Cats rubbing their face on something leave their scent behind / mark their territory, so yes, in a way they're claiming ownership. However, your cat isn't saying "this item is mine now" with this message, but rather likes to leave its own scent on items that also smell like you, as they associate it with something comforting and safe. It is more like a "this thing smells like my human and I want other cats to know that we belong together" scenario.

As for why the TV remote of all things: you're holding that thing in your hand, and your palms have a lot of special sweat glands that do not react to heat but rather emotions. Humans get sweaty palms when stressed or exited and your cat is basically able to "read" these emotions in items that you held in your hands. If you're relaxed and comfortable while switching through the channels, the TV remote will basically smell like "my favorite human is happy" to your cat. ;)

Supermarket employee here. We have a "fresh" fish counter selling stuff like whole mackerels and raw salmon fillets and the like.

Each and every one of these has been frozen at least once - this is a mandatory health hazard prevention thing (to kill off parasites etc) and also basically the only food-safe way to transport them in great quantities over long distances without them going bad. They get delivered frozen solid, get thawed behind the scenes and then put on display / on ice for customers to buy. And then they're lying there all day long until someone happens to buy some .... people still treat the pre-packaged fish from the frozen foods aisle as a second choice, even tho those have NOT been lying around half-thawed in the open air for 10 hours straight.

Long story short, "fresh" fish from the counter is less fresh than the frozen stuff, despite customers commonly believing it to be the other way around.

More and more relevant by every passing day ....

Exactly this. Put any one species into a tiny depressing enclosure with way too many strangers and way too little food, and they will fight and establish a pecking order eventually. This has nothing to do with how the same species would behave in the wild and with enough resources to live comfortably, and the author realized that mistake years ago and is since trying to correct it.

But I guess the entire "alpha male" thing is just too popular with certain people ... ahem.

I hope this doesn't come across as rude, but as someone who has an aunt that behaves VERY similar, I can only say that some people do not want solutions - they want to be mad about something and others to agree with them. Finding easy ways to remove the problem instead of being allowed to complain about it is the opposite of what they expect to achieve.

Fixed a timing bug were 5 hours of work only made the clock advance by 5 minutes, and 5 minutes of spare time randomly made the clock advance by 5 hours.

Noone has mentioned Avatar - The Last Airbender yet...? I thought that would be amongst the first answers.

I live in Hesse, Germany. The dumbest law I know about (that's still in use but rarely enforced) is this:

Aus der Altstadtsatzung der nordhessischen Kleinstadt Bad Sooden-Allendorf: In § 10 Abs. 6 ist geregelt, dass „Sonnenschirme […] beige-, pastell- oder sandfarbig“ sein müssen. Wer dieser Regelung zuwiderhandelt, begeht eine Ordnungswidrigkeit und kann nach dem Gesetz über Ordnungswidrigkeiten (OWiG) mit einer Geldbuße von bis zu 15.000 Euro bestraft werden.

Translation: In that particular town, sun umbrellas have to be pastel/cream colors. If you put one up that is too bright / too dark / too whatever, it can lead to a fine of 15.000€ (ca. $16,700).

Source: https://www.bad-sooden-allendorf.de/politik-ortsrecht/satzungen

That's some really "spez"ial thinking process right here.

1. Realize that Reddit needs more traffic and users ASAP

2. Randomly block access to content

3. ???

4. Profit!

... seriously ... any site that greets me with pop-ups like "we noticed you're using an adblocker" and stupid captchas and the like gets closed immediatly, and if I need to subscribe / join just to read what some rando on the internet wrote 6 years ago then I'm just going to look for that info elsewhere. Does spez really think that reddit is so incredible and awesome that people would WANT to log in / create an account when confronted with this bullsh*t?

Literal bug fix.

It boosts traffic during a time a lot of ex-redditors scraped/nuked worthwile content and left. If people are annoyed and want to show that off, but they can only change a single pixel every-so-often, then they will refresh / check the site VERY often to make sure their hard-earned single-pixel contribution isn't overwritten by someone else.

I wouldn't be surprised if that was one of the reasons, trying to profit from the agitated masses somehow.

the biggest pain in the ass

....that's because they're not meant for that, despite looking... uh ...similar.

Joke aside, that mess sure does look annoying, and it is probably also not easy to replace parts if one of those lines snap or get twisted too much.

It must be really hard to be an Onion 'reporter' these days, trying to come up with ridiculous nonsense that doesn't seem too far-fetched but is still crazy enough that people know it is meant to be satire and didn't actually happen. It used to be a fine line between those two sections, but .... well ... /gestures broadly at everything

Most reported problems: app (72%) ....well if that ain't a clear statement.

The dumpster fire has reached a critical level of stupidity now, if someone would use that same stuff for a comic villain it would be dismissed as too far-fetched and unrealistic. Maybe he and ol' Muskie have a bet who can ruin their platform faster?

Personally, I like the "alpha as in new software" approach: Alpha version = unstable, missing important features, filled with flaws, prone to breakdown and not fit for the public.

Cashier here. I managed to outwardly stay friendly and nice during the first wave of Covid, even tho at least 70% of our customers had managed to turn into the most insufferable nuisances in the history of mankind. It was especially exhausting when they started to bulk-buy toilet paper and literally everyone had some sort of super lame excuse why they NEEEEEEED eight packs at once and why we definitely SHOULD make an exception to the "one pack per customer" rule specifically for them.

If you have the same old discussion fourhundredandeightyseven times a day, it gets old pretty fast. But you can't just tell them to STFU without risking your job, soo ... well. It was simply exhausting.

One day I had a proper Karen at the register, who tried to tell me that she was buying the second pack for her poor old neightbor lady which allegedly had a broken hip and couldn't walk to the store herself (you know, because if you have a broken hip you DEFINITELY stay at home instead of the hospital and definitely also use the toilet yourself, no issues here ....) and she simply refused to leave the register. I was honestly contemplating whether I should call security and have her removed when the guy behind her looked at me and said:

"Well, that lady definitely needs twice as much toilet paper as others ..... because judging by the amount of shit that just came out of her mouth, she's got assholes on both ends."

It took all of my remainig willpower to not laugh. Imagine the "Biggus Dickus" scene from the Life of Brian for a mental image of how hard I tried to keep a straight face. Karen got red, huffend and left without buying either pack, and that delightfully snarky guy has been my favorite customer ever since. I might or might not sometimes "accidentally" swipe my own tag across the scanner to give him an employee discount...

"Fun" Fact: that chart isn't even a joke - it is actually, factually, pretty accurate. You can get a prison sentence of up to 3 years for that particular gesture.

Gemäß § 86a Absatz 1 und 2 StGB ist es nicht erlaubt, nationalsozialistische Symbole, Grußformeln oder Parolen zu verwenden. Der Hitlergruß wird [...] mit bis zu drei Jahren Freiheitsstrafe geahndet

...on the other hand, it is a wonderful piece of irony that a joke about Germans turns out to be a non-joke in disguise, lol. German humor is no laughing matter, after all!

=P

"You just turned 100 today - what's your secret to a long life?" - No matter what the answer will be, I guarantee you that there are millions of people in the world who do the exact same and still die young. But yeah, of course aunt Margharet only managed to live an entire century because she ate three cans of surströmming every week, no doubt. Genetics, healthcare and lifestyle have nothing to do with it. Nothing at all.

Edit/addendum: Weird specific example

Something similar was also my no.1 pet peeve on reddit whenever people argued about how the Blood Moon works in Breath of the Wild. It's an in-game timer of roughly 3 hours, but the game does not tell you about it, nor does it display the timer, and back when the game code wasn't cracked yet, there were a LOT of outrageously weird theories about how to allegedly make the Blood Moon appear.

So you just "made" a BM happen by running straight into a wall for 3 hours? Yes you got a BM, but not "because" you were running into a wall for 3 hours, but because the effing timer was up. The game does not care for WHAT you do in that time.

So you reloaded and ran into a wall again and the BM happened again? It is STILL not because you ran into a wall - you rewinded the effing timer by reloading a save file from before the event you're trying to trigger, and then the timer was up again. (They never bothered to check whether it would happen if they did not try to trigger it with their chosen tactic)

It is really really hard to try and convince these people that they're wrong, because once they're convinced that a specific action yields a specific result, they WILL keep doing it over and over again until it "works" and then see it as proof. But by the same logic you can also throw tomatoes at a wall until it starts to rain and then claim that the rain happened because you just threw 547 tomatoes against a wall. And then you continue to throw tomatoes because it "worked" last time ... and if it doesn't rain then you just didn't throw enough tomatoes yet.

Imagine being cleaning staff in that office. You accidentally drop something during your night shift. All the chairs start driving themselves across the room at 4 AM while you're completely alone in the building.

"Heart attack" would be an understatement for the reaction I'd have.

When I had to move out (long, unpleasant story) I had the opportunity to get a nice, cozy appartement with low rent almost immediatly, but during the interview it turned out that they didn't allow pets and wouldn't budge, so it wasn't an option for me and I politely declined.

They still tried to pressure me into signing the rental contract - calling me multiple times a day to ask whether I wanted to rethink my former decision again, eventually giving me a 24 hour deadline and demanding that I sign ASAP or they would pick someone else. That was the point I told them to go F- themselves as I was NOT going to leave my 13 year old tomcat behind or surrender him to a shelter. They didn't take it well. (...and suddenly they claimed that noone else wanted the appartement and that they desperately needed someone to move in very soon yadda yadda ... so much for "we're going to pick someone else if you don't sign today".)

Best decision I've made that year. The landlord I have now is a super chill dude and I still have my spoiled furry little bastard with me. I'd rather have lived on the street than leaving a four-legged family member behind.

No idea what became of the other appartement but I pity the people who will have to put up with that passive-aggressive nonsense for lack of alternatives.

I know it is supposed to say "Service Fee" but after reading your comment my brain is unable to read anything other than Service Egg now ....

Grocery baggers. I'm German - we pack our own bags over here and most customers do NOT like others to fondle their groceries. We literally do not have any "baggers" in any supermarket, and if a cashier packs a customer's bags without being specifically asked to do so (basically never happens) the customer will take that as an insult - as if you're trying to say they don't get out of your sight fast enough / that you want to speed up their departure to get rid of them, or that you don't think they're capable of that super basic, simple task. It's considered rude and condescending.

A cashier is expected to scan the stuff the customer wants to buy, take payment, hand over the receipt and change, and then leave the customer and their groceries alone.

Morticia and Gomez Addams.

They're unapologetically weird, fiercely in love with each other, they support and love their children unconditionally, they're brutally honest with each other, including openly showing affection without giving a damn about what others may think of them. They're one of the best (fictional) examples of caring parents and lovers, and I will die on that hill.

When the former boss had to quit due to health reasons, we got a two-faced lying PITA instead. He was an overall unpleasant employer in the first place, but the final nail in the coffin for the cashiers was that he demanded from them that they have to make sure customers stay 6 feet apart from each other during Covid.

• If we didn't pester everyone in line to keep their distance, we got shouted at in front of the customers for "not doing our job". Customers that didn't want to obey the rules after being asked nicely were automatically our fault.

• If we DID try to enforce the policy, a lot of customers went to the front desk to complain about it, he did a 180° turn every time, apologized to the customers and handed out coupons. The more drama they caused, the bigger they were rewarded for it, and the cashier was chewed out for doing what HE wanted them to do.

If you have the choice between "wrong" and "worse" and you WILL get shouted at for both, there is no room left for morale.

Some sellers try to maximise their chances by listing the same item on ebay, amazon, etsy or whatever to reach as many people as possible. It can happen that they sell more items at once than they actually have in stock, so some orders get cancelled / refunded.

I am fairly sure that ebay has rules against it, but people do it anway. Reporting rarely works, and if you got your refund already, then just leave it be.

My coffee machine gets a little "thank you"-pat whenever it is finished brewing my coffee. No idea why exactly I started doing it, but nowadays it feels wrong to not praise it a little before walking away.

My personal pet peeve is pre-installed, un-removable software and apps. My current mobile phone for example has apps that link to twitter, facebook, amazon etc. none of which I will ever use, but you can somehow not delete them. Why do I need to have that virtual junk in my phone?

sustained level of activity over the last ~3 months

Gee, I wonder what happened roughly 3 months ago that might have led to them picking this exact time frame ...

The mosquitoes are dead.

Poorly. I handle it poorly.

Every time it happens I end up feeling like an idiot, being percieved as awkward and verbally clumsy, and I feel guilty about having ruined the conversation. I haven't found a good way to cope with it yet ... but it's one of the reasons why I prefer things like SMS, email and chat for communication rather than talking to others directly. I can delete and rewrite text as often as I want to until it reads okay, but I can not rehearse an entire conversation beforehand and then just rewind whenever I said something that "doesn't fit", so I have to deal with the consequences. Smalltalk with coworkers is the worst.

Just break up already. Creating a tiny extra human is not going to magically fix all of your issues.

... of course that would create a paradox in which I was never born, hence not able to give her that advice ... but seriously, the only reason I exist is because my mother didn't want my dad to leave her, which is simply a shitty reason to become pregnant.

The heart doesn't care where the adrenaline comes from - the strain on the organ will be the same either way. Anything that makes your pulse and/or blood pressure go up can pose a risk, independendly from whether or not it is "just a game".

..but like others have said already: better ask an actual doctor for advice on how to handle the situation. Maybe "small doeses" will be okay, or you can get a way to monitor your vitals and take a break before you get too worked up, but an actual medical professional should decide that in the end.

"It's just a prank bro"-people. I already hate it when someone finds it hilarious to hurt others, but if those same "pranksters" then also act all indignant and percieve themselves as victims of prejudice when other people do NOT find their "pranks" funny, they can GTFO.

You can see your nose at all times, as it is within your field of vision at all times - but your brain filters it out, so what you actually "see" is a nose-free impression of your surroundings. It works like a movie editor that removes unwanted parts from raw footage before the movie is actually shown to the public.

If blinking were a total blackout for a fraction of a second, I'd wager the human brain would have developed a workaround to delete that / filter it out as well, so you wouldn't even notice a difference.

I know it's annoying that the password "doesn't match", but ... a 128 character limit?! I'd like to see THAT fully utilized lol.

(PS: the sentence above is exactly 128 characters, just for a comparison.)

...and I bet once you want to change it you get the "your new password can not be the old password" error message just because.

I can't speak for everyone else, but to me personally, it's because I'm not okay with u/spez making cash with my years of unpaid volunteer work while simultaneously spitting in the face of every content creator and half the userbase. NGL, It sucks that this action hurts the community the most, as redditors now no longer have access to the removed content, but "just leaving" while the content remains intact and public means that u/spez can just shrug it off and continue the shitshow undisturbed. He didn't get the hint during the blackout - maybe he'll get the hint once the site is exclusively filled with trolls, bots and scammers and devoid of actually interesting stuff.

Long story short, a website is only as interesting as the content it offers, and if you take the content away, you remove the incentive for people to visit said site.

A friend of mine was convinced that the "middle ear canal" goes all the way through your skull in a more or less straight line, connecting your ears. Y'know, because otherwise you wouldn't be able to hear sounds to the right of you with your left ear or vice versa. Maybe HE had such a thing where the brain was supposed to be...

#7 could be useful for gambling - when you can see into one container but not the other, you instantly know which one has the prize in it.

It's okay to use any other beverage as a substitute ... and any other pet for company. It's the spirit of the holiday that counts ♪