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Supersized Edition of Books on Sale!

There is a huge list of amazing Kindle Daily Deals, so I decided to just go overboard in listing some highlights. 




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Gift Guide 2024: Subscription Boxes – Especially Book Boxes!

We’re back with your, and our, weekly Gift Guides! Every Wednesday until the week before Christmas (AND Hanukkah?!) we’ll be sharing links, suggestions, and ideas for holiday gifts. We want to hear yours, too! For our first Gift Guide, we wanted to share some book subscription boxes that are making us VERY happy, especially those that are from small independent booksellers. NB: some links in this and future gift guides include affiliate links which send … Continue reading Gift Guide 2024: Subscription Boxes – Especially Book Boxes!




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Going Vape Shitt

A good day to be Willow




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Conducting Experiments

Poke poke poke




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The Greeting Of Her People

I'm gonna be at Gencon at booth 1237 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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Full Penetration

I'm gonna be at Gencon at booth 1237 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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It Really Happens




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They're A Serif Sort Of Person




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Peer Reviewed Romance

wait, who's funding this research anyway




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the worlds oldest person

Today on Toothpaste For Dinner: the worlds oldest person


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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the problem with poor people

Today on Toothpaste For Dinner: the problem with poor people


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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people should be less greedy

Today on Toothpaste For Dinner: people should be less greedy


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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impending doom

Today on Toothpaste For Dinner: impending doom


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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spelled bubes

Today on Toothpaste For Dinner: spelled bubes


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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positive habits for healthy people

Today on Toothpaste For Dinner: positive habits for healthy people


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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people these days

Today on Toothpaste For Dinner: people these days


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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'As the breadwinner, you hold all the leverage': Husband refuses to spend $2,000 on wedding gift for wife's friend, wife tallies up his recreational finances

It seems that both parties are at fault here. On the one hand, you have the Redditor, who is the breadwinner of the family. He recently brought home a bonus of $3,000, a bonus that his wife wanted to be mostly used to pay for a wedding gift for her friend. Now, this friend frequently extends financial generosity to the Redditor's wife when they socialize together. It makes logical sense that the wife would want to pay her friend back for all the meals and financial assistance her friend provided to her over the years during difficult times. However, spending $2K out of your husband's $3K bonus on a necklace does not seem like the kind of idea her husband would be happy with. Naturally, this started a heated argument between the two spouses.

This conflict led to the wife tallying up all her husband's expenses on recreational activities, such as hobbies or the two cars he owns. Clearly, he is not the most generous spouse either, especially since his wife still needs help with her personal finances from her friend. Keep scrolling below to see what people had to say to this guy in the comments section. For more, check out this post about a 40-year-old who was passed over for a promotion in favor of a younger coworker.




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'Not a single person ever paid me back': Man loans friends over $18,000, friends avoid repaying him for years

This person is lending out way too much money to their friends! There's only so much you can do for your friends before you're officially the one being taken advantage of. After all, friendship is supposed to be a give-and-take. You laugh together and cry together. You listen to their troubles and they listen to yours. If it's not reciprocal, it can leave one or both of you with conflicting feelings. You might start to wonder why you're always the one who has to pay the bill at the end of a meal because your friend keeps insisting they've fallen on hard times. Or in this person's case, you might accidentally loan your friends thousands of dollars over time, leaving you with an entire friend group who owes you big.

This person, u/mastagoose, has learned the hard way that they need to be cautious when mixing money with friendship. There's that common rule that states that if you're going to loan someone money, just give it as a gift, and don't expect to get it back. That way, there won't be any hard feelings when you notice your friend wearing a new outfit or buying an expensive meal, knowing that they haven't paid you back. This guy not only hasn't forgotten about their numerous loans to friends, but they made a list about it, and the people of the internet were not exactly kind to them. Instead, they were repeatedly told that they should stop lending people money ASAP. Maybe they'll take the internet's advice! 

Up next, read about one 22-year-old employee who "decided to start including the Chairman/CEO…on all emails" in order to get their coworkers to reply to their emails. 




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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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'She has a temper [...] I hate her': 16-year-old girl refuses to tutor her terrible 15-year old sister despite parents' threats of punishment

We're often taught that we have an obligation to love our family and that "blood is thicker than water." While this is overly simplistic, I think it remains true that we should try harder to make things work with our family than we would with other random people. We should seek to resolve issues that reasonably can be resolved with a higher obligation than we would with friends and acquaintances. But even with family, there is a point where cutting ties becomes the only option.

Still, these sisters may come to find they grow closer as they grow older and as whatever chip this younger sister has on her shoulder subsides and she matures—or they may never come to find common ground, with old deep cuts festering and becoming impossible to resolve and move past. But, for now, it's hard to say that the older sister is wrong for not wanting to help her sister out. Siblings are going to fight, but there's a point where things go way too far, and the parents desperately need to intervene. Perhaps the parents would be better off just hiring a tutor to help her with the subjects she's falling behind in.




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'Leaving was the best thing I did': Employer of 3 years hires new employee at $30k higher than experienced worker, they quit

It's no secret that a lot of employers in as many industries allocate more budget to hiring than they do to staff retention. This is a bit silly when you consider that large organizations will go on to spend tens of thousands of dollars on recruiting, onboarding, and training processes—in addition to value lost due to lost time and productivity of vacant roles. Though some of this cost is silent or not immediately apparent on the books and, in contrast, the idea of approving even half that money in the upfront cost of giving a raise is daunting. While this is an organizational flaw that often occurs, there are, of course, more intentional reasons why employers choose not to give their workers even deserved raises.

Whatever the reason or cause, unfortunately, this ends up with a turnover of the most experienced staff who are frustrated at their own lack of advancement and pay that is falling behind the market rate, discovering that new hires are being paid more than them despite their experience and contribution.

That's what this worker in a "niche" field discovered had happened when they learned that their employer of 3 years had hired a new hire at $30k more than they were currently earning. Frustrated, they found a new job as fast as possible.




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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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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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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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'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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Peggle Replays




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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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rest in peace, bob newhart

When I worked on Big Bang Theory, each episode involved a few days of rehearsal before we did camera blocking and the actual taping in front of the audience. Most […]




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The perils of wokeness

The latest Stephanie Stirling video dropped a tantalizing mention. There exists something called a “woke content detector“, which is basically a small group of self-appointed censors who are busily telling everyone which video games are bad. Not particularly interesting, except that the criteria they use to decide which games are too woke are hilarious. They […]



  • Miscellaneous and Meta

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Science needs specific, informed, productive criticism

Professor Dave demolishes Sabine Hossenfelder. I feel that. The topic of my history class last week and this week is about bias in late 19th/early 20th century evolutionary biology, and how we have to be critical and responsible in our assessment of scientific claims. It’s tough, because I’m strongly pro-science (obviously, I hope?) but I […]




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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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Badenoch's win and Labour's big Budget mean we now have sharper left-right divide

With the government announcing big spending and tax, the differences between the two main parties feel sharper, writes Laura Kuenssberg.




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Return of unpredictable president puts UK defence spending top of agenda

Politicians say we're living in dangerous times, and Trump is a lot less willing than Biden to pay for Europe's defence.




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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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MPs back end of House of Lords hereditary peers

The proposals will now undergo further scrutiny in the Lords, where they are expected to face tough opposition.







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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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How pen and paper comes to the rescue in an IT crisis

Firms are advised to practise operating with pens and paper in case of a computer meltdown.




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Worker shortage hampers datacentre boom

Despite offering high pay companies that build datacentres are struggling to find skilled staff.




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How the Falklands conflict shaped my identity

The British overseas territory was invaded 40 years ago, beginning a short but bitter conflict.