Random News Stories

[Randy Stankey]

Specifically? Do you mean that there should be a law against a woman putting her tit in a cat's mouth? I can't think of any time in my life when somebody said it was illegal to breastfeed a cat. I've seen and heard a lot of strange things in my life but I have never heard of anything like this before. I would never imagine that such a thing should be called out, by name, to say it's illegal. I'd kind of figure that existing laws about bestiality and public indecency should cover it.

I think that the same goes for the duck incident. Does a university need to have a specific rule about hunting ducks? I think that the local game laws would cover the situation.

It's illegal to hunt game without a license. Ducks are game. Aren't they?
How did they catch the duck? Did they use a shotgun? IF they did, that could set them up for charges on discharging a firearm in a prohibited area.
If they used a trap, it could set them up for charges on possession of a "harmful device" or "instrument of mayhem."
Besides, if they were "tame" ducks that were bought to be put in that lake, they would be "property" and anybody who harmed them would be liable to the owner to repay the loss. (Civil tort.)

We already have a lot of "loony laws" on the books and I don't think we need more of them. If we have to write laws that say you can't breastfeed a cat on an airplane or that you can't hunt ducks on University Lake, we are venturing into that territory.

What would be next? You can't ride a zebra down Main Street on a Sunday?

[Leo Enticknap]

I did write "specifically." Agreed that all the generic rules in the book you mention could be thrown at her if prosecutors so wish.

Reminds me of when I was a student, living in a hall of residence with a large lake in the grounds. One Sunday afternoon, some international exchange students caught, cooked, and ate a duck from it. The rules 'n regs for on campus living totaled tens of thousands of words, but they successfully argued that they did not violate any of them, and in the end escaped any sort of sanction. Needless to say, a new rule, with broad brush wording along the lines of disturbing or harming wildlife, was very quickly added.

[Randy Stankey]

Are there any airline regulations or federal laws that specifically prohibit this? ...

A woman forcing her breast into a cat's mouth isn't bestiality? The legal definition of bestiality does include frottage. Rubbing a breast on a cat's face is frottage.

Besides, how can using force that makes a cat scream in public NOT be considered animal abuse?
Human milk is simply not fit for consumption by cats. It doesn't have the right fat content. It doesn't have the correct nutrition. It doesn't contain the right antibodies. If you forced a human to drink cat's milk, that would be considered abuse. It could easily be argued that force feeding human milk to a cat is abuse.

Public nudity? Although normal breastfeeding between a human mother and child is not considered nudity, this is not considered breastfeeding and, therefore, would be public nudity or exhibitionism. Rules, laws, ordinances or social customs regarding breastfeeding only apply if it's human-human breastfeeding. Human-feline breastfeeding would not be protected.

Let's see...what else?....
Creating a public disturbance? Disobeying a lawful order? There are circumstances where, under F.A.A regulation, disobeying the reasonable, lawful orders of a member of a flight crew could be considered an offense. I'm sure that some sort of "lewd conduct in presence of a minor" could also be cooked up if there were any children on board the plane.

Owning or possessing a hairless cat should get the death penalty! They are not normally found in nature, except for rare cases which usually don't live very long in the wild. They were cross-bred for the purpose of creating a cat without hair. That kind of crap should be illegal!
If you want a cat or a dog with a certain color hair and you can breed for that trait, I suppose that's okay because such a thing can happen in nature.

[Leo Enticknap]

Two stories involving aviation and animals...

From the New York Post:

Woman caught breastfeeding her hairless cat on a Delta flight

A woman who took a Delta flight recently wasn’t kitten around when she whipped out her breasts and started feeding her hairless cat.

The unidentified female flew from Syracuse, NY, to Atlanta, GA, where she was caught breastfeeding her feline on the plane. A flight attendant told her repeatedly to stop and put her cat back in its cage, however, the woman refused.

A message was sent through the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) to alert Delta crew in Atlanta that a passenger in seat 13A “is breastfeeding a cat and will not put cat back in its carrier when [flight attendant] requested.”

A photo of the message board was found on Reddit and was posted on Twitter by author Rick Wilson.

Flight attendant Ainsley Elizabeth, who was on board during the incident, took to TikTok on Nov. 13 to explain more of what went down, Newsweek reported.

“This woman had one of those, like, hairless cats swaddled up in a blanket so it looked like a baby,” she said. “Her shirt was up and she was trying to get the cat to latch and she wouldn’t put the cat back in the carrier. And the cat was screaming for its life.”

Elizabeth revealed in another video that security got involved. However, she’s unsure of what happened to the woman and her cat once the jet touched down in Atlanta.

The Delta employee who sent the ACARS message also requested that Delta’s Red Coat team apprehend the woman once they got to the ground. Red Coats are “the elite airport customer service experts, identifiable by their bright red coats. They are specially trained to handle on-the-stop customer issues,” according to Delta’s website.

The airline’s website also outlines its policies of women breastfeeding children. “Delta fully supports a woman’s right to breastfeed on board Delta and Delta Connection aircraft and in Delta facilities. Breast pumps are allowed on board. At the airport and if you prefer, many airports do offer private lactation rooms or spaces,” the policy states.

Delta allows animals such as small dogs, cats and household birds to board domestic flights and “must be able to fit in a small, ventilated pet carrier.”

Are there any airline regulations or federal laws that specifically prohibit this? I'd be surprised if anyone had bothered to make any ... until now.

And from the Daily Star (of Dhaka, Bangladesh):

While taking off from Cox's Bazar Airport, a Biman Bangladesh Airlines plane yesterday hit two cows on the runway, leading to their death.

Several officials, in charge of security at the Cox's Bazar Airport, confirmed the matter to The Daily Star wishing anonymity.

The accident happened around 5:57pm on Tuesday when a Biman Bangladesh Airlines flight (EA-437), carrying 94 passengers, was flying from Cox's Bazar to Dhaka.

Till the time of filing this report, it was not yet known who the cows belonged to.

Cox's Bazar Airport sources said the flight landed safely at Dhaka airport at 7:05pm.

Not surprised about the wishing anonymity part: how could two pilots and presumably at least one air traffic controller in the tower fail to see two cows on the runway before attempting to take off a 737 from it?! Udder incompetence, if you ask me.

[Harold Hallikainen]

I think a sticker on the device with the default randomized password (unique to every device) is sufficient. People can change the password away from the randomized default, if desired, and use restore to get it back should they forget that password. The requirement for physical access to the device to see the sticker or to restore the sticker password seems to me to be adequate security. I don't think companies should be required to keep a record of the randomized default password. They would then have to get into trying to figure out if someone who calls is authorized to get the password. That is avoided by putting the default randomized password on the device.

Harold

[Leo Enticknap]

From Gizmodo:

The UK Just Banned Default Passwords, and We Should To

UK lawmakers are sick and tired of shitty internet of things passwords and are whipping out legislation with steep penalties and bans to prove it. The new legislation, introduced to the UK Parliament this week, would ban universal default passwords and work to create what supporters are calling a “firewall around everyday tech.”

Specifically, the bill, called The Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill (PSTI), would require unique passwords for internet-connected devices and would prevent those passwords from being reset to universal factory defaults. The bill would also force companies to increase transparency around when their products require security updates and patches, a practice only 20% of firms currently engage in, according to a statement accompanying the bill.

These bolstered security proposals would be overseen by a regulator with sharpened teeth: companies refusing to comply with the security standards could reportedly face fines of £10 million or four percent of their global revenues.

“Every day hackers attempt to break into people’s smart devices,” UK Minister for Media, Data and Digital Infrastructure Julia Lopez said in a statement. “Most of us assume if a product is for sale, it’s safe and secure. Yet many are not, putting too many of us at risk of fraud and theft.”

The rules would attempt to meaningfully tackle what’s become a scourge of weak IoT passwords increasingly susceptible to attackers. And we’re not talking about weak, but serviceable passwords either. According to a 2020 report conducted by cybersecurity company Symantec, 55% of IoT passwords used in IoT attacks were “123456.” Another 3% of the attacked devices featured the password “admin.” IoT devices are notoriously insecure outside of passwords as well. A recent report from Palo Alto Networks found that 98% of all IoT device traffic was unencrypted.

The problem is only getting worse, especially as smart home devices gain mass popularity and become more affordable. Though estimates vary, the total number of global IoT devices could swell to over 20 billion by 2030. That’s already translating into more attacks. Just two months ago, Kaspersky Labs told Threat Post that it had detected 1.5 billion IoT attacks in the first half of 2021 alone. That’s double what it detected in the last six months of 2020.

IoT companies also routinely try to throw the blame on customers when their lackluster security practices result in breaches or hacks. That was, maybe most famously, the case for smart home security company Ring, which tried to claim a rise in compromised accounts was the result of customers reusing passwords. In response, Ring and its owner Amazon found themselves on the receiving end of a class-action lawsuit filed in late 2019 accusing the company of negligence for failing to properly secure its devices. For what it’s worth, Ring has since made some meaningful improvements in the security department, including requiring two-factor authentication on new devices and, more recently, adding end-to-end encryption.

The UK’s no-nonsense approach to passwords though could serve as an example for copycats in the U.S. and elsewhere. The U.S. actually passed a significant IoT security bill last year, but it stopped short of issuing penalties or bans on weak passwords. Rather, the legislation, called the IoT Cybersecurity Improvement Act, directs the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology to establish a minimum set of security requirements for IoT devices and for those standards to get a refresher every five years.

The law also requires contractors to put in place vulnerability disclosure policies. But while these provisions are a step in the right direction they are largely limited to firms that engage in business with the federal government.

By contrast, the UK’s proposed bill would cover a far wider scope of divides and manufacturers and, importantly, provide clear monetary sticks to drive compliance. Incentives and carrots are only useful up until a point. Security lapses though, particularly in cheap IoT devices, are nothing new and have thus far been mostly unresponsive to any market nudges. Clear penalties, or at least the threat of them, could instead offer an avenue for actual change.

I'm in two minds about this, thanks to an experience a few years ago. We go through a ritual here whereby we change our ISP every year from the cable monster (Spectrum) to the landline monster (Frontier) and then back again, because they both try to anally rape us when the teaser rate runs out. They cynically figure that we won't be willing to go to the hassle of switching, and I guess this holds true for most of the residents in our development.

When we first signed up with Frontier, they gave us a DSL modem/router/wifi access point combined box, which had a unique password baked into its BIOS, and a sticker on the unit stating what it was. Security conscious as I was, I removed this sticker from the unit and filed it, carefully ... too carefully as it turned out. The following year we switched to Time Warner/Spectrum, who gave us a separate MOCA modem/router/access point, and then the year after that back to Frontier. Frontier wanted to charge us $10 a month to rent a new unit from them, which we could avoid if we reused the old one. But I couldn't remember the password, or find the sticker. A look online revealed that there is simply no way to nuke it to a universal default. If you don't have that sticker, the thing is e-basura. Frontier won't even give it to you if you give them the serial (of course not - they'd be passing up revenue if they did).

After several hours of my life that I won't get back, I found it, and was able to reuse the router. But I predict that if a universal ban on factory default credentials is enforced, the volume of perfectly good devices going to landfill will increase to the point of making Greta Thunberg go postal. Therefore any legislation would have to include a mechanism for recovering lost passwords from serviceable equipment (i.e. the manufacturer would have to be required to release the credentials for a given serial number to anyone who can provide reasonable proof that they own the device or are authorized to manage it) for a given number of years after the sale.

[Randy Stankey]

Is that "retraining center" being run by a corporate entity and are those corrupt cops receiving kickbacks maybe?

Are you talking about the place where I took the special test? No. That is run by PENNDOT. (PA Dept. of Transportation.) The agency that manages driver's licenses and car registrations, etc. That's just the way things are run in this state.

The cop that wrote me up for the stop sign was a "townie." (A town cop.) Townies are famous for acting like Deputy Fife (a character on an old TV show).

Most places where I have lived, the town cops would give you a break if you lived in the neighborhood. Where I live, now, the town cops seem to work in reverse, sometimes.

I know who a few of them are through acquaintances...friend-of-a-friend. Many of them are ex-military who finished their enlistments and got jobs as cops. They all walk around, acting like they are still in the army. A bunch of gung-ho idiots.

If you get pulled over by one of them, the other patrol cars will hear it over the radio and, within five minutes, there will be two or three cruisers surrounding your car.

Which...by the way... If you ever want to commit a crime in this town, all you have to do is get somebody to run a stop sign in one end of the town so that all the cops will go to that location, leaving the rest of the area wide open.

Cops, here, aren't so much corrupt as they are just butt heads.

This woman who took cannabis candy to school?! What kind of butt head is she?!

I don't care what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home but they shouldn't take their "toys" to school.
What the hell was she thinking? That's just plain DUMB!

Let's just give the benefit of the doubt and say that she forgot, somehow. Maybe she was looking through her coat pocket or purse and found a piece of cannabis candy that she didn't know was there. She should have taken that outside and locked it in her car or, better, flushed it down a toilet. Putting it in a box with other candy is just about the stupidest thing I can think of.

So, yes! I this case, the punishment fits the crime.

[Jon Dent]

Was it the art teacher?

[Leo Enticknap]

Makes a change from the usual 20-something pretty high school teacher shags eighth grader story, I suppose...

Lexington County teacher had marijuana edibles in student prize box

LEXINGTON, S.C. (WIS-TV) —

A South Carolina elementary school teacher is accused of having weed edibles in her student prize box, according to Lexington County Sheriff Jay Koon.

Victoria Farish Weiss, 27, is charged with possession of a Schedule 1 drug, according to warrants.

“We became involved in this case Sept. 23 after we received word a Rocky Creek Elementary School student picked a pack of marijuana edibles out of a box full of candy Weiss used to reward students,” Koon said. “Detectives confirmed during interviews that Weiss took the pack of edibles from the student and told him to pick something else from the box.” The student went back to the box and happened to grab another pack of edibles.”

No students ate the edibles, according to Koon.

During a search of Weiss’ house, investigators found packs similar to the ones that the student picked from the prize box.

As of Oct.13, Weiss is no longer employed by Lexington School District One, according to district officials.

“The safety of our students is our top priority,” Superintendent Greg Little said. “It is unacceptable for a staff member to potentially threaten the wellbeing of a child. We will continue to work to ensure all of our children have a safe environment to learn and grow. Rocky Creek Elementary has a sterling reputation which will not be tarnished by the actions of one person.”

Koon said that the edibles were cannabis-based food products that came in the form of candy. They are illegal in the state.

Weiss turned herself in Friday morning. She is being held at the Lexington County Detention Center.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Is that "retraining center" being run by a corporate entity and are those corrupt cops receiving kickbacks maybe?

I had a run-in with a Belgian cop who wanted to "fine" me for "parking" in a "no parking" zone. I wasn't parking though, I was loading/unloading stuff from the vehicle, which was perfectly legal at that very spot. He wanted to see money and I told him that without showing me a ticket first, there would be no money. Also, I wanted his full name, badge number, the works. He left on his motorcycle shouting all kinds of stuff I couldn't understand towards me and I've never heard anything about the episode ever since. Corrupt cops seem to be a universal plague.

[Randy Stankey]

A few years ago, I had to take a special driver's exam because I ran two stop signs in the span of a year. In PA, if you take the test again and pass, it'll take points off your record.

The town cops in the borough where I live are a bunch of real-life Deputy Fifes! I once got pulled over less than 100 yards from my house at 1:30 a.m. (on my way home from work on 2nd shift) because the cop claimed my headlight was out, which it wasn't. He was basically asking, without actually asking, "What are you doing out, driving around in this neighborhood so late at night?" When I showed him my ID badge from work then pointed at my house and said, "I live RIGHT THERE!" he was all like, "Umm...Allright." These are the same cops that stopped me for not counting "Three Mississippi" before proceeding at a stop sign.

Anyhow, when I went downtown to retake the exam, the place was full of dunderheads. Both customers and employees. The guy proctoring the exam was legally blind and had to use a magnifier to read anything. Most of the other test takers weren't much better. You've got a time limit to finish the test but it's ridiculously stupid. Like, two hours to take a 20 question, multiple choice test on a "Scantron" sheet. All the questions are bloody simple. Red means stop and green means go.

Not only was I the first person to finish, I was the only one who got 20 out of 20 and there were a few who failed. Not only that, some needed the whole two hours and there was one guy who was dong the old "fill in the rest of the answers at the last second trick" after the proctor called "Pencils down."

Everybody had to stay in the room for the whole time because they don't score the tests until everybody hands in their papers. No talking and no books or personal items allowed. They claim to do this in order to discourage cheating.

Umm... The guy administering the test is legally BLIND! How could he tell if somebody is cheating?!

All this for a test that a fifth grader could pass in thirty minutes?

SHEESH!!

[Leo Enticknap]

From the Daily Telegraph's letters page today:

SIR – I have just received my letter from the Department for Transport inviting me to help alleviate the driver shortage. I shall not be doing so. The several days I wasted on Driver CPC training still scar me.

These patronising and thoroughly useless courses were imposed by the EU, and I would be interested to see if there is any evidence that they have benefited anyone besides the training providers. On a typical day, the course content was enough to fill an hour, but the rules kept you there for seven.

One particularly sticks in my mind. The class was on healthy lifestyles for HGV drivers, delivered by a morbidly obese instructor who insisted on a cigarette break every half hour.

Philip Collison
Terrington St Clement, Norfolk

HGV = heavy goods vehicle, the British term for a big rig.

I feel for this guy. I've lost count of the number of training courses I've had to attend, the content of which could have been covered in one hour if delivered by a competent trainer, but took a whole day because it wasn't.

[Frank Cox]

I have only had two mice here. The first time was about fifteen years ago when I woke up to a mysterious thumping sound in the middle of the night. I went to find out what was thumping and discovered a mouse in an empty five gallon pail. How or why it got into that pail I have no idea, but its efforts to get back out were what was making that thumping sound. Not really knowing what to do (and it being the middle of the night) I just took the pail outside and a bit down the street and threw the mouse out into the street. In hindsight I should have just put a couple of inches of water into that pail and then dumped the dead mouse in the morning, but I didn't think of that until later on.

The second time was just a couple of weeks ago. Late in the evening my wife screamed, "Frank, come quick!" Not knowing what was going on I raced into the kitchen and she said, "There's a mouse right over there." I looked over there and sure enough a mouse ran across the floor into a corner. It must have come in when I opened the door to take out the garbage about fifteen minutes earlier.

I told her to watch that corner and got a piece of plywood out of the basement that was big enough to barricade the corner. After getting it blocked off I got an ice cream pail and started searching everything in that area. I didn't have a really clear plan for what I was going to do when I found the mouse but I had some idea of trying to get it into the pail.

I searched everything in that corner and no mouse. I searched everything again and still no mouse.

I had a mousetrap that I bought and never needed to use after the mouse in the pail episode, so I congratulated myself on my foresight in having this trap available and got it out for the first time.

Set it, put some peanut butter on it and put it down in that corner. Left it alone and a few minutes later, SNAP! The trap had sprung but no mouse. However, I noticed that when I put the peanut butter on the trap I had got a bit of it smeared on the outside as well and some of that seemed to be missing. I carefully cleaned that off so there was no peanut butter anywhere on the trap other than the trigger, and set it again.

Some time after that, SNAP! Trap again sprung but still no mouse.

This trap being fairly lightweight plastic with a very snappy spring in it, I thought that it's probably bouncing and moving when it's sprung and missing the mouse. I had just been putting it down on the floor but this time I reset it and put it into the corner so it was supported on two sides. Ten minutes after that, SNAP! Dead mouse in the trap, and problem solved.

I disposed of the mouse and spent the rest of that evening cleaning everything in that corner. Haven't seen a mouse since. I bought a couple of new traps and set them but there's been no activity at all there since so I guess there was just that one single mouse.

[Harold Hallikainen]

The mouse story reminds me of Squirrel Cop at https://www.thisamericanlife.org/510/fiasco-2013

Harold

[Leo Enticknap]

Mice are an annoyance, but nothing like the health and property threat that rats are. They can't gnaw through food containers, drywall, etc., they don't reproduce as quickly, and they aren't a vector for diseases that can be fatal to humans (e.g. Weil's Disease and rabies). In exurbian and rural areas they are pretty much endemic, and sooner or later, one will likely run in through an open window or your back door.

The best way to keep them, and other pests and bugs, under control, is to have a cat or cats. One of ours once staked out the TV cabinet for the best part of a day, besieging a cockroach that had taken refuge under it, before eventually catching it and proudly presenting me with the corpse.