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

A cat named Leonardo da Pinchy doesn’t want your affection. He wants to steal your underwear

Most cat owners dread their pets bringing home mice or birds. But for the owners of one felonious feline in Auckland, New Zealand, there’s a worse shame — being the unwitting accomplice to an unstoppable one-cat crimewave.

His prolific laundry-pinching from clotheslines and bedrooms in the placid beachside neighborhood of Mairangi Bay has turned 15-month-old Leo into a local celebrity and earned him a new moniker. He now goes by Leonardo da Pinchy.

Microsoft signs deal for the world's most expensive poop burial program

Another The Onion headline becomes reality: School district says doctor’s notes will no longer excuse child absences

Adkins also said during the meeting, “We are going to take control of the attendance of our students. You can bring all the doctor’s notes you want, but it is still unexcused.”

While there will be exemptions for verified chronic illnesses and several other things, Adkins and other district officials said during the meeting that students need to learn reliability and work ethic.

“If you have the sniffles, that is fine,” Adkins said during the meeting. “You are going to have them when you go to work one day. We have all gone to work sick and hurt and beat up.”

In Portuguese: McDonald's order comes without meat, lady complains, gets a one-word response: "Impossible"

TL;DR: Brazilian lady purchases burger from McDonald's through food delivery app. It arrives without the actual burger patty. She contacts the store via the app she purchased from and receives this reply: "Impossible". Pissed off, she shares the story, which is soon picked up by a major news channel, who contacts the restaurant again on her behalf. McDonald's response to them this time: "The experience of our consumers is our priority and this response does not fit with our customer service policies. The company informs that we are already attempting to contact the customer to resolve this issue."

Once again, naming and shaming megacorporations online seems to be more effective than dealing with them directly.

Man accused of taking stolen boat on naked joyride in Hudson River escapes from Manhattan hospital

Normally I'd pick a sentence or two from the article to highlight, but given that the entire article is only four sentences (and a video that doesn't load for me) here it is:

NEW YORK CITY (WABC) -- A man accused of going on a naked joyride on a stolen boat in the Hudson River over the weekend escaped from New York Presbyterian Hospital in Washington Heights where he was undergoing a psychiatric evaluation.

Sources told Eyewitness News that 36-year-old Stephen Blasetti slipped out of his handcuffs Wednesday morning, while the police officer watching him fell asleep.

Security camera captured Blasetti putting on a doctor's jacket before he slipped out of New York Presbyterian Hospital.

Blasetti was charged with grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property, and reckless endangerment in connection to the July 19 incident when he took the stolen boat in the Hudson River.

Sounds straight out of a movie.

Experiment finds yoghurt can lower house temperature (BBC)

Dr Ben Roberts, a senior lecturer in healthy buildings at Loughborough University, said applying yoghurt to the outside of windows could lower the temperature by up to 3.5C.

He has pointed to the results of a month-long experiment to show the method has brought results.

...

The experiment found the indoor temperature of the house with yoghurt on the windows was on average 0.6C cooler, but up to a maximum of 3.5C cooler when it was "hot and sunny".

According to Dr Roberts, the yoghurt forms a thin film on the window itself and reflects some of the incoming solar radiation as it is a light colour.

...

He added when they carried out experiments with tinfoil - which blocks "pretty much" all of the incoming sun's heat - they saw a maximum temperature drop of 5C to 6C, so he was "pleasantly surprised" with the results from the yoghurt experiment.

Toronto Transit Commission blames 12-year-old boys for jokes about its new POO crew

City of Toronto, Canada's, transit fair inspectors have officially been renamed Provincial Offences Officers, blames childish behaviour when people point out the obvious acronym.

The Rise of the Japanese Toilet

https://archive.is/vKLsD

From the article:

The Toto Washlet first appeared in 1980. At the time, the product had three primary functions: washing, drying and a heated seat. It was expensive, costing the equivalent of about $2,000 in today’s currency, and early models were known to sometimes spray inspectors in the face.

The Japanese public was slow to warm to the devices. It took Toto 18 years to sell its first 10 million Washlets. But Toto added features — deodorizing in 1992 and automatic flushing and lid opening in 2003 — and sales picked up.

In current models, the water spray is kept at a precise 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature the company describes as “warm but not surprising.” Toto sold another 10 million Washlets between 2019 and mid-2022 and has maintained a similar pace of sales since. Its all-time Washlet sales now exceed 60 million.

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Toto-style bidet toilets first spread to Japan’s neighbors, including South Korea and Taiwan. After they expanded to China in 1994, the country quickly became Toto’s top overseas market, but sales outside Asia remained elusive.

When Toto began selling Washlets in the United States in 1989, it encountered many of the same hurdles it faced early on in Japan.

...

The company saw a big shift when the Covid-19 pandemic started in 2020.

During nationwide lockdowns, Americans struggling to get toilet paper began flocking to Washlets. In 2020, Toto Washlet sales in North America nearly doubled from the year prior. That boom has carried forward, even after toilet paper stocks have replenished, Mr. Tamura said.

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Toto manufactures most of the Washlets it sells in the United States in Thailand and Malaysia, countries that Mr. Trump has threatened with additional tariffs of more than 20 percent. Mr. Trump’s tariffs, if enacted, would most likely force Toto to raise its prices in the United States, Mr. Tamura said.

Even so, he said, Toto sees plenty of room for growth, since Washlet-style bidets still account for only about 2.5 percent of American toilets.