11
votes
Offbeat Fridays – The thread where offbeat headlines become front page news
Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like nuclear power, animalist and pivot. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was perplexed.
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!
Church fresco resembling Italian PM has face scrubbed out
BBC News – Tiffany Wertheimer – 5th February 2026
Art in the eye of the beholder. Personally I don’t think it’s bad, so am just assuming the PM isn’t liked by the people of Rome. Well, now it looks like they are happy with the solution.
Generally, it's probably a bad idea to use a real, living person as a basis if they're involved in politics. It will be a contentious choice with someone.
Unless the politician in question is an animal. We need all the dog mayors memorialized forevermore in some way.
Or if you're trying to be a messy bitch Dante style.
ABC NEWS: Multiple sickened after exposure to Las Vegas home 'bio lab,' court documents claim
A key detail: this house rented out rooms on AirBNB. So it didn't just risk exposing people aware of the lab's existence or acquaintances of the owner, but total strangers. If something went wrong and a vial broke or something... Yikes.
The mention of dead crickets in the master bedroom is particularly eerie.
Meth lab!
Nope, it's weirder than that. Keep scrolling, the Solomon guy running this place was associated with another guy who's been in prison since 2023 for operating a similar illegal bio lab, I remember that other case. Weird shit!
Penisgate.
This sounds like one of those rumors among overreacting parents about weird sex trends among teens, or the kind of conspiracy spread by middle school students or internet trolls.
And I want to dismiss it, but then I remember a funny anecdote about the Russian swim team growing mustaches after Mark Spitz told Russian coaches his mustache made him more hydrodynamic. That taught me that Olympic atheletes (and coaches) will do some ridiculous things to raise their chances of victory even marginally.
This is crazy! I thought I was going to read another article about weird sex thing, WWI bomb stuck up his backside. Winning at all cost-man…
There is no way they get an extra 5% of suit fabric from a chemical penis pump.
Way more effective to just eat foods that cause you to retain water before your examination. That will plump you up all over, rather than the truly marginal improvement to one area.
Foods you're mildly allergic to that will make you swell even more!