IKEA Monkey

Hey.

Read more...

Jaxson is a puppy who loves his family. He enjoys chasing his big sister Chloe around the back yard. He loves to play with all his toys and exploring in his back yard to see if he can find something new to play with. He plays so hard during the day that he sleeps all night long!

Not looking forward to your shower giving an operatic performance every time you bathe? It’s a pretty common problem—showers that make an annoying high-pitched squeal when you run the water—but you can probably fix it yourself.

Read more...

Hello, we are Sadie (blonde) and Flo (tri-color) and we are beagle puppy sisters. We recently found our forever home and love everything about it including our new big sisters and brother. They are two beagles, Jo and Duke, and a Great Dane mix, Doris. They are all very patient with us and will help us as we learn more and more about our new surroundings! We love to explore our new yard and play in Mom's garden. Our favorite time of the day is meal time and we are growing bigger and stronger every day!

There’s a fascinating piece on Flavorwire hero Chuck Tingle at Literary Hub today, and if you fancy yourself as a true buckaroo who knows that love is real, we suggest you head over there and read it as quickly as possible. If you’re still here, though, you might be as surprised as we are to find that Chuck Tingle is… real?

In the world of the internet, of course, it’s hard to know what’s true and what isn’t, and who’s actually on the other end of that screen name or this avatar. Like many others, then, we assumed that Chuck Tingle — our man of the year for 2015, and author of high-concept post-modern erotica like Pounded in the Butt by My Book ‘Pounded in the Butt by My Own Butt’ — was a persona created by some sort of performance artist. Surely the Billings, Montana-based hero who made fools of a bunch of Hugo Award-trolling alt-right clowns and claims grandmastery in taekwondo and a PhD in holistic massage couldn’t be a real person?

Lit Hub’s M. Sophia Newman, however, has done some digging into the Reddit AMAs done by both Tingle and his “handsome son” Jon, and found something overlooked by most until now: Jon, at least, insists that his father’s persona is very much reflective of his actual personality.

“To answer the first question that I always get, Yes, my father is very real,” Jon wrote. “He is an autistic savant, but also suffers from schizophrenia.” Amid the outpouring of attention, this fact has gone mostly unacknowledged. Naomi Kritzer, whose “Cat Pictures Please” beat out Tingle’s Space Raptor Butt Invasion for Best Short Story at the Hugos, said from the stage, “I want to thank Chuck Tingle for his outstanding performance art, and for giving us something to talk about.” But his weirdness is not self-consciously “artistic,” per se. Chuck Tingle’s eccentric style, unique taste, and his freedom to focus on writing e-books has a lot to do with his status as a person with serious mental and neurological disabilities.

This is 100% true — as far as I’m aware, this is the first article on Tingle to take note of Jon’s claims about his father, and trust me, I’ve read pretty much everything written about him. Tingle is certainly self-aware, as his Twitter account demonstrates — earlier this week, he was tweeting about how the inevitable slew of Gamergate hate toward Zoe Quinn’s collaboration with him was the work of men who are “LONESOME SAD MEN or possibly babies.” Should the knowledge that he is — according to his son, at least — not a performance art creation change our attitude to him? I’m not sure that it should, to be honest. Either way, he’s a national treasure, and if he’s happy writing his Tinglers — and, as per Jon’s AMA, he’s “he’s happier than I’ve seen him in a long time,” we’re happy reading them.

Zucchini is a pretty versatile vegetable. It grills great on a kebab, fries up into crunchy little coins, and can even be used as a sub for noodles, but all of those iterations pale when compared to the spreadable delight that is zucchini butter.

Read more...

If you’ve seen a guy around town wearing a Batman suit paired with a Captain America mask, you might want to give police in Salamanca, NY, a call.

A guy who clearly has trouble committing to one superhero was caught on video surveillance stealing two 18-packs of beer from a store in the western part of the state on Tuesday, reports WIVB.com.

He’s described as a white male in his 20s with a slim build, standing between 5’9” and 6’. If you’ve got information on this super villain, the police would love it if you’d make an anonymous tip.

Others have come before who have also sought to hide their identities behind a costume while doing foul deeds: in 2015, police in Indiana were on the hunt for bank robbery suspects who dressed as musician Rick James and Youngblood Priest, a character from the 1972 movie Super Fly; and way back in 2007, a man robbed a Citizen’s Bank disguised as a tree.

Police looking for beer thief dressed as Batman and Captain America [WIVB]

There are currently 20 women in the United States Senate. That number, while still too low, represents a historic achievement: It’s the largest number of women who have ever served in the Senate. But now, as the Guardian reports, five women vying for Senate seats in swing states could not only move that historic bar, but also deliver the Senate back to the Democrats.

Read more...

"We've discredited this claim months ago." [ more › ]

Further proof that America is willing to give a white male athlete endless opportunities to succeed, things are once again looking up for Ryan Lochte. Things were looking grim earlier this week for America’s Idiot Sea Cow following his bad behavior in Rio, which caused sponsors like Speedo and Ralph Lauren both pulled their support of the medalist. All was not well in Lochte Nation.

However, it looks like Lochte will be getting yet another shot at the spotlight, this time on the dance floor instead of the in the pool. People reports that the Olympian is in talks to join Dancing With The Stars for season 23 (oh my god, so many dancing celebrities).

According to a DWTS “insider,” Lochte has wanted to be on the show for years. As public opinion surrounding Lochte is at an all-time low (somehow even worse than after What Would Ryan Lochte Do?) this could be his shot to get back in our good graces. He told People on Wednesday that he was disappointed in himself following the lies and property damage in Rio.

“I’ve been thinking about it a lot, because I have a big heart, and I feel like let down a lot of people,” Lochte told People on Wednesday. “I feel bad that I have let people down.”

“Everyone started watching it, and they didn’t watch the athletes,” he continued. “That’s another reason why I’m so hurt by it, because it took away from the Games.”

Whether or not this will help his PR remains to be seen, but we’ll see if people are willing to give him another shot. What does Lochte think of his chances?

(Via People)

Strong-as-hell swimming champion Katie Ledecky is from Washington D.C., and the Nationals invited her to come throw the first pitch tonight before their game against the Orioles. She arrived, as well she should, decked out in all five of her recently-acquired Olympic medals. Thankfully, Bryce Harper was kind enough to act as a medal rack while Ledecky threw an accurate first pitch.

Read more...

At a rally in Tampa earlier today, Donald Trump spent some time helping along the Hillary health conspiracies before offering a bit of insight into young Hollywood.

Read more...

Tuna Wrap and a Salmon Wrap both covered with Hot Cheetos just to spice up the week a bit. 📷: @hungryhugh /📍: @thelowkeypokejoint Riverside, CA #forkyeah http://ift.tt/2biwRtx

Life is both very long and very short but trust me that the minute and change you spend watching Anthony Hamilton and pals the Hamiltones sing a song to a goat will be worth it.

Read more...

The Cincinnati Zoo has deleted its Twitter accounts after being bombarded for weeks with memes, jokes and protests against the death of Harambe the gorilla.

Donald Trump says there could be a "softening" in his hardline immigration proposals -- though he did not provide detail and his campaign so far has yet to offer a coordinated message on whether there's been a shift in policy.

Donald Trump's new campaign manager Kellyanne Conway says that Donald Trump's current immigration plan is the same as it was before it is just how to execute the plan that has been changing.

Um. Good luck with that. [ more › ]

And just like that, the uber-popular Pokémon Go game has begun to fizzle out. Or at least, that’s the takeaway from a new report that found usage of the app has dropped by tens of millions of users. 

Bloomberg, citing an analysis from Axiom Capital Management, reports that daily users and engagement has dropped from a peak of 45 million users shortly after launching in July to just about 30 million daily users last week.

The analysis, based on data from Sensor Tower, SurveyMonkey, and Apptopia, shows that the game is now on a downward trend, Senior Analyst Victor Anthony says.

If usage continues to decrease, Anthony tells Bloomberg, it could put the viability and popularity of Pokémon Go — and its creator Niantic into question.

The change in daily usage — while not as reliable as looking at monthly users — should be enough to settle concerns from other social media apps like Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter that users were distracted from using their products.

Still, the decreased use of the game isn’t exactly a sign the Pokémon Go is on the way out. It is still the number one free game on the Google Play store and the number two in Apple’s App Store.

Additionally, the game is still enjoying great fanfare in other parts of the world, where it has launched more recently.

Mashable reports that a vide from Taipei, Taiwan, appears to show a group of Pokémon Go players rushing to catch a Snorlax, creating a stampede while crossing the street.

These Charts Show That Pokemon Go Is Already in Decline [Bloomberg]
This ‘Pokémon Go’ stampede in Taiwan is terrifying [Mashable]

There are different strokes for different folks and then there’s openly mocking some of the greatest Olympic athletes the world has ever known because their super-heroic bodies don’t match a pre-determined standard of beauty. In this case, three members of the women’s Olympic gymnastics team, Madison Kocian, Aly Raisman and Simone Biles (who took home a combined 10 Olympic medals in Rio) decided to hop out of their leotards and into some swimsuits to enjoy the beach. They deserved some relaxation, they’ve been working hard at being the best over the last few years, and that hard work just happens to result in rock-solid abs.

Of course, one Twitter commenter didn’t like what he saw and got destroyed by a simple mic drop in under 140 characters.

And there you have it. Nearly 50,000 retweets later, this astute woman named Crystal lived up to her namesake and made the clearest and most perfect response you could; those abs are from over 10,000 hours of hard work. Those abs are from years of becoming the best gymnasts in the world. Those abs are roads paved to Olympic gold.

Naturally, Twitter let him have it and let Crystal know that she just dropped an A-bomb.

(Via Buzzfeed)

David Becker is the new Brock Turner.

The Playlist has compiled a list of the top film scores of the 21st century (so far).¹ Tron: Legacy should be much higher than #49...it is perhaps my favorite Daft Punk album. And I don't know how they left Philip Glass' fantastic score for The Hours off. Glad to see Upstream Color, There Will Be Blood, and Requiem for a Dream so high on the list though.

I love film scores -- I listen to them while I work -- so here are a few of my favorites that are available on Spotify:

Not available on Spotify but worth seeking out elsewhere: The Fog of War, Sunshine, and Her.

1. This is not to be confused with the list of the best movie soundtracks. The score is the music composed specifically for a film while a soundtrack features songs from other artists and albums that appear in a film. More or less.↩

Tags: best of   lists   movies   music

Earlier this week, we shared the concerns of patients who are struggling with the rising cost of EpiPens, injection devices that can save lives in the case of a severe allergic reaction to foods or other substances. The important thing about EpiPens, though, is that patients hope to never actually need to use them. Another drug with significant recent price increases, insulin, has to be taken every day… when patients can afford it.

Insulin is another injectable drug based on a human hormone, but it’s one that patients take every day. Well, they’re supposed to take it every day, which is kind of the problem. Affording different forms of insulin has become so difficult that patients are stretching out containers, which can cost hundreds of dollars for customers without insurance or who have a high deductible.

The problem is a national one. In a great piece looking at the problem across the country, Lee Newspapers details the insulin crisis, where it may have come from, and how patients and health care providers are trying to deal with it.

Treating diabetes patients has become as much about helping patients afford their drugs and deal with the expense than dealing with the disease itself, and patients who use large amounts of insulin can be paying more for the drug than for their mortgages.

A medical professor who has tracked the cost of insulin over the years says that a one-month supply of a popular version that cost $45 wholesale in 2001 cost $1,447 14 years later, an increase of almost 3,000%. That’s the wholesale price, not the retail price that an uninsured patient would pay.

“These patients are desperate,” a pharmacist and diabetes educator in Texas explained. “They do without their insulin, skip doses, lower their prescribed dose to stretch out the insulin they have, and end up in the emergency room or ICU with long-term complications such as kidney failure, leg amputations or vision problems.”

Keeping blood glucose readings and insulin doses calibrated is an important part of not dealing with the serious potential side effects of diabetes, and when insurers switch around which forms they’ll cover, or patients simply can’t afford the version they’ve been prescribed,

Who’s to blame for the increase? Health care providers blame the negotiations between pharmacy benefit managers and drug companies.

Insulin extracted from animal pancreases has been on the market since 1920, and the first synthetic insulin came out in 1978. While the invention of longer-acting insulins has meant new patents and new revenue sources for drug companies, it hasn’t meant that the most popular and effective forms of the drug have become any cheaper.

Insulin price spike leaves diabetes patients in crisis [Lee Newspapers]

An 18-year-old Massachusetts man accused of raping and sexually assaulting two unconscious classmates in April will serve two years of probation.

The case against David Becker was continued without a finding in Palmer District Court last week. The case will be dismissed if Becker complies with...

   I’d like to thank the photographers at this event for making sure they got detailed shots of Chloe’s accessories. SOMEONE knows what we need. Read More ...

Judy writes:

Nobody seems to care that I live alone in my 70s. My two adult children and four adult grandchildren are busy living their lives. It’s hard to put into words the feelings of loneliness that overcome me.

I give many gifts to my children. Yes, I’m invited to birthday parties and graduations—any celebration requiring a gift—and now I am broke, living off Social Security, fearful I’ll soon be homeless. I’m lonely and in fear of my immediate future.

I have no social contact with others my age. Guess I’m an introvert, lonely and wanting a friend.

Here’s another reader, Brenda:

I’m alone in Texas. My four children are out living their lives. If I died, they would find out two weeks later. My oldest daughter might care. My second daughter wouldn’t care. My son might be slightly shocked, but he would get over it quickly.

My youngest is the only one who shows much care. She calls me every Sunday. She is all I have, so I will love and cherish her from 2,000 miles away.