Porn website printed on toy dolls from Mattel, some merch for a new film in the Wizard of Oz universe.
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Weird News ε' - The fifth column
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Coverage by butter shoplifters on… Kitchener?
Broken_Erika
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This elephant gives herself nice showers with a hose. But another elephant keeps ruining them
Scientists aren’t sure if the younger elephant's hose-kinking behaviour is pettiness or play
When staff at the Berlin Zoo go around showering the elephants, they don't bother with Mary. They simply hand her the hose and let her have it.Not only does Mary prefer to shower herself, but she's really good at it. So good, in fact, that her dexterous bath-time ritual is the subject of a new study about animal tool use.
"When you look at the footage, it's just fantastic," co-author Michael Brecht, a neuroscientist at Humboldt University of Berlin, told As It Happens host Nil Köksal.
"She's very knowledgeable about how to use hoses, and has really very impressive strategies."
Scientists who work with elephants say the findings, published in the journal Current Biology, are another example of the animals complex cognitive skills and ability to adapt to their environments.
But some caution that the sample size of one is too small to draw widespread conclusions, and question the ethics of keeping elephants in captivity.
From trunk to toes
Nobody taught Mary how to use a hose. Her caretakers told the study's authors she simply figured it out herself.And once the researchers started filming her, Brecht says it became clear that she has some pretty slick moves.
Mary systematically hoses off her entire body, from trunk to toes, he says, adjusting her grip and her limbs accordingly.
When washing her front and sides, she grips the hose close to the nozzle for precision. But when it's time to wash her back, she grabs it farther down, then flips it up over her head like a lasso.
She even adjusts her technique when given a slightly smaller hose, though Bretcht says she was visibly displeased with the change in routine.
"She looks less enthusiastic," Brecht said. "You can tell."
Mary is the only elephant at the Berlin Zoo who showers herself, Bretcht says, but she's not the only self-starter. Earlier this year, he and his team co-authored a study about another Berlin Zoo elephant, Pang Pha, who peels her own bananas.
A possible saboteur?
Mary seems to enjoy her shower time, Brecht says. But a younger elephant at the zoo, Anchali, keeps interrupting her flow — literally.Anchali, the banana peeler's daughter, has been repeatedly observed bending and gripping the hose until it cuts off Mary's showers.
Mary and Anchali, Brecht says, have a history of conflict at the zoo, with Mary as the primary instigator. Mary was also given extra shower time for the duration of the study, so he suspects a jealous Anchali is ruining her showers on purpose.
"I think it's reasonable to call it sabotage," he said.
His co-author Lena Kaufmann, a doctoral student at Humboldt, disagrees. She told the New York Times that Brecht's theory is "a bit far-fetched."
The authors tried to test it by giving Anchali two hoses, one connected to Mary's shower, and one that wasn't. She chose to kink the one closest to her, regardless of whether it impacted Mary.
But the results, Brecht says, are inconclusive. Anchali might not have known which hose was Mary's. Or she might have backed off the behaviour because zoo staff often scold her for messing with Mary's showers.
"It's difficult to be sure what her intentions are," Brecht said. "We can't ask her."
Chase LaDue, an elephant ecologist who wasn't involved in the study, says it's possible Anchali is just playing with the hose.
"It's common to observe elephants manipulating food and non-food objects in a way that reminds us of a toddler playing with a toy or of an adult fidgeting with office supplies at their desk," LaDue, a conservation scientist at the Oklahoma City Zoo and Botanical Garden, said.
Captivity breeds conflict, says scientist
He called the study "another example of the cognitive complexity of elephants.""While this study only reports on the specific abilities of one elephant, the findings suggest that other elephants are also capable of such behaviour," he said.
"I have witnessed elephants use hoses like this to bathe, swat at high-hanging food sources with perfectly fashioned sticks, and gingerly hand back empty food bowls to caretakers after feeding time."
Mickey Pardo, a behavioural ecologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., who studies wild elephants, cautioned against drawing widespread conclusions about Asian elephants based on Mary's behaviour alone. But said it's still "very valuable to report this behaviour in the scientific literature."
- Elephants may have names for each other that humans don't know, study finds
- This fussy elephant peels her bananas, but only when they're perfectly ripe
Elephants in the wild, he says, are far less aggressive with each other than those in zoos, in part because they have more exercise and stimulation, but also because of their complex social structures.
"In the wild female elephants live with their relatives, but zoo elephants are often housed with unrelated individuals that they did not grow up with. Wild elephants can also choose when and how much to associate with each other … whereas in captivity they are forced to be in each other's presence constantly," he said.
While he appreciates the German scientists' research, Pardo says he believes elephants should be free.
"To be perfectly honest, keeping elephants in captivity is inhumane and the practice needs to be discontinued."
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/elephant-shower-study-1.7381543
Bonyduck Campersang
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'Banana-free areas requested' over Swedish minister's phobia
Government officials reportedly ask for no bananas to be present ahead of official visits.
www.bbc.com
Bonyduck Campersang
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Gamer challenges internet service provider owner to duel, owner accepts, gamer backs down
www.aol.com
Billionaire, 57, Turns Up At Local Supermarket To Fight Gamer Who Insulted Him Online
A French billionaire showed up at a supermarket to fight a gamer who had criticized his internet company for its slow connection. Back in May, social media user @JimmyBLLT called out Xavier Niel, founder of France’s second-largest internet service provider, Free, and one of the richest men in...
www.aol.com
Broken_Erika
Play with me.
Artist says he was surprised people mistook his seashell sculpture for a poop emoji
The sea snail-shaped piece was commissioned by the local government to celebrate the nature reserve it's on
At no point in the months-long construction of his sea snail-shaped structure did artist Mark Antony Haden Ford think his art looked like anything but an aquatic creature.But to some folks, the piece's spiral shape resembles the poop emoji more than what was intended: a type of sea snail called a periwinkle.
"This was an intentional sculpture," Ford told As It Happens host Nil Köksal. "[But] spirals occur in nature, right? So it can be interpreted as another thing."
Ford says the artwork was commissioned by the local government in Chichester, England, to celebrate the Medmerry Nature Reserve that the installation sits on. Like much of Ford and his wife Rebecca's sculptures, it was made from woven willow branches.
The goal was to create a structure that visitors of the reserve could walk into for shelter from the elements. "There's no shelter at all. It's [a] very exposed section of coastline. And so it seemed to make sense to have something you could sit inside," said Ford.
Ford said he drew inspiration from archaeological excavations that took place on the site a few years ago. One such dig revealed the remains of periwinkle shells in a medieval willow basket.
"It just seemed to make sense that it would be made of willow, would be some sort of shelter, and it would be the shape of a periwinkle," Ford said.
As an environmental artist, Ford said he avoided painting the structure in order to keep its ecological impact to a minimum — though he admits painting it white might have made it look more like a seashell.
According to local media, visitors of the nature reserve have gotten a laugh out of the structure's shape. "I couldn't stop laughing when I saw it. I thought it was a joke at first," a visitor told The Telegraph.
Others have drawn additional meaning from the artwork's unintended resemblance.
"Some people have been saying to me, 'If people see the shape of a poo, maybe that's a metaphor for what we're doing to our coastline — just allowing poo to be spilled into it'," Carolyn Cobbold, project leader for the environmental group Manhood Peninsula Partnership, told the BBC.
While Ford defends the seashell design, he doesn't mind that some people interpret it differently. "I think it's great, actually, that people can see what they want to see.… People can interpret it the way they want."
Having worked as an artist alongside his wife for 20 years, Ford said this isn't the first time his art has been mistaken, either.
The two wove a "tetrapodicus" — a mythical four-legged beast with a long neck — in the forest outside of Montreal last month, which some mistook for a bear or a dinosaur. And a 12-metre-long mustache they crafted on the side of a building looked like two whales kissing to some who laid eyes on it.
Ford says the reception won't dictate what he and his wife weave next. They're already building a giant acorn sculpture in London, and plan to construct a willow Christmas tree next week — for the very same local government that commissioned the periwinkle shell.
But in the future, "I think we'll stay away from sculptures which can be so easily misinterpreted," Ford said.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappen...seashell-sculpture-for-a-poop-emoji-1.7388887
Broken_Erika
Play with me.
Dutch police find gnome made of MDMA during drug bust
Officers in the southern Netherlands have found a garden gnome weighing nearly 2kg (4lb) and made of the drug MDMA.
"Drugs appear in many shapes and sizes, but every now and then we come across special things," Dongemond Police said in a translated social media post.
The gnome was found among suspected narcotics during a large drug search.
"In itself a strange place to keep your garden gnome," the force said. "That's why we decided to test [it] for narcotics".
"The gnome himself was visibly startled," police said, referring to the gnome having its hands covering its mouth.
It is not known which area the gnome was recovered in, but the Dongemond Police covers the municipalities of Oosterhout, Geertruidenberg, Drimmelen and Altena.
MDMA - which is an illegal substance in the Netherlands - is a synthetic party drug also known as ecstasy.
As of 2019, the Netherlands was among the world's leading producers of MDMA.
It is not the first time someone has attempted to hide the drug in inconspicuous guises.
Last year, a Scottish man was jailed for more than four years for trying to smuggle over £84,000 worth of MDMA that was hidden in cat food into the country.
A Leeds man was also previously charged over a plot to smuggle 90kg (198lb) of the drug into the UK hidden inside pallets of frozen chicken.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy9jr3y8gv5o
Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s deputy vows to have him assassinated if she is killed
The Philippines’ vice-president, Sara Duterte, said on Saturday she would have someone assassinate the president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, if she herself were killed, leading Marcos’s office to vow “immediate proper action”.
In a dramatic sign of a widening rift between the country’s two most powerful political families, Duterte told a press conference that she had spoken to an assassin and instructed him to kill Marcos, his wife and the speaker of the Philippine house of representatives if she were to be killed.
“I have talked to a person. I said, if I get killed, go kill BBM [Marcos], [first lady] Liza Araneta and [speaker] Martin Romualdez. No joke. No joke,” Duterte said in the profanity-laden briefing. “I said, do not stop until you kill them, and then he said yes.”
Duterte was responding to an online commenter urging her to stay safe, saying she was in enemy territory as she was at the lower chamber of Congress overnight with her chief of staff. Duterte did not cite any alleged threat against herself.
The presidential communications office responded with a statement saying: “Acting on the vice-president’s clear and unequivocal statement that she had contracted an assassin to kill the president if an alleged plot against her succeeds, the executive secretary has referred this active threat to the presidential security command for immediate proper action.
The Philippines’ vice-president, Sara Duterte, said on Saturday she would have someone assassinate the president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, if she herself were killed, leading Marcos’s office to vow “immediate proper action”.
In a dramatic sign of a widening rift between the country’s two most powerful political families, Duterte told a press conference that she had spoken to an assassin and instructed him to kill Marcos, his wife and the speaker of the Philippine house of representatives if she were to be killed.
“I have talked to a person. I said, if I get killed, go kill BBM [Marcos], [first lady] Liza Araneta and [speaker] Martin Romualdez. No joke. No joke,” Duterte said in the profanity-laden briefing. “I said, do not stop until you kill them, and then he said yes.”
Duterte was responding to an online commenter urging her to stay safe, saying she was in enemy territory as she was at the lower chamber of Congress overnight with her chief of staff. Duterte did not cite any alleged threat against herself.
The presidential communications office responded with a statement saying: “Acting on the vice-president’s clear and unequivocal statement that she had contracted an assassin to kill the president if an alleged plot against her succeeds, the executive secretary has referred this active threat to the presidential security command for immediate proper action.
danjuno
Cole Phelps, Badge 1247
Blood feud between the Marcos and Duerte clans? Seems like a fairly calm day for Filipino politics.
A Glowing Metal Ring Crashed to Earth. No One Knows Where It Came From
The 1,100-pound mystery object landed in Kenya at the end of December. Experts are still baffled.It has been more than a week since reports first emerged about a “glowing ring of metal” that fell from the sky and crashed near a remote village in Kenya.
According to the Kenya Space Agency, the object weighed 1,100 pounds and had a diameter of more than 8 feet when measured after it landed on December 30. A couple of days later, the space agency confidently reported that the object was a piece of space debris, saying it was a ring that separated from a rocket. "Such objects are usually designed to burn up as they reenter the Earth’s atmosphere or to fall over unoccupied areas, such as the oceans," the space agency told The New York Times.
More here.
A Glowing Metal Ring Crashed to Earth. No One Knows Where It Came From
The 1,100-pound mystery object landed in Kenya at the end of December. Experts are still baffled.
Bonyduck Campersang
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Ordnael
Emperor
Paris : la Gaîté Lyrique, toujours occupée par «300» migrants, suspend sa programmation jusqu’au 24 janvier
La célèbre salle de spectacle parisienne, squattée depuis le 10 décembre par des immigrés se disant «mineurs», a annoncé que tous les événements prévus entre le 10 et le 24 janvier étaient «annulés ou déplacés dans d’autres lieux partenaires».
www.lefigaro.fr
To help those similarly gallicaly chalenged, here is how this is AI translated for me:Paris : la Gaîté Lyrique, toujours occupée par «300» migrants, suspend sa programmation jusqu’au 24 janvier
La célèbre salle de spectacle parisienne, squattée depuis le 10 décembre par des immigrés se disant «mineurs», a annoncé que tous les événements prévus entre le 10 et le 24 janvier étaient «annulés ou déplacés dans d’autres lieux partenaires».
Paris : la Gaite Lyrique, still occupied by «300» migrants, suspends its programming until’au 24 January
The famous Parisian theater, squatted since December 10 by immigrants calling themselves «miners», announced that all events scheduled between January 10 and 24 were «canceled or moved to other partner locations».
The migrants, they, demand «dignified and sustainable’ hosting solutions». In addition d’«a roof»their main demands are «respect for the presumption of minority» and one «immediate support by l’ASE». In an article published Saturday in Releasement, this cultural place of the City of Paris urged Mayor Anne Hidalgo to find a housing solution, calling for its «moral requirement». The City, for its part, calls on the’State: «If we regret the’occupation of Lyric Gait, we wish to affirm our support to young adults without housing who have found refuge in the’ establishment, the town hall points out. The City refuses to implement dry evictions: these situations of social’urgences require social responses and, therefore, adapted accommodation places’».
Young people play foosball at the Lyric Gait occupied by the Collectif de jeunes du Parc de Belleville in Paris, December 11, 2024
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