cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/17027060

Businesses, community groups, arts organisations and residents in a thriving town on the Croydon-Surrey border are in uproar because the automatic systems employed to police social media have silenced them on one of the world’s biggest digital platforms – all because Coulsdon has the letters L, S and D in its name.

Residents’ associations and businesses with “Coulsdon” in their titles have found themselves “cancelled”, with posts being removed from Facebook and warnings issued as to their future conduct under a set of rules so vague that any post, however innocent, might fall foul of them.

Los Angeles police said they spent hours trying to get the man out from a crawl space under the El Sereno home, after the woman's family reported hearing noises for weeks.

The man - identified as 27-year-old Isaac Betancourt - "refused to leave" even as police used dogs and two rounds of gas, according to the resident's son-in-law Ricardo Silva.

"He wasn't scared of the dogs, and the first two attempts at gas didn't fish him out," he said.

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Mr Silva said they had been hearing noises for weeks, usually late at night, but they "just chucked it off to animals being under the house".

"The noises were kind of like knocking," he added.

"It was kind of like, as my wife was walking, they were kind of knocking back from under the house so she says, 'you know something's wrong'."

While it's not clear how long the man had been under the home, the family suspects he may have been staying for up to six months.

The space under the home is roughly 2ft high and has three entries, which the family believes he used to come and go.

"It's a bizarre thing, but it's not probably uncommon, you know," Mr Silva said.

"In this day and age, people are looking for shelter."

It started as a social media quest for breakfast dumplings, but ended with thousands of cyclists bringing traffic gridlock between two cities in central China.

What should have been a boost to the ancient city of Kaifeng’s economy backfired when the trend went viral - tens of thousands on rented bikes cycled through the night from nearby Zhenghou.

A six-lane expressway between the two cities quickly filled with cyclists as police took to loudspeakers urging them to leave. Bike rental firms warned they would remotely lock bikes taken out of Zhengzhou.

The event is part of a trend where young Chinese are travelling cheaply at a time when the economy is faltering and job prospects are scarce.

It began with four university students who cycled for 50km (30 miles) from Zhengzhou to Kaifeng in June to try guantangbao, a type of soup dumpling.

"You don't get a second chance at youth, so you must go for a spontaneous trip with friends," one of the four had told local media.

That message struck a chord with other young people in the city of 12.6 million - China's young have increasingly been complaining of burnout from an overly-competitive and grinding job market.

Thus was born the social media trend “Night Ride to Kaifeng".

State media initially praised it as a demonstration of young people's "passion". And local government saw it as an opportunity to recreate the instant fame that the town of Zibo enjoyed last year as millions arrived to sample its barbecues.

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But the happy mood turned as the roads in Zhengzhou began to be overwhelmed by the thousands of bikes.

Pictures circulating online showed serious congestion on the main roads from Zhengzhou to Kaifeng. One witness told the local outlet Jimu News that his drive on that route, which usually took one hour, took three.

Some riders shared on social media that they were forced to get off their bikes and push their way through the crowd.

There was no official estimate of the number of bicycles on the road on Friday night. But reports on social media suggest the number ranged from 100,000 to 200,000.

And many of those who made it to Kaifeng didn't seem to have enjoyed the experience.

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Traffic police in both Zhengzhou and Kaifeng closed off some of the main cycling lanes between the two cities on Saturday and Sunday.

It is not surprising to see officials in both cities pushing back because Chinese authorities have always cracked down on large gatherings, which they fear can lead to protests or any form of political expression.

Last month, police in Shanghai silenced celebrations for Halloween over fears the revelries might be used to express dissent.

President Javier Milei’s drastic austerity measures aimed at improving Argentina’s flailing economy have shown better results in recent months.

The libertarian president’s ambition to eliminate bureaucracy and red tape have become one of the main focuses of his cabinet, including cutting public works budgets, and slashing education spending.

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After passing a major reform package, the Ley Bases (Bases Law) in July, Sturzenegger is now preparing another project, called Ley Hojarasca (Fallen Leaves Law). The project, presented to Congress on October 10, aims to void legislation created by previous governments that no longer serve a purpose, or were replaced by other laws.

One peculiar law at risk of the chopping block is an Argentine tradition that allows the president to become the godparent of the seventh consecutive son or daughter of Argentine couples, in order to prevent them from becoming werewolves.

Indeed, Law 20.843 was passed in 1974 during the presidency of María Estela Martínez de Perón, but the tradition is actually over a century old.

The law allows a couple with seven sons or seven daughters to request that the president become the godfather/godmother to the seventh same-gender sibling. According to the law, the president then can send a representative to the child’s baptism, usually with a commemorative gold medal, and concede a scholarship towards his or her education, a token fee ranging from $150 to $300 dollars a year.

Where does this tradition come from? “The myth arrived in Argentina through Brazil, with the Portuguese werewolf or lobis-homen, which later evolved into the lobizón. Thus, most cases of alleged werewolves are reported in northeastern Argentina,” historian and journalist Alejandro Galliano explained to Argentina Reports.

The myth, which has deep roots in Argentina’s countryside, is that the seventh son becomes a werewolf during nights when a full moon takes place.

The idea to make the president the godfather of a family’s seventh son was introduced by German immigrants from the Volga region, who came to Argentina in the early 19th century and established rural communities in the northeastern Mesopotamia region, comprised of the provinces Misiones, Entre Ríos, and Corrientes.

“The tradition comes from Catherine the Great,” added Galliano, referring to the Russian leader of the 18th century who believed in becoming the godmother to the seventh son to prevent him from becoming a werewolf. “Both traditions ended up mixing here.”

The first case occurred in October 1907 in Coronel Pringles, a city in the south of the Buenos Aires province. Russian farmer Enrique Brest and his wife, Apolonia Holmann, requested then President José Figueroa Alcorta to become godfather to their seventh son. The president agreed and birthed a tradition that lasted for over a century and became a law in 1974, when benefit was extended to include daughters. That year, the scholarship was established to finance the child’s education.

“It was a way to compensate for the discrimination reportedly suffered by the seventh sibling, because of the legend of the lobizón,” commented Galliano.

More than 12,000 children are estimated to have become godsons or goddaughters to an Argentine president in the past 117 years. Former President Alberto Fernández, who left office in 2023, became a godfather to 66 children, while his predecessor, Mauricio Macri, godfathered 159. Before them, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, a strong Peronist, granted the benefit to 1,152 children during her term.

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Noah Portillo, born September 10 in Río Gallegos, could become the first seventh son recognized by the current president.

However, his fate as a future werewolf may be at stake if Sturzenegger’s bill is passed. “It is a medieval figure that has no place in a modern democracy,” argued the minister in an X post, upon announcing the Fallen Leaves Bill.

Indeed, Galliano explained, the tradition is no longer followed in Russia, where it originated, nor in any other country.

A local politician in northern Germany who posted a picture of a sex doll with a St Pauli T-shirt and a noose around its neck has stepped down following a wave of criticism.

The posting by Bulent Buyukbayram, a member of the Christian Democrats in the city of Delmenhorst, also showed the words "shit St Pauli" written on the doll's head, with the letters 'S' shaped like the logo of the SS, the Nazis' main paramilitary force.

Bundesliga club St Pauli, based in Hamburg, said they would consider legal action and Buyukbayram has apologised and stepped down from his local posts.

"It was a stupidity, a mistake," he told Bild newspaper. "I am getting serious threats. I have apologised to St Pauli."

Ratnik Tactical, the Russian military equipment maker, said on Telegram: “The best warriors of humanity applied scrolls with prayers and promises to their armour before the battle.

“We really liked this image, and we decided that Russian soldiers are rightfully the best warriors of humanity, and can also wear such scrolls into battle. Thousands of seals have already gone to the front, and gave hope to soldiers in the darkest hour.”

The seals, with the words of Psalm 90, are similar in style to Warhammer 40k and cost about £9. The psalm is about the brevity of life.

It replaces the space marine skull with a Christian symbol and is available in normal and “sooty versions”.

The phenomenon was spotted and researched by ChrisO_wiki, a military history author and blogger on the Ukraine war.

He said on X: “The seals have been blessed by priests at the Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces in Kubinka near Moscow.”

“Again, this reflects Warhammer 40k lore, which has Space Marine Chaplains blessing purity seals ‘with chanted litanies in honour of the Primarch and the Emperor.”

He added that it reflected the huge popularity of the game in Russia and Ukraine and purity seals have been worn by soldiers on both sides as far back as February last year.

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The Ukrainians also have their own purity seals. Images shared online showed them being stuck on military vehicles.

Other soldiers sport real-life versions of the game’s battle badges and gruesome skull symbols.

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The Russian seals have been criticised by some for fusing Orthodox theology with pagan fantasy.

Alexander Soldatov, the religious journalist, said: “Amulets are not typical for the Orthodox tradition at all, they have always been perceived as an element of paganism, magic, in this case, combat magic.

“But in war, all means are good, and the Russian Orthodox Church no longer shies away from using any mechanisms, including purely occult ones.”

Archive

Last week, the Vatican unveiled Luce, a Japanese-style cartoon character that will serve as the Catholic Church’s mascot for its upcoming jubilee year, as well as its Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan.

Archbishop Rino Fisichella, the Vatican's chief organizer for the jubilee year who presented Luce to the world, said that the mascot was "created from the desire to enter into the world of pop culture, so beloved by our young people".

I believe his excellency should have considered his desires more carefully, because there is no clearer sign that Luce has indeed entered pop culture and is beloved by young people than the fact that there are now dozens of AI-generated hardcore pornographic images of her on the internet.

On Civitai, a site for sharing custom AI models and generating images, users have created at least a dozen different Luce-themed AI models specifically for generating images of the Vatican’s mascot. These models are not explicitly designed to produce adult content, but as I’ve reported previously Civitai makes it easy to modify AI models and combine them with others that are designed to produce pornographic images, and that is often what users on the site do with any AI models of any character or real person.

Looking at just one model page, Luce - Vatican's Mascot [PONY], in the section where users share images they’ve created with that model, I can see images of Luce nude, covered in semen, and a nude Luce alongside what appears to be a Luce Fleshlight-type sex toy.

“If you came here for what everyone else came here for, then you won't be disappointed,” one user said in a comment on the model’s page. “Lord forgive me for what I am about to do,” another user said.

Archive

Snake handler Drew Godfrey, who works for Hervey Bay Snake Catchers in the Australian territory of Queensland, had the task of removing two coastal carpet pythons, also known as Morelia spilota mcdowelli, from a customer's toilet bowl.

"The homeowner contacted us as he found the snake when he went to use the toilet," Godfrey told Newsweek. "It was a female that was likely in there to soak its skin before shedding.

"Two days later, we were called back to the same house to remove a male from the same toilet. The male most likely entered looking for the female as that was the last place she would have left a scent trail," he continued.

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"Coastal carpet pythons are nonvenomous and serve as an asset around the home, as they keep down rodent and other pest species," Godfrey told Newsweek.

"They grow to over 3 meters but are placid animals that are friendly toward humans. They only ever bite in self-defense," he continued.

A 32-year-old man was killed after accepting a dare by his friends to sit on a box of lit fireworks in Bengaluru, India.

An Indian publication, The Hindu, reported that the man died after he accepting a challenge to sit on a container which had a box full of firecrackers in it to win an auto rickshaw that was placed as a bet.

The publication said the horrific incident was captured on a neighbour’s CCTV camera on Friday.

It is believed that one of his friends offered the deceased his new auto rickshaw if he sat on the box full of lit fireworks.

Speaking to the publication, Deputy Commissioner of Police Lokesh Bharamappa Jagalsar, said the deceased and his friends were drunk when the incident happened.

Australian scientists have solved a mystery which has gripped Sydney: what were the sticky dark blobs which washed up on some of the city's famed beaches last month?

Initially believed to be tar balls, they were in fact a "disgusting" combination of human faeces, cooking oil, chemicals and illicit drugs, researchers say.

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Last month authorities in New South Wales (NSW) said they suspected the objects were a mixture of fatty acids, fuel oil and chemicals found in cleaning and cosmetic products.

But further testing found the material is unlikely to have originated solely from an oil spill or waste from a ship, as some had thought.

Each ball was slightly different but had a firm surface - hardened partially by accumulating sand and minerals like calcium - and a soft core.

Inside was everything from cooking oil and soap scum molecules, to blood pressure medication, pesticides, hair, methamphetamine and veterinary drugs.

"They smell absolutely disgusting, they smell worse than anything you've ever smelt," lead investigator Associate Professor Jon Beves, from the University of NSW, told 9News.

Professor William Alexander Donald said they resembled fat, oil, and grease blobs - often called fatbergs - which are commonly formed in sewerage systems.

Detecting this along with recreational drugs and and industrial chemicals had "pointed us to sewage and other sources of urban effluent", he explained

What would you rather have: $125,000 worth of crypto or crusty French bread? It appears that one ransomware group is a bigger fan of the latter, having demanded that payment for the 40GB of compressed data it stole be paid in baguettes.

Hellcat, a newly formed ransomware group, claims it is behind the cybersecurity incident being investigated by Schneider Electric. The French multinational energy management company has confirmed a developer platform was breached.

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Hellcat is asking for $125,000 to delete the data. It said that if Schneider publicly admits to the breach, it would cut the ransom demand in half to $62,500.

However, rather than demanding the money in crypto, as is the norm, Hellcat is asking for it to be paid in baguettes.

With the average price of a standard baguette in France at €1.07, or approximately $1.09, Schneider would need to hand over at least 58,715 of these long French loaves.

A tribunal judge remarked that use of the f-word was "particularly common in the North" while explaining why a firm had been unfair to sack a worker for swearing.

Delivery driver Rob Ogden was fired from his job at wholesaler Booker Ltd in Oldham after swearing at a colleague.

But judge Jetinder Shergill said swearing was so widespread that Mr Ogden, who had worked there for seven years, had been made an unfair example of.

He said that while such language should not be used in the workplace it is a "common everyday experience, particularly in the North".

Scotland Yard is hunting a prankster in their ranks who filled an iron with urine in the locker room of one of London’s biggest police stations.

The culprit filled an iron, used for officers’ uniforms while on-duty, with urine at the locker room in Charing Cross police station in central London.

Now the force is probing two offences of criminal damage after the grim discovery last weekend, The Sun reported.

The Met is investigating one count of criminal damage over the iron prank, which would have left officers’ uniforms stained with body waste, and another over damage to an unknown piece of police equipment.

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The incident at the station, which has Europe’s largest custody centre, has caused a stir among rank-and-file officers.

One retired Met detective chief inspector, Mick Neville, dubbed the mystery culprit the “Slasher of the Yard”.

He told the paper: “This has no doubt caused quite a stink. A joke’s one thing – but this is taking the ‘you-know-what.’

The cause of a "terrible" stench plaguing passengers at Leeds City Bus Station has been revealed.

Speaking on BBC Radio Leeds' Message the Mayor, West Yorkshire Mayor Tracy Brabin said the odour had been caused by spilt milk.

Staff previously told the BBC it had been lingering in the bus station's main foyer for more than 10 days, with customers likening it to a cow farm and fish.

A simple explanation but then they go a.bit Alan Partridge:

At the scene - Steve Jones, BBC Yorkshire

I was here on Sunday and the stench was overpowering, with passengers visibly affected.

While it may not be quite as pungent two days on, people are still holding their noses as they hurry to the exit.

One group of girls even ran to the doors to escape for some fresh air.

Disposable vapes are indefensible. Many, or maybe most, of them contain rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, but manufacturers prefer to sell new ones. More than 260 million vape batteries are estimated to enter the trash stream every year in the UK alone. Vapers and vape makers are simply leaving an e-waste epidemic to the planet's future residents to sort out.

To make a point about how wasteful this practice is—and to also make a pretty rad project and video—Chris Doel took 130 disposable vape batteries (the bigger "3,500 puff" types with model 20400 cells) found littered at a music festival and converted them into a 48-volt, 1,500-watt e-bike battery, one that powered an e-bike with almost no pedaling more than 20 miles. You can see the whole build and watch Doel zoom along trails on his YouTube video.

Not the first Brit to do that this year as a chap in Kent made the news in June.

Meta is one of several tech companies vying for a nuclear boost.

A shoplifter has been banned from wearing wigs after attempting to disguise herself while committing thefts on numerous occasions.

Hannah Roberts of Nettleton Road, Gloucester, was handed a Criminal Behaviour Order (CBO) at Cheltenham Magistrates' Court earlier this month.

Roberts, 33, repeatedly ignored a ban by the City Safe Scheme from entering any member shops in Gloucester, the court heard.

Although she tried to get around the ban by wearing a variety of wigs, her distinctive neck tattoo meant she was recognisable to shop staff in the city.

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Under the CBO, Roberts has been banned from entering Gloucester city centre and shops participating in the Gloucester City Safe scheme.

She is also prohibited from wearing a wig or hairpiece designed to change her appearance while entering any retail premises.

The man was said to be ‘extremely drunk’ when he returned to his room in Pattaya’s red light district in the early hours of this morning.

Groans and banging was later heard coming from the 51-year-old’s room at The Freelancer Hotel but staff thought nothing of it.

It was only when his legs crashed through the ceiling of an adjacent internet café after he plunged from the balcony that they realised something was amiss.

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Shocked gamers called police as the naked holidaymaker, believed to be from Blackburn cried for help with his legs dangling from the floorboards.

Subsequent pictures showed him being guided to an ambulance while covered up in a blanket.

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Officers later checked his room, where they discovered excrement smeared across the floor.

Police lieutenant Thanawee Yarangsee said: ‘We have some ideas about what he was doing in the room to make it so dirty but there was nothing illegal.

‘It is his private life, so he will have to speak with the hotel to negotiate the bill.’

Two Scots who are believed to own the biggest brick collection in the UK are looking for a museum to house all 6,000 of them.

Mark Cranston and Ian Suddaby have spent the last 15 years collecting thousands of Scottish-made bricks from all over the world.

Part of the collection is stored in two large stables in Mr Cranston's garden in the Scottish Borders; the rest is stacked outside Mr Suddaby's house in East Lothian.

The pair have an agreement that if something happens to one of them the other will make sure their priceless collection is safe. However, they have now decided they need to find a more secure and permanent home for them.

Mr Suddaby, an archaeologist who lives in New Winton, told BBC Scotland News the bricks were an important record of Scotland's industrial past.

"Brick-making is a very important part of Scotland's history because we do have some of the best quality fireclay in the world for making industrial bricks.

"And this ties in with the industrial revolution and I think it should be promoted to a wider audience and that should be in some sort of a museum.

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Among their collection is a special fire brick that was salvaged from the SS Politician, after it ran aground in the Outer Hebrides in 1941 carrying 264,000 bottles of malt whisky - inspiring the novel and film Whisky Galore!

There is also a brick that was retrieved from the execution block at Barlinnie prison in Glasgow, before it was demolished in the late 1990s.

The men own a Scottish-made brick recovered from an old gold mine in Washington state, USA. Their oldest brick is a drainage tile from 1833.

Their collection even out-numbers that of The Brickworks Museum - the UK's only brick museum - in Swanwick, Hampshire, which has about 3,500 bricks.

A woman who pleaded guilty to dressing as a clown and in 1990 murdering the wife of a man she later married was released from prison on Saturday, ending a case that has been strange even by Florida standards.

Sheila Keen-Warren, 61, was released 18 months after she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for the shooting of Marlene Warren, Florida department of corrections records show. The plea deal came shortly before her trial would have started.

Keen-Warren, who has maintained her innocence even after her plea, was sentenced to 12 years in prison. But she had been in custody for seven years since her arrest in 2017, and Florida’s law in 1990 allowed significant credit for good behavior. It had been expected she would be released in about two years.

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Marlene Warren’s son, Joseph Ahrens, and his friends were at home when they said a person dressed as a clown rang the door bell. He said that when his mom answered, the clown handed her some balloons. After she responded, “How nice,” the clown pulled a gun and shot her in the face before fleeing.

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Palm Beach county sheriff’s investigators had long suspected Keen-Warren in the slaying, but she wasn’t arrested until 27 years later when they said improved DNA testing tied her to evidence found in the getaway car. Rosenfeld has called that evidence weak.

At the time of the shooting, Keen-Warren was an employee of Marlene Warren’s husband, Michael, at his used car lot. Since 2002, she has been his wife – they eventually moved to Abingdon, Virginia, where they ran a restaurant just across the Tennessee border.

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Aronberg last year conceded that there were holes in the case, saying they were caused by the three decades it took to get it to trial, including the death of key witnesses.

A record-breaking 75-mile GPS image of a penis has been scrawled across south Wales on the exercise app Strava to raise money for charity.

The outline of the male genitalia – drawn by the on-foot journey of Terry Rosoman – stretches from Hay-on-Wye to Abergavenny via a double circuitous route taking in Crickhowell and Llangenny.

It was completed in less than 24 hours by Rosoman, 38, a marketing director from south Wales, to raise money and awareness about men’s mental health issues for Movember.

He said he chose to run the giant phallus to help gain the attention of his “target demographic”. He claimed most men find the shape “hilarious”.

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