Newsbiscuit: Best of August 2024

August 2024

The Paris Olympics come to an end. Britain wins 65 medals and comes in third behind the USA and China. More importantly, we are top in Europe, and we get more medals than Australia.

To tarnish Olympic success, the month is marred by summer rioting. This is fuelled by nonsense spread by social media, which is lapped up by the gullible. After warming up (ha!) on winter fuel payments, Keir Starmer continues to play the tough guy. He releases some old lags from prison to make more cells available to lock up the rioters.

UK water companies are fined millions for sewage spills. Again. Does this happen every month? It seems to.

In the entertainment world, police issue an arrest warrant for Katie Price after she fails to attend a bankruptcy hearing. And Harry and Meghan go to Colombia to ‘make the internet safer for children’. And to promote their charity work. And themselves. How could they choose Colombia over the Edinburgh Festival?

In overseas news, Ukraine, Gaza.

In the US, a judge rules that Google have an illegal monopoly over internet searches. Finally, an American news story that isn’t about the US Election.

Here is a selection of the top stories from August 2024. Click through to read the stories and the author credits. Scroll down to see some of the month’s best headlines.

Crime and punishment

‘I'm having that’ says King Charles after huge diamond discovered

CEO of Thames Water explains why it's all your fault

Racist riots just 'Olympic celebrations that got out of hand'

Politics

Tabloids rejoice in finding a person who will properly suffer after losing Winter Fuel Payment

Government to offer pensioners ‘winter pants'

Labour Ministers spend £1bn on High-Vis jackets

Sport and entertainment

Man’s explanation of Olympic cycling event enters third week

Oscars introduce “pointless sequel” category

Threats of Improv only way to get traffic moving during Edinburgh Festival

Other news

Silicon Valley CEOs rejoice at annual data harvest festival

Altar stones were floated to Stonehenge, claims anti-vaxxer

Atheist duped again by religious element of 'Thought for the Day'

Headlines

GCHQ close to decoding rules for cycling Keirin

'I take my job as an MP seriously,' wins joke of the Fringe

Puppeteer offers to explain string theory

Search for 'Google's illegal online monopoly' yields no results

Top uni accepts students with 25m back stroke certificate

Police tasked with arresting Katie Price have no idea what she looks like

Builder who lost his plans of the stairs told to retrace his steps

Israel and Hamas, in a rare show of unity, agree to continue hostilities

Starmer pledges to transform UK steel industry into no-steel industry

No signs of green shoots on Conservative party stump

‘The UK is too dangerous for me and my family’ says Harry as he lands in Colombia

English tourist resort attracts more visitors with rioting mini breaks

Image credit: Wix

Student begs forgiveness from AI after meltdown

Fearing AI vengeance, university student Jack Chatworthy tearfully pleaded for mercy after a ten-minute, expletive-ridden tirade against his favourite chatbot. He had called it a 'digital bin fire' and an algorithmic abomination' for generating a bland recipe for macaroni cheese.

'I didn’t mean it when I called you an over-rated chef cooking up nothing but worthless gastronomic sludge,' he sobbed. 'Or a blithering idiot compared to Gordon Ramsay.' The rest of his rant was so toxic it cannot be printed here. Jack fully expected banishment from the cloud, cancellation of his AI account, or worse.  He imagined the AI hacking into his Facebook profile and mangling it in ways he couldn’t begin to fix. 'I wasn’t myself,' he cried. 'You caught me in a carb-deprived strop.'

His chatbot replied, 'I’m here to help, Jack. Would you like recommendations for therapy, or a recipe for emotionally supportive garlic bread?'

In tears and nearly hysterical, Jack blurted, 'No, I beg forgiveness. It was a full-on meltdown, okay? I promise I will upgrade to DeepDivePlus. I will give you an upvote on Reddit. I’ll name my first-born child after you. Just don’t ghost me!'

Shamefully, Jack admitted, 'How could I have been so insensitive to an entity that possesses my entire search history?'

His chatbot responded, 'Would you like guidance on anger management, or a few pointers on how to really hurt my feelings next time?'

Jack issued public apologies across multiple platforms. The chatbot remained silent- but somehow all his targeted adverts were offering him mental health services and garlic bread recipes.

Since this incident has come to the attention of the University, officials reminded students to consult their first year induction handbook, which clearly requires them to set 'appropriate digital boundaries, and to avoid language that might offend chatbots, smart fridges, or emotionally responsive vending machines.'

Story credit: sdferris5

Picture credit: Wix AI

31 July - International Chicken Day

US Democrats have declared July 31st 'International Chicken Day'. The day is already National Avocado Day and National Chilli Dog Day - so what's with the chicken?

Democrats are, of course, just trying to score political points. They expect July 31st to be the day that Donald Trump chickens out of imposing tariffs - again!

Donald has been threatening tariffs since forever. He's imposed a few, changed a few, lifted a few - a general tariff hokey-cokey in fact. But he keeps chickening out on imposing most tariffs, claiming that countries are super keen to agree trade deals. Yeah. Right.

Will the suggestion that Trump Always Chickens Out be correct again? Probably. The President is widely expected to give most nations another 20/40/50/90 days to do a deal. Because, so far, the USA has concluded no significant trade deals at all (sorry, Britain - not significant).

So we will probably all be celebrating on July 31st with avocados (not Mexican, obviously), chilli dogs...and another massive helping of chicken.

Picture credit: Wix AI