13 votes

Offbeat Fridays – The thread where offbeat headlines become front page news

Posted by mycketforvirrad
Tags: ask.discussion, recurring.weekly, offbeat fridays, offbeat

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like fathers, ux and tom scott. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was paying attention.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

2 comments

  1. mycketforvirrad
    Link
    Customer parks tank outside Wickes in protest at ‘poor quality’ £25,000 kitchen The Telegraph – Neil Johnston – 29th December 2023

    Customer parks tank outside Wickes in protest at ‘poor quality’ £25,000 kitchen

    Paul Gibbons drove the British Abbot SPG vehicle to the Basingstoke branch after claiming retailer refused to accept his complaint.

    Mr Gibbons told the Basingstoke Gazette: “The finish throughout is so poor, and half of the kitchen doesn’t fit as it should. I agreed to the contract and what I was told would be two weeks of work, and 10 months later I am still left with a kitchen which I can’t even use as you should.”

    The Telegraph – Neil Johnston – 29th December 2023

    6 votes
  2. Fal
    Link
    iPhone survives 16,000-foot fall after door plug blows off Alaska Air flight 1282

    iPhone survives 16,000-foot fall after door plug blows off Alaska Air flight 1282

    On Sunday, game developer Seanathan Bates discovered a working iPhone that fell 16,000 from Alaska Airlines flight 1282 on Friday. Flight 1282 suffered an explosive decompression event when a door plug blew off the plane. No one was injured during the incident. The iPhone wasn't injured, either—still unlocked and with a torn charging cable connector plugged in, it appeared largely undamaged and displayed information that matched the flight.

    After the discovery, Bates contacted the NTSB, who took possession of the device and told him the iPhone was actually the second phone that had been found from the flight. During a press conference on Sunday, NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy confirmed that two people had discovered cell phones that fell from flight 1281. The other cell phone was discovered in someone's yard.

    The decompression event started when a door plug used to cover an unused exit door on the Boeing 737 Max 9 unexpectedly detached from the plane. Rapid decompression can suck passengers and objects violently out of an aircraft due to air pressure differences. While no people fell out of the plane, the loose iPhone apparently got ripped away while charging. "In case you didn't see it, there was a broken-off charger plug still inside it! Thing got yanked out the door," wrote Bates in his X post.

    3 votes