All posts tagged: wrecked

Michelin-starred chef criticises ‘evil’ pub guests whose dogs ‘attacked chickens’ as children wrecked coop

Michelin-starred chef criticises ‘evil’ pub guests whose dogs ‘attacked chickens’ as children wrecked coop

Published by Sam Flores

A Michelin-starred chef has claimed that guests at his pub allowed their dogs to savage chickens, while their children broke into its coop and smashed fertilised eggs. Former Masterchef: The Professionals finalist Adam Handling said “evil” guests at the Tartan Fox near Newquay, Cornwall let their pets and children cause havoc during last week’s Sunday lunch service. In a video posted to Instagram on Thursday, Mr Handling said: “On Sunday, we had a couple of guests that just allowed their dogs off their lead, where there’s signs everywhere saying, ‘Please keep your dogs on a lead, chickens are everywhere’, to just attack our chickens. “A few of them died. They died today after being nursed for the last couple of days, which is really quite sad.” Mr Handling claimed that their children then went into the pub’s chicken coop, where the rooster had been fertilising the eggs to produce more chicks, before they “picked up all the eggs and smashed them against a tree.” “I have no idea what goes through kids’ heads when they’re …

Iran’s environmental catastrophe has also wrecked its economy

Iran’s environmental catastrophe has also wrecked its economy

Published by skeptic

For several decades, Iran has devoted substantial financial, institutional and political resources to military expansion. It has invested heavily in supporting its regional partners, as well as in pursuing geopolitical influence across the Middle East. Previously, the Islamic Republic has shown few signs of swivelling its resources toward fixing its ever expanding environmental problems. And those problems are considerable. Around 11% of deaths and 52% of the burden of diseases across the country are attributable to environmental risk factors, according to the World Health Organization. Excessive groundwater extraction has caused buildings and roads to crack and sometimes collapse. Iran’s capital Tehran is often ranked as having the worst levels of air pollution in the world. In 2025 local media reported 350 deaths caused by poor air quality within a ten-day period. Hospitals at the time reported rising numbers of cases of respiratory and cardiac complications across Iran. Lake Urmia – once the Middle East’s largest saltwater lake – has dried out, leaving salt-laden dust plumes were capable of travelling hundreds of kilometres and even crossing …

Trump wrecked America’s 250th in DC, but other blue cities will save it

Trump wrecked America’s 250th in DC, but other blue cities will save it

Published by Sam Flores

Donald Trump’s well-documented ability to destroy everything he touches has come for what should have been the easiest of tasks: making the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence fun. If there is one thing the world’s oldest democracy is good at, it’s throwing Independence Day parties, hosting outdoor concerts, and filling out state fairs with charmingly schlocky entertainment and ice cream stands. Producing the Great American State Fair in Washington, D.C., was considered such a layup for the Trump-led Freedom 250 organizers that it’s no surprise Fox News, eager to showcase a MAGA win, set up a broadcast tower, seemingly intent on giving the event wall-to-wall coverage for its full 16-day run. As anyone who has been on social media can attest, this was a mistake. Clip after clip has gone viral of Fox News hosts claiming huge crowds in front of a live backdrop showing that few are bothering to show up. The initial roster of musical performers, which mostly consisted of nostalgia acts from the 1980s and 1990s, dropped out, …

City Council Wrecked in Voter Bloodbath After Allowing New Data Center

City Council Wrecked in Voter Bloodbath After Allowing New Data Center

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Small town politicians are learning the hard way that when Americans say no to data centers, they mean it. In Festus, Missouri — a sleepy town of roughly 12,700 residents — the backlash was so great that residents ousted half their city council after they approved a $6 billion data center development against the public will. According to Politico, the uproar caused by the data center approval led to a surge in voter turnout, the majority of whom expressed their discontent with the old councilors by voting in four anti-AI newcomers. Take Rick Belleville, a 70-year old who’d never previously run for office, but who unseated Jim Tinnin in the city’s fourth ward. Tinnin, an eight-year city council veteran, had previously been elected in 2018. This time, he lost to the upstart Belleville by over 40 percentage points after voting to approve the data center buildout. “I ran because I thought the city was not listening to people,” …

Marriage over, €100,000 down the drain: the AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion | Health & wellbeing

Marriage over, €100,000 down the drain: the AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion | Health & wellbeing

Published by Sam Flores

Towards the end of 2024, Dennis Biesma decided to check out ChatGPT. The Amsterdam-based IT consultant had just ended a contract early. “I had some time, so I thought: let’s have a look at this new technology everyone is talking about,” he says. “Very quickly, I became fascinated.” Biesma has asked himself why he was vulnerable to what came next. He was nearing 50. His adult daughter had left home, his wife went out to work and, in his field, the shift since Covid to working from home had left him feeling “a little isolated”. He smoked a bit of cannabis some evenings to “chill”, but had done so for years with no ill effects. He had never experienced a mental illness. Yet within months of downloading ChatGPT, Biesma had sunk €100,000 (about £83,000) into a business startup based on a delusion, been hospitalised three times and tried to kill himself. It started with a playful experiment. “I wanted to test AI to see what it could do,” says Biesma. He had previously written books with …

One year’s worth of bread lost in UK to wrecked harvests since 2020, report finds | Extreme weather

One year’s worth of bread lost in UK to wrecked harvests since 2020, report finds | Extreme weather

Published by Jenni Sidey

One year’s worth of bread has been lost in the UK since 2020 due to extreme weather destroying harvests, a report has found. Droughts and floods, which have been exacerbated by climate breakdown, have created a deficit in wheat production of over 7m tonnes. Experts at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) calculated this is enough wheat to bake more than 4bn loaves of bread – a year’s supply. Due to the drought this year, 2025 is expected to be another poor year for harvest. Farmers battled record hot and dry weather and irrigation bans, and struggled to plant their crops. Two of the worst three harvests on record have happened this decade, and the conditions are expected to continue to worsen as climate breakdown brings longer periods of dry weather coupled with heavier, more extreme rain which can cause floods. The worst year was 2020 and third worst 2024. The climate crisis is creating uncertainty for farmers, with different types of growers experiencing boom and bust years. Winegrowers said 2025 will be a …