Stupid people of the week

Don’t use the word ‘MUMMY’… it’s offensive to ancient Egyptians: Museums stop using age-old expression out of ‘respect’ for 3,000-year-old dead

It might seem impossible to hurt the feelings of a 3,000-year-old corpse. But woke museum chiefs have stopped using the word ‘mummy’ to describe the remains of ancient Egyptians, all in the name of ‘respect’.

They say the term is dehumanising to those who died and – of course – an unwelcome throwback to Britain’s colonial past.

The phrase now deemed politically acceptable is ‘mummified person’ or ‘mummified remains’.

The British Museum says it uses the latter phrase to emphasise to visitors that they are looking at people who once lived, while the Great North Museum: Hancock in Newcastle says that it has adopted the new terms for its mummified woman Irtyru, who dates from around 600BC, to acknowledge the history of colonial exploitation and to give her the respect she deserves.

National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh has also removed the word ‘mummy’ from labels on its human remains.

A spokeswoman said: ‘Where we know the name of an individual we use that, otherwise we use “mummified man, woman, boy, girl or person” because we are referring to people, not objects.

‘The word “mummy” is not incorrect, but it is dehumanising, whereas using the term “mummified person” encourages our visitors to think of the individual.’

Museums are also concerned the word has become linked to terrifying monsters, thanks to countless horror B-movies such as 1932’s The Mummy.

The Great North Museum’s Jo Anderson, said that ‘legends about the mummy’s curse and movies portraying supernatural monsters… can undermine their humanity.’

The word mummy has been used in English since at least 1615, but some say it has a colonial past as it derived from the Arabic word ‘mummiya’, meaning ‘bitumen’, which was used as an embalming substance.

Many mummies found their way to Britain in imperial times, especially during the Victorian age, where there was a trend for unwrapping them.

Ms Anderson said this turned human remains into specimens or curiosities.

But critics of the new terms claim the change is virtue signalling.

Jeremy Black, author of Imperial Legacies: The British Empire Around The World, said: ‘When museums cut themselves off from popular culture they show contempt for how we all understand words, meanings and history.

‘It would be better to focus on helping create a setting that encourages all to visit them rather than in pandering to a virtue signalling minority.’

David Abulafia, professor emeritus of Mediterranean history at Cambridge University, described the move as strange, and Chris McGovern, the chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said: ‘The curse of the mummy is driving these academics mad!’

A British Museum spokesman said: ‘The Museum hasn’t banned the use of the term ‘mummy’ and it is still in use across our galleries.

‘Our recent displays use the term ‘mummified remains of…’ and include the name (when known) of the person who has been mummified. Displays and exhibitions created by the Museum have emphasized that mummified remains are of people who once lived.

‘The research undertaken by the Museum over the last 10 years has focused on the individuals, looking at how they lived and how they were prepared for the afterlife. This approach aims to bring the visitor closer to the people who lived along the Nile Valley.’

And Adam Goldwater, manager at the Great North Museum: Hancock, said they wanted to describe their collections ‘in respectful ways, sharing information from the perspective of their original community’.

Source; Daily Mail

Canadians told to have two drinks a week, as crack is decriminalised

Justin Trudeau’s government has introduced some of the strictest guidelines on alcohol consumption in the West, just weeks before Canada will decriminalise heroin and crack cocaine in parts of the country.

The government is recommending Canadians have no more than two drinks per week. The new advice is a steep drop from the previous recommendation of a maximum of 10 drinks a week for women and 15 drinks for men.

No amount of alcohol is safe, says Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addictions (CCSA) in a report published in January. The report concludes “drinking less is better”, and if you must drink, two drinks maximum each week is deemed low-risk.

The move puts the country out of step with several other Western nations. The US recommends no more than two drinks a day for men and one for women, while the UK suggests no more than 14 “units” of alcohol – around six glasses of wine, or pints of beer – per week.

Source; The Telegraph

Florida woman rescued from storm drain for third time in less than two years

A Florida woman was pulled from a storm drain for the third time in two years last week.

The Delray Beach Police Department said officers and firefighters responded to a report of a woman possibly in distress while swimming in a canal near the 500 block of Lindell Boulevard around noon Wednesday. The department said officers located the woman, identified as Lyndsey Jane Kennedy, and asked if she needed help.

Kennedy reportedly ignored them and climbed into a storm drain pipe. Delray police said she refused to come out and began crawling farther into the culvert pipe, which crossed under Lindell Boulevard.

Firefighters were able to keep Kennedy between two sections of pipe while the Delray Beach Fire Rescue Special Operations Team utilized a ladder and a rescue harness to pull her out.

Kennedy appeared to have minor injuries and was treated at the scene before being transported to a hospital for further evaluation.

Delray police said the fire department previously rescued Kennedy from a storm drain in March 2021 after she had been missing for three weeks.

According to local news outlets at the time, Kennedy told police she went swimming in a canal near her boyfriend’s house on March 3, the same night her boyfriend reported her missing. While swimming, she said, she entered a doorway in the shallow part of the canal and noticed a tunnel. She continued following tunnels until she realized she was lost.

Kennedy was eventually rescued near the intersection of West Atlantic Avenue and SW 11th Avenue after a woman called 911 to report a woman yelling for help from inside the drain. She said she had stopped walking in that area because she could see light and people walking past her.

The woman, who was 43 at the time, told police she had been walking in the sewer system for about three weeks. She also said she had been living off an unopened can of ginger ale she found in the drain while looking for a way out.

Delray police said Kennedy “appeared to be coherent” and didn’t need to be Baker Acted (involuntarily institutionalized). Police contacted her mother, who said she has a history of mental illness, is a frequent user of illegal narcotics and has a history of doing “odd things” and “making bad decisions.”

Before she disappeared, Kennedy’s family members said she attended a Bible study with her mother where they learned about the prophet Elijah taking a journey. The relatives said Kennedy wrote her mom a note claiming she was planning on going on her own journey.

Despite that, the family said they didn’t believe her journey was meant to be in a storm drain.

She was reportedly listed as “endangered” on the sheriff’s office’s missing persons documentation, and a detective wrote in the report she went missing “under similar circumstances” in April 2020.

Kennedy’s third rescue from the storm drain took place in Grand Prairie, Texas, two months later in May 2021. Police in the town were searching for four days before her mother and best friend found her at a canal.

In this instance, she had reportedly wandered off from a rehab facility after checking in. When police saw the woman near a creek and began to approach her, she went into a nearby storm drain, according to WPEC.

A tracking app on her cellphone allowed her family to find her last location before she disappeared underground. Before she was rescued, her family and friends reportedly dropped bags of food and Gatorade into manholes in the area.

Kennedy was reportedly arrested in Florida in July 2021 after a hit-and-run occurred when she sped off from a gas station after stealing beer. She almost ran over the store’s clerk, who chased her outside, then she ran several red lights before crashing with a car.

Palm Beach County deputies said she ran from the crash scene to an apartment complex, but staff led them to her.

Kennedy’s passenger, who was injured, told police she ran because she didn’t have a driver’s license. Police said her license had been suspended 17 times from 2007 to 2020.

Source; NY Post and this piece from the last time she did it.

Montana man gets 10 years for faking COVID to miss criminal court hearing

A Montana man who is serving a 23-year prison sentence for defrauding two elderly Butte residents had another 10 years added to his term this week for lying when he said he missed a court hearing because he had COVID-19.

The Butte man was sentenced in March 2022 for violating his probation for his 2015 and 2017 convictions for stealing from two people. He had been given suspended sentences for both crimes, but he never paid restitution.

The man missed a December 2021 court hearing over those criminal cases and told the judge he had COVID-19. The next week he supplied a document from a Missoula clinic saying he had been diagnosed with the respiratory virus — a medical record prosecutors later learned had been forged, The Montana Standard reported.

The 10-year sentence he received Wednesday was for fabricating physical evidence.

District Court Judge Kurt Krueger denied a defense request that the new sentence run at the same time as the 23-year sentence, citing the 50-year-old man’s extensive criminal record.

Source; Fox News

Category: Crime, Stupid Criminals