University students are often stereotyped as tech-savvy, spending-shy, and/or smelly. These attributes coalesced around July's hacking of the University of Amsterdam's digital-payment-accepting washing machines: the 1,250-plus students on the Spinoza campus won unlimited free spins from the 'smart' machines. However, the system's managers have now chosen to shutter the laundry room rather than foot the bill. They hope to revert to analogue machines. Meanwhile, Folia reports, residents, left to make do with the few nearby laundry facilities that are not perennially out of order, worry that smart lice are gaining a foothold.
Reports of a possible explosion in the skies over the Brazilian coast led fire crews to wreckage including several fuel tanks, numerous SpaceX-branded packets, and a corpse in a sugarcane field in Coruripe. This was not the opening to an episode of Drugs in Space but, according to g1 Globo, the outcome of an Australian pilot crashing his heavily fuelled Zambia-registered aeroplane while attempting to deliver nearly 200 kg of disguised cocaine internationally.
A![[IMG:Spiralling mayhem]](images/chineseheritage3.png)
dvertised as China's 'fireworks hometown', the city of Liuyang
recently arranged a national-holiday extravaganza in which drone
choreography combines with vaunted firework traditions to create a
![[IMG:Spectators and sparklies]](images/chineseheritage1.png)
blooming effect over the local river. What ended up seared into
spectators' memory was a synchronised manoeuvre wherein at least a few
dozen firework-carrying drones burst into flames in mid-air, with
debris and embers sparking several small fires, city-wide. As
attendees at Liuyang's purpose-built pyrotechnics dome hefted chairs
as shields, 'October: The Sound of Blooming Flowers' produced sounds
somewhat closer to screams.
In January, California's Peter Tripp Akemann drove to Santa Monica for a closer look as the Palisades fire approached a friend's home. Launching his hobby drone from a multi-storey car park, he witnessed fire crews' efforts to douse the raging flames with 6,000-litre loads of ocean water from Super Scooper aircraft. Akemann, 57, lost contact with the drone when it was about 2.5 km away. He later recounted: 'It was not until I heard on the news that a drone had collided with a firefighting aircraft that I became concerned that it was possibly my drone' that left an 8x15 cm hole in the left wing. While he has been assigned a mere 14 days in prison and 30 days of at-home detention, he must pay for 56,000 euros' worth of repairs to the Canadair CL-415 and 78,000 in fines.
Drones of a different kind lay behind the doors of the Tampa-area
mansion where Kingdom of God Global Church leader Michelle Brannon
lived. An FBI raid revealed cramped quarters shared by 57 forced
labourers whom Brannon, 56, and the megachurch's other leader,
53-year-old founder 'Apostle' David Taylor, are accused of using
to staff their call centres as 'armor bearers', with the resulting
well-laundered millions getting funnelled through an expansive
network. While Brannon was receiving Bentleys, statues, and gold
bars, her personal servants received sleep deprivation, beatings,
and threats of eternal damnation if they did not meet what officials
called 'unobtainable' donation goals.
Ratcheting up the eeew factor, I'll mention alleged demands to ferry
women - fellow slaves and others - to and from Taylor and make them
take emergency contraceptives. Videos cover many related encounters
but not Taylor's 'multiple face-to-face encounters with God'.
A long-awaited report intended as the backbone for education reform in
Newfoundland and Labrador points to a need to reform more than just
local education. The 410-page action plan, 18 months in the making,
not only cites a profound need for 'ethical' use of artificial
intelligence in schools but also epitomises such needs - according to
![[IMG: The thick report]](images/untelligence.png)
the CBC, it contains at least 15 fabricated citations bearing the
hallmarks of AI's genuine stupidity. For example, it refers to a film
used only by a style guide as lorem ipsum.
Josh Lepawsky, who left the team's advisory board in January upon
seeing the writing in crayon on the wall (i.e., evidence of a 'deeply
flawed process', said: 'Errors happen. Made-up citations are a
totally different thing, where you essentially demolish the
trustworthiness of the material.'
Laken Ashlee Snelling, a 21-year-old University of Kentucky student,
has copious experience in cheerleading but apparently not with lessons
from hide-and-seek: closets make poor hiding spots.
A few hours after she left her dorm room for the day's classes, her
roommates discovered what she'd tucked into the closet: a bin liner
containing cleaning products and the towel-wrapped body of a full-term
infant, at the end of a faint trail of blood.
Upon her arrest, Snelling explained to the police that she'd given
birth in the room, heard a faint 'whimper', then passed out on top of
the baby. On waking, she'd panicked upon seeing the 'blue and
purple' newborn. This has earned her charges of abusing a corpse,
tampering with physical evidence, and concealing an infant's birth.
Kentucky has additional gruesomeness to offer. There is a rather
strong case against Daniel A. Kearney, 39, in connection with the
death of his partner, Damian Poole, whose decomposing gunshot-riddled
body was discovered in his McCreary County home, along with the bodies
of his two dogs. This is thanks to Kearney having penned a 'to-do'
list that features such items as steps for removing blood stains,
'paint everything', and reminders of what evidence to hide where - and
because he hadn't followed his own instructions. For example, Kearney
did not spread the ashes on the road in another state.
He too faces charges of abusing a corpse and tampering with physical
evidence. But he is accused also of murder and cruelty to animals.
Thanks to 'homeless unaccompanied youth' status, 17-year-old Kevin C.
Perry Jr received fast-track enrolment as a senior at Minnesota's White
Bear Lake Area High School. Playing on the football team there was a
dream come true - not for Perry, who didn't exist, but for Kelvin
Luebke, the document-forging 22-year-old who played him. After about
a month, Luebke was arrested and banned from the premises. A similar
guise served him longer at a Forest-Lake-area school, in 2022-2023,
before he was convicted of sending a nude photo to a 15-year-old
girl.
Luebke attempted to clarify that this year's 'misunderstanding'
arose because 'I had a different birth certificate on my other thing
in Africa'.
In the two weeks following Indonesia's implementation of a
national free-meal programme, thousands of children and pregnant
women in West Java alone fell ill, arriving at hospitals and makeshift
clinics with symptoms ranging from vomiting to severe stomach pain and
shortness of breath. In reply to criticism, programme head Dadan
Hindayana said: 'I wouldn't call it poisoning but, rather, digestive
disturbance' arising because 'the quality of the meals served was no
longer fresh'. Mothers in central Java, in turn, have responded by
banging pots out on the streets, an action that activist Kalis
Mardiasih described as what locals do 'so our voices reach the ears of
policymakers' in cases of emergency.
Meanwhile, some children have shared videos of maggot-ridden Makan
Bergizi Gratis meals. So far, expired sauce, shards of glass, and
storage/contamination issues from imported fried shark have been found
at the kitchens built in rushed efforts to fulfil Indonesian President
Prabowo Subianto's campaign promises to combat malnutrition. While
such problems persist, officials have not reversed their decision
to close underdeveloped regions' established grassroots kitchens.
The idea of killing someone with kindness gained a reflexive twist in Texas, where Cecilia Simpson, 41, held a door open for another woman at Dallas's Five Below shopping centre. She berated the other woman, age 22, for failing to thank her. Then, the younger woman followed Simpson into another shop, where she expressed her own views until both ladies were asked to leave. Their argument continued in the car park, where Simpson hit her adversary. A witness reports on how the confrontation ended: three shots from a handgun left Simpson dead. A charge of murder followed also.