Moon Limited Editions

Check out Grim Oak Press for Fool Moon limited editions!




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This weekend at Comicpalooza!

Jim will be attending Comicpalooza May 24th-26th in Houston Texas! Tickets are available on Comicpalooza’s website. For schedules and for any changes in times or location, please visit their website.




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Coming this November to Hal-Con!

Jim will be attending Hal-Con this November 8th-10th in Halifax, Nova Scotia! For tickets, head to Hal-Con.com. Please visit their website for all information about schedules and events.




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A lifetime with the Yanomami

The photographer who spent 50 years fighting to protect indigenous people.




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NunTok: How religion is booming on social media

Nuns, imams and Buddhist monks are among those sharing successful - and often fun - short-form videos on social media.




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TikTok profits from livestreams of families begging

Children are among those pleading for hours for digital gifts, as the company takes a cut of up to 70%.




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Comic for 2021.12.17

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic




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Comic for 2021.12.18

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic




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Comic for 2021.12.19

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic




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Comic for 2021.12.20

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic




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Comic for 2021.12.21

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic




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Jamie Oliver pulls 'offensive' children's book from sale

The 400-page fantasy novel is accused of stereotyping Indigenous Australians.




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'Seminal review can end Premier League deadlock'

EFL chairman Rick Parry tells BBC Sport's Dan Roan about his hopes for the new football regulator as the Football Governance Bill has its second reading before parliament.




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Premier League footballer questioned over rape claims

A Premier League footballer has been further questioned by police over allegations of rape.