Growing extreme-weather risks mean President Joe Biden’s expected request for billions in extra disaster-relief funding might not be

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The internet is full of weird and wonderful trends and memes, but one of the strangest by far is the Skibidi Toilet meme that has taken over social media platforms. If you’ve heard of Skibidi Toilet recently, chances are it was on TikTok or X/Twitter but many people may not know that the phenomenon started on YouTube. Skibidi Toilet is a meme based on a bizarre animated YouTube series with 59 episodes all about singing and dancing disembodied heads lurking in toilets. The series shows how the Skibidi Toilets have conflict between themselves and the so-called “Cameramen” – other people with CCTV on their heads, who are killed by the Skibidi Toilets. The YouTube show was created by user “DaFuq!?Boom!” and has over 27.2 million YouTube subscribers and some Skibidi Toilet episodes have upwards of 63 million views. The show is animated by Alexey Gerasimov, an animator based in Georgia. Since posting the first episode in February this year, the series has rapidly taken off. Its popularity seems to have got Gen Zers worried that they are getting old, as Gen Alpha is coming up with its own memes that they don’t understand. Gen Alpha, those born between the early 2010s and mid-2020s, are the next generation on from Gen Z (1997 – 2012) and are now becoming tweeners that have their own interests and online identity. Some have compared Skibidi Toilet to Gen Alpha’s Slender Man – a scary character that was popular among online youth in 2009. The emergence of Skibidi Toilet has left some Gen Z-ers realising that soon they will be facing the same mocking and ridicule they dished out to Millennials. On X/Twitter, someone wrote: “I just overheard my sister talking about how Gen Z is old and stupid and how they don't get their jokes, hello I am right here I am only 15 (she was born in 2013) “Then she asked me if I knew what a Skibidi Toilet was please help me what the f**k is a Skibidi Toilet I feel old.” For those who are extreme fans of Skibidi Toilet, a new phrase called Skibidi Toilet Syndrome has been coined as the diagnosis for people who can’t stop watching and consuming content based on the animated show. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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Gfycat is being put down. The GIF-hosting platform has announced it will soon shut down,

China have embarked on an enormous project: to dig the biggest hole in the country. The planned 10,000 metre hole will aim to pierce through ten layers of rock and could even end up finding signs of life as suggested by discoveries in past boreholes. And the objective? To reach rocks and minerals that could date back to around 145 million years ago - or the Cretaceous period. Findings from the mission may help alert China to environmental hazards such as volcanoes and earthquakes, whilst also identifying potentially valuable minerals lurking below. Past expeditions have also unearthed signs of life - with one project discovering signs of life under the surface. Don't worry, it wasn't subterranean humans or any other horror movie tropes. That borehole unearthed plankton 4 miles below the surface. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter That project won't be surpassed by this new - admittedly massive - attempt. The deepest ever dug - the one that discovered the plankton - was in Russia. The Kola Superdeep Borehole - just a really big hole in the ground - ended up reaching over 11,000 meters below sea level after being started by Soviet scientists in 1970. They had to abandon the project after hitting extremely high temperatures that they weren't expecting. Interesting. The Chinese project isn't going to be easy. It's not as simple as digging straight down into the Earth's crust and hoping for the best. It's also extremely costly and time-consuming. “The construction difficulty of the drilling project can be compared to a big truck driving on two thin steel cables,” Sun Jinsheng, an academic from the Chinese Academy of Engineering, told news agency Xinhua. So yeah, they'll need more than a JCB for this. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Germany’s Interior Ministry wants to ban critical components from Huawei Technologies Co. and ZTE Corp. from its 5G

Best deals on robot mops this week Despite the enthusiasm of actors in Swiffer commercials,

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On Saturday (July 15), Elon Musk revealed that Twitter is struggling with a “heavy debt load” due to advertising revenue dropping 50 per cent. Responding to a user seemingly giving financial business advice to Musk, the billionaire replied explaining that the company is “still in negative cash flow, due to ~50 per cent drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load. Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else.” Back in April, Musk had said Twitter was “roughly breaking even,” as most of its advertisers had returned. However, a New York Times report in early June found that Twitter’s revenue from US advertising was down 59 per cent from the previous year. Since taking over Twitter in October last year, Musk has faced constant scrutiny for his business decisions, cutting roughly 75 per cent of its workforce almost immediately, as well as reinstating users who were previously banned for breaking terms of service. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter In May, Musk hired a new CEO, Linda Yaccarino, an ex-NBCUniversal advertising executive. The new hire was supposed to signal a fresh start for the platform under Musk’s ownership, but it clearly hasn’t worked in bringing previous advertisers back. Twitter has also caused new upset by imposing ‘rate limits’ on how many tweets users can view a day. At the time, Musk had said the restrictions were required to “address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation”. Another challenge that faces Twitter is Meta’s Threads, the new app it launched this week to compete with Twitter. Meta saw over 100 million users sign up in the first two weeks, but is yet to allow advertisers to host on the platform, despite interest. In response, Twitter threatened legal action, with Twitter’s attorney, Alex Spiro, accusing Meta for unlawfully using trade secrets and other intellectual property to create a “copycat” app. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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