[PennySerenade]

NYPD Officer Adopts Dog She Rescued from Locked Hot Car: They 'Will Never Be Neglected Again'



A New York City Police Department officer is taking her work home with her after making a furry friend.

Officer Aruna Maharaj of the 19th precinct adopted a dog last week after she helped rescue him from a hot car in June. Before his rescue, the dog was locked in the car for over two hours.

"This pup will never be neglected again!" the NYPD precinct wrote on Twitter, along with a photo of the elated canine greeting his new mom.

"A month ago, this sweet doggo was rescued after his owner left him in his hot locked car for hours; yesterday, one of its rescuers, Officer Maharaj, adopted him!" the precinct added on social media. "Thank you @ASPCA for taking such good care of this lucky pup!"

The 19th precinct previously shared a video of the dog's rescue on June 18, which includes footage of Maharaj assisting with the operation. In the clip, police officers break the front passenger side window, unlock the car and retrieve the dog from the backseat, giving him a treat and some water.



"Hot car, hot dog rescue — thanks to caring NYers who saw this pup locked in a car for over 2 hours & called 911! Our cops responded discovering the car off, windows shut & distressed dog," the precinct wrote with the clip on Twitter. "They broke the window, got pup out & off to a vet for care. Criminal investigation continues."

In a follow-up tweet, the precinct noted that the temperature that day hovered in the mid-80s, which would heat up the car to "a deadly 102 degrees" in only 10 minutes.

The NYPD added: "It's prohibited to leave an animal unattended in a car under these dangerous conditions — thankfully the pup was rescued & is being cared for."

“The Clamor of Ornament,” a dazzling new exhibition at the Drawing Center, gathers nearly 200 drawings, etchings, photographs, tunics and weavings to tell a complicated story, one that spans five centuries, about cultural exchange and appropriation.

The Clamor of Ornament: Exchange, Power, and Joy From the Fifteenth Century to the Present
Through Sept. 18 at the Drawing Center, 35 Wooster Street, Manhattan; (212) 219-2166, drawingcenter.org.


The designer Martin Sharp used a cloud of concentric circles to evoke psychedelic experience in his “Blowing in the Mind/Mister Tambourine Man,” 1968, in the show “The Clamor of Ornament” at the Drawing Center.


The curators define ornament as “embellishment, surface or structural, that can be lifted from its context, reworked, reproduced, and redeployed.” This wide-open description gives them space to include nearly anything, and they do: There are Albrecht Dürer woodcuts from the early 1500s, a bark painting by an anonymous Papua New Guinean artist, a series of black-and-white cakes and pastries that the illustrator Tom Hovey drew for a coloring book version of “The Great British Bake Off.”

An ingenious exhibition design lets you imagine these squiggles and frills leaping around the world as if totally weightless. One of the Dürers, a lacy roundel inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing of an Ottoman design, hangs next to a 1968 poster of Bob Dylan with a similar circle on his forehead; elsewhere, in a series of 19th-century watercolors and woodblock prints, textile patterns ricochet between India, Europe and Japan.

There’s nothing wrong with the roundel on Dylan’s forehead, of course, or with the other circles that the designer Martin Sharp used to depict the musician’s hair. But in the 19th century, when such patterns were all the rage in Western Europe, they were associated with racist notions of “the Orient” — a fantasy constructed to romanticize the very people those Europeans were conquering and robbing.

“Clamor of Ornament” offers evidence, too, of the ruthlessness of industrialization as well as of colonialism — at least as it showed up in art. There’s the drawing of “the Red Fort, Delhi, Furnished According to English Taste”; the stylized Kashmiri mango ripped off by textile mills in the Scottish town of Paisley; the American flag included in a Navajo weaving made after the Navajo had been confined to a reservation where they had to import wool. (In her erudite catalog essay, Emily King, a co-curator of the exhibition, quotes the economic historian Kazuo Kobayashi as saying that cottons manufactured in India “were the most important trades in exchange for African slaves.”)


In the end, the exhibition doesn’t make any one argument so much as it presents a whole host of them — a conceptual clamor that deepens and amplifies the already overwhelming visual experience. On the one hand, as arguments about cultural appropriation grow ever more heated and lose ever more nuance, we desperately need reminders like this of how difficult it still is to disentangle the realities. On the other hand, as a visitor to the exhibition, I ended up engaging in some decontextualizing of my own, tuning out the snazzy but informative wall labels, designed by Studio Frith, and focusing instead on the sheer sensual pleasures of an air-conditioned gallery filled with an extraordinary collection of beautiful objects.

Some people may be drawn to the bold colors of Emma Pettway’s Gee’s Bend quilt (2021), Toyohara Kunichika’s 1864 woodblock series “Flowers of Edo: Five Young Men,” or the temporary wall covered in an 18th-century French pattern called “Reveillon Arabesque 810.” But I found myself gravitating toward the simpler, monochrome certainties of John Maeda’s trippy typographical posters; of a zigzagged “Tapa Cloth Fragment” from Oceania; or of a specimen of 19th-century scrimshaw. Barely six inches long, the engraved bone shows a densely crosshatched whale surrounded by distressed sailors as it destroys their whaler. It was heady to consider that the entire little scene, packed with drama and pathos, might be just another patch of free-floating ornament.




Albrecht Dürer’s “The First Knot,” a woodblock print made before 1521, was his version of an Ottoman design earlier drawn by Leonardo da Vinci.


A Navajo weaving “with American flag panels and eye dazzlers” was made between 1868 and 1910, after the Navajo had been confined to a reservation and forced to rely on imported wool.


Possibly the greatest pleasure of “The Clamor of Ornament” is the vividness of its juxtapositions. From left, outfits by Dapper Dan, with photographs by Janette Beckman; “Peelatchiwaaxpáash/Medicine Crow (Raven),” 2014, by Wendy Red Star; and “Ghana Boy” Style Tunic, circa 1960s–70s — all displayed against a four-color woodblock reprint of an 1840s wallpaper design called Westwood Gothic.


A scene packed with drama in a 19th-century scrimshaw carving on whale bone.

View: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/03/arts ... speak.html

[prokroustis]

Wreck of historic royal ship discovered off the English coast



Maritime history expert Prof Claire Jowitt of the University of East Anglia described it as the most important maritime discovery since the Mary Rose

The wreck of one of the most famous ships of the 17th century – which sank 340 years ago while carrying the future King of England James Stuart – has been discovered off the coast of Norfolk in the UK, it can be revealed today.

Since running aground on a sandbank on May 6, 1682, the wreck of the warship the Gloucester has lain half-buried on the seabed, its exact whereabouts unknown until brothers Julian and Lincoln Barnwell, with their friend James Little, found it after a four-year search.

Due to the age and prestige of the ship, the condition of the wreck, the finds already rescued, and the accident’s political context, the discovery is described by maritime history expert Prof Claire Jowitt, of the University of East Anglia (UEA), as the most important maritime discovery since the Mary Rose.

The Gloucester represents an important ‘almost’ moment in British political history: a royal shipwreck causing the very near-death of the Catholic heir to the Protestant throne at a time of great political and religious tension.

This explorer searches deadly mines for treasure: old jeans



Brit Eaton is a daring mine explorer and fashion archaeologist who searches deadly mines for treasure . When Eaton ventures into a mine, he's on the lookout for old jeans aka "denim gold." He explains that some of these antique jeans can be worth 50k. The only challenge is avoiding things such as deadly poisonous gasses, rattlesnakes, falling rocks, and other fatal obstacles while searching for the denim gold. I love his adventurous spirit, and wish him safety and luck in his mine exploring.

https://boingboing.net/2022/08/07/this- ... jeans.html

[lush]

Yonge-Dundas Square Billboard Advertises Single Cheese String for Trade
August 6, 2022*

• Because, you know, what isn’t up for trade these days?

Did you happen to have been in the square this week? If so, you may have noticed something a little weird.

That being a large billboard advertising a single Black Diamond Cheese String- for trade.



The buyer of the advertising space, Angel Domingo, said the cheese string was found in the refrigerator of his new Toronto home. He regularly trades items on resell websites like Kijiji and decided he would try to do the same with the piece of cheese.

Domingo who is used to trading vehicles, car parts and furniture on websites, said the market is “filled with all kinds of strange things.”

“This is probably the strangest thing that I’ve ever had to had to offer up,” he said. “Somebody told me that I wouldn’t get anything for it and nobody would want it, but I guess people some people really want it.”

According to Domingo, since the billboard has went up, he has been receiving offers in “droves.” “(I’ve received) a lot of offers,” he said, “Some people are calling me again because the first offer they had wasn’t good enough.”



“I think the most anybody had to offer me was they offered me two Persian cats,” he continued. As of Thursday afternoon, Domingo says that he has not accepted any of the offers.

“I’ve been telling everybody the same thing when they asked me what I’m looking for… it’s like you’ll know when you when you see it,” he said, adding that he hasn’t heard the right offer yet.

“There’s been a lot offers and a lot of it is just fluff — there hasn’t been any quality,” he said.

Though he would not disclose the amount, Domingo says that he paid “a lot of money” to put the billboard up, and that his contract for the advertising space is only for a few weeks.

Domingo says that the cheese string is “still edible,” and that the expiry date is still a few months away.

I know my article the other day is referencing the same event, but this ongoing cheese-string saga even made it onto my go-to in other news source

[Governor3]

George Clooney’s Tequila Is Taking Over Rap
All of a sudden, it seems like Casamigos is name-checked in every song



In the beginning, there was Hennessy. “The Genesis,” the first track on Nas’s 1994 debut studio album, Illmatic, packs in four mentions of the cognac brand. “Take this Hennessy,” Nas says. “Pass that henrock, pass that henrock,” says Nas’s younger brother, Jungle. “We drinkin’ this straight up with no chaser,” replies the rapper AZ.

In the decades that followed, Hennessy became a fixture of rap lyrics. 2pac’s 1996 hit “How Do U Want It” called Hennessy “a favorite of my homies when we floss on our enemies.” In the 1998 song “Weed and Hennesey,” Master P rapped: “I smoke weed, and Hennesey / Just to make it through the days man.” Six years later, the references were still everywhere; in 2004, Trick Daddy boasted “See I know how to control my Hennessy” on his Thug Matrimony track “Gangsta Livin’.” Cristal champagne and Patrón tequila soon became rap staples, too, popularized by songs such as Jay-Z’s “Can’t Knock the Hustle,” from 1996’s Reasonable Doubt: “Waddle off the champagne, Cristals by the bottle.” In the 2006 earworm “Snap Yo Fingers,” Lil Jon rapped about mixing Patrón with Percocet: “I pop, I drank / I’m on Patrón and Perc, I can’t thank.” As rap evolved from its homegrown roots into something glossier and more commercial, the liquor name-drops evolved, too, into a kind of lyrical shorthand for opulent, larger-than-life success and its pitfalls.

But in recent years, I’ve noticed that, seemingly out of nowhere, a different liquor brand is everywhere. Turn on any hip-hop or Top 40 radio station and you’ll hear it too: Casamigos this, Casamigos that. Everyone seems to be obsessed with Casamigos. The Atlanta rapper Lil Baby name-checks the tequila on both Nicki Minaj’s “Do We Have a Problem?” (“She a lil demon off that Casamigos”) and Drake’s “Girls Want Girls” (“We got 1942 Casamigos, it’s getting heated”). Saucy Santana has referenced the brand on at least four separate songs since December 2020. Soulja Boy released a whole song called “Casamigos” last year. How on earth did a relatively new brand of tequila—one co-founded in 2013 by George Clooney, of all people—seize hip-hop culture and challenge Hennessy’s reign so fast?

Casamigos’ rise to rap prominence arguably began with Young Thug. In September 2018, the Atlanta-based artist released “Sin,” on which Jaden Smith joins him and raps, “Casamigos got me spinnin’.” There had been a handful of lyrical nods to the brand as far back as 2015 (for instance: in The Game’s “Quik’s Groove”), but “Sin” marked the first time a rapper with such clear pop-crossover appeal had name-checked it. (A year earlier, the tequila had been sold to the British drinks giant Diageo for at least $700 million, which also likely kicked its distribution into higher gear.)

By late 2021, artists from all over the country had also started citing the tequila, sometimes as a kind of truth serum or as creative inspiration, in their lyrics—among them the Atlanta rapper K Camp (“Casamigos to the head, I forget what I said”), St. Louis’s Smino (“Casamigos got me so honest, I’m sorry”), and Brooklyn’s Fivio Foreign (“Casamigo help me get in the zone”). This year alone, the brand has been referenced nearly 100 times in rap songs indexed on the lyric-annotation platform Genius.

Tahir Hemphill, a multimedia artist and researcher who created the searchable rap-lyric database Rap Almanac, has also noticed this trend. “When you talk Hennessy, you think about Black & Milds, Yankee fitteds, Timbs. You think about Hennessy, henrock,” Hemphill told me, dipping into a dramatically lower register. “Casamigos is definitely a different lifestyle.” He thinks its popularity in hip-hop has to do with the way the brand speaks to a modern take on the finer things: “It’s imported; it has four syllables; it’s [in the] Spanish language,” Hemphill said. “It makes you fancy.”

This tracks with one of the reasons rappers started mentioning specific brands of alcohol decades ago.“It’s not just ‘I ordered champagne’; they want to tell you how expensive the champagne was through the brand or how top-shelf it is,” Tuma Basa, the director of Black music and culture at YouTube, told me. “Artists are trying to paint an accurate picture of the lifestyle that they’re selling to the audience, who’s living vicariously through them.”

Though Casamigos doesn’t conjure the ostentatious grandeur of Cristal, with its gilded, extravagantly priced bottle, many of the brand’s advertising campaigns have leaned heavily on images of Clooney himself, looking gently windblown on a motorcycle or sipping tequila alongside his co-founder Rande Gerber. The 23-year-old Brooklyn musician Cassius Cruz, whose song “Pienso en Ti” mentions the tequila (“Shit got me on go, Casamigo”), told me that Clooney was part of the tequila’s appeal. “Whenever I reference alcohol in my music, I’m kind of cloaking myself in those projections,” Cruz said. “I want to take that coolness and that suave vibe and superimpose that onto whatever I’m doing.”

But some of the recent Casamigos lyrics seem to be doing something more nuanced than that too. Take the first verse of “Neo,” from the 28-year-old Portland-raised artist Aminé: “Just touched down, we in Euro / Italy summer, Lake Como,” he raps. “Driving on the boat next to Clooney’s house / Sippin’ on a lil Casamigo.” Although that scene might seem like a standard-issue lifestyle brag, it also contains a playful contradiction: Many would surely consider Aminé and his friends, young Black people, out of place in the rarefied setting of Clooney’s Italian vacation home. The disconnect between that staid European milieu and, potentially, a rowdy group of newly moneyed young Black men is fun, the kind of wink that rappers such as Jay-Z and Ye have also deployed to smugly satisfying effect.

Inevitably, all these Casamigos references end up seeping into the larger culture. On TikTok, videos tagged with “casamigoschallenge”—featuring eager participants downing a shot (or much more) of Casamigos—have netted nearly 200 million views total. In the past few years, parties advertising Casamigos open bars or Casamigos-forward cocktail lists have been joining, and in some cases appear to be replacing, the Hennessy-centric events that have long dominated nightlife in some cities with sizable populations of Black people.

Casamigos’ sudden dominance is especially notable when you consider it in historical terms. After all, earlier generations of Black consumers, Nas and other rappers included, didn’t just spontaneously decide to start buying Hennessy en masse. French cognac producers had been building ties with Black American consumers since the early 20th century, beginning with the U.S. soldiers stationed in Europe. After the end of World War II, Hennessy became the first spirit brand to place ads in Black-owned magazines such as Ebony and Jet. When President Barack Obama was elected, Hennessy made a limited-edition cognac that now sells for more than $1,000 among collectors. By the time Hennessy brought on Nas as a brand ambassador in 2013, it had long since established itself as the most popular cognac in the United States, largely because of Black consumers. By Illmatic’s 20th anniversary in 2014, Hennessy was promoting a documentary about the album’s creation.

From the December 1995 issue: Don’t call it cognac

For the brands that embraced it, hip-hop ended up being an accelerator of sorts. In 2002, a Courvoisier spokesperson told Fortune that Busta Rhymes’s infectious (and unsponsored) paean had helped the cognac line “achieve double-digit percentage growth” that year. But the relationships between alcohol brands and hip-hop artists have also sometimes been complicated. In 2006, Jay-Z had been emphatically rapping about Cristal for at least a decade when an executive at the company that produces the champagne made a comment suggesting that the brand was less than pleased with its popularity among rappers: “We can’t forbid people from buying it. I’m sure Dom Pérignon or Krug would be delighted to have their business.” Jay-Z responded by boycotting the brand and acquiring a competing one, Armand de Brignac (colloquially known as Ace of Spades). He also rapped about the slight on 2009’s “On to the Next One”: “I used to drink Cristal, them muh’fuckers racist / So I switched gold bottles on to that Spade shit.”

Cristal is not the only brand that has alienated Black customers by seeming to try to distance its image from hip-hop culture. In 2018, the organizers of a mega-popular Black party series known as Henny Palooza—which had begun as an impromptu gathering thrown by a few friends in New York in 2012 and evolved into a multicity, ticketed event with thousands of attendees—tweeted that Hennessy had never sponsored Henny Palooza because it didn’t “value us, us being the young, ambitious, creative minorities that are actually the culture that they claim to be a part of.” (At the time, the company instead pointed to its “long history of supporting the African-American community,” and a Hennessy spokesperson told The New York Times that the company does not comment on details of any sponsorships.) The party series got sponsored by D’Ussé cognac instead—a brand partly owned by Jay-Z.

According to Liz Paquette, the head of consumer insights at the alcohol-delivery service Drizly, Casamigos sales now outpace both Hennessy and D’Ussé in New York and Atlanta. In New York, it’s the best-selling brand of any spirit in 2022 to date.

Casamigos has been very coy about its founders’ views on its prevalence in rap. Much of its publicly available marketing materials don’t seem to be targeting Black consumers in the way that, say, Hennessy’s Nas-led 2021 film tribute to Black businesses did.

In 2015, Casamigos launched another campaign called “House of Friends,” featuring young people sitting around a campfire, strumming guitars amid a few scattered tequila bottles. It’s idyllic in an early-2000s-Hollister-ad way; it’s also remarkably white. Through a representative, Casamigos’ co-founder Rande Gerber didn’t answer a question about the brand’s popularity among rappers in particular, opting instead to give a conveniently generic statement: “​So many people are drinking it more and more every day and they spread the word,” he said via email.

What Gerber didn’t say, but what seems true to me as someone who has been listening to rappers name-drop liquor brands since well before I could legally drink, is that Casamigos has edged out Hennessy in part because of the brand’s own canny self-positioning. Its price point is high enough to seem luxe but not so high that it feels inaccessible; its bright, simple packaging makes it an appealing social-media prop; even its founders’ silence on the topic of Casamigos’ role in hip-hop can be read as a strategic move intended to keep the brand’s demographic appeal as broad as possible.

Or maybe the reason is simpler than any of that. Hemphill’s Rap Almanac does linguistic analysis of songs, and when we chatted about Casamigos’ popularity in hip-hop, he offered a theory that seemed almost suspiciously obvious. It was the kind of theory that comes not from studying hip-hop formally but from having been immersed in it, from having belted songs with friends at parties and recited verses in the mirror alone. “It might just be,” he said with a laugh, “that Casamigos is more fun to rhyme with than Hennessy.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/arc ... re/671058/
------------------
Surprisingly only the second worst piece of drivel The Atlantic choose to publish this week. Guess they figure no one is paying attention in August - Gov

[johngriffen]

I sometimes get REALLY DEPRESSED reviewing the news these days.
It's always about a global pandemic threatening life as we know it,
protests around the world, stupid politicians, natural disasters,
or some other really bad story.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

Welcome to The mobi weekly news magazine
IN OTHER NEWS
MONDAY AUGUST 8
What is it?
Here is your chance to become an "ACE REPORTER" for our weekly news magazine.
It is your job to fine weird, funny or "good feel" stories from around the world and share them with our readers in our weekly magazine

How do you play?
Just post a story that you have come across that made you smile, laugh, feel good...
BUT NOTHING DEPRESSING

EXAMPLE POST

​Naked sunbather chases wild boar through park after it steals his laptop bag

A naked sunbather was seen chasing wild boar through a park after it stole his laptop bag.
Amusing photographs from Germany show the man running after the animal to try and claim the plastic bag back.
But the cheeky boar and its two piglets appear to be too quick for the sunbather, who can't keep up with their speedy little trotters.
As the incident unfolds, groups of friends and family sat on the grass watch on and laugh.
Heads are seen turning in surprise and amusement in the hilarious photographs.
The incident happened at Teufelssee Lake - a bathing spot in the Grunwell Forest in Berlin, Germany.

Rules:
Each Edition of IN OTHER NEWS will be open for 7 days...
You can post as many stories as you like, but you will only get paid for One Story in any 24 hour period
So in other words, you can only earn WRZ$ once a day.
Each news day will start when I post announcing it
OR at:
9:00 AM CHICAGO TIME (UTC -5)
2:00 PM GMT (UTC -0)
on those days I space out and forget to post or can't due to Real Life
Stories may be accompanied with images - but No big images, please! 800x800 pixels wide maximum
Videos are allowed, but please keep them short, and post a short summary for those that don't like to click on videos
No Duplicate stories - Where a post has been edited resulting in duplicates, then the last one in time gets disallowed.
And please limit this to reasonably family friendly stories

Reward:
Each news story posted that I feel is acceptable (must be a real story, too few words or simply a headline are not considered acceptable) will earn you 50 WRZ$
If you post multiple stories on any given day, you will only earn 50 WRZ$ for the first story of the Day
All payments will be made at THE END of the weekly news cycle.
Special Bonus - Each week I will award "The Pulitzer Prize" for the best story of the week
The weekly winner of the "The Pulitzer Prize" will receive a 100 WRZ$ bonus
It's just my personal opinion, so my judgement is final

So help bring GOOD news to the members of mobi, and join our reporting team...

IN OTHER NEWS

NOTE: THE RECAP AND REWARDS WILL BE DONE LATER TODAY

[ozswede]

Tuneless Bangladeshi social media star grilled by police

An out-of-tune Bangladeshi singer with a huge internet following was hauled in by police at dawn and told to cease his painful renditions of classical songs, sparking a furore on social media.

"Hero" Alom, as he styles himself, has amassed nearly two million Facebook followers and almost 1.5 million on YouTube with his unique crooning style and arresting, raunchy videos.

One of his numbers, "Arabian Song", in which he appears in traditional Arab clothing on a sand dune with camels superimposed in the background, has garnered 17 million views.

But he has also drawn critics' scorn, particularly for versions of classic songs of two beloved national treasures -- Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore and Bangladesh's national poet Kazi Nazrul Islam.

On Wednesday Alom told AFP that he was "mentally tortured" last week by police who told him to stop performing classical songs, that he was too ugly to be a singer, and to sign an "apology" bond.

"The police picked me up at 6 am and kept me there for eight hours. They asked me why I sing Rabindra and Nazrul songs," he said.

Dhaka's chief detective Harun ur Rashid told reporters that Alom had apologised for singing the cherished songs and for wearing police uniforms without permission in his videos.

"We received many complaints against him," Harun said.

"(He) totally changed the (traditional) style (of singing)... He assured us that he won't repeat this," Harun added.


Hero Alom, an out-of-tune Bangladeshi singer with a huge internet following was told by police to cease his painful renditions of classical songs

Farook Hossain, deputy police commissioner of Dhaka, rejected claims by Alom, 37, that he had also been pressed to change his name.

"He is making these comments just to go viral in social media," he told AFP.

Following his ordeal, Alam released a new video depicting himself behind bars in a prison outfit, warbling mournfully that he is about to be hanged.

Alom's treatment triggered outrage on social media, with commentators and activists calling it an attack on individual rights -- even if his singing grates.

"I am not a fan of your songs or your acting. But if there is an attempt to muzzle your voice, I stand up against it," journalist Aditya Arafat posted.

"Don't be broken. You are a hero. No matter what others say, you are a real hero," Sanjida Khatun Rakhi wrote on Alom's Facebook page.

Alom says he has acted in several films and also participated in Bangladesh's parliamentary election in 2018 as an independent candidate -- garnering 638 votes.



He told AFP at his Dhaka studio that he started using the moniker "Hero" after becoming popular in his home district of Bogra, 150 kilometres (95 miles) north of Dhaka.

"I felt like I am a hero. So I took the name Hero Alom. I won't drop this name no matter what," he said.

"At present, it seems you can't even sing with freedom in Bangladesh."

(Everyone’s a critic… )

[Fatima99]

Woman teaches her pet 'stripper' cat to pole dance – and impresses as it swings round

Today is International Cat Day, and what better way to celebrate than with this pussy stripper.

No, that was not a euphemism.

Minds now out of the gutter, a woman has 'taught' her pet cat how to pole dance and honestly, we are pretty impressed.

Leah Trice has a metal pole in the middle of her living room where she practices her moves while rocking a leotard.

But it seems that she wanted to pass her skills along to the rest of her household.

In several TikTok clips that have racked up millions of views, Leah picked up her furry feline to pet her to the test.

And, the cat definitely had some moves of her own.

One clip showed Leah holding her pet at the top of the pole, and with a little encouragement, the cat grabbed on with its arms and legs before it slid down in style.

“My cat really is a stripper”, she said while sticking her tongue out in excitement.

As Leah told the cat where to put its limbs, she voiced: “I really teach her how to use the pole, she listens and loves to learn.”



The cat mum supported her student as it got to grips with learning the sliding technique.

Another clip showed Leah in her one piece giving the pole a go herself to demonstrate, and before waiting for their turn the cat eagerly joined in at the bottom of the pole.

“She was happier than me when she learned”, Leah giggled.

Cincinnati Zoo reveals gender of new baby hippo



The Cincinnati Zoo on Monday revealed the gender of its new baby hippo, with the zoo welcoming a male calf to its ranks.

Zoo officials made the announcement live on the TODAY Show.

"We have a bouncing baby boy," Cincinnati Zoo marketing manager Amy Labarbara said on the show, adding that it took a few days to confirm the sex of the baby because "they really wanted to let [mother and calf] bond, so they didn't really want to get their hands on the baby right away."

While the boy has not yet been named, the zoo is currently taking suggestions on its website, with the public allowed to weigh in.

The TODAY Show also played an exclusive new video of the baby boy, alongside his mother in their enclosure.

"He's amazing," Labarbara said of the baby. "He's doing so well, he's so strong, he's just staying right with his mom and doing everything we want a baby hippo to do. He's swimming, and just doing great."

The baby boy was born last Wednesday evening to mother Bibi, at which time the zoo said that the pair would remain isolated for approximately two weeks to be able to bond with each other.

The boy is the latest in the Ohio-based zoo's group of hippos, alongside the zoo's most famous resident, his sister Fiona.

Fiona became the first hippo to be born at the zoo in 75 years when she arrived in 2017, and has since become one of the most famous zoo animals in the country.

She continues to make waves on social media, producing viral moments throughout her life and even predicting various Super Bowl winners.

One thing Fiona has not yet done, though -- meet her new brother.

"He has not met [Fiona] yet," Labarbara said. "He's seen her from a distance, so, it's kind of a slow process."

The new boy will likely join his sister in helping to promote hippo conservation, with the species seeing dwindling numbers in recent years.

While the population has somewhat stabilized, the World Wildlife Fund estimates that there are only 115,000 to 130,000 hippos left in the wild.

Hunting, poaching and climate issues continue to cause problems for hippos, with some even calling for the animal to be named as an officially endangered species.

[goldie0608]

California Hospital Tech Brightens Kids' Casts with Amazing Artwork

"I like having fun and making kids smile," says orthopedic technician Luis Ruiz



Kids are often stressed and scared when they break a bone, but Luis Ruiz makes getting a cast fun at Children's Hospital Los Angeles. The orthopedic technician customizes casts of young patients with drawings of their favorite cartoon characters, sports teams, and more.

"About ten years ago, a little boy asked me to draw a happy face on his cast. I told him, 'You know what, I'm really not good at drawing. I'd rather not. I might mess it up,'" Ruiz tells PEOPLE.

The boy continued to insist on a smiley face, so Ruiz agreed. The little boy was ecstatic with the results.

"It lit him up!" Ruiz remembers.

That moment of joy inspired Ruiz to offer cast drawings to all the kids who came into the hospital with broken bones.

"I was not very good," Ruiz says. "But as time went by, little by little, I got better and better, to a point where now I can almost do anything they ask for."



Ruiz started his cast art career using permanent markers but now uses oil-based paint pens, which he found work better on a cast's rough material.

Since that first smiley face, Ruiz has painted thousands of casts, and the best part, he says, is "bringing those smiles."

"The kids just bring me joy," Ruiz adds. "I'm kind of a fun guy and a little kid myself inside, and I like having fun and making kids smile, and they make me smile."

A moment that stands out to Ruiz from his decade of decorating casts was when he met a young girl with cancer who wanted a Wonder Woman emblem drawn on her cast.

"It made her very happy to go around with that [drawing], because she got a lot of compliments on it," Ruiz shares.

These moments of joy matter most to Ruiz, who sees children in the hospital get asked serious questions about their health. His cast drawings often give kids in the hospital something fun to talk about and bring them "a joyful moment instead of having to explain what happened to them."

Covid exodus: Brooklyn Comes Alive at The Brooklyn Mirage on September 17



On September 17th, Brooklyn Comes Alive will return to The Brooklyn Mirage for its sixth installment. This one-day festival brings together the best genres of live music ranging from jazz, jam and funk. Likewise, this event features some unforgettable collaborations, unique one-off performances and one-of-a-kind music experiences.

Inspired by New Orleans and its famed Jazz & Heritage Festival, Brooklyn Comes Alive has been breaking the mold of traditional festivals with unprecedented music experiences since 2015. This year, Brooklyn Comes Alive will feature STS9, Medeski Martin & Wood, Lettuce, and the debut of Cool Cool Cool, an unforgettable project from former members of Turkuaz.

" It is so rewarding to work with some of our favorite artists to deliver special performances, debut new projects, and create memorable experiences for fans and bands alike at Brooklyn Comes Alive. That we get to do this in one of the country’s best live music venues, in the best city in the world, is a dream come true. Brooklyn, we’re back, and we can’t wait to celebrate with you at the incredible and unique venue, The Brooklyn Mirage.
– Festival director Gideon Plotnicki (GMP Live) "

Brooklyn Comes Alive was built from the fabric of the vibrant live music community of Brooklyn. Much like past “Comes Alive” events, Brooklyn Comes Alive 2022 will be full of exciting firsts and never-before-seen surprises. This event will mark STS9’s first show in NYC since 2019 when they last took over the Brooklyn Mirage. Similarly, Medeski Martin & Wood, who have not played on their home turf in NYC since 2019, will use the special appearance to celebrate their 30th anniversary as a band, which took place last year.

Lettuce will be notching both their Brooklyn Comes Alive debut and their Brooklyn Mirage debut as they celebrate the release of their latest album, Unify, but the band’s individual members are all Brooklyn Comes Alive veterans.

View full lineup:

https://nysmusic.com/2022/08/06/brookly ... tember-17/

[prokroustis]

Newly discovered chemical reactions could explain the origin of life



The first lifeforms are thought to have arisen on Earth billions of years ago, from a nutrient-rich mixture often called the primordial soup

Exactly how non-living molecules sparked into life is one of the most puzzling mysteries of science. Now scientists at Scripps Research have discovered a new set of chemical reactions that can produce the building blocks of life out of materials thought to be common in the primordial soup of early Earth.

The first lifeforms are thought to have arisen on Earth billions of years ago, from a nutrient-rich mixture often called the primordial soup. Essentially, the molecules contained within began to react with each other, thanks to some added energy like lightning strikes or hydrothermal vents, until they formed basic organic compounds, then amino acids, which can then link up into peptides and proteins and, eventually, living cells.

That, of course, is a huge oversimplification, and the specific chemical reactions that took place during the process remain murky. Scientists have investigated by cooking up their own versions of the primordial soup, based on what was thought to have been plentiful at the time, and exposing it to different conditions to see what happens and how easily life’s precursors may arise.

[PennySerenade]

3-Year-Old Conjoined Twins with Fused Brains Separated in Historic Virtual Reality Surgery



A neurosurgeon from England has successfully separated two Brazilian twins who were conjoined at the head.

On Monday, the charity Gemini Untwined announced that Bernardo and Arthur Lima, 3, who were born with "fused brains," had made it through seven procedures at the Instituto Estadual do Cerebro Paulo Niemeyer in Rio de Janeiro under the direction of pediatric surgeon Noor ul Owase Jeelani from London's Great Ormond Street Hospital, reported The Independent.

The young twins were treated for a total of 33 hours during the final two surgeries alone and were attended by almost 100 medical staff, The Evening Standard added Monday.

The procedures, which Jeelani called a "remarkable achievement," required medical professionals to master virtual reality training programs for months before they actually attempted the surgeries in real life.

Thanks to this training surgeons in separate countries worked together in the same "virtual reality room" for the first time in history, Jeelani added, according to The Evening Standard.



Jeelani, who founded Gemini Untwined in 2018, said he was "really apprehensive" about the procedure since past unsuccessful attempts to separate the twins had created complications due to scar tissue, reported The Evening Standard.

Despite this, he praised the operations' success and told The Evening Standard that "in some ways these operations are considered the hardest of our time."



The successful separation of Bernardo and Arthur is a remarkable achievement by the team in Rio and a fantastic example of why the work of Gemini Untwined is so valuable," Jeelani added in a statement obtained by The Independent.

"Not only have we provided a new future for the boys and their family, we have equipped the local team with the capabilities and confidence to undertake such complex work successfully again in the future," Jeelani's statement continued. "It is through this process of teamwork and knowledge-sharing globally that we can hope to improve the outcome for all children and families that find themselves in this difficult position."

"This is only possible through generous donations from members of the public," Jeelani finished.

During the final, 27-hour operation, Jeelani took only four 15-minute-long breaks for food and water, according to The Evening Standard.

"There were a lot of tears and hugs," Jeelani told the paper. "It was wonderful to be able to help them on this journey."



Gemini Untwined's website identifies the condition the Lima twins were born with as craniopagus twins, "a term for two independent children that are connected to each other with fused skulls, intertwined brains, and shared blood vessels."

The charity's website notes that one in 60,000 births result in a pair of conjoined twins, and five percent of those births are craniopagus twins.

Our mission is to offer hope and medical solutions to challenges faced by craniopagus children and others with complex craniofacial conditions," reads Gemini Untwined's website. "To further global health equity and access, enabling the treatment of children and the training of medical teams across the world; and to continue to push the boundaries of medical innovation and research."

The twins will go through six months of rehabilitation following the surgeries and are recovering in the hospital, the charity told The Independent. The boys are now the oldest set of craniopagus twins with a fused brain to be separated, the newspaper added.

On Monday, Gemini Untwined CEO Marelisa Vega told PEOPLE in a statement that the charity is "incredibly proud of the Gemini Untwined team, especially our founder Mr. Owase Jeelani and Professor David Dunaway, who have been advising the team at the Instituto Estadual do Cérebro Paulo Niemeyer for months via virtual reality," before Jeelani flew to Rio de Janeiro to perform the final surgeries.

In the three years since Gemini Untwined's founding, the organization told PEOPLE that it has performed six surgeries separating craniopagus twins, which it said "is more than any one organization." All twelve children involved in the surgeries have survived, it said.

Jeelani directed previous operations on twins from Pakistan, Sudan, Turkey and Israel, according to The Evening Standard.

[lush]

Walk on Beer With These Limited-Edition Sneakers With Beer-Filled Soles
August 5th, 2022*

Dutch beer company Heineken recently teamed up with sneaker designer and customizer Dominic Ciambone, aka The Shoe Surgeon, to create a special sneaker with beer-filled soles.

To celebrate the launch of Heineken’s newest product, Heineken Silver, the Dutch brewer commissioned The Shoe Surgeon to create a sneaker that embodied the identity of their smooth, easy-to-drink new beer, and he delivered. The so-called “Heinekicks” feature the company’s iconic color scheme – green, white and red – as well as the Heineken logo, and handy bottle openers built into the tongues. But what really sets them apart from any other sneakers is the liquid floating in their transparent soles – actual Heineken Silver beer.



Using a specialized surgical injection method, Dominic Ciambone created the first ever pair of sneakers that allow the wearer to walk on beer. And, apparently, it’s not just about the look, as the soles also provide a smooth and comfortable walking experience inspired by Heineken Silver. The fluid shifting inside the sole as you walk is said to provide a unique feeling.



“Partnering with Heineken for their new beer was a fun challenge,” Ciambone said. “We both share a passion for innovation and pushing boundaries and created a design to reflect that. The shoe not only embodies the energy of Heineken Silver, but literally carries it. I can’t say I’ve ever designed a sneaker that contains actual beer before.”



Unfortunately, unless you live in Singapore, the chances of getting your hands on one of the only 32 pairs of Heinekicks that will ever hit the market are slim to none. The kicks will only release in the small island nation, with the first seven pairs expected to land in Q4 2022. The price is yet to be announced.



These Heinekicks reminded us of another unique project we featured a while back, the MSCHF x INRI Jesus Shoes, 97 pairs of limited edition Nike sneakers featuring transparent soles filled with holy water from the Jordan River.