Winter cricket and bridge thread - Held over by popular demand

I’m here for the beer, broads, and bullets. And mostly because nobody else will have me.

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Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation — think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough —
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!*

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God I would hate to learn English as a second language

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Her clients rave about her and seem to generally get better. Her documentation is A+.

I can’t fire her with cause.

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Is giving her a preponderance of trans patients so she refuses to work so you can sack her, or throws in the towel, tantamount to constructive dismissal? Does that concept even exist in USA#1?

But religion is one of those protected classes, and given her otherwise stellar performance it’d be obvious.

Also there are contractual implications for firing her without just cause.

I’d be actively harming clients.

If she refuses to treat them aren’t you in the same spot you’re in now?

Could you draft a new corporate policy and vision that explicitly states your mandate is to treat anyone, including trans and LGBTQ+ people?

It would then be grounds for dismissal is she refused to follow the policy.

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It’s 1100 pages long and broke a reviewer’s cards table lol.

But basically advocates for his previous ideas plus dissolution of national borders and free movement of people, all good things but somewhat pie-in-the-sky.

Interesting. I’ll be reading this. I have long thought borders should be totally open.

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You’d be firing her for refusing to perform the duties of her job, not for her religion. Perhaps there’s an argument that you need to accommodate her, but refusing to treat patients is a lot more burdensome than wearing a headscarf or needing certain days off.

Yeah I have no idea what civil right anyone thinks would be violated by firing her.

Hobby lobby says hi.

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Have you tried other apps? I tried Headspace and everything the guy said basically sounded the same to me.

Is there something different about Sam’s that separates it from the others?

I find myself being shit at mindfulness. Ten minutes of this is not easy to do without my mind wandering elsewhere.


As for the therapist, fire that bitch for refusing to treat certain people. That’s an abdication of her responsibility as far as I’m concerned and outright discrimination based on gender identity. That doesn’t belong in the workplace…

I like Harris’ because he is secular and it doesn’t have any new age spiritually mixed in which is a very common land mine among meditation practitioners.

As for it being hard, this was the toughest thing for me to wrap my head around. It’s actually super easy. Deceptively so. The reason you think it is hard is you are measuring each time you have a thought while meditating as a failure when it’s the whole point. It’s a success. You are by definition being mindful! It took me a really long time to accept this as I thought success was some kind of zen state free of thought.

The magic of mindful meditation is not eliminating thought, it’s allowing yourself to recognize it as such and let it pass.

As Harris always says, it simply reduces the half-life.

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Grunching, but this is a perfectly good thing to bring to a therapist. Do you have one?

Ignorance really is bliss.

Your only play is to make her life miserable and hope she leaves. Don’t ever mention her religion or her bigotry.

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