WTF?

Friend of Satan: how Lucien Greaves and his Satanic Temple are fighting the religious right

They have protested against a homophobic church and opposed prayer in classrooms. Now this minority religion is defending the right to abortion

A statue of Baphomet – a pagan idol used in popular culture as a representation of the devil, with the head, horns and feet of a goat, the torso of a man and the wings of an angel – is the centrepiece of the Satanic Temple’s headquarters in Salem, Massachusetts.

More than 8ft (2.4 metres) tall, jet black and altogether unnerving, Baphomet serves as a reminder of what brought the Satanic Temple to fame. In 2013, the group, which is acknowledged as a religion by the US government, responded to the installation of a Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the Oklahoma state capitol building – seemingly a flagrant abuse of the US constitution’s separation of church and state – by demanding that its own Baphomet statue also be positioned in the grounds. According to the first amendment, which protects freedom of religion, public spaces should be open to all religions or none, it argued.

One of the bigger mysteries to show up during the holiday season was the series of attacks on electrical substations in Washington state on Christmas day. Thousands of people were left without power just as their festivities were beginning, and the cost of repairs to the facilities is estimated to be in excess of three million dollars. We immediately began speculating on the motive for such attacks. Was this a group of domestic terrorists? Were anarchists trying to shut down society during a holiday period? Might foreign adversaries be involved?

A studio for rent in China has gone viral after photographs advertising the six-square-metre property showed a man cooking while sitting on a toilet.

The listing, shared by property agents on Douyin, China’s TikTok shows off the micro-rental which is located under stairs and is being listed for 380 yuan (£45) per month.

The post put a renewed focus on the living standards of migrant and low-paid workers.

The driver of a Tesla that plunged 250 feet off a notorious California cliff Monday has been arrested — after authorities say he intentionally drove over the edge with his wife and two children inside the car.

Dharmesh Patel, a 41-year-old physician from Pasadena, will be booked on attempted murder and child abuse charges once he is out of a hospital, the California Highway Patrol said in a statement.

Denmark has discovered an unexpected benefit of a cashless society after bank robberies in the Scandinavian country fell to zero.

Figures from Finans Danmark, an industry association, show the number of attacks has collapsed in recent years as the shift towards online transactions has led many Danish banks to abandon cash services in branches. While there were 221 bank robberies in 2000, the number of hold-ups in Denmark fell to 121 in 2004, before declining to one in 2021 and none last year.

The Bible is pretty darn clear: God created two human sexes, labeling them as male and female. “Male and female created He them” (Genesis 1:27). One would expect that a vicar of a Christian church grounded in Biblical scripture would accept God’s foundational creations, but Bingo Allison (yes, that’s his real name) knows better. The “gender-queer” vicar says that his epiphany came when he was reading Genesis, at which time he concluded that God intended sexual fluidity. No wonder Christianity is dying in England, even as Islam rises.

White people not wanting to be around black people is racist but black people not wanting to be around white people is fine because white people are dangerous demons pic.twitter.com/ltncydUenn

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 3, 2023