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Great Acts Of Stupidity

BMW accidentally drives into Brussels tram tunnel and stops at first station

A motorist in Brussels accidentally drove into a tram tunnel last night, writes Flemish public broadcaster VRT. The woman then drove her BMW in a panic until she saw the lights of the first underground station.

The motorist was heading for Liège, but chose the wrong tunnel at Meiserplein. According to a spokesman for the transport company STIB, the situation was quickly resolved. "We towed the car out of the tunnel in time with a STIB tow truck. Everything was repaired before the start of services this morning," she told VRT.

The incident happened late in the evening, so tram traffic was not disrupted. The woman may have to pay damages.

This is not the first time a car has ended up in the Brussels tram tunnel. In January this year, a car got stuck in the tracks. And in 2016, a Range Rover even passed several stations underground before the car stopped at the South Station.

Still, according to the STIB spokesperson, yesterday's situation is "exceptional". "The woman must have aimed very well, because we have a system that makes this almost impossible."

https://nos.nl/artikel/2469748-bmw-...lse-tramtunnel-in-en-stopt-bij-eerste-station

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
 
This one is full of stereotypes, confirmation bias bliss :) Click the link for pictures and video!
https://nos.nl/artikel/2469549-hardrijdende-profvoetballer-vliegt-met-auto-sporthal-in-belgie-binnen

Hard-driving professional footballer flies into sports hall in Belgium with car

Moroccan-Belgian footballer Sofian Kiyine (25) flew at full speed through the wall of a sports hall with his car yesterday. The accident happened in Flémalle, near Liège. The professional footballer is out of danger, reports his club Oud-Heverlee Leuven.

The sports hall caused havoc. No one else was involved in the accident, but that may be called a miracle. Shortly before the accident, there were still children in the hall. They had just gone to the changing rooms, says a local administrator, according to the newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws.

CCTV footage shows the Mercedes driving at high speed straight ahead on a roundabout and being launched as a result. The vehicle then flies through the wall of the sports hall at a height of a few metres.
 
escargot said:
'Personal use, Officer!' :rollingw:
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That's what I always say....


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I don't know which is stupider, sharing classified military information with your buddies on Discord, or giving immature young dudes access to classified military information as part of their (junior status) IT job:

New York Times: FBI arrests Jack Teixeira
"The arrest raised questions about why such a junior enlisted airman had access to such an array of potentially damaging secrets, why adequate safeguards had not been put in place after earlier leaks and why a young man would risk his freedom to share intelligence about the war in Ukraine with a group of friends he knew from a video game social media site."
 
IbisNibs said:
I don't know which is stupider, sharing classified military information with your buddies on Discord, or giving immature young dudes access to classified military information as part of their (junior status) IT job:

New York Times: FBI arrests Jack Teixeira
"The arrest raised questions about why such a junior enlisted airman had access to such an array of potentially damaging secrets, why adequate safeguards had not been put in place after earlier leaks and why a young man would risk his freedom to share intelligence about the war in Ukraine with a group of friends he knew from a video game social media site."
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You've got to wonder why military intelligence would recruit such a stupid person.
Unless they needed him for one specific task.
 
Maybe a Strange Death rather than a Great Act of Stupidity. TikTok strikes again.

A dangerous social media trend called the “Benadryl challenge” has claimed the life of a 13-year-old boy.

The viral TikTok challenge involves taking massive amounts of Benadryl, the over-the-counter allergy drug, to get high and bring on hallucinations. Jacob Howard Stevens of Greenfield, Ohio died after taking 12-14 pills which immediately caused seizures, his father Justin Stevens told ABC 6 News.

https://www.psychiatrist.com/news/viral-tiktok-benadryl-challenge-claims-life-of-13-year-old-boy/
 
*sigh*
Ever thus ...

Drying and smoking banana skins for an illegal/legal high; smoking 'cannabis' flavoured joss-sticks for an illegal/legal high; snorting plastic-bags full of Brut antiperspirant (in my day) to get an illegal/legal high. Etc. Etc.
 
Stormkhan said:
snorting plastic-bags full of Brut antiperspirant (in my day) to get an illegal/legal high.
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I've never heard of THAT one before!
The ingenuity of bored teenagers is a thing of wonder.
 
Stormkhan said:
It was the propellant that gave them the high.
Though, after some experience with various recreational stimulants, I think they were confusing dizziness and nausea with a 'rush'.
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Yes, but Brut? At least they could've used Old Spice.
 
Floyd1 said:
Putting this here, NOT because of what the pricipal did, but what the school board's actions were in response;

Principal fired after Florida students shown Michelangelo statue​

​






A picture of Michelangelo's statue of David's statue of David

By Antoinette Radford
BBC News

A principal of a Florida school has been forced to resign after a parent complained that students were exposed to pornography.
The complaint arose from a Renaissance art lesson where students were shown Michelangelo's statue of David.
The iconic statue is one of the most famous in Western history.
But one parent complained the material was pornographic and two others said they wanted to know about the class before it was taught.
The lesson also included references to Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam" painting and Botticelli's "Birth of Venus".
Principal Hope Carrasaquilla of Tallahassee Classical School said she resigned after she was given an ultimatum by the school board to resign or be fired.
Local media reported that Ms Carrasquilla did not know the reason she was asked to resign, but believed it was related to the complaints over the lesson.
They also said Ms Carrasquilla had been principal for less than one year.
On Thursday, Florida's governor moved to expand a law that banned public schools from teaching sexual education and gender identity.
Teachers who violate the law face being suspended or losing their teaching licences.
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The sacked principal views Michelangelo's David in Florence.

A US principal forced to resign after parents complained about an art lesson showing one of the world's most famous sculptures has visited the masterpiece.

Hope Carrasquilla and her family went to see Michelangelo's David on Friday at Florence's Accademia Galleria. They came at the invitation of museum director Cecilie Hollberg, who said that she was grateful for the visit.

Ms Carrasquilla said she was impressed by the gallery, saying: "I think it's beautiful. It looks like a church."

"The thing that impresses me the most is that this whole gallery was built for him," she said in a statement provided to BBC News on Friday. "There is nothing wrong with the human body in and of itself," she continued. "Michelangelo would have done him wrong to sculpt him in any other way. I think it's wonderful."

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65433304
 
The use of Vermin Powders was not confined to the elimination of rodents, but was also liberally used to get rid of stray dogs and cats. One such purchaser was writer Henry F. Randolph, who in May 1892, bought some strychnine to poison an annoying cat. As any sensible nineteenth-century writer would do, he elected to put the poison in a drawer by his bedside rather than outside, in—say—a garden shed, in a container marked “POISON.” One night Randolph awoke and decided to take a dose of quinine, another bitter alkaloid. Not surprisingly, in the dark, he picked up the bottle of strychnine and took some of that instead; three and a half hours later he was dead. It is safe to assume that the moral of this story is that keeping poison on your bedside table is not the most sensible idea.

From:
A taste for poison
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...n?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=WVoqEdZGJg&rank=1
 
uair01 said:
The use of Vermin Powders was not confined to the elimination of rodents, but was also liberally used to get rid of stray dogs and cats. One such purchaser was writer Henry F. Randolph, who in May 1892, bought some strychnine to poison an annoying cat. As any sensible nineteenth-century writer would do, he elected to put the poison in a drawer by his bedside rather than outside, in—say—a garden shed, in a container marked “POISON.” One night Randolph awoke and decided to take a dose of quinine, another bitter alkaloid. Not surprisingly, in the dark, he picked up the bottle of strychnine and took some of that instead; three and a half hours later he was dead. It is safe to assume that the moral of this story is that keeping poison on your bedside table is not the most sensible idea.

From:
A taste for poison
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...n?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=WVoqEdZGJg&rank=1
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The model and actor Olive Thomas (1894 –1920) died from kidney failure after accidentally drinking the mercury chloride which her husband was taking for syphilis medicine.

Mercury chloride was freely available and had many medicinal uses. Accidental poisonings from it were sadly common.
 
IbisNibs said:
I don't know which is stupider, sharing classified military information with your buddies on Discord, or giving immature young dudes access to classified military information as part of their (junior status) IT job:

New York Times: FBI arrests Jack Teixeira
"The arrest raised questions about why such a junior enlisted airman had access to such an array of potentially damaging secrets, why adequate safeguards had not been put in place after earlier leaks and why a young man would risk his freedom to share intelligence about the war in Ukraine with a group of friends he knew from a video game social media site."
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Here is a very good summary of the Pentagon Leak papers:
https://www.electrospaces.net/2023/04/everything-you-want-to-know-about.html?m=1
 
uair01 said:
One night Randolph awoke and decided to take a dose of quinine, another bitter alkaloid. Not surprisingly, in the dark, he picked up the bottle of strychnine and took some of that instead; three and a half hours later he was dead. It is safe to assume that the moral of this story is that keeping poison on your bedside table is not the most sensible idea.
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I think the REAL moral of the story is that anyone who hates cats enough to want to kill them will run afoul of the mysterious powers of cats in the dark!
 
Spudrick68 said:
A school colleague in my years died when he was 15 inhaling gas from a canister.
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I'm possibly rather older than you, as the teenagers' prevailing fad back in my day :pipe: was for glue-sniffing.

The trick to avoid suffocation was to make sure you placed the blob of glue in a lower corner of the plastic bag you were inhaling it from.
If you accidentally smeared some further up, the bag might stick to your face so you couldn't control the 'dose'.

So I'm told, never tried it myself.
 
escargot said:
I'm possibly rather older than you, as the teenagers' prevailing fad back in my day :pipe: was for glue-sniffing.

The trick to avoid suffocation was to make sure you placed the blob of glue in a lower corner of the plastic bag you were inhaling it from.
If you accidentally smeared some further up, the bag might stick to your face so you couldn't control the 'dose'.

So I'm told, never tried it myself.
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A mate of mine used to spend the entire woodwork lesson sniffing a paper towel covered in lacquer.
 

High Wycombe: Entire car park ticketed after council error.​




Cars in the Duke Street car park, High Wycombe, with parking fines on them

All cars parked in the Duke Street car park appeared to have been ticketed

A commuter said she was stunned after returning to her vehicle to discover a car park full of vehicles had been ticketed following a council mistake.
The vehicles were parked at the Duke Street car park in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, on Monday.
It is understood Buckinghamshire Council put up a small sign stating it was closed for "relining".
The council has now said the tickets should not have been issued and it would cancel the enforcement notices.
Heleen Jalvingh, who lives in the town, said she had arrived at the car park at 07:00 BST and paid for her car park ticket via an app.
She said she parked next to a row of other cars already parked there and looked at the "big car park signs out of a habit, but no notices to be seen".
The 48-year-old said she was later shown a picture on Facebook of a sign, about the size of an A4 sheet of paper, "somewhere on the car park".
"But I have not seen this and the rest of the car park apparently didn't either, as we all returned to High Wycombe to find a yellow plastic envelope stuck on our windscreen," she said.
"This was obviously extremely disappointing, as we had done our duty by paying for the car park."

'Sorry for inconvenience'​

She said app-users should have been informed either via the app itself or with clearer signage at the entrance of the car park "as people do not necessarily go to the pay machines".
"To basically see all the cars with a fine does make me think that this has been a matter of poor communication by the council as apparently nobody realised that we were not allowed to park here," she added.
Ms Jalvingh said she had appealed the £70 fine, but Buckinghamshire Council said it would cancel all of them.
Councillor Steven Broadbent, the council's cabinet member for transport, said: "We want to apologise to the people who parked at Railway Place and Duke Street car parks in High Wycombe this week and who received parking tickets during a closure of the car park.
"Whilst we do enforce parking across the county these tickets should not have been issued and we will be reversing the parking tickets to everyone who received them.
"Only a small number of parking bays should have been closed to install the brand new EV charging bays rather than the whole car park and we did not give our customers enough notice of this action.
"We are sorry for any inconvenience and upset caused. Anyone who has been ticketed should take no further action as the notices will be cancelled, and anyone who has already paid the PCN charge will be refunded."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-65616515
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I'll bet money that there was just the one 'warden' fully bedecked in hi-viz and a peaked cap, just churning out the tickets with a glazed expression on his/her face.

I find that mostly the people employed to do the job of issuing these tickets have about as much intelligence as your average goldfish.

Anybody with any common-sense would immediately (upon finding that the car park was full of paying customers) contact their boss and tell them that something wasn't right.

It must have taken at least a couple of hours to issue these tickets. So that's the waste of time doing a pointless task, the wages involved, the arse-ache for all those people parked there, and the time spent by everyone else at the local council etc putting things right.
And I bet they still didn't install the EV points yet.
 
Trevp666 said:
I'll bet money that there was just the one 'warden' fully bedecked in hi-viz and a peaked cap, just churning out the tickets with a glazed expression on his/her face.

I find that mostly the people employed to do the job of issuing these tickets have about as much intelligence as your average goldfish.

Anybody with any common-sense would immediately (upon finding that the car park was full of paying customers) contact their boss and tell them that something wasn't right.

It must have taken at least a couple of hours to issue these tickets. So that's the waste of time doing a pointless task, the wages involved, the arse-ache for all those people parked there, and the time spent by everyone else at the local council etc putting things right.
And I bet they still didn't install the EV points yet.
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I bet they get a commission for every ticket issued.
 
Trevp666 said:
I'll bet money that there was just the one 'warden' fully bedecked in hi-viz and a peaked cap, just churning out the tickets with a glazed expression on his/her face.

I find that mostly the people employed to do the job of issuing these tickets have about as much intelligence as your average goldfish.

Anybody with any common-sense would immediately (upon finding that the car park was full of paying customers) contact their boss and tell them that something wasn't right.

It must have taken at least a couple of hours to issue these tickets. So that's the waste of time doing a pointless task, the wages involved, the arse-ache for all those people parked there, and the time spent by everyone else at the local council etc putting things right.
And I bet they still didn't install the EV points yet.
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Tell us you've had a ticket without telling us you've had a ticket. :evillaugh:
 
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