4 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 creative commons, opting in out and david attenborough. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was curious.

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!

3 comments

  1. [2]
    mycketforvirrad
    Link
    French professor investigated for awarding himself fake prize BBC News – Hugh Schofield – 6th May 2026

    French professor investigated for awarding himself fake prize

    A French academic is under investigation for inventing a Nobel-style prize for philology in order that he could then go on to win it.

    Florent Montaclair, from Besançon in eastern France, was decorated with the Gold Medal of Philology in 2016 at a ceremony held at the National Assembly in Paris, attended by ministers and Nobel laureates.

    But the prize was a fiction, as was the body that supposedly awarded it, the International Society of Philology - both apparently dreamed up by Montaclair to burnish his academic credentials.

    BBC News – Hugh Schofield – 6th May 2026

    4 votes
    1. jredd23
      Link Parent
      I find the articles definition interesting. Not only in relation to where its placement in the article but maybe just adding salt to an already wounded academia soul. Maybe I can be a philosopher?

      I find the articles definition interesting. Not only in relation to where its placement in the article but maybe just adding salt to an already wounded academia soul. Maybe I can be a philosopher?

      Philology is the study of language through texts.

      1 vote
  2. jredd23
    Link
    So I am still on the hunt for the 2026 great trail adventure. In my research, I found this item: …feral cows take over a remote Alaskan island It's a long read and at least for me, I find it so...

    So I am still on the hunt for the 2026 great trail adventure. In my research, I found this item: …feral cows take over a remote Alaskan island

    On the surface, Alaska as a whole appears an odd choice for cattle: mountainous, snowy, far from lucrative markets. But we’re here in June, summer solstice 2022, at “peak green,” when the archipelago oozes a lushness I associate with coastal British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest. The islands rest closer to the gentle climate of those coasts than to the northern outposts they skirt

    It's a long read and at least for me, I find it so interesting. Mother nature may be impartial, sometimes cruel, sometimes not but nature seems to find a way forward.

    4 votes