tokiwo (地球のB面の投稿者)

85 Bodies at Buddhist Retreats in Thailand — Is “Corpse Meditation” Really Buddhist?

2026-09-18 by tokiwo

At first glance, this sounds like the kind of story that practically writes its own sensational headline: Buddhist retreats, dozens of human bodies, and a pond containing hundreds of crocodiles.

But the easy version of the story starts to fall apart once the details are checked.

Between November 20 and 26, 2024, Thai authorities investigated three linked Buddhist sites in the central provinces of Kamphaeng Phet and Phichit. Across those sites, a total of 85 human bodies were found.

At one of the Phichit sites, where 41 bodies were documented, investigators also found a large enclosure holding more than 600 crocodiles.

That combination sounds deeply unsettling. Yet there is an important complication: Buddhist traditions do include forms of meditation in which practitioners contemplate corpses, bodily decay, mortality, and attachment to the body.

So the real question is not simply, “Why were Buddhists meditating around dead bodies?” The more interesting question is where an established religious practice ends — and where a modern, site-specific system involving dozens of stored bodies begins.

Thailand

Nepal’s Fake Helicopter Rescue Scam: When Rescue Pays

2026-09-17 by tokiwo

In the Himalayas, a helicopter evacuation can be the difference between life and death. A trekker develops severe altitude sickness or suffers an injury in a remote mountain region, and a rescue helicopter gets them to medical care within hours. There is nothing strange about that. It is exactly what mountain rescue is supposed to do.

But in Nepal, investigators say that lifesaving system was also exploited as a way to extract money from overseas insurance companies.

On January 25, 2026, Nepal Police’s Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) arrested six people linked to rescue and travel businesses as part of an investigation into alleged organized fraud involving foreign trekkers. The investigation later expanded across trekking businesses, rescue operators, aviation, hospitals and other intermediaries. On March 22, cases were filed against 32 defendants. A 33rd defendant was formally charged in April, and by June all 33 were under a second-stage money-laundering investigation.

These are criminal allegations, not convictions. But the structure described in the investigation is striking enough without exaggeration.

Nepal

The Yellow Volkswagen of Karak Highway: Where Did Malaysia’s Ghost-Car Legend Come From?

2026-09-17 by tokiwo

You are driving along a highway at night when a yellow Volkswagen Beetle appears ahead. It is moving strangely slowly, so you pass it. A few minutes later, the same yellow Beetle is in front of you again.

You overtake it once more. It comes back again. And when you finally pull alongside it, there is nobody in the driver’s seat.

This is the Malaysian urban legend commonly known as Volkswagen Kuning—literally, the “Yellow Volkswagen.” Today it is closely associated with the Kuala Lumpur–Karak Highway, one of Malaysia’s best-known mountain expressways. But once you start digging into the story, things become less tidy. There is no clearly documented first witness, no confirmed date when the legend began, and no verified accident that can be identified as its origin. Even stranger, older online accounts suggest that the ghost car may not always have belonged to Karak at all.

Malaysia

Perna Cabeluda: How Brazil’s “Hairy Leg” Legend Grew Through the Media

2026-09-17 by tokiwo

Brazil has an urban legend about a hairy human leg with no torso, no head and apparently no need for the rest of the body. It roams the streets at night, trips people, kicks them and disappears. Its name is Perna Cabeluda — literally, the “Hairy Leg.”

That description alone is strange enough. But the most interesting part of the story is not the monster itself. It is how the monster seems to have been built, piece by piece, in public.

The earliest documented newspaper report dates to December 10, 1975, in Tiúma, a district of São Lourenço da Mata near Recife, the capital of Pernambuco in northeastern Brazil. When Brazilian media revisited the archives in 2025 and 2026, an apparently ridiculous ghost story opened into something much larger: a story about newspapers, radio, popular culture and censorship.

Brazil

A Man Spent $150,000 Building an AI Version of His Dead Father — Is RichieBot Really Him?

2026-09-16 by tokiwo

When someone dies, photographs remain. Videos remain. Their voice may remain. And now, with generative AI, something else can remain too: a version of the dead that answers back.

On July 21, 2026, at an event connected to TechChicago Week in Chicago, an unusual “father” made an appearance. Brian Dema, a Chicago marketing executive, had spent months building an AI version of his father, J. Richard Dema, who had died about four years earlier. He called it RichieBot.

The project cost about $150,000, involved 19 people over roughly six months, and used 17,500 pages of his father’s documents, along with audio and video material. This was not a science-fiction pitch. It was an actual attempt, in 2026, to reconstruct a dead person through data.

United States

They Sheared Dogs Like Sheep—Why the Coast Salish Woolly Dog Disappeared

2026-09-16 by tokiwo

On September 8, 2026, the University of British Columbia announced that the only known surviving pelt of the extinct Coast Salish woolly dog would be placed on loan at UBC’s Museum of Anthropology. At first glance, it sounds like a small museum story: an unusual animal specimen returning to the region it came from after more than a century.

But the real story is stranger—and much bigger. This was not simply a fluffy dog that happened to shed useful hair. Coast Salish and Makah communities along the Pacific Northwest deliberately bred, managed, and sheared these dogs for fiber that could be spun and woven into blankets, robes, and clothing. In other words, the dog was part of a textile system. A living production system maintained for thousands of years began to decline rapidly during the 19th century.

Canada

Why New Zealand’s DOC Gets Calls About UFOs, Cats and Seals

2026-09-16 by tokiwo

A UFO has fallen into the mountains. There is a black cat at the front door. Someone wants something done about possum droppings. Another person is worried about a supposed MMA fight between a human and a chimpanzee.

None of those questions went to the police, a veterinary clinic or a television station. They ended up with New Zealand’s Department of Conservation, better known as DOC.

On September 14, 2026, DOC published a selection of unusual inquiries received by its customer service team. During the 12 months ending August 31, 2026, the agency handled 42,637 phone calls and 22,394 emails. Of those calls, 2,977 were classified as unrelated to DOC’s work.

That means only about 7% of the calls were actually off-topic. So no, New Zealanders were not making 42,000 bizarre phone calls to a conservation agency. Still, the examples raise an obvious question: why does one government department end up hearing about everything from wildlife to UFOs?

New Zealand

Why a French Historic Town Banned Visible Laundry—and Why It Became More Than a Question of Appearance

2026-09-16 by tokiwo

On June 3, 2026, a municipal order took effect in Villeneuve-sur-Lot, a town in southwestern France, restricting laundry that can be seen from public spaces in parts of its historic center. In French administrative terms, the measure is an arrêté municipal—a municipal executive order rather than a bylaw passed by a local council.

At first glance, the story sounds almost too easy to summarize: beautiful European streets come first, everyday life comes second. But once the case is examined more closely, it stops being a quirky story about underwear and balconies. It turns into a much larger question involving heritage preservation, tourism, poverty, aging housing, energy use, and just how far local government should be able to regulate ordinary domestic life.

France

Why Taiwan Was Alarmed by a Soviet Film Screening for Just 20 People

2026-09-16 by tokiwo

観客20人の映画会を台湾政府が警戒した理由　81年前のソ連映画と“選ばれた20人”

On September 3, 2026, Russian officials in Taipei held a closed-door film screening for roughly 20 Taiwanese guests. The film was an old Soviet documentary about the defeat of Japan at the end of World War II. On paper, it sounds like a tiny cultural event.

Taiwan’s government did not treat it that way. The island’s National Security Council said it was closely monitoring Chinese-Russian cooperation in what Taiwan describes as “cognitive warfare.” The strange part is the mismatch: a screening for only about 20 people triggered attention at the level of national security.

The date itself was not random. In Russia, September 3 is officially commemorated as the “Day of Victory over Militarist Japan and the End of World War II,” a designation written into federal law in 2023. The Taipei event was therefore tied to a much larger Russian historical narrative about the end of the war in Asia.

But the audience matters just as much as the date. Reuters reported that the event was invitation-only and that journalists were denied entry. Taiwan’s foreign ministry said around 20 people from academic circles had been invited, while one attendee said the group also included former journalists, business figures and other public-facing people. Seen another way, they were not simply 20 viewers. They were potentially 20 information nodes.

Taiwan

The Cloud Has an Address: Why American Towns Are Pushing Back on AI Data Centers

2026-09-16 by tokiwo

When people use ChatGPT, few stop to wonder where the AI answering them actually is. The technology feels almost weightless, as if it exists somewhere beyond the screen in “the cloud.”

But the cloud has an address. It sits inside enormous data centers built on the edges of suburbs and rural towns, where thousands of servers consume electricity around the clock. Some facilities also require significant amounts of water for cooling, while fans, transformers and other infrastructure keep running 24 hours a day.

This article examines the data center backlash that became increasingly visible across the United States from late 2025 through September 2026. Communities began pushing back against the giant facilities that support AI and other digital services, and by the summer of 2026 protests had spread across multiple states. The dispute did not stop at environmental concerns. Some of the residents who fought data center projects began running for local office — and some had already won seats.

United States