Wow, so in about 6 weeks, they grow from tiny smidgens (video of last year’s brood, listen to the peeps) to ready to fly:

(The video just says that the female laid 4 eggs in March. The male fed her while she sat on them. The chicks hatched over Easter, and if they grow up healthy, they’ll be released in Austria.)

It’s so cute how owls lie on their bellies to sleep. This is the first time I’ve seen an adult do it.

Here’s a link to the original song. The part the meme comes from starts around 0:45. It was a hit in 2004.

Eventually, Hecker’s inclusion on the 2018 roster produced the most serious ramification for him. A member of the US military went to law enforcement and reported that he was a teenager in 1975 when Hecker, then a staff member at his high school, strangled him unconscious in a church bell tower – pretending to teach him a wrestling move – then sodomized him.

The archdiocese of New Orleans waited to turn over Hecker’s complete personnel file until June 2023, when it received a subpoena from the local district attorney. Three months later, a grand jury empaneled by the DA charged Hecker with aggravated rape, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated crime against nature and theft.

He’s now claiming he’s not competent to face the charges because he has short-term memory loss. If you read the second article, that doesn’t sound believable (scroll down to number 5).

At the deposition itself, Trahant bluntly asked Hecker: “Do you have a problem remembering things from 15 minutes ago?”

“No,” Hecker answered.

Other made up offenses include having a knife and having nothing but walking toward them

Or having a seizure on your kitchen floor.

Or having dementia and ending up at the wrong house because you think you live there.

Oh, that’s a great picture! I wish I lived in a place where I could see foxes running around.

Yeah. Business Insider had a good long read on that. I think it was posted before, but it’s worth reading.

In addition to their financial struggles, all of the hospitals shared three things in common. They all served low-income communities that suffered from a lack of access to healthcare. They were all owned at various points by for-profit investors, including leading private-equity firms like Cerberus, Leonard Green, and Apollo. And in a move that stripped the hospitals of one of their prime assets, the owners had sold the land beneath the facilities to a little-known real-estate investor called Medical Properties Trust. MPT, which has purchased some $16 billion of hospital real estate over the past two decades, now bills itself as one of the world’s largest owners of hospital beds.

For many of the hospitals, the deals proved disastrous. Once their real estate was sold to MPT, they were forced to pay rent on what had always been their own property. That added to the massive debt burdens already placed on the hospitals by their for-profit owners, deepening their financial woes. It also deprived Americans of desperately needed healthcare and put lives at risk — all while enriching some of the world’s wealthiest investors.

But I occasionally, like once a month or less, run a short load if they really need me to. That makes me still exempt and is still legal for them to do.

That could be illegal, depending on what state you’re in. I don’t think it’s right that laws about this can vary so much from state to state, but the difference can be night and day.

Even if you’re in a state that’s better about protecting workers, you have to be ready to put up a fight. It can take years, and it’s not uncommon for a company to keep doing the same thing after the case is over.

Yeah, it’s kind of like eating raw flour. But extremely bland and weirdly minerally. Still better than kibble.

Were you standing inside something when you took this, or is the black frame something that was added later?

Not who you asked, but here you go.

1 cup shortening
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 cups flour
2 cups quick oats
2 cups rice krispies
1 cup (shredded) coconut.

The instructions are probably on the back of the card. You can follow the ones here.

Yeah, it’s crazy how fast they grow. And no wonder, the way they eat. I don’t know how the parents keep up. Quote from here:

In contrast, the owls very quietly brought half the animal kingdom to their nestling, day after day. We started to jokingly call them “the murderers."

Beautiful birds! It must have been something to see so many at once. Looks like one is standing on one leg to sleep like a flamingo.

Oh hey, I love your owl posts. I always read the comments too because I know there will be more pictures and info. I’ve been meaning to comment there, but work got super busy and I forgot to stop by.

And then there’s the different ways to connect verbs in English.

• I want to go to the movies. (“I want going” is wrong.)
• I like going to the movies. / I like to go to the movies. (Both ways work.)
• I despise going to the movies. (“I despise to go” is wrong.)

There aren’t rules for that, as far as I know. Just very fuzzy guidelines at best. And word stress is pretty random too. Both of those things can be tricky for non-native speakers.

Gender often comes along with cases, which basically show you what role a noun is playing in a sentence. For example, is someone doing something, or is something being done to them. That lets you change the word order and keep the same meaning. You can emphasize different parts of the sentence, or just be more flexible with how you say things.

Here’s an example from German:

• Der Hund (subject) hat den Mann (object) gebissen. / The dog bit the man.
• Den Mann (object) hat der Hund (subject) gebissen. / The dog bit the man. (Implied: That guy, and not someone else.)

In English, the meaning changes when you change the word order.

• The dog bit the man.
• The man bit the dog.

Languages do fine with genders and without. They’re just different systems that happened to evolve over time. And languages can even change. English used to have 3 genders, but they disappeared hundreds of years ago. Instead of having like 12 different ways to say “the,” we just have one, thanks to the Vikings and the Norman invaders.

There’s feddit.it in Italian and feddit.ro in Romanian.

It’s subjunctive, so “were” is technically correct. But it’s super duper common for people to use “was” instead.

The ones that interest you the most will be easiest to stick with. I find things just through my general interests and poking around.

Favorite music genre? Listen to bands from different countries and see how they sound. TV shows, movies, and documentaries from other countries are another big one. Listen to the original language, see if it sounds interesting, maybe read a little about it.

Or maybe you know someone who you’d like to be able to talk with in their language. It could be anything. Pick one or two things to try and you’ll get a feel for what you like.

You can add salt, sugar, or lemon juice to the yolks to keep them from getting so gelatinous. Link 1 has a good overview and here’s link 2 for good measure.