And Finally...

A bow-tie wearing duck has been injured in a drunken pub brawl with a local dog in Chulmleigh, Devon.

The booze-loving bird, affectionately named Star, was enjoying a pint in The Old Courthouse Inn with his handler, Barrie Hayman, when Hayman's canine Meggie sparked a bar brawl.

Star was left with injuries to his beak after the fight.

"Star pushed his luck too far and Meggie snapped - splitting Star's bottom beak right down the middle," Hayman, 69, told the Cheddar Valley Gazette.

"He gave her a stare, then promptly stood on her back. It was not pretty and not nice. We were so scared we would lose Star.

...

Hayman has cared for Star ever since he was a chick, carrying him around in his pocket. Once the duckling grew up, he developed a taste for real ale and started following his owner to the pub.

"He just won't leave me and so we go everywhere together," Hayman said. "I've not trained him to follow me. He just seems to like it and he is one fantastic duck.

"He loves to come to the pub, where everyone loves him. He is such a personality and attracts so much attention."

On May 1, the zoo drew large crowds of excited animal lovers as it prepared to unveil a new attraction.

When the zoo revealed the animals, visitors were met with the sight of little four-legged creatures, with white faces and black spots around their eyes and ears - not unlike the colorings of a panda.

The only thing is, these creatures weren't pandas. In fact, they were Chow Chows - a dog you might recognize from real life or social media, since they're very much the opposite of a wild animal.

The spitz-type dogs originally come from northern China, and were presented at the zoo because the owners said they didn't have any actual pandas to show visitors.

The owners were accused of trimming and dying the dogs to look like pandas, causing some backlash as locals accused the zoo of animal cruelty.

However, a spokesperson for the zoo hit back at the criticism as they pointed out that 'people also dye their hair'.

Carl Elsener, chief executive of Victorinox, said a rise in regulation to tackle knife crime meant the company was developing a new version of its famous pocket tool.

In an interview with Swiss newspaper Blick, he said: "We're concerned about the increasing regulation of knives due to the violence in the world.

"We're actually working on pocket tools without blades. For example, I have a cool tool for cyclists in mind.

"We already have a tool specifically for golfers in our range. Cyclists probably need special tools, but not necessarily a blade. The blade creates a weapon image in some markets."

Mr Elsener said Victorinox saw knife sales plummet by more than 30% "overnight" after the September 11 attacks in the US, telling Blick: "9/11 painfully showed us that we must not become dependent on a single business area."

...

Under UK law, a person can only carry a knife in public if it has a folding blade that is less than three inches long.

is illegal to carry most other knives in public without a "good reason", which includes for work, for religious reasons (such as the kirpan some Sikhs carry) or if they are carried as part of a national costume.

Data released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in April shows that knife crime in UK increased by 7% from the year ending December 2022 to December 2023, and has increased by 81% in the past decade.

Eastern Europe update

Should the government subsidise kebabs?

That's the question in Germany at the moment amid fears the price of the dish could surpass €10 (£8.60).

The German Left Party has reportedly proposed using state funds to cap the price of kebabs at €4.90 (£4.20) - and €2.50 (£2.10) for young people.

The meaty flatbread meal - one of Germany's de facto national dishes - currently averages around €7.9 (£6.80), a number that the Left Party says is going up with inflation.

The cost of kebabs has become something of a running joke in German politics, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz remarking that everywhere he goes he is asked about it.

...

The newspaper cited a report from Ms Gebel's party, which says that 1.3 billion kebabs are eaten in Germany every year and the proposed subsidies could potentially cost "almost four billion".

...

In the UK, people buying takeaways have faced soaring prices, with the boss of Deliveroo saying in March that food inflation was outpacing wage inflation by about two to one.

The UK government has not made any commitment to a kebab price cap.

Adolfo Gómez Hernández, a legislator of the Morena parliamentary group in Mexico, invited individuals with censers and two others who sacrificed the animal in the government building on Wednesday (April 24th).

Colleagues of the lawmakers stated they tried to prevent the animals from entering the Senate.

However, the determined Hernández ensured the unusual ritual took place inside the building. A statement from the Senate declared it “does not endorse in any way the reported events and will take appropriate disciplinary action against the responsible senator.”

Ana Lilia Rivera Rivera, President of the Senate’s Board of Directors, said in a statement: “These events occurred under the strict individual responsibility of Senator Adolfo Gómez Hernández, who justified the action under the protection of the uses and customs of an indigenous group or community in which he expressed his self-identification.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/20347898

Archive/mirror: https://archive.ph/1pl5L

Mrs Johnson, from Scarborough, attended her hospital appointment in March 2023.

The mother-of-two said: "I gave them my letter and their first words were, 'ooh you're dead'.

"I said, 'pardon?'. I was in shock.

...

The retired housekeeper contacted her GP and was told the mistake had been fixed.

However, when she contacted the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) the bemused call handler told her: "On the computer you're dead".

"I said, 'I'm not, I'm still talking to you'.

Warning: The following article contains graphic details of extreme physical mutilation

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/11244571

Along the corridor of Hadrian’s Wall, there are 59 known phalli which consist of incised, relief, or sculpture phalli. Each architectural type of phalli have been grouped into one of nine morphological traits: the rocket, the hammer, the kinky-winky, the splitcock, the pointer, the double-dong, running hard, the beast, and the lucky dip.

cross-posted from: https://real.lemmy.fan/post/2962394

A Willy Wonka-inspired experience in Glasgow that reduced children to tears and prompted calls to the police has inspired a similar event in Los Angeles, drawing dozens of curious fans.

The original £35-a-ticket "Willy's Chocolate Experience" in Scotland made headlines and sparked dozens of memes after images emerged showing its near-empty warehouse location decorated with only a handful of props and a bouncy castle.

Families had been promised a "chocolate fantasy like never before" - but parents had described it as "shambolic" and "terrible", with many demanding a refund.

Promoters have now created a Californian version attempting to mirror the underwhelming decor and lacklustre stalls of Glasgow, complete with AI-generated artwork.

The one-night-only pop-up event was held in a similarly uninspiring warehouse, with a few candy cane props lining the ruffled green carpet entrance.

...

Actress and yoga teacher Kirsty Paterson, 29, who became a viral hit after pictures emerged of her as a sad Oompa Loompa at the Glasgow event, was also one of the main attractions at the Californian version.

Also present was a local actor playing "The Unknown" - a villain of the Glasgow set who famously and creepily emerged from behind a mirror scaring the children who attended.

...

Sky News's US partner NBC News attended the event, which was described as not intended for children as Golden Ticket holders were offered THC-infused cotton candy and Oompa Loompa-themed cocktails and were treated to more explicit stage performances.

Forgive me father, for I’m a sim.

An AI priest was defrocked just days after its inception after the chatbot repeatedly claimed to users that it was a real member of the clergy and performed sacraments.

“Father Justin” is a handsome, gray-bearded 3D animated parish priest in a cassock intended to answer users’ questions about Catholicism.

It was launched by the San Diego-based Christian group Catholic Answers on Monday as an interactive educational tool — but the AI insisted it was a real priest living in Assisi, Italy, according to tech website Futurism.

In a screenshot of an exchange with the AI that one woman posted online, the computer priest even appeared to take a woman’s confession — and then gave her penance and absolved her of her sins.

“Go in peace, my child, and sin no more,” Father Justin concludes their interaction.

The self-proclaimed “real” priest also took a hard Catholic stance on sexual issues, according to its interaction with Futurism.

“The Catholic Church,” it told us, “teaches that masturbation is a grave moral disorder.”

Father Justin told another user that they could baptize their baby in Gatorade.

Of course when you have an outdoor wedding you always run the risk of nature crashing the party, like when a deer decided to crash a wedding and take a nibble out of the bride’s bouquet, or this grizzly bear that brutally mauled a moose in the background of a wedding at Glacier National Park.

It happens.

But wedding guests got quite the surprise at a wedding in Oklahoma when they thought a cow had plopped down in a nearby field to watch the ceremonies.

Well it turns out it wasn’t a cow at all, but actually a furry in a cow costume with a camera who ended up taking photos of the wedding.

...

But this particular furry was just laying out in the field as the wedding took place nearby, giving the impression from afar that it was a normal cow, until it stood up and started taking pictures of the ceremony.

That’s gonna be a great story that the bride and groom can tell their kids someday. And maybe it even opens up a whole new market of wedding paparazzi. Don’t want the photographer in the shot? Have them dress up like a cow and lay down in the background. Has the furry community explored this business opportunity yet?

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/11102291

A village has been taken over by popular sci-fi figures replicated in scarecrow form, including E.T. and the Daleks from Doctor Who.

More than 50 installations are on display for the annual Wray Scarecrow Festival in Lancashire.

One of the organisers, John Gordon, said: "There are quite a few E.T.s around - on the bike, of course.

"We've got a number of Daleks, characters from Star Wars, and there's an amazing one from Planet Of The Apes."

...

Mr Gordon added: "There was one person who had his family eating yoghurts for two weeks so they could get the all pots to stick on a Dalek."

...

The festival - which began in the early 1990s - has an origin story as quirky as the scarecrows on offer.

"It started off by accident," Mr Gordon said.

"One of our people who lives here had gone to France on holiday and they saw what they thought was a man hanging off a tree and they were a bit worried about that, so they went into the local village to see what was happening and they noticed there was a scarecrow stuck on a bar outside the local pub.

"Wray is a very old traditional village and its had a May fair for centuries and they thought it would be a nice idea to add this to the May fair, so they persuaded one or two people to make scarecrows and it just took off from that.

"It was a momentary flash of brilliance."

...

The festival runs until 6 May, culminating with a traditional May fair including a giant scarecrow parade on 3 May.

A 101-year-old woman keeps getting mistaken for a baby because of an error with an airline's booking system.

The problem occurs because American Airlines' systems apparently cannot compute that Patricia, who did not want to share her surname, was born in 1922, rather than 2022.

The BBC witnessed the latest mix-up, which she and the cabin crew were able to laugh off.

“It was funny that they thought I was only a little child and I’m an old lady!” she said.

But the centenarian says she would like the glitch to be fixed as it has caused her some problems in the past.

For example, on one occasion, airport staff did not have transport ready for her inside the terminal as they were expecting a baby who could be carried.

A 30-year-old Kansas man who killed in wife on Halloween in 2019 reportedly used some of the payout from two life insurance policies to buy a sex doll.

...

After his wife's death and prior to his arrest, CBS reports Colby collected two life insurance payouts totaling $120,000 and two days later used roughly $2,000 of it to buy a life-size sex doll.

Assistant Ellis County Attorney Aaron Cunningham told the network that Colby spent all the money in about eight months. Other spending includes video games, music equipment and paying off debt.

The European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter has spotted "spiders" on the Red Planet's southern polar region.

But they're not the arachnids we fear or adore back on Earth — they're the result of a complex geological process that causes carbon dioxide to sublimate, digging up darker material from below the surface during the planet's spring.

And they're a whole lot larger than the spiders you're used to, measuring up to 3,300 feet across.

...

Many of these spots have been found outside of a Martian landscape dubbed Inca City (formally Angustus Labyrinthus) thanks to its geometric ridges that summon to mind Inca ruins.

A grieving mum has spoken of her shock after finding a sex toy, knickers and lube dumped near to her son’s grave in a Doncaster cemetery. The woman, who has asked not to be named, says she discovered the items close to headstones in Doncaster’s Rose Hill Cemetery – and decided to remove them to avoid upsetting other grieving families.

She said: “I don’t know if they had been used in some kind of sex act or left by someone as some sort of strange tribute but either way, its not the kind of thing you expect to find in a cemetery.”

The mum said she had been tending to her son’s grave when she noticed the sex toy a few metres away. She said: "There was this bright pink vibrator, a pair of grubby knickers as well as some Ann Summers lubricant.

"It did make me feel a bit queasy as I pushed them into a plastic bag I had used to bring my son’s flowers in, but I just didn’t want anyone else finding them and getting upset.

"I know people sometimes put things like cigarettes and drinks bottles on people’s graves as unusual tributes, so I wasn’t sure if it was something like that.

"But to me it looked like they had either been left there as a joke or someone has been having sex in the cemetery. Whatever, its not very nice for people to see when they are going along to visit their loved ones’ graves is it?”

The mum says she has since disposed of the items.

Finally – FINALLY! – the world’s first flame-throwing robot dog is available for the general public to purchase in the US. What could possibly go wrong?

Ohio-based company Throwflame is selling the “Thermonator” on its website with a price tag of $9,420 (with free shipping in the US, by the way).

The remotely operated quadruped robot is mounted with an ARC flamethrower, fuelled by gasoline or gasoline diesel mix, that can spurt out a 9-meter (30-foot) flame from its nozzle. Armed with laser sensors to help navigate and avoid obstacles, humans can command the robot using a control pad that displays a first-person view via an onboard camera. Fortunately, autonomous control doesn’t seem to be an option.

The robot may be named after a cybernetic assassin sent back in time from a post-apocalyptic future, but the company states that Thermonator has been made for a variety of non-nefarious uses including wildfire control and prevention, agricultural management, snow and ice removal, and entertainment.

The website also has a “Defense Procurement & Export” portal for any militaries interested in getting their hands on one.

For the first time in at least a billion years, two lifeforms have merged into a single organism.

The process, called primary endosymbiosis, has only happened twice in the history of the Earth, with the first time giving rise to all complex life as we know it through mitochondria. The second time that it happened saw the emergence of plants.

Now, an international team of scientists have observed the evolutionary event happening between a species of algae commonly found in the ocean and a bacterium.

cross-posted from: https://real.lemmy.fan/post/2761992

Washington Post Archive Link

Recently, a man visiting his parents’ newly renovated home recognized an eerily familiar white curve in their tile floor. To the man, a dentist, it looked just like a jawbone. He could even count the teeth—one, two, three, four, five, at least. They seemed much like the ones he stares at all day at work.

The jawbone appeared at once very humanlike and very old, and the dentist took his suspicions to Reddit. Could it be that his parents’ floor tile contains a rare human fossil? Quite possibly. It’s “clearly hominin,” John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who also blogged about the discovery, told me in an email. (Hominin refers to a group including modern humans, archaic humans such as Neanderthals, and all of their ancestors.) It is too soon to say exactly how old the jawbone is or exactly which hominin it belonged to, but signs point to something—or someone—far older than modern humans. “We can see that it is thick and with large teeth,” Amélie Vialet, a paleoanthropologist at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, wrote in an excited email to me about the jawbone. “That’s archaic!”

A nine-year-old boy from Derbyshire has screeched his way to victory at the European championships of a gull impersonation competition.

Cooper Wallace, a gull enthusiast from Chesterfield, competed in the fourth European gull screeching championship in Belgium on Sunday.

Taking to the stage in a full gull costume, his uncannily accurate impression scored him 92 points out of 100, leading him to first place in the junior category.

As part of his act he lunged at a large cone of chips held by his sister Shelby.

“My school friends thought it was annoying at first. But not now. I did it,” Cooper told the Times. “I just wanted to make the noise to remember I got pecked by one. But I like seagulls.”

...

Jan Seys, a marine biologist who was president of the judging panel, said Cooper “managed to include several call types in his performance and each of them resembled a real seagull call in a most impressive way”.

“We pay attention to timbre, rhythm as well as variation,” he said, adding that the birds have a “repertoire of sounds” for different occasions.

“The gull caller who can capture this variation well, and demonstrate it as truthfully as possible, wins,” he said.

...

It was the first time a UK contestant had participated in the competition, which took place in the Belgian coastal resort of De Panne and aims to reduce “friction between seagulls and humans”.

The organisers said “scientific observation” was required to recreate their noise accurately and people who took the time to observe the creatures “will start caring for them”.

All families have their own quirks and habits, but one group of relatives has such a unique trait that scientists have branded them a total anomaly of the human species.

The Ulas family has been the subject of evolutionary fascination for years after they were discovered in a remote village in Turkey walking on all fours.

Back in the early 2000s, a scientific paper was published on five of the Ulas siblings and their strange bear crawl-style of movement, with experts divided over the cause of the abnormality.

In the years following the paper’s publication, evolutionary psychologist Professor Nicholas Humphrey, of the London School of Economics (LSE), travelled to Turkey to meet with the extraordinary family.

The Ulas mother and father had a staggering 18 children, however, of these, only six were born with quadrupedalism (walking on all fours), which has never been seen before in modern adult humans.

“I never expected that even under the most extraordinary scientific fantasy that modern human beings could return to an animal state,” Humphrey told 60 Minutes Australia, which made a documentary about the family back in 2018.

“The thing which marks us off from the rest of the animal world is the fact that we’re the species which walks on two legs and holds our heads high in the air,” he added.

“Of course, it’s language and all other sorts of things too, but it’s terribly important to our sense of ourselves as being different from others in the animal kingdom. These people cross that boundary.”

The documentary describes the Ulas as “the missing link between man and ape” and suggests that they “shouldn’t exist” at all.

And yet, no one has yet figured out the precise cause of the strange walking style.

Whilst some experts have suggested that it’s caused by a genetic problem which has “undone the last three million years of evolution”, others have rejected the idea that there’s a specific “gene” for upright walking and suggested something else is at play.

Humphrey pointed out that the affected siblings – five of whom are still alive and aged between 22 and 38 – all suffer from a particular form of brain damage.

...

He also stressed that the Ulas’ form of quadrupedalism differs from that seen in our closest animal relatives – chimpanzees and gorillas – in one key way.

Whilst these primates walk on their knuckles, the Turkish children’s use the palms of their hands – putting their weight on their wrists while lifting their fingers off the ground.

"What's significant about that is that chimpanzees ruin their fingers walking like that," Humphrey told the BBC News website back in 2006 when the BBC broadcast its own documentary about the family.

...

"These kids have kept their fingers very agile, for example, the girls in the family can do crochet and embroidery," he added.

Humphrey has hypothesised that this could indeed be the way our direct ancestors walked.

...

The LSE researcher also suggested that there are more basic explanations for the Ulas children’s quadrupedalism: they were simply not encouraged to walk on two feet.

In the Turkish village where they grew up, there was no local health service to help the disabled kids make the transition from crawling as babies (on hands and knees) to walking fully upright.

🍑

Amanda Taylor, a film blogger and Democratic candidate running for Missouri’s House of Representatives, called the police after she mistook promotional material for the new horror movie The First Omen as pro-life propaganda.

Last month, Taylor received an anonymous letter in the mail that included a single child-like drawing of what appeared to be four dark figures surrounding a young girl in mid-air suspension.

“Right away, I was thinking, ‘Ah, this has something to do with abortion,’” Taylor told Business Insider. “The day before I had received something from a pro-life organisation so I was like, ‘Okay, I’m starting to receive all the propaganda stuff.’”

Taylor said that she then sent the mysterious letter to her campaign advisor, who immediately called the police out of fear that it had come from an unhappy, pro-life constituent.

“She called me, and she was like, ‘Put that into a plastic bag, wash your hands, the police are on the way,’” Taylor said, explaining that there was concern the letter had been laced with a dangerous substance.

After a couple of weeks, it was eventually discovered that the letter had been sent from Walt Disney Studio’s senior publicist, Marshall Weinbaum.

The drawing had apparently been a part of the company’s promotional campaign for its new horror film, The First Omen, starring Bill Nighy.