Something is happening in the postindustrial pocket of Hamilton, Ontario, a 45-minute drive from Toronto’s gleaming skyscrapers. In its squat downtown, where payday loan services with names like Money Mart and Cash 4 U compete across the street from each other and a beware of dog sign hangs from a church gate, a potentially transformational future is on trial.
Source: vice.com
Depending on their score bracket, residents hold a grade ranging from A+++ to D. Some offenses can hurt the score pretty badly. For drunk driving, for example, one’s score plummets straight to a C. On the other hand, triple As are rewarded with perks such as being able to rent public bikes without paying a deposit (and riding them for free for an hour and a half), receiving a $50 heating discount every winter, and obtaining more advantageous terms on bank loans.
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English speakers are sanguine about homophony—often blithely, so that they make little attempt to clarify meanings even when the context leaves open the possibility of more than one. In one study led by Victor Ferreira, people were asked to describe objects in visual scenes that showed both a baseball bat and a flying bat—but they ambiguously referred to either of these as simply “the bat,” under some conditions as often as 63 percent of the time.
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Unfamiliar passers-by may think it’s a joke. But to locals, this landmark goes by the name “Fork and Beans.” It has a logbook hidden inside its frame and it’s one of the more than 500 geocaches scattered around Wilberforce—the “Geocaching Capital of Canada,” as the town calls itself, and home of one of the most popular geocaching tours in the world.
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