Reddit forbids sad content on their r/aww community

The subreddit r/aww which is a large group of users who are on the site to post "Things that make you go AWW! -- like puppies, bunnies, babies, and so on"  cannot post sad stuff. Good or bad? Strange or common sense?

It just seems very unnecessarily controlling to me. Sometimes things that make you go aww can be slightly sad. 

These are the rules on reddit.com for this 'subreddit'.

Pretty strict, I'd say. It seems that the admin boys have learned from experience that a lot of rules pays dividends. They think that they have to have them as users tend to do naughty things.

It also has to be original content. I wonder if they'd allow an image created by an AI computer to the specific instructions of a reddit.com user? Each time you do that the image is unique and created for the person giving the instructions.

For instance here is an image created by Bing's Copilot to the following instructions for the r/aww subreddit.

"Create an image with barn cat mother feeding her four kittens in a bed of hay while the setting sun shines through the barn door as a horse stands near the door."

Here is the image created to order. Not bad.

Here is the reddit post. Reddit admin deemed it to be original content. Great. It is what I thought they'd do. Or hoped they'd do.

An AI created r/aww image to order. Is this original content? I think it is. I asked the AI computer to "Create an image with barn cat mother feeding her four kittens in a bed of hay while the setting sun shines through the barn door as a horse stands near the door."
byu/broadsurf inaww

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

I ask my cat if he wants wet food and he answers

One of the difficulties for a cat caregiver is ensuring that your cat eats all or nearly all the wet food that you give him/her. You have to minimise waste both for financial reasons and because it is a pain in the bum getting rid of waste cat food. Giving it to the foxes is perhaps the best way if your neighbours don't know about it or accept it. Judging by the stories in the internet sometimes neighbours get angry about feeding wildlife by feeding feral cats. 

Anyway, this is how I minimise wet cat food waste. I ask him. Literally. Of course I also understand his body language and the signals he sends to me when he is interested in a meal but sometimes cats can fool their owners in this regard because they want a treat and not regular food. It is hard to tell the difference.

What I do is this:

• I ask in English if he wants wet food
• I place my cat on the kitchen counter - yes, I feed my cat on the kitchen counter. Some people do.
• I hold up a sachet of wet food - a small sachet to make sure he eats all of it - near his face.
• If he is interested and genuinely in the mood to eat because he is sufficiently hungry he head butts my hand. The one that is holding the cat food sachet. 
• He wants it. I remove the food carefully to avoid splashing some on the counter. Sachets can he hard to tear open. I always use a knife to ensure that all the food is extracted. Waste not want not.
• He eats all the food.

The key is his answer in the affirmative response by head butting my hand. This means he butts the top of his head against it. This is scent exchange - depositing scent on my hand but it also serves as a positive response to my question under these circumstances.

How did I get to this form of communication? It took several years of routine. As they say, patience is all when it comes to training a cat.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Virginia has become the third state to enact a ban on declawing

Virginia has become the third state to enact a ban on declawing, joining New York, which was the first in 2019, and Maryland in 2022. Concurrently, the Rhode Island Senate has passed a similar ban, which is now pending in the House.

Cats need claws to climb trees to be happy and to express their natural instincts and desires. Image: MikeB.

This development is seen as positive, considering that declawed cats face a significantly higher risk of back pain, avoidance of the litter box, aggression, and excessive grooming. Moreover, the risk of pain is exacerbated if bone fragments are left behind, a consequence of poor surgical techniques in over 60% of declawing cases.

Contrary to popular belief, prohibiting declawing does not increase the likelihood of cats being abandoned. Research indicates that there was no significant rise in the number of cats surrendered to shelters for destructive scratching post-ban, as most declawing was pre-emptive rather than reactive. The study concluded that cat owners are capable of managing their pets' scratching behaviour without resorting to declawing.

Cat copies his opera-singing young female caregiver (video)

This will make you smile. Or it should do. I think the cat is copying their owner. Cats do this a lot. They learn by observation. Think about cats learning to open doors for instance.

Either that or there is something behind the camera which has caught the cat's attention and provoked her/him to make these sounds. The second theory is probably the better one. You can see the cat looking intently at something off-camera.

>barges in
>sings a solo
>refuses to elaborate
>leaves pic.twitter.com/jCYU2e1VRO

— Punch Cat (@PunchingCat) April 27, 2024

Please remember that embedded videos from social media sometimes fail because they are removed at source i.e. on the social media platform. If this video has stopped working I apologise but I can't control its existence. 😢🙄

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

2 million bottles of Perrier destroyed. Well water contaminated.

A well that has been the source of Perrier water for a century has been suspended as spring water from it was found to contain E. coli and other bacteria which can cause severe intestine of infection and can lead to fatal kidney failure in rare cases.

Image from online store and in the public domain.

The well is situated in Vergèze near the southern city of Nimes. As a result, Perrier has been forced to destroy to million bottles of their water.

The well is one of seven used by Perrier to fill their bottles. Perrier is owned by Nestlé Waters France, a business which has been under pressure to improve production processes since it admitted in January that it had used illegal treatments on Perrier and Vittel to remove pollutants.

The bacterial contamination was detected before the bottles had been distributed and the bottles destroyed as a precaution. The company put the problem down to a "microbiological deviation". The problem appeared after heavy rains in southern France last month.

The company added that "All bottles on the market can be consumed in complete safety."

Nestlé admitted breaching French and EU regulations three months ago in using ultraviolet disinfection and activated carbon filtration to purify Perrier and Vittel mineral water.

The treatments are effective in reducing the risk of faecal contamination and are allowed for tap water but banned for "natural mineral waters".

Underground springs such as the ones mentioned providing water to Perrier are supposed to require no sanitising whatsoever.

The Times newspaper reports that "Nestlé has previously been accused of illicit treatment of other mineral water brands including Contrex and Hepar.

They said that they have stopped the practices and that their water is and has been always safe to drink.

An investigation has been launched to shed light on the state's failures in the supervision of the production of bottled water.

French news media have accused the French government of turning a blind eye to production problems despite an official report in 2022 which revealed that at least 33% of French mineral water brands had used banned treatments.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.