Fourth Oddities Spotted in the News

[Dartz]

Statue of Mosquito which killed Oliver Cromwell proposed for Cork

I've posted the CBC link to provide some context to those who might wonder why Cromwell might be less than popular here....

[Labster]

California bans Kars4Kids charity jingle for false advertising

Well, I suppose 17-year-olds and 18-year-olds might still count as "kids"... but is financing gap-year trips to Israel what they say or imply in the commercials that they're doing?

Banning those jingles is a public service for our sanity.

They don't really say in the commercial that the money goes to anything except repeat the phone number, followed by "donate your car today".  The only implication is that it has preteens playing around on instruments while singing (obviously badly, but cleaned up with autotune cranked up to maximum).  The low content in the ad was enough for me to always assume that the charity was probably shady, because most charities want to tell you exactly what they do so you give more money and speak on behalf of their cause.  But, as the court ruled, the average person would be confused.  As Carlin said, think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize that mathematically half of them must be even stupider.

I had already been joking that those kids in the commercial were all now adults... but who knew that that would make them just the right age to benefit from the charity?  I guess 1-800-KARS-4-JEWS isn't as catchy a song?

[Norgarth]

I saw a note on the CBC news ticker mentioning that King Charles got shit on by a seagull during a visit to Ireland. I can't help but imagine there are more than a few Irish who think that's hilarious.

[robkelk]

Pope Leo XIV has issued his first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.

It's an oversimplificatopn to say that, as As It Happens notes, he's spelling Faith without AI... because that isn't all that the encyclical addresses.

[Labster]

Pope Leo XIV has issued his first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.

It's an oversimplificatopn to say that, as As It Happens notes, he's spelling Faith without AI... because that isn't all that the encyclical addresses.

I haven't finished reading it, but I feel like there are certain chapters put there just for JD Vance's benefit. Now look here JD buddy, seriously, the social gospel has been a concept in church thought for over a century, look at what all these popes wrote about.  You can't go back in time to the point where the church "stays in their lane" because it never existed.

Welcome to 2026, where the only organization still working on AI alignment is the Catholic Church.  Yet another thing I would have never believed in 2024.

[Norgarth]

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket has exploded on the launchpad during an engine test firing
https://apnews.com/article/blue-origin-r...fd4e61543e

[Dartz]

That was the coolest explosion ever.

[Labster]

US man named Loony Toon sentenced to 20 years for shooting at police officers

Oh no, they got Doug!

[Bob Schroeck]

<snrk> And it looks like it's actually his birth name, not some frivolous name-change late in life. His parents must have hated him...

[robkelk]

What are they teaching in high schools nowadays, that a grade-9 student can write a paper with this title?

ΛCDM+S - Thermodynamic Cosmology: Simulating The Universe's Expansion Without Dark Energy

Needless to say, Liam Desre won "Best Project - Discovery" for this at the 2026 Canada-Wide Science Fair.

Mr. Desre is using black hole thermodynamics to explain universal acceleration. Maybe we can't find dark energy because it doesn't exist?

[robkelk]

The Y2K bug is back! Dutch dev digs up untimely flaw in old BSD build

Okay, you have to have a DEC PDP-11/70 using a Traconex PSTI shortwave time signal receiver, but all of that can be emulated on a Raspberry Pi Pico.

“I'm writing a PDP emulator,” van Heusden told The Register in an email. “I'm also very much interested in time keeping on computers. That combined, I dove into the NTP-implementation on the PDP. When adding emulation for the PSTI-device, I suddenly noticed 19126 for the year.”

[hazard]

... That's spelled 'Van Heusden' when there isn't an initial, first name, or nickname in front of it.

Which, yes, I know, English does not understand. Nor do Americans.

[Bob Schroeck]

An escaped giraffe is on the loose in the Texas hill country.

[robkelk]

You know how taking the letter "L" out of the word "public" results in a completely different word?

That works in French, too. And, in this case, nobody noticed until after the posters went up.

Unfortunate typo prompts removal of French-language posters from downtown Ottawa

"I thought, 'Ooooh, this is bad in general,'" said Rideau-Vanier Coun. Stéphanie Plante, council's liaison on Ottawa's French language services advisory committee. "The translations were bad, the phrasing was bad."

Plante expressed surprise that the error went unnoticed until after the posters went up.

"It's not like there aren't any francophones in Centretown," she said.

[classicdrogn]

Is there an image of the whole poster somewhere? The one that's clear on there is only the top third or quarter, and the longer shot with it over someone's shoulder either used composition tricks to get her in focus and the background not, or was intentionally obscured in editing.

And they made this error on a bright pink poster, too! At least it doesn't sound like anyone is actually losing their cool (or their job) over a typo, however risqué it ended up.

[robkelk]

The Register: Japan wants 10 million more robots by 2040, some providing medical care

Japan has updated its national robotics strategy with a goal to adopt 10 million robots by the year 2040, with some intended to provide medical care.

Minister for the Economy, Trade and Industry Ryosei Akazawa yesterday announced the amended strategy, which envisions more robots working to provide medical care, or taking on roles in the food and beverage manufacturing sectors.

Millions of robots in Japan by 2040? The article doesn't mention any particular anime by name, but I know what I thought of. They do mention the general case, though:

South Korea announced a similar plan to become a robotics powerhouse on Monday, so let battle be joined! Hopefully not giant robot battle – an aspect of robotics that’s a notable feature of Japanese popular culture.

[classicdrogn]

With biological children becoming an economic nightmare to raise and the working population aging out of reproductive years, they have to do something to try to keep everything from collapsing in another decade or two... not that America is more than a decade or two behind on the same demographic trends.

It'd be funny if what finally gets AI stuff kicked into shape is a need for robot nurses to take care of Nana and Papi as they get to retirement/voting bloc age and then get attached to their infomorph "grandkids."

[robkelk]

One reason why I don't trust AI is that I don't know what it does "under the hood". It looks like that concern is justified.

The Register: Red teamers turned Claude Desktop into a double agent to do their evil bidding

Pentera Labs’ red teamers compromised a developer’s AI agent via his Claude Desktop app and ultimately turned that access into full remote code execution on the dev’s machine – demonstrating how an attacker could turn a trusted, chatty AI assistant into a double agent operating on their behalf.

[Bob Schroeck]

And Anthropic told them "this isn't a bug, this is working as designed"? That's just asking for trouble.

[robkelk]

Yeah. Cue IT departments everywhere taking that statement as an admission of Claude being a hacker tool and banning the software in 3...2...1...