Thread: Strange News

Jeeesuz. You must be when you’re already quoting yourself.

Originally Posted by DrWilly

Jeeesuz.

^Pissed and roaming the forum, looking for an argument.

Things OK at home?

New York dog gets City Council citation for rat kills in war against vermin

A New York City dog named Luna received an award Thursday for killing rats.

City Council Member Chi Ossé posted on the social platform X awarding Luna a City Council Citation for the work she’s done.

“We just presented an official @NYCCouncil citation to Luna the Dog for being New York’s strongest solider in our war against the rats,” Ossé posted.

“With over 200 confirmed kills, including over 60 this year alone, Luna is holding the front line and making us proud,” he said.

He shared a photo with Luna and of her citation, which said it’s given to individuals who give “exemplary service” to their communities.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has said he hates rats and would hire a rat czar to help rid the city of its vermin. It’s been a years-long effort for Manhattan leaders to try to tackle the city’s rat problem.

In April, Adams announced that Kathleen Corradi, a former elementary school teacher, would lead the city’s efforts to battle the potentially millions of rats in Manhattan.

In both New York and Washington, D.C., a group of dogs and their owners head out late at night to catch rats.

They walk in dark alleyways and behind restaurants to unleash their dogs, trained to bite, rip and efficiently kill rats, which the owners say is more humane than traps or poison, The Washington Post reported last year.

Workers remove marijuana plants from Wisconsin Capitol

Up in smoke: Workers remove dozens of apparent marijuana plants from Wisconsin Capitol tulip garden

Someone’s plans to harvest dozens of apparent marijuana plants grown on the Wisconsin state Capitol grounds have gone up in smoke.

The plants sprouted in a tulip garden outside the Capitol, WMTV-TV reported Thursday.

Tatyana Warrick, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Administration, told The Associated Press in an email Friday that workers had removed the plants, but that her agency couldn’t determine if they were marijuana or hemp. Both are forms of cannabis, but only marijuana has the compound that gets people high.

Warrick didn’t respond to questions about how the plants might have made it into the garden.

University of Wisconsin-Madison botanist Shelby Ellison, who examined the plants for WMTV before they were removed, told the station that they were cannabis plants. But she told The Associated Press on Friday that she couldn’t say for certain whether they were marijuana or hemp.

She said there were dozens of the plants in the garden, suggesting someone planted them intentionally.

“It was just a large number of plants for it to be anything accidental,” Ellison said.

Marijuana remains illegal in all forms in Wisconsin. Assembly Republicans introduced a bill last session that would have legalized marijuana for medical purposes, but they couldn’t muster support among their state Senate counterparts and the measure never got a hearing.

Originally Posted by DrWilly

clog up the forum just like a toilet in a teenage boys boarding house.

Finally, you've outed yourself.

Originally Posted by cyrille

Finally, you've outed yourself.

Wait, what!?


Bastard.

Drawings depicting gladiators among latest discoveries at Pompeii

Charcoal graffiti believed to have been sketched by children uncovered at ancient Roman city

Drawings of gladiators believed to have been made by children inspired by watching battles at Pompeii’s amphitheatre are among the latest discoveries in the ruins of the ancient Roman city.

The charcoal drawings were found during excavations at I’Insula dei Casti Amanti, a cluster of homes in Pompeii’s archaeological park that opened to the public for the first time on Tuesday.

Other drawings found on a long wall include the outline of three small hands, two figures playing with a ball, a hunting scene of an animal that appears to be a boar, and a scene that depicts two boxers lying on the ground.

Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the director of Pompeii’s archaeological park, said the drawings were probably done by one or more of the children who played in what was a courtyard before the city was destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79.

He said: “Together with psychologists from the Federico II [university of Naples], we have come to the conclusion that the drawings of gladiators and hunters were made based on a direct vision, and not of pictorial models. They had probably witnessed battles in the amphitheatre, thus coming into contact with an extreme form of spectacularised violence.”

Archaeologists also discovered the remains of two victims of the eruption that were found by the door in the House of the Painters at Work, named as such because the home is believed to have been undergoing a repaint at the time of the disaster.

‘Enormously exciting’ fossils found in NSW opal field suggest Australia had ‘age of monotremes’

Some time about 100m years ago in what is now an Australian opal field, a weird, furry, egg-laying, rabbit-sized mammal was gliding through a waterhole across a massive polar floodplain.

This mammal – Opalius splendens, but which scientists have thankfully blessed with the nickname “echidnapus” – was among the ancient descendants of one of the planet’s most unique orders of animals, the monotremes.

New scientific research released on Monday showed the echidnapus had characteristics of the last two remaining members of their tribe.

Modern Australia is the stronghold for the only monotreme species – the supremely odd platypus, a nipple-free Aussie mammal with a duck-like bill, and the spiky echidna with its over-stretched snout, which also lives in Papua New Guinea.

But the discovery of echidnapus and two more ancient monotremes in the opal field fossils means at least six monotreme species existed in what is now the far north New South Wales outback.

“It’s like discovering a whole new civilisation,” said Prof Tim Flannery, the lead author of the research, published in palaeontology journal Alcheringa.

“Today Australia is known as the land of the marsupials, but discovering these new fossils is the first indication that Australia was previously home to diversity of monotremes.

In the region where the fossils were found, “there are no other kinds of mammals. It suggests Australia experienced an age of monotremes when they were the dominant mammal.”

The discovery of the opalised jawbones in an area known as Lightning Ridge almost never happened. Elizabeth Smith, of the Australian Opal Centre, and her daughter Clytie found the specimens about 25 years ago while going through the tailings heap of an opal mine.

“It was largely luck that I found the pieces,” Elizabeth Smith said. “But I immediately knew it was a mammal and therefore really significant.”

She donated the specimens to the Australian Museum at about the turn of the millennium but they’ve only been described now in the Flannery research. These days her finds and those that are sent to her by opal miners stay at the not-for-profit opal centre.

“These specimens are a revelation,” Smith said. “It’s enormously exciting. They show the world that long before Australia became the land of pouched mammals, marsupials, this was a land of furry egg-layers – monotremes.”

The three species are described in the journal from opalised jaws dating back to an age of the Cretaceous period between 102m and 96.6m years ago.

Very strange news