Sideswipe: June 22: Infection free ... not for long

Why you don't own a home

It's the Avocado Toast Debacle all over again. But this time it's Netflix. A study out of the UK this week says that half of the British public believe young people can't afford to buy a home because they spend too much on coffee, Netflix and travel. Not the income to house price ratio, not student debt or lending criteria. Naturally, the internet had some opinions about the researchers' findings. "It's true. Millennials are just $19.99/month from being able to carry the mortgage on a $1 million home that Boomers bought for chewing gum and a couple of packets of matches," tweeted one commenter. "You would have to cancel Netflix for 2300 years to save enough to pay for the average home price in the US," tweeted another. But this tweeter said it best: "What, cancel my parents' Netflix subscription? That seems rude."

Contradiction much?

Big cats, but not big dogs

Why are there big cats, but no big dogs? At one time, there was a very big ancestor – no, not Clifford the Big Red Dog – but that one's extinct anyway. While there are wild canine species left that differ from our human-bred domestic dogs, the biggest of them top out at about 80kg. Meanwhile, adult male tigers can easily weigh 275kg! It's all to do with hunting strategy. Neatorama.com explains: "Dogs are pack animals, and almost all cats are solitary ambush predators (the lion being an outlier). The size of the cat has to do with its preferred prey, which varies widely from house cats chasing mice to tigers taking down water buffalo. A dog's size matters less when they have an army of relatives hunting with them. The difference in hunting strategies also explains quite a few other differences between cat and dog anatomy, from their teeth to their shoulder articulation."