the "Headline That Caught My Attention or the WTF" thread

I’d watch every game just to hear his name called.
“Knigga Please”🤣🤣🤣
[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.foxnews.com/sports/indiana-hs-sports-star-noah-knigga-clears-up-name-pronunciation-he-goes-viral-social-media.amp[/URL]

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12610551/Joe-Biden-brother-Frank-naked-selfie-GuysWithiPhones.html[/URL]

What a family circus.

I'm from the government, I'm here to help and I have absolutely no sense of humor.

Maine has a contest going too: [Maine DOT Humor Contest]('https://www1.maine.gov/mdot/contests/cms/') I'll miss the Maineah specific ones like:

[HEADING=2][SIZE=7]No joke: Feds are banning humorous electronic messages on highways[/SIZE][/HEADING]
Humorous and quirky messages on electronic signs will soon be disappearing from highways and freeways across the country.

A freeway sign reading “Drive hammered, get nailed” is seen in Tucson, Ariz., on Dec. 9, 2017. Under new federal guidelines, humorous and quirky messages on electronic signs will soon disappear from highways and freeways across the country. Shutterstock
PHOENIX — It’s no joke. Humorous and quirky messages on electronic signs will soon disappear from highways and freeways across the country.

The U.S. Federal Highway Administration has given states two years to implement all the changes outlined in [its new 1,100-page manual]('https://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/') released last month, including rules that spells out how signs and other traffic control devices are regulated.

Administration officials said overhead electronic signs with obscure meanings, references to pop culture or those intended to be funny will be banned in 2026 because they can be misunderstood or distracting to drivers.

The agency, which is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation, said signs should be “simple, direct, brief, legible and clear” and only be used for important information such as warning drivers of crashes ahead, adverse weather conditions and traffic delays. Seatbelt reminders and warnings about the dangers of speeding or driving impaired are also allowed.

Among those that will be disappearing are messages such as “Use Yah Blinkah” in Massachusetts; “Visiting in-laws? Slow down, get there late,” from Ohio; “Don’t drive Star Spangled Hammered,” from Pennsylvania; “Hocus pocus, drive with focus” from New Jersey; and “Hands on the wheel, not your meal” from Arizona.

Arizona has more than 300 electronic signs above its highways. For the last seven years, the state Department of Transportation has held a contest to find the funniest and most creative messages.

Anyone could submit ideas, drawing more than 3,700 entries last year. The winners were “Seatbelts always pass a vibe check” and “I’m just a sign asking drivers to use turn signals.”

“The humor part of it, we kind of like,” said state Rep. David Cook, a Republican from Globe, told Phoenix TV station CBS 5. “I think in Arizona the majority of us do, if not all of us.”

Cook said he didn’t understand the fuss.

“Why are you trying to have the federal government come in and tell us what we can do in our own state?” he said. “Prime example that the federal government is not focusing on what they need to be.”

Looks like there's been some pushback:

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.nj.com/news/2024/01/feds-u-turn-decision-to-not-allow-any-humor-in-highway-safety-messages.html[/URL]

This world has some serious issues...no wonder they put instructions like remove plastic before eating...

[URL unfurl="true"]https://nypost.com/2024/01/25/lifestyle/health-officials-warn-against-tiktok-toothpick-eating-trend/[/URL]

This world has some serious issues...no wonder they put instructions like remove plastic before eating...

[URL unfurl="true"]https://nypost.com/2024/01/25/lifestyle/health-officials-warn-against-tiktok-toothpick-eating-trend/[/URL]

just read that & was about to post it...................

Sickening
[URL unfurl="true"]https://share.newsbreak.com/5zomht8c[/URL]

Uggghhhh, this got me going. I am totally disgusted and ashamed with the way the Native Americans have been treated since Europeans found the New World. If any group deserves abject apologies for their treatment this is the group, BUT how can the enormity of their mistreatment even begin to be assessed if folks can't be educated on the culture of each tribe??? This ridiculous "idea" from the WH is a great example of the "cancel culture and/or PC Nazis" effectively doing exactly what they shouldn't be doing!!!

SMFH...

[HEADING=2][SIZE=7]Leading Museums Remove Native Displays Amid New Federal Rules[/SIZE][/HEADING]
The American Museum of Natural History is closing two major halls as museums around the nation respond to updated policies from the Biden administration.

The American Museum of Natural History will close two major halls exhibiting Native American objects, its leaders said on Friday, in a dramatic response to new federal regulations that require museums to obtain consent from tribes before displaying or performing research on cultural items.

“The halls we are closing are artifacts of an era when museums such as ours did not respect the values, perspectives and indeed shared humanity of Indigenous peoples,” Sean Decatur, the museum’s president, wrote in a letter to the museum’s staff on Friday morning. “Actions that may feel sudden to some may seem long overdue to others.”

The museum is closing galleries dedicated to the Eastern Woodlands and the Great Plains this weekend, and covering a number of other display cases featuring Native American cultural items as it goes through its enormous collection to make sure it is in compliance with the new federal rules, which took effect this month. That will leave nearly 10,000 square feet of exhibition space in the storied museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan off-limits to visitors; the museum said it could not provide an exact timeline for when the reconsidered exhibits would reopen.

“Some objects may never come back on display as a result of the consultation process,” Decatur said in an interview. “But we are looking to create smaller-scale programs throughout the museum that can explain what kind of process is underway.”

Museums around the country have been covering up displays as curators scramble to determine whether they can be shown under the new regulations. The Field Museum in Chicago [covered some display cases]('https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/11/arts/design/field-museum-nagpra.html'), the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University said it would remove all funerary belongings from exhibition and the Cleveland Museum of Art has covered up some cases.

The changes are the result of a concerted effort by the Biden administration to speed up the repatriation of Native American remains, funerary objects and other sacred items. The process started in 1990 with the passage of the [Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act]('https://www.nps.gov/subjects/nagpra/'), or NAGPRA, which established protocols for museums and other institutions to return human remains, funerary objects and other holdings to tribes. But as those efforts have dragged on for decades, the law was criticized by tribal representatives as being too slow and too susceptible to institutional resistance.

This month, [new federal regulations]('https://www.nps.gov/subjects/nagpra/regulations.htm') went into effect that were designed to hasten returns, giving institutions five years to prepare all human remains and related funerary objects for repatriation and giving more authority to tribes throughout the process.

“We’re finally being heard — and it’s not a fight, it’s a conversation,” said Myra Masiel-Zamora, an archaeologist and curator with the Pechanga Band of Indians.

Even in the two weeks since the new regulations took effect, she said, she has felt the tenor of talks shift. In the past, institutions often viewed Native oral histories as less persuasive than academic studies when determining which modern-day tribes to repatriate objects to, she said. But the new regulations require institutions to “defer to the Native American traditional knowledge of lineal descendants, Indian Tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations.”

“We can say, ‘This needs to come home,’ and I’m hoping there will not be pushback,” Masiel-Zamora said.

Museum leaders have been preparing for the new regulations for months, consulting lawyers and curators and holding lengthy meetings to discuss what might need to be covered up or removed. Many institutions are planning to hire staff to comply with the new rules, which can involve extensive consultations with tribal representatives.

The result has been a major shift in practices around Native American exhibitions at some of the country’s leading museums — one that will be noticeable to visitors.

At the American Museum of Natural History, segments of the collection once used to teach students about the Iroquois, Mohegans, Cheyenne, Arapaho and other groups will be temporarily inaccessible. That includes large objects, like the birchbark canoe of Menominee origin in the Hall of Eastern Woodlands, and smaller ones, including darts that date as far back as 10,000 B.C. and a Hopi Katsina doll from what is now Arizona. Field trips for students to the Hall of Eastern Woodlands are being rethought now that they will not have access to those galleries.

“What might seem out of alignment for some people is because of a notion that museums affix in amber descriptions of the world,” Decatur said. “But museums are at their best when they reflect changing ideas.”

Exhibiting Native American human remains is generally prohibited at museums, so the collections being reassessed include sacred objects, burial belongings and other items of cultural patrimony. As the new regulations have been discussed and debated over the past year or so, some professional organizations, such as the Society for American Archaeology, have expressed concern that the rules were reaching too far into museums’ collection management practices. But since the regulations went into effect on Jan. 12, there has been little public pushback from museums.

Much of the holdings of human remains and Native cultural items were collected through practices that are now considered antiquated and even odious, including through donations by grave robbers and archaeological digs that cleared out Indigenous burial grounds.

“This is human rights work, and we need to think about it as that and not as science,” said Candace Sall, the director of the museum of anthropology at the University of Missouri, which is still working to repatriate the remains of more than 2,400 Native American individuals. Sall said she added five staff members to work on repatriation in anticipation of the regulations and hopes to add more.

Criticism of the pace of repatriation had put institutions such as the American Museum of Natural History under public pressure. In more than 30 years, the museum has repatriated the remains of approximately 1,000 individuals to tribal groups; it still holds the remains of about 2,200 Native Americans and thousands of funerary objects. (Last year, the museum [said it would overhaul practices]('https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/15/arts/american-museum-natural-history-human-remains.html') that extended to its larger collection of some 12,000 skeletons by removing human bones from public display and improving the storage facilities where they are kept.)

A top priority of the new regulations, which are administered by the Interior Department, is to finish the work of repatriating the Native human remains in institutional holdings, which amount to more than 96,000 individuals, [according to federal data]('http://npshistory.com/publications/diversity/nagpra/ann-rpt/2023.pdf') published in the fall.

The government has given institutions a deadline, giving them until 2029 to prepare human remains and their burial belongings for repatriation.

In many cases, human remains and cultural objects have little information attached to them, which has slowed repatriation in the past, especially for institutions that have sought exacting anthropological and ethnographic evidence of links to a modern Native group.

Now the government is urging institutions to push forward with the information they have, in some cases relying solely on geographical information — such as what county the remains were discovered in.

There have been concerns among some tribal officials that the new rules will result in a deluge of requests from museums that may be beyond their capacities and could create a financial burden.

Speaking in June to a [committee]('https://www.nps.gov/subjects/nagpra/review-committee.htm') that reviews the implementation of the law, Scott Willard, who works on repatriation issues for the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, expressed concern that the rhetoric around the new regulations sometimes made it sound as if Native ancestors were “throwaway items.”

“This garage sale mentality of ‘give it all away right now’ is very offensive to us,” Willard said.

The officials who drew up the new regulations have said that institutions can get extensions to their deadlines as long as the tribes that they are consulting with agree, emphasizing the need to hold institutions accountable without overburdening tribes. If museums are found to have violated the regulations, they could be subject to fines.

Bryan Newland, the assistant secretary for Indian Affairs and a former tribal president of the Bay Mills Indian Community, said the rules were drawn up in consultation with tribal representatives, who wanted their ancestors to recover dignity in death.

“Repatriation isn’t just a rule on paper,” Newland said, “but it brings real meaningful healing and closure to people.”

Another dumb ass tries selling high end stuff on line, gets robbed and pulls another dumb ass move😂
[URL unfurl="true"]https://share.newsbreak.com/60hslo9f[/URL]

Another dumb ass tries selling high end stuff on line, gets robbed and pulls another dumb ass move😂
[URL unfurl="true"]https://share.newsbreak.com/60hslo9f[/URL]

What a idiot

what the.........

[[IMG alt="USA TODAY"]https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/mahyS7Gis84ax92ofeoeJQ--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTI2MDtoPTYwO2NmPXdlYnA-/https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2020-11/092f7540-26ea-11eb-bdb4-b7283677d9f5[/IMG]]('https://www.usatoday.com/news/')
[HEADING=2]They found a head in her fridge. She blamed her husband. Now she's charged in the case.[/HEADING]
Natalie Neysa Alund, USA TODAY
Mon, January 29, 2024 at 11:17 AM PST·3 min read
[83]('https://www.yahoo.com/news/mans-head-other-body-parts-191711389.html#')

A New York City woman previously taken for a psychiatric evaluation after police said they found human remains including a man's head in a taped up refrigerator in her home was due in court Monday after being arrested in connection to the grisly discovery.

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.yahoo.com/news/mans-head-other-body-parts-191711389.html[/URL]

what the.........

[[IMG alt="USA TODAY"]https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/mahyS7Gis84ax92ofeoeJQ--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTI2MDtoPTYwO2NmPXdlYnA-/https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2020-11/092f7540-26ea-11eb-bdb4-b7283677d9f5[/IMG]]('https://www.usatoday.com/news/')
[HEADING=2]They found a head in her fridge. She blamed her husband. Now she's charged in the case.[/HEADING]
Natalie Neysa Alund, USA TODAY
Mon, January 29, 2024 at 11:17 AM PST·3 min read
[83]('https://www.yahoo.com/news/mans-head-other-body-parts-191711389.html#')

A New York City woman previously taken for a psychiatric evaluation after police said they found human remains including a man's head in a taped up refrigerator in her home was due in court Monday after being arrested in connection to the grisly discovery.

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.yahoo.com/news/mans-head-other-body-parts-191711389.html[/URL]

Is your "what the..." about the crime or the article? It reads like three different stories mushed together and makes no sense.

Who is Wells? Did the police respond to a welfare check or a report from an informant? Was the dead guy chopped up in the freezer or unconscious on the floor? It's frikin' gibberish.

No wonder the news media gets no respect. They don't deserve any.

Is your "what the..." about the crime or the article? It reads like three different stories mushed together and makes no sense.

Who is Wells? Did the police respond to a welfare check or a report from an informant? Was the dead guy chopped up in the freezer or unconscious on the floor? It's frikin' gibberish.

No wonder the news media gets no respect. They don't deserve any.

it's in the thread title........................

What could possibly gowrong?

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/neuralink-implants-brain-chip-first-231049603.html[/URL]

What could possibly gowrong?

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/neuralink-implants-brain-chip-first-231049603.html[/URL]

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.foxnews.com/us/hotel-vp-accused-drunkenly-slapping-teenage-disney-world-restaurant-hostess-over-dress-code-snub[/URL]

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.foxnews.com/media/trans-influencer-viral-meme-says-declining-masculinity-getting-control[/URL]

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mayorkas-lashes-out-baseless-gop-allegations-ahead-of-key-impeachment-vote[/URL]

"Baseless" ??????????????????

Mayorkas’ letter comes after Republicans have traded barbs with Democrats and the administration over the impeachment push against the Biden cabinet secretary, who Republicans have accused of a "dereliction of duty" in his handling of the ongoing and historic crisis at the southern border. Migrant numbers officially hit 302,000 in December, a new record, after 2.4 million encounters in FY23. Republicans have said that large releases into the interior and a rolling back of Trump-era policies have fueled the crisis.

what the.........

[[IMG alt="USA TODAY"]https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/mahyS7Gis84ax92ofeoeJQ--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTI2MDtoPTYwO2NmPXdlYnA-/https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2020-11/092f7540-26ea-11eb-bdb4-b7283677d9f5[/IMG]]('https://www.usatoday.com/news/')
[HEADING=2]They found a head in her fridge. She blamed her husband. Now she's charged in the case.[/HEADING]
Natalie Neysa Alund, USA TODAY
Mon, January 29, 2024 at 11:17 AM PST·3 min read
[83]('https://www.yahoo.com/news/mans-head-other-body-parts-191711389.html#')

A New York City woman previously taken for a psychiatric evaluation after police said they found human remains including a man's head in a taped up refrigerator in her home was due in court Monday after being arrested in connection to the grisly discovery.

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.yahoo.com/news/mans-head-other-body-parts-191711389.html[/URL]

They or she did the world a favor. The guy in the fridge is a pedophile and look at the slap on the hand he got for raping a kid.

Because he's black and that makes it okay.

If you're happy and you know it CLAP your hands!!! Uh, nothing a little penicillin can't cure...

[HEADING=2][SIZE=7]U.S. hasn’t seen syphilis numbers this high since 1950. Other STD rates down or flat[/SIZE][/HEADING]
It continues to have a disproportionate impact on gay and bisexual men but is expanding in heterosexual men and women, and increasingly affecting newborns, too, CDC officials say.

NEW YORK — The U.S. syphilis epidemic isn’t abating, with the rate of infectious cases rising 9% in 2022, according to a new federal government report on sexually transmitted diseases in adults.

But there’s some unexpected good news: The rate of new gonorrhea cases fell for the first time in a decade.

It’s not clear why infectious cases of syphilis rose 9% while gonorrhea dropped 9%, officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, adding that it’s too soon to know whether a new downward trend is emerging for the latter.

They are most focused on syphilis, which is less common than gonorrhea or chlamydia but considered more dangerous. And while it continues to have a disproportionate impact on gay and bisexual men, it is expanding in heterosexual men and women, and increasingly affecting newborns, too, CDC officials said.

Total cases surpassed 207,000 in 2022, a 17% increase and the highest count in the United States since 1950, according to data released Tuesday. The count includes not only the most infectious stages of the disease but also latent cases and cases in which pregnant women passed syphilis on to their babies.

Syphilis is a bacterial disease that can surface as painless genital sores but can ultimately lead to paralysis, hearing loss, dementia and even death if left untreated.

New syphilis infections plummeted in the U.S. starting in the 1940s when antibiotics became widely available and fell to their lowest by 1998.

About 59,000 of the 2022 cases involved the most infectious forms of syphilis. Of those, about a quarter were women and nearly a quarter were heterosexual men.

“I think it’s unknowingly being spread in the cisgender heterosexual population because we really aren’t testing for it. We really aren’t looking for it” in that population, said Dr. Philip Chan, who teaches at Brown University and is chief medical officer of Open Door Health, a health center for gay, lesbian and transgender patients in Providence, Rhode Island.

The report also shows rates of the most infectious types of syphilis rose not just across the country but also across different racial and ethnic groups, with American Indian and Alaska Native people having the highest rate. South Dakota outpaced any other state for the highest rate of infectious syphilis at 84 cases per 100,000 people – more than twice as high as the state with the second-highest rate, New Mexico.

South Dakota’s increase was driven by an outbreak in the Native American community, said Dr. Meghan O’Connell, chief public health officer at the Great Plains Tribal Leaders’ Health Board based in Rapid City, South Dakota. Nearly all of the cases were in heterosexual people, and O’Connell said that STD testing and treatment was already limited in isolated tribal communities and only got worse during the pandemic.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last year convened a syphilis task force focused on stopping the spread of the STD, with an emphasis on places with the highest syphilis rates – South Dakota, 12 other states and the District of Columbia.

The report also looked at the more common STDs of chlamydia and gonorrhea.

Chlamydia cases were relatively flat from 2021 to 2022, staying at a rate of about 495 per 100,000, though there were declines noted in men and especially women in their early 20s. For gonorrhea, the most pronounced decline was seen in women in their early 20s as well.

Experts say they’re not sure why gonorrhea rates declined. It happened in about 40 states, so whatever explains the decrease appears to have occurred across most of the country. STD testing was disrupted during the COVID-19 pandemic, and officials believe that’s the reason the chlamydia rate fell in 2020.

It’s possible that testing and diagnoses were still shaking out in 2022, said Dr. Jonathan Mermin, director of the CDC’s National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention.

“We are encouraged by the magnitude of the decline,” Mermin said, though the gonorrhea rate is still higher now than it was pre-pandemic. “We need to examine what happened, and whether it’s going to continue to happen.”