Turns Out People Who Swear A Lot Are Actually Smarter Than People Who Don't

from Distractify:

If you enjoy a strongly uttered four-letter word every now and again, you've definitely heard it. It probably came from someone at least 20 years your senior and was accompanied by a furrowed brow and/or wagging finger:

"Swearing is the sign of a weak mind."

"Cussing is the sign of a poor vocabulary."

"Profanity is a sign of limited intelligence."

Maybe you felt guilty and agreed with them, or maybe you gave them a silent middle-finger with your mind. Regardless of how you reacted, science is here to tell us (again) that they were wrong.

Exciting new research recently published in the journal Language Sciences confirms what f-bomb droppers have always known in their hearts: Swearing isn't a mental crutch--it's a sign of verbal intelligence.

The study, a joint effort of psychologists at Marist College and the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, found that people who swear more may actually have stronger language skills overall than those who don't.




They reached this conclusion by pitting two popular theories against each other:

A folk assumption about colloquial speech is that taboo words are used because speakers cannot find better words with which to express themselves: because speakers lack vocabulary. A competing possibility is that fluency is fluency regardless of subject matter—that there is no reason to propose a difference in lexicon size and ease of access for taboo as opposed to emotionally neutral words.

To test which theory was correct, researchers gave study participants 60 seconds to rattle off as many swear words as they could. Then, they asked them to do the same with a more benign subject, such as animal names. (In social science this is known as the Controlled Oral Word Association Test.)

If old-fashioned swear haters are right, participants fluent in swearing should have had trouble coming up with the neutral words but that's exactly the opposite of what happened.

Instead, those who listed the most curse words were consistently able to list the most words in other associative trials—showing an undeniable connection between swearing skills and a larger overall vocabulary.

Fucking awesome, right? It gets better.

Because the researchers separated the types of swear words listed into distinct categories (like slurs, general pejoratives, sexual terms, etc) they could also determine that "speakers who use taboo words understand their general expressive content as well as nuanced distinctions that must be drawn to use slurs appropriately."

In normal words, this means that swearing is actually a sign of verbal intelligence, rather than linguistic deficiency. Which is a huge professional advantage, not to mention a life skill that many people lack.

So if you want to hurl a few swears at the sky every now and then, go ahead. It just means you're better than everyone else.

I'm not even shitting you, bro.

thanks Tara Tiger Brown!

Bad Business - Good news McDonald's franchisees say the brand is in a 'deep depression' and 'facing its final days'

from Yahoo Finance:

McDonald's franchisees believe the brand is in a "deep depression" and could be facing its "final days," according to a new survey.
"We are in the throes of a deep depression, and nothing is changing," one franchisee wrote in response to the survey by Nomura analyst Mark Kalinowski. "Probably 30% of operators are insolvent."



Another wrote, "The CEO is sowing the seeds of our demise. We are a quick-serve fast-food restaurant, not a fast casual like Five Guys or Chipotle. The system may be facing its final days."

More than a dozen franchisees expressed frustration with McDonald's management, saying that CEO Steve Easterbrook's turnaround plan — which includes initiatives like all-day breakfast and a shift to digital ordering kiosks — is a distraction from the core issues of McDonald's, like food quality and customer service.

"The lack of consistent leadership from Oak Brook is frightening, we continue to jump from one failed initiative to another," one franchisee wrote.

A second wrote, "I have been in this business since the early 1970s but have not seen us this leaderless in all my time."

The company's reaction to their frustration, one franchisee claimed, is for operators to "get out of the system" and quit the business.

Several franchisees complained about all-day breakfast, saying that it has complicated kitchen operations and goes against Easterbrook's repeated promises to simplify the menu.

"The system is very lost at the moment," one franchisee wrote. "Our menu boards are still bloated, and we are still trying to be too many things to too many people. ... Things are broken from the franchisee perspective."

Franchisees also criticized the "Create Your Taste" program, which allows people to customize their burgers with premium ingredients.

"They are throwing everything they can against the wall to see what will stick," one franchisee wrote.



Kalinowski interviewed 29 US franchisees covering about 226 restaurants for the survey. McDonald's has more than 14,000 restaurants in the US.

In response to the survey, McDonald's said it's hearing a different story from franchisees — specifically pertaining to all-day breakfast.

"We’re hearing from customers and the overwhelming majority of our 3,100 franchisees that all-day breakfast is a hit!" a company spokeswoman told Business Insider. "In fact, since the launch, McDonald’s has reached its highest brand score in two years according to YouGov BrandIndex."

McDonald's is trying to revive business following seven straight quarters of same-store sales declines in the US.

In addition to adding all-day breakfast and "Create Your Taste," McDonald's has also made some changes to its core menu items.

The company started toasting its hamburger buns longer, making its beef patties slightly larger, and changing how the patties are seared.

McDonald's has also announced plans to remove antibiotics from its chicken.

There are at least a few franchisees who are on board with the changes.

Among the myriad negative responses to Kalinowski's survey, several franchisees expressed hopeful attitudes.

"I think our leadership is headed in the right direction," one wrote. "It will take time."

Another said, "The CEO seems to be doing OK so far!"

McDonald's sues to block Seattle's minimum wage

from Boing Boing:

They're basing their case on the 14th Amendment, which addressed slavery by guaranteeing all persons equal protection under the law, and since corporations are people, well...

But what about the equal protection rights of the people who work in these businesses? Our historical research has found that the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment were very interested in employer-employee relations, and in particular, whether workers could earn "fair, living wages." That phrase doesn't come from some union organizer or activist in Seattle: it comes from Senator Jacob Howard, a staunch Republican who was the Fourteenth Amendment's Senate floor manager back in 1866, and whose statements on the concerns motivating the Fourteenth Amendment are a little more important than the legal opinions of Grimace and Captain Crook. And during the Congressional hearings documented in the official report of the committee that proposed the amendment, Senator Howard asked over and over whether employers would pay "fair, living wages." Of course, a living wage wasn't the only concern behind the Fourteenth Amendment. But, unlike protection of the franchised business model, it was definitely part of the overall goals.

Given how important the idea of "fair, living wages" was to the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment, it's shameful for the McNugget Buddies to claim that the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause should protect them, rather than real human workers with families to feed. But it's not surprising. Ever since the Fourteenth Amendment was passed, corporate lawyers have tried to leverage it into a racket to strike down laws like Seattle's. In 1938, a frustrated Supreme Court justice complained that "of the cases in [the] Court in which the Fourteenth Amendment was applied during the first fifty years after its adoption, less than one-half of 1 percent invoked it in protection of the negro race, and more than 50 percent asked that its benefits be extended to corporations." Just this past year, we've seen the Equal Protection Clause invoked on behalf of coal companies and multinational agribusiness conglomerates. And now, the Fry Kids.

Ronald McDonald and Friends Sue Seattle to Stop Minimum Wage Hike [Ron Fein/Huffington Post]

Thrashin (1986) Full movie HD

This is an embarrassment to all humans, particularly skateboarders everywhere, imagine if like me you actually knew some of the people who "acted" in this horrible film or let them use your photo for a "Hollywood" trade magazine before you could see it... Lesson learned early on...

but I thought some of you on a saturday might get a kick out of this:

Shit Express will send poop to your bitter enemies

from Dangerous Minds:

 

Sometimes, when someone—your boss, your neighbor—really pisses you off, only a box full of poop sent to their home or office will really satisfy your need to inflict revenge. But so far, at any rate, there isn’t a tutorial on sending your enemies poop in the mail on eHow or Instructables, and until there are, you’re either going to have to do it yourself—yuck—or rely on the good people at Shit Express.

 



 

Shit Express is an online company that specializes in, well, sending shit to your enemies (hearing the lamentation of their women is not included in the service fee). It turns out that there are a lot of complex variables to having someone send your enemies poop. The poop of what animal? What should the packaging be? Here’s the step-by-step process, according to Shit Express:

 

1. Choose an animal.

2. Give us an address.

3. Choose how to wrap your package.

4. Pay anonymously with Bitcoin.

 

About seventeen bucks will get you a box of horse poop sent to anyone of your choice. At press time, the only poop available was horse poop. Packaging comes in “plain,” “cute,” and “ceremonial.” Apparently one of them, probably “cute,” features smiley faces. Shit Express insists on cryptocurrency like Bitcoin to ensure your anonymity. It’s actually illegal to send certain substances in the mail in some nations, so Shit Express has to navigate the laws in the various countries they ship to (this appears to be unlimited).

 

 

via Death and Taxes