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Offbeat Fridays – The thread where offbeat headlines become front page news
Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like sideloading, messaging and friendship. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was eagle-eyed.
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!
A house sale and a slip-up: How a painting looted by the Nazis was located in Argentina
El País – Javier Lorca – 27th August 2025
It's the time of year when everyone's gardens have overproduced tomatoes.
As an introvert, can someone explain why this festival is fun? Like, why would someone want to do this or live in a town where you have to clean tomatoes from your walls and gutter every year. And be pelted by rotting tomatoes. Would other foods or textures be fun as well or is it the colour?
(Quick search says the food waste issue is not an issue because they're overripe or too sour. 150 tonnes though. Maybe stop growing so many?)
Part of it is probably just the atmosphere. I'm an introvert too, but just being in a place with a great atmosphere can boost my mood even without interacting with people. There's also the cliche of throwing tomatoes and booing at bad performances, so it's probably fun to participate in that sort of thing at least once.
As for the number of tomatoes: they seem to be pretty common plants for people to grow in small gardens. I don't really care for tomatoes myself, but we know multiple people who grow them because they like them extra fresh rather than store-bought. That said, in our area at least this year has apparently been rough for them due to the weather? Some are fine (and we've gotten multiple offers of tomatoes), but I've heard a few conversations about the rough quality this year.
We've had too much rain this year to produce great tomatoes. One of the reasons for homegrown is that you can regulate the water supply (weather permitting) to get those rich, intense flavors that overwatered commercial tomatoes don't develop.
As a fellow introvert, I can see the appeal of a festival where everyone is there to be mutually embarrassed by consent.
Our local kook, the “Queen of Canada” has been arrested. What this will amount to is unclear — they went in on a tip about illegal firearms, but only found replicas. At the very least, their neighbours will have a few hours of respite from their wacky sovereign citizen antics.
She's been arrested before and nothing happened, nor did it discourage her in any way from continuing to harass COVID clinics and the like. Last time it was just local Victoria police who arrested her for assault but then the charges got stayed when the witness never showed up. :/
p.s. She's way more than just a "soveriegn citizen" too. She also claims she's an extraterrestrial with special healing powers. 🤦